Treatment: Setting Bones

Lin Yi crouched on the rocky shore and swept his gaze over the dead branches and vines scattered around him.

He rose and hurried to a nearby grove of scrub trees, selecting several trunks of even thickness and good flexibility. He then tore down several sturdy long vines and, in a few quick motions, bound them into a crude yet solid stretcher.

"Put him on it. Keep him as flat as possible. Be gentle—don't jostle him." Lin Yi kept his voice low.

Several tribesmen carefully lifted Falcon's body, cushioned him with the outer robe, and slowly laid him flat on the stretcher.

During the move, Falcon let out an almost inaudible muffled groan. His brow tightened for an instant before he sank back into deep unconsciousness.

Lin Yi lowered his eyes to that face, pale to the point of bluish gray, and felt as though a stone were pressing down on his chest.

He had only been in Bluestone Tribe for less than half a month, yet every face had already been carved into his memory.

Honest and taciturn, Falcon never spoke much, but he had never once slacked off at work. Whenever meat was distributed, he would always quietly pass the slightly fattier portions to the younger tribesmen.

And now, this very man lay on a crude wooden frame, without a single intact bone left in his body.

Lin Yi's chest felt so clogged that he could barely breathe.

Four tribesmen steadily lifted the stretcher, taking every step as level and slow as they could.

Biao walked beside them without a word. Yet the veins bulged on the hands clenched around his knife hilt, his knuckles had turned white, and a heavy, suffocating pressure radiated from his whole body.

On that rough face, usually split wide with laughter, there was now nothing but one taut line after another.

The corpse of the thirty-foot giant python was carried up as well, its blue-black scales gleaming with a cold, hard light beneath the sun.

But no one looked at it. Every gaze was fixed on the slowly moving stretcher ahead.

At some point, Mang had come to Lin Yi's side. After walking in silence for a while, he reached out and gently patted Lin Yi's shoulder.

That palm was heavy and solid, yet it landed on his shoulder surprisingly lightly.

"To survive in the Great Wilderness," Mang said in a voice rasping as though sandpaper had scraped over it, "death can come in an instant. You haven't seen anything worse since you came here... You'll get used to it."

Lin Yi said nothing. He merely nodded slightly, but his fist remained clenched, never loosening.

The group moved quickly and soon returned to the tribe.

The tribesmen guarding the entrance saw the figure lying flat on the stretcher from afar, and their expressions changed at once.

Someone turned and ran into the tribe, shouting at the top of his lungs as he ran, "Something happened! Come quickly! Falcon is hurt!"

Before long, the tribe was thrown into chaos.

Women poked their heads out from stone houses in every direction. Children were dragged back indoors by the adults and forbidden from coming out to look, while several old hunters hurried toward the stretcher.

Through a gap in the parting crowd, the village chief's aged yet hurried figure practically rushed out. Lin Yi had never seen the village chief run so fast.

"Quick, quick, quick! Carry him inside! Lay him flat!" the village chief commanded between rough breaths. His withered hands checked Falcon's pulse at the neck and wrist, then lifted his eyelids to inspect his pupils. His face darkened like gray cloth soaked in water.

He turned and rushed into his own house, emerging with a large bundle of herbs and several rolls of clean hemp cloth. He began crushing herbs, applying medicine, and binding wounds.

Everyone in the room watched with bated breath. Lin Yi stood in the corner, watching the village chief's callused hands work frantically over Falcon—cleaning his wounds, applying crushed blood-staunching herbs, tightly wrapping the injuries with hemp cloth, then prying open Falcon's mouth and pouring in a small bowl of dark brown medicine.

After quite some time, the village chief finally straightened up.

He let out a long breath of stale air, wiped the medicinal stains from his hands onto his hem, then lifted his head and slowly swept his gaze across the tense faces in the room.

At last, his gaze settled on Lin Yi. His voice was dry and weary. "His life has been saved for now."

