Wounded City Guards!

The days passed smoothly and regularly, so much so that Lan Tian almost began to think this peaceful stability would last forever.

He saw patients in the morning, trained in the afternoon, took medicinal baths and meditated at night, occasionally went to Soul Hunting Forest to gather a batch of herbs, and once in a while tried his luck at the black market.

Autumn grew deeper by the day. The edges of the Blue Silver Grass leaves in the courtyard had begun to take on a faint yellow tint, but his own cultivation progress was still advancing steadily. After all this tempering, his level fourteen foundation had grown more and more solid.

That morning, he had just seen off an old woman who had twisted her ankle when the door of the clinic was suddenly shoved open.

A group of people poured in.

They were all wearing standard-issue leather armor, with sabers at their waists, and their boots were still stained with mud and dried blood.

The man walking at the front was in his early thirties, tall, burly, and solidly built. His left arm had been hastily wrapped with strips of cloth, most of which were already soaked through with blood. His face was pale, but his back remained ramrod straight.

The seven or eight team members behind him were in even worse shape. One clutched his stomach and stooped over, another had a saber wound on his arm so deep the bone could be seen, and two others had to be helped inside, clearly unsteady on their feet.

"Doctor Lan!"

The man in the lead spoke, his voice hoarse. "We're the third squad of the Nuoding City Guard. My name is Renn. On the captain's orders, I brought my brothers here to have their wounds treated. We just encircled and wiped out a gang of thugs who'd drifted over outside the city. Quite a few of the brothers got hurt. We heard your medical skills were excellent, so we came to trouble you."

Lan Tian swept his gaze over the group's condition and wasted no time with unnecessary words. "All of you come in. Sit on the beds and benches along the wall. The most seriously injured first."

He strode over to the cabinet, opened the medical kit, and laid out the scalpel, forceps, suture needle and thread, hemostatic powder, and anesthetic powder. Then he pointed at the wooden basin in the corner. "There's water. Wash your own hands. Those who can move, help carry the seriously injured onto the beds."

Renn did not stand on ceremony either, immediately ordering several lightly wounded brothers to get moving.

The first to be carried onto a bed was a young team member. There was a deep knife wound on the left side of his abdomen. The clothes near the wound had been cut open, revealing flesh that had turned outward, and something could be vaguely seen inside.

Another team member beside him said anxiously, "He was stabbed with a broken-bladed short knife. The tip snapped off inside. We didn't dare pull it out, so we carried him all the way here like this."

Lan Tian walked over, crouched down, and examined the wound carefully. Then he sent Blue Silver Grass into the man's body to confirm the position, and his brows furrowed slightly.

The fragment of the blade tip was lodged between the abdominal wall muscle layer and the intestinal wall. It had come just short of piercing the intestine.

If his luck had been a little worse, and the fragment had been dragged along by the movement of the muscles, once the intestine was torn open, things would have become very troublesome.

"Anesthesia," Lan Tian said without turning his head, only then remembering that he had no assistant.

Renn seemed to notice his predicament and immediately said, "Doctor Lan, just tell us what you need. My brothers may not be as professional as you, but we can still lend a hand."

"Fine. You help me hold him down so he doesn't move." Lan Tian picked Renn, then pointed at two lightly wounded team members. "You two. One of you stand beside me and hand me the scalpel and forceps. The other take a clean cloth and press around the wound to stop the bleeding."

The city guard members moved into position swiftly and efficiently.

Lan Tian poured the anesthetic powder into a cup and dissolved it, then fed it to the injured man. After that, he applied Numb-Bone Vine juice to the skin around the wound.

Once the medicine took effect, the wounded man fell completely unconscious and his muscles relaxed. Lan Tian picked up the scalpel, heated it over the candle flame, and began debridement.

The blade tip entered the wound, precisely parting the rolled-back flesh and finding the location of the broken blade fragment.

The forceps extended in steadily, clamped the edge of the fragment, and slowly drew it out.

Throughout the entire process, his hands were as steady as a scale.

After the fragment was removed, he rinsed the wound, sutured the internal injury, and then sutured the skin.

Every step was clean and efficient, so fast that the city guards beside him could barely follow it with their eyes.

Once the suturing was complete, Lan Tian activated his Blue Silver Grass vines and wrapped them around the wound. A yellow soul ring rose, and his first soul skill, Endless Life, activated.

Life energy flowed into the wounded man's body. The damaged muscle and skin began to repair rapidly, and the edges of the wound healed, scabbed, and fell away at a speed visible to the naked eye.

In less than half a quarter of an hour, only a faint red line remained on the injured man's abdomen. Not even a scar could be seen.

The surrounding city guards stared, dumbfounded. Renn's eyes widened even more. "That... that's healed?"

"It's healed." Lan Tian wiped the blood from his hands, his expression calm. "Next."

Next was a team member who had suffered a blunt blow to the abdomen. Two of his ribs were cracked but not broken, and there was no foreign object to remove, so Lan Tian directly used Endless Life to repair the cracked bones and the contusions to his internal organs.

After that was someone who had taken a slash at the shoulder blade, the flesh rolled open to reveal white bone.

Lan Tian cleaned the wound, sutured it, and repaired it with Endless Life in one smooth sequence.

The fourth, the fifth, the sixth...

For the lightly injured team members, he simply probed them with Blue Silver Grass, activated Endless Life for a short while, and the problem was solved.

For the seriously injured who needed surgery, he cleaned and sutured their wounds one by one. If fragments needed to be removed, he removed them. If tendons needed reconnecting, he reconnected them.

But by the time he reached the fourth seriously injured patient who needed surgery, fine beads of sweat had already appeared on Lan Tian's forehead, and the consumption of his soul power had begun to grow obvious.

Although Endless Life's healing effect was excellent, using it repeatedly consumed soul power in a very real way.

Before leaving home that morning, he had only completed his basic meditation, so his soul power reserves were at most eighty percent. After treating several seriously injured patients in a row, more than half of the soul power in his body had already been consumed.

Just as he was preparing to grit his teeth and continue, the clinic door sounded again.

Louise hurried in. The moment she saw the room full of city guards in leather armor and the bloody scene on the floor, she was startled, but she quickly calmed down. "Doctor Lan, I heard people outside saying all the injured city guards were running to your place. I guessed you'd be too busy to handle it alone, so I came to help!"

Seeing that she had arrived, Lan Tian felt his heart loosen. "Perfect timing! Come help me hand things over."

Louise nodded and quickly walked to the medical kit. Although her technique was clumsy, she was quick with her hands and feet, and her mind was sharp.

When Lan Tian said scalpel, she immediately passed over the blade that had been heated over the flame. When he said suture thread, the needle had already been threaded and delivered to his hand.

With Louise assisting him, Lan Tian's efficiency improved by more than double.

He proceeded to treat two more seriously injured men in succession. One had an arrowhead embedded in his back, while the other had a fractured and dislocated arm.

The arrowhead was easy to remove, but it was embedded deeply. He had to avoid the blood vessels and tendons; the slightest carelessness would cause secondary damage.

It took him half an hour of delicate work to extract it whole, then he used Endless Life to repair the damage inside the wound.

The one with the broken arm was easier. He directly set the bone back into place, wrapped and fixed it with Blue Silver Grass vines, then added life energy to repair it. The bone soon knitted together.

By the time the last injured person had been treated, it was already afternoon.