What Rotten Luck

Li Muyang's voice was calm.

From the moment he saw his younger sister, Li Yuechan, to when he directed everyone to carry the girl inside, and even now, Li Muyang had shown no signs of excitement.

His calm reaction quieted the noisy crowd.

Steward Wang hesitated, then nodded. "All right, I'll go ask Doctor Lin to come over."

Doctor Lin was an old demon cultivator who had spent more than twenty years in their outer sect. When her period of serving as a menial disciple ended, she hadn't wanted to leave the outer sect and return to the secular world, so she had stayed in the outer sect of the Demon Refining Sect.

She was an excellent physician. Whenever an outer sect disciple suffered a serious injury, such as broken bones or damaged tendons, they would ask her to treat them.

The only problem was, she charged a fortune.

Only after Steward Wang hurried off did Li Muyang turn to Guan Xiaoshun.

"Xiaoshun, do you know what happened?"

Li Muyang's question drew the eyes of the remaining outer sect disciples to Guan Xiaoshun.

"Yeah, Xiaoshun, what happened?"

"How did the Li family's little sister end up so badly hurt out of nowhere?"

Steward Wang had called these outer sect disciples over to help carry her, but most of them had come to gawk.

Life in the outer sect was incredibly isolated. The slightest disturbance could draw a crowd of onlookers.

That was why carrying Li Yuechan had turned into such a big production.

Under everyone's curious gaze, Guan Xiaoshun sighed and answered Li Muyang.

"Brother Li, the steward and I ran into your sister on the flying boat."

"She was already injured then, and a female disciple who called herself Ning Wan'er was carrying her on her back."

"Miss Ning said her injuries were severe and that she was bringing her here to ask you for help."

"When Steward Wang heard she was your sister, he immediately called everyone over to help carry her here."

"Miss Ning said she was going back to get some medicine. She has some healing medicine, and she'll come by later."

At this point, Guan Xiaoshun hesitated, then said, "Miss Ning said it was an inner sect senior sister named Qin Haie who hurt her."

"I've heard of Senior Sister Qin. She's Elder Qi's personal disciple in the inner sect, and she's always been domineering."

"This afternoon, she got into an argument with another personal disciple in the city. Afterwards, she suddenly flew into a rage in the street and hurt more than ten people. Apparently, some of them died on the spot."

"Little Yuechan was pretty lucky. Her injuries aren't as severe as they could've been. Once Doctor Lin gets here, she'll surely be able to heal her."

Guan Xiaoshun and the others had great faith in Doctor Lin's medical skills.

After hearing the whole story, Li Muyang fell silent for a moment, then slowly breathed out.

"So that's what happened..."

He looked at the unconscious girl on the bed, his gaze complicated.

This was what he had feared most since transmigrating here—being caught in the crossfire simply because some powerful demon cultivator had taken out her anger on someone.

That Senior Sister Qin hadn't even meant to target Li Yuechan.

She had simply been in a foul mood and randomly picked a dozen unlucky passersby to vent her anger on.

But of the dozen people who had the misfortune to cross her path, some had died and others had been injured.

And as long as Senior Sister Qin paid a fine, she would face no consequences.

The passersby she had injured or killed wouldn't even leave a ripple in her memory.

—Just as people never noticed the ants they crushed beneath their feet.

Li Muyang sighed. "Yuechan's really unlucky..."

The others in the room murmured in agreement. "Yeah, really unlucky..."

For the people living under the Demon Refining Sect's rule, this sort of thing was already commonplace.

Those who had nothing to do with it and merely saw or heard about it could only sigh and say, "What rotten luck."

Beyond that, what could little nobodies like them say?

Once he had learned what happened, Li Muyang smiled and invited everyone to sit by the door. He quickly heated some water and poured tea for them all.

Their home was humble, but they still had a few chipped bowls and a box of stale tea leaves.

Most outer sect disciples lived hand to mouth. Although the sect handed out all sorts of things that would be valuable to ordinary people, many of those things couldn't be turned into cash without leaving the outer sect.

Life in the outer sect was generally hard.

Everyone sat by the door for a while and drank a couple of cups of hot tea. Then Steward Wang arrived, panting, with Doctor Lin.

Doctor Lin was a woman in her fifties, with a few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. But thanks to her cultivation, she looked only about thirty.

As soon as she entered the room, she waved her hand in disgust and drove everyone out.

"Get out, all of you! Stop standing around in my way. A girl's being treated, so what's a bunch of rough men doing in here? If you want to watch, go home and watch your own mothers."

Doctor Lin rudely chased everyone out of the room, including Li Muyang.

No one knew what kind of treatment she performed inside. A full hour passed before the door of the tiled house finally opened.

Doctor Lin's hands were covered in blood. As she told Guan Xiaoshun to fetch water so she could wash them, she asked Li Muyang, "You're this little girl's husband, right?"

Doctor Lin glanced at Li Muyang.

Li Muyang shook his head. "I'm her brother."

Doctor Lin didn't care. "Brother's just as good, as long as you can pay."

"Anyway, I've taken care of the immediate problem. I'll explain her condition."

"This little girl's injuries don't look serious, but they're actually a real problem. Qin Haie's demonic cultivation technique will keep rotting the flesh and soul."

"If the residual demonic energy in her body isn't removed, she'll lose her left hand, half her shoulder will rot, and her face will be disfigured."

"All I can do for now is keep her alive. Whether the remaining demonic energy can be removed, and how much of it, is up to you."

Doctor Lin spoke lightly as she washed her hands in the clean water Guan Xiaoshun brought her.

Steward Wang asked curiously, "Sister Lin, Little Li doesn't know medicine. How can it be up to him?"

Doctor Lin flicked the water off her hands. "It's up to him to pay... Removing this demonic energy isn't especially difficult, but it isn't easy either."

"There are two ways. First, you can go find Qin Haie and ask her to take back the demonic energy she left behind. That won't cost you anything, and it's the simplest way."

Steward Wang gave an awkward laugh at that. "Well... Sister Lin, don't joke around. If a bunch of poor wretches like us could get someone like Senior Sister Qin Haie to come here, would we still be stuck in the outer sect?"

Doctor Lin said, "Then there's only the second way: pay."

As she spoke, Doctor Lin rummaged through the storage pouch at her waist, pulled out a small cauldron, and tossed it to Li Muyang.

"This is a medicine cauldron. Find some hundred-year-old mountain ginseng, fifty-year-old Vermilion Fruit, and other spirit medicines, then use this cauldron to refine them into medicinal liquid and feed it to your sister."

"If you have enough medicinal liquid, it might even be possible to remove all the demonic energy from your sister's body."

"In short, how well she recovers and how much of her body rots will depend on how much silver you have, big brother."

When Doctor Lin finished, she saw Li Muyang take out a thick money pouch and immediately shook her head.

"Don't give me that much. I only charge for treating her."

"As for the spirit medicines, you'll have to buy them yourself. You don't think this old lady keeps a stockpile of expensive spirit medicines at home, do you?"

As she spoke, Doctor Lin glared at the crowd of outer sect disciples watching from the doorway. "There are so many poor wretches in the outer sect. Who knows when someone might steal them."