Everyone in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief. But the village chief had not finished.

"However..." The old man's voice dropped several degrees lower. "Nearly every bone in his body has been shattered. His breastbone, ribs, arm bones, leg bones... not a single one is intact. Every joint is dislocated, and bone fragments are scattered through the flesh."

He closed his eyes, and the wrinkles on his face deepened another layer. "Even if the external injuries heal and the flesh grows back, if the bones cannot be set back in place, he will only be able to lie in bed for the rest of his life. He won't even be able to turn over."

The room fell silent for a moment.

Then Falcon's mother let out a sob suppressed to its very limit. She covered her mouth tightly, her shoulders shaking violently.

Biao's fist smashed into the stone wall with a thud.

Lin Yi stood among the crowd, but something flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning.

He recalled some medical knowledge he had happened to read before transmigrating. For patients with fractured and dislocated bones, surgically resetting and fixing the bones could largely prevent permanent paralysis.

He did not understand any profound surgical techniques, but he had qi and blood, as well as exceedingly precise control over it.

Perhaps he could do something.

"Village Chief." Lin Yi's voice rang out clearly in the silent stone house. "If... I set every one of Falcon's bones back into place, could he avoid lifelong paralysis?"

The village chief abruptly lifted his head. A glimmer flashed through his cloudy old eyes, but he soon furrowed his brow and pondered for a moment.

Rubbing his fingers together, he slowly said, "In theory, as long as the bones are returned to position, the broken surfaces fit together, and no sharp splinters are lodged in the flesh, the bones can grow back together on their own. There is a strong chance it will work."

The old man paused, his gaze falling on Lin Yi. His tone carried grave caution. "But to do that, the requirements are exceedingly harsh.

"You must know the position of every bone like the back of your hand. You must accurately move every fragment back into place without the slightest deviation. Even an old healer who has cultivated for many years might not be able to accomplish it."

Lin Yi stepped forward. "I'll do it."

Everyone's eyes snapped toward him.

"You know how precise my control over qi and blood is. I can condense it into extremely fine threads, send them into Falcon's body strand by strand, determine the position of every bone fragment, and then push them back into place."

Lin Yi's voice was steady, but every word landed with weight. "But I do not have absolute confidence."

Biao suddenly raised his head. Fire seemed ready to burst from his bloodshot eyes, but within that fire was an urgency too thick to dissolve.

He strode up to Lin Yi and grabbed his shoulder. "Lin Yi! If you can save Falcon, I, Biao, will serve you like an ox and horse for the rest of my life!"

The village chief also nodded heavily, his voice carrying the weight of a final decision. "Treat a dead horse as if it were alive. If you don't try, Falcon will be paralyzed for life.

"If you try, at least there is still a sliver of hope." He looked at Lin Yi.

"Go ahead and do it. Falcon himself would not want to lie in bed for the rest of his life."

Lin Yi said nothing more.

He turned and walked to the wooden bed where Falcon lay, sat down beside it, and gently pressed his right hand against the center of Falcon's bare chest.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then an exceedingly fine, gentle strand of qi and blood flowed from his palm. Like an invisible thread, it passed through Falcon's skin and muscles, slowly seeping into his body.

The moment the first strand entered, Lin Yi's expression darkened.

It was worse than he had imagined.

Inside Falcon's chest cavity, nearly half his ribs were broken. The fractured stumps were misaligned and piled together like dry, dead branches.

His breastbone had visibly caved in, and bone fragments pressed against his organs. Fortunately, his heart and lungs had not suffered a fatal puncture.

Lin Yi carefully avoided those fragile organs. First, he divided his qi and blood into more than a dozen fine threads, wrapped each thread around a broken bone, then exerted force, adjusted, and pulled them all at once.

The first rib was gently drawn straight, its broken ends fitting together. Then the second, then the third.

The chest cavity was an exceedingly complex area. Even the slightest deviation could injure the internal organs.

