But now the arrow was on the string, and he had no time to think further.
"Get away! Get away from me, you walking curse! Don't touch my leg! Aah-!"
When Chen Xuan pressed a finger against the fracture, Liu San nearly passed out from the pain. He flailed his left hand desperately to shove Chen Xuan away, spraying bloody foam as shrill, garbled screams escaped through the gaps in his teeth.
"What's going on?! What's all this racket now?! Can't a man get any peace?!"
Just then, Steward Zhao, who had only just walked a short distance beyond the courtyard gate, hurried back with a dark expression, the brass keys at his waist clanging wildly.
The terror on Chen Xuan's face did not lessen in the slightest. Instead, he trembled even harder, while his mind raced like a wound-up clock.
Steward Zhao strode into the courtyard with long, hurried steps. Looking down at Liu San's wretched state, his mouth full of blood and two bloody front teeth lying on the ground, his thick eyebrows instantly twisted into a tight knot. "What the hell happened here?! Liu San, didn't I tell you to teach this brat a lesson? How did you end up knocking your own teeth out?!"
"S-Steward Zhao! You must get justice for me! It was this little bastard! He deliberately rammed into me and broke my leg!"
Seeing his mainstay arrive, Liu San clutched at him like a drowning man grasping a lifesaving straw. He pointed his left hand insistently at Chen Xuan, who was kneeling beside him, air leaking through his teeth as bloody foam streamed down his chin. "H-he's pretending! There's something strange about this useless wretch! He deliberately rammed his shoulder into my knee just now... aah... my leg bone must be broken! Steward Zhao, hurry and chain him up! Flay him alive!"
"Steward Zhao, please see the truth! Spare my life, Steward Zhao! I've been wronged-even Dou E wasn't as wronged as I am!"
Before Steward Zhao could speak, Chen Xuan beat him to it, dropping to his knees in the muddy water with a thud to face him. He knocked his forehead against the ground with repeated bangs, weeping with tears and snot streaming down his face:
"Even if I had ten times the courage, I'd never dare raise a hand against Brother Liu San! Look at my shoulder! Brother Liu San just gave me five heavy lashes, and the blood has soaked right through my clothes! The pain had me seeing stars. When I bent down to pick up the hay, I slipped in the mud and fell-that was how I accidentally bumped into Brother Liu San! I don't even get enough to eat, and a gust of wind could knock me over. How could I possibly have the ability to deliberately hurt Brother Liu San like this?!"
The old slave beside them, who had advised Chen Xuan earlier, hurriedly spoke up for him in a low voice. "Steward Zhao, we were all watching from the side just now. Chen Xuan really did slip and fall after being whipped. Brother Liu San happened to step forward, and they collided at just the wrong angle. That stone slab by the gate is slippery and hard, too. Brother Liu San just had a stroke of rotten luck..."
His face dark, Steward Zhao first looked down at the hay scattered over the ground, slick with muddy water. Then he looked at Chen Xuan kneeling and trembling on the ground, a glaring patch of blood-red showing through the torn clothes on his right shoulder. Only then did his gaze return to Liu San's bloody, mangled pig's head.
"Useless trash!"
Steward Zhao spat viciously at Liu San and cursed with undisguised disgust. "You don't watch where you're going, and you're as unsteady on your feet as a woman! You tripped over a half-dead sickling and managed to knock your front teeth out, and you've still got the fucking nerve to wail like someone's died and blame someone else?!"
"Steward Zhao! I'm not lying! He really did it on purpose! I saw it clearly-even the way he looked at me just now was wrong!" Liu San's eyes grew bloodshot with desperation as he clutched Steward Zhao's trouser leg and shouted.
"Bull-fucking-shit!" Steward Zhao kicked Liu San's filthy hand away, sneering repeatedly. "Who in this whole rear courtyard doesn't know what Chen Xuan is? He's been in this household for three full years, and the useless good-for-nothing hasn't even come close to sensing Qi with the Boulder Art! The young lord whipped him within an inch of his life the day before yesterday, and you just gave him another five lashes! Now you're telling me that a lifetime-bonded slave who couldn't even truss a chicken could 'deliberately' ram into a full-grown man like you and break your leg?!"
Standing over Liu San, Steward Zhao pointed at his nose. "Liu San, are you taking me for a fool, or are you telling me that you, a stable foreman, aren't even as good as the most useless wretch in the entire household?!"
Those words hammered down like a barrage of cannon fire. Liu San gaped with his bloody, gap-toothed mouth, his throat feeling as though it had been stuffed with rotten cotton. He could not force out a single word.
That's right!
Chen Xuan was the notorious waste of the marquis's rear courtyard who had failed to make any headway for three years!
If he insisted that Chen Xuan had injured him through genuine ability, wouldn't that mean admitting that he, Liu San, was even more useless than a waste? Chen Xuan wouldn't even have to lift a finger then. Steward Zhao would be the first to kick him out of his position as stable foreman and feed him to the dogs!
"Enough. Stop making a disgrace of yourself here. Just looking at you turns my stomach!"
Steward Zhao waved a dismissive hand and ordered the two menial slaves by the wall, "You two, lift this useless thing up and take him to Doctor Liu in the outer courtyard to have his injuries looked at. Get a couple of dogskin plasters slapped on him! Remember what I said: you're only to see Blind Liu in the outer courtyard. If anyone dares carry him anywhere near the inner courtyard clinic and disturbs the distinguished people or the honored guards there, I'll break your damned legs! Liu San, you're not doing any more stable work today. Get back to your room and lie down!"
At those words, the huge rock hanging over Chen Xuan's heart came crashing down as he knelt in the mud!
Safe! Completely safe!
Divine Physician Sun, who presided over the inner courtyard clinic, was a ranked martial physician. Once he felt the bones, he might really detect the cracks left in Liu San's kneecap by the impact of internal force. But Doctor Liu in the outer courtyard, nicknamed "Blind Liu," was merely a half-baked barefoot doctor who had once treated livestock in the countryside and handled sprains and bruises on the side!
Going to him for treatment? As long as the bone had not pierced the skin and stuck out, Blind Liu treated everything as a fall or a sprain, slapped on a black dogskin plaster, and called it done. Even an immortal wouldn't be able to uncover the slightest trace of anything fishy involving internal force!
"Yes, Steward Zhao. We'll carry Brother Liu San to the outer courtyard right away!"
Not daring to delay, the two menial slaves hurried forward and hoisted the still-groaning Liu San up, one on either side.
Steward Zhao turned to leave. Yet he had barely taken half a step when his boot abruptly stopped on the muddy ground.
He slowly turned halfway around, his shrewd, murky, triangular eyes settling once more on Chen Xuan, who knelt on the ground.
His gaze first swept over the glaring bloodstains on Chen Xuan's right shoulder, where his fingernails had dug in-the flesh looked torn open and streamed with blood. There was nothing to find fault with there.
Then Steward Zhao's gaze shifted down an inch and fixed on the back of Chen Xuan's right hand, which was braced against the muddy ground.
Yesterday afternoon at the training grounds, that very hand had taken a direct splash of scalding ginseng tea when the young lord kicked the cup over. It had been scalded red and blistered at the time, and he, Zhao De, had seen it with his own eyes.