Hidden Shadow – CH 138

Chapter One-Hundred-Thirty-Eight: Itch

An Jiu stared at him with bloodshot eyes, squeezing out a few words through clenched teeth: “You will find out.”

Mo Sigui sensed something was wrong and quickly said seriously, “That’s unnecessary. You rest for a while; I will read.”

He took the lamp and sat down in the chair behind An Jiu, continuing to read his medical books.

The Konghe Army coveted Elder Qi’s medical skills. These manuscripts would be confiscated sooner or later. Mo Sigui might not be able to memorize other books after one reading, but he had a photographic memory for medical books, so he needed to get rid of them as soon as possible.

Moreover, if he was engrossed in his reading, he would not hear An Jiu’s soft twitching from pain.

Rebuilding her bones and muscles was a major undertaking, and he could not afford any mistakes along the way. Therefore, she could not be left unattended. Even if Mo Sigui had to go out, he would choose a relatively safe time to go and return quickly.

The fine sand in the hourglass flowed softly, and the two of them remained in seclusion without eating or drinking.

Five hours later, Mo Sigui turned around.

An Jiu’s head rested limply on the edge of the tub, her face swollen, a deathly pale complexion tinged with purplish-blue, unrecognizable from her former appearance.

Mo Sigui removed the iron weight, wrapped his arm in soft snakeskin, and reached into the water to lift her out and place her on the couch.

The place where Mo Sigui’s arm touched her was excruciatingly painful, and An Jiu’s vision blurred.

“The dressing needs to be changed. You cannot faint now; you must stay awake, understand?” Mo Sigui said in a deep voice.

An Jiu gave a weak groan.

Mo Sigui fed her some saltwater, and after a moment, channeled his inner energy to support her. Only after doing all this did he begin to cut the cloth covering her. “Bear with it.”

“Hiss!” The cloth was gently tugged, and An Jiu felt as if someone were tearing her flesh apart.

Mo Sigui frowned, and his movements became even faster.

Even someone as resilient to pain as An Jiu was now trembling uncontrollably from the intense agony, tears streaming down her face like a dam bursting, mingling with large drops of sweat.

Mo Sigui ignored her, treating the person before him as a corpse, and proceeded without hesitation. His movements grew increasingly swift.

The bandages unwrapped, revealing a swollen body, the skin a bluish-black. Experience told Mo Sigui that this flesh was nearing necrosis; the flesh was rotting away. The torment she had endured was unimaginable.

Theoretically, such body tempering should have had some effect on rebuilding the meridians