Fine beads of sweat began to seep from Lin Yi's forehead.

At this moment, his Super Brain ran at full speed, processing more than a dozen bone positions at once. The force and angle of every pull were grasped with flawless precision.

After finishing the chest cavity, he turned to the limbs.

The ulna and radius in the left arm had each broken into two sections, and a small bone fragment had become lodged within the soft tissue of the forearm.

Lin Yi carefully wrapped that fragment in threads of qi and blood, pulled it to the fracture site, aligned it, and fixed it in place.

The right arm was in somewhat better condition, with only one fracture. His legs were more serious: the femurs were broken, the tibias dislocated, and the joint surfaces around the knees had shattered.

Sweat ran down his jaw and soaked the front of his clothes. The qi and blood in his hands remained as steady as ever.

No one in the room made a sound. Everyone held their breathing to the lightest, shallowest degree. Even Biao stood motionless by the wall like a stone statue.

Time slipped by bit by bit.

No one knew how long had passed before Lin Yi finally pushed the last dislocated bone in Falcon's body back into place.

He carefully examined everything once more, confirming that every fractured surface was neatly aligned and every bone fragment had returned to its proper position. Only then did he slowly withdraw the threads of qi and blood.

He opened his eyes. The hair on his forehead had been soaked through with sweat, clumping into strands against his skin.

Lin Yi did not rest. He immediately turned to the village chief. "Village Chief, bring wooden boards.

"Use boards to fix every joint and fracture from his chest down to his ankles. Prevent him from unconsciously turning over or convulsing and causing the bones to dislocate again."

The village chief immediately got to work.

Several tribesmen brought over a stack of thin boards and clean strips of hemp cloth. Under Lin Yi's direction, they wrapped and secured Falcon section by section, from his collarbones to his ankles.

Every fracture was firmly locked in place by boards and cloth strips, making him seem as though he had been wrapped in a hard shell.

After finishing this, Lin Yi pressed his hand against Falcon's abdomen. He gathered the tiny bone splinters he had earlier wrapped inside Falcon's body bit by bit, guiding them up through the esophagus and into the mouth.

He lifted Falcon's head and gently patted his back. "Falcon, spit it out."

Though Falcon was unconscious, his body's instinctive reactions remained.

He dry-heaved several times, and tiny gray-white bone chips streaked with blood flowed from the corner of his mouth.

Lin Yi wiped them clean with a cloth. Only then did he finally let out a full breath and rise from the bedside. His legs were slightly numb from sitting too long, but his back remained perfectly straight.

"It's done. All the bones have been set back, and the fragments have been cleaned out. Now he needs to rest and let his body heal on its own." Lin Yi's voice was somewhat hoarse. "He cannot move for at least three months. After that, we'll see how he recovers."

After he finished speaking, the room was silent for a moment.

Then a woman's voice, choked with tears she had suppressed for far too long, suddenly rang out. "Thank you... Thank you, Lin Yi..."

Falcon's mother rushed out from the crowd and tightly gripped Lin Yi's sleeve with both hands. Her face was streaked with tears.

She trembled violently, and it took several broken fragments of speech before she finished. "You saved my boy... His father is already gone... I can't lose this son too..."

The tribesmen beside her hurriedly stepped forward to support her. Lin Yi gently patted the back of her hand, softening his voice. "Sister-in-law, don't say that. Falcon is my tribesman. It is what I should do."

He paused, then earnestly instructed her, "You will have to work hard during this time. Falcon cannot move carelessly. Be careful when turning him over, feeding him, and washing him.

"His bones are healing. Even if they shift by an inch, it could leave lasting complications in the future."

Falcon's mother nodded hard through her tears, committing every word Lin Yi said firmly to memory.

Biao strode over. He wiped his large, rough palms against his clothes again and again before carefully taking Lin Yi's hand.

He said nothing, but the heavy emotion in his eyes, so thick it seemed ready to overflow, outweighed any words.