Young Man, Is the Master All Right Now?

From the moment Song Xuan entered the room, he sensed something was wrong.

At first, he could not tell exactly what was amiss. Only after spending a little time in the room did his gaze settle on the windowsill, on an incense burner with incense burning inside.

The scent was faint, fresh, and wonderfully pleasant, but after he inhaled a few more breaths of it, the pure yang limitless internal energy in his dantian suddenly went berserk.

Streams of internal energy surged forward like rushing water, as though facing a formidable enemy, frantically devouring every trace of the fragrance he had inhaled.

At that, Song Xuan understood.

The incense burning in that burner was poisonous.

As a celestial person level technique, the Pure Yang Limitless Child Skill produced internal energy with all manner of extraordinary abilities. One of those was being immune to all poisons.

Any poison that entered his body would send his pure yang inner force into a frenzy, causing it to swarm forward and devour the poison completely.

Clearly, any incense that provoked a reaction from his pure yang inner force had to contain some unknown poison.

He did not know what poison it was, but knowing it was poisonous was enough.

After announcing that Lin Ruhai had been poisoned, Song Xuan flicked his sleeve. Everyone immediately felt a fierce gust sweep through the room. The bedroom's doors and windows burst open with a crash, and the burner with its smoldering incense was flung out into the courtyard.

A faint gleam appeared in Lin Ruhai's clouded eyes. He neither asked what poison he had been given nor pondered who had poisoned him. Instead, he stared at Song Xuan with a look of hope.

"There's poison in the incense burner?"

Song Xuan nodded.

"Can I still be saved?"

"Yes!"

Without wasting words, Song Xuan took a jade bottle from inside his robe, removed the stopper, and carefully tipped out a pill.

The pill was small, only about the size of a fingernail, and pale gold. The instant it emerged from the bottle, a rich medicinal fragrance filled the room.

"This medicine..." Lin Ruhai seemed to recognize it, and a peculiar gleam rose in his eyes.

"The Black Robe Guard's secret medicine, the Lesser Rejuvenation Pill."

Song Xuan flicked a finger. Before Lin Ruhai could react, the pill flew into his mouth. The next instant, fragrance filled his mouth, and he instinctively swallowed.

Then streams of warmth began coursing through his body. Previously exhausted and weak all over, he gradually began to feel refreshed and invigorated.

"The Lesser Rejuvenation Pill can counter all poisons and cure all illnesses, but it offers little benefit to someone whose vitality has dried up and whose lifespan is exhausted."

Song Xuan said calmly, "Put simply, Lord Lin, the Lesser Rejuvenation Pill cannot restore the blood, vital energy, and years of life the poison has already cost you. Even if we save you this time, you probably have only about ten years left."

"Ten years?"

A smile appeared on Lin Ruhai's face. "Ten years is a long time. I can accomplish a great deal."

In ten years, he could return to the capital, enter the Grand Secretariat, and fulfill the ambitions in his heart.

In ten years, he could find his daughter a good family to marry into and watch her marry and have children.

There was so much he could do in ten years. It was enough to make up for the many regrets he had accumulated in the first half of his life.

Feeling somewhat more alert, Lin Ruhai did not rush to offer his thanks. Instead, he first looked at Lin Daiyu, hot tears brimming in his eyes.

"My dear girl, these past few days, my greatest regret has been sending you to the Jia Mansion back then and failing in my duty as your father.

I'm not afraid of death, but I am afraid of leaving you alone in this world to suffer after I die. You're a young girl. Without your family's protection, who knows how much hardship you would endure, how many tears you would shed?

Whenever I thought of that, I simply couldn't let go of this last breath..."

"Father!"

Lin Daiyu threw herself beside the bed and sobbed. "I often thought of you too, Father. I missed home. I'm not afraid of sharing hardships with you. I only ask that you never leave me alone again..."

Song Xuan quietly retreated to the doorway, pulled Song Qian away from her engrossed viewing of the father and daughter's tearful scene, and led her outside, closing the bedroom door behind him.

"Have a little tact. With you planted there, they couldn't even cry freely."

Song Qian smiled sheepishly, then said with feeling, "Compared to our cousin, I've suddenly realized how happy I am, brother."

Both her parents were alive, her family was well-off, and she had an older brother who had doted on her since childhood.

Though she was a girl, her family was open-minded. They had imposed none of the tedious rules of grand aristocratic households on her, nor had they ever stood in the way of her dream of becoming a great heroine.

Compared with Lin Daiyu, who had lost her mother as a child and lived under someone else's roof without freedom, Song Qian had practically begun life as Heaven's favored daughter.

Song Xuan said nothing. He kept staring at a corner of the courtyard.

Earlier, he had been so busy rushing inside to examine Lin Ruhai that he had failed to notice someone else stationed there.

It was an old man dressed in black, sitting there lazily and wiping the blade in his hands. When he noticed Song Xuan looking over, he grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth.

"Young man, is the master all right now?"

Song Xuan nodded. "The poison has been neutralized. After a few days of rest, he should be fine."

At those words, the old man's smile grew a little colder, and veins bulged on the back of the hand wiping his blade. "It's all my fault for being useless. Killing is all I know. I never even noticed that the master had been poisoned.

Young man, do you know what poison he was given?"

Song Xuan shook his head. "I don't know either, but I can say for certain that it's a slow-acting poison. Mixed into incense, it would take at least several years of inhaling it before the poison penetrated deep into his organs and threatened his life."

The old man searched his memory, then said, "What you describe sounds very much like an unusual poison known in the martial world. It's called Thousand-Day Drunk. Colorless and odorless, its toxicity needs to accumulate over years before taking effect, making it extremely difficult to guard against.

But even in the martial world, this poison is only a legend. I've roamed that world for decades and never seen it. To think someone would use something so precious on the master."

As he spoke, he produced a whetstone from somewhere and began sharpening his blade, paying no further attention to them.

As he sharpened it, he muttered to himself, "One, two, three..."

Song Xuan suspected the old man was not counting strokes of the blade, but how many heads he would be cutting off next!

Creak...

The bedroom door opened. Lin Daiyu glanced somewhat bashfully at Song Xuan and Song Qian, then said softly, "Father and I lost our composure just now. I'm sorry you had to see that, cousins."

"A father and daughter reuniting is a happy occasion. What is there to be embarrassed about?"

Song Xuan smiled. "Has your father settled down now?"

Lin Daiyu nodded. "Father is doing very well now. Do you have a moment, cousin? He has something he'd like to discuss with you."

"Oh," Song Xuan said. "Then I'll go inside. Your cousin can't sit still, so why don't you take her for a stroll around the area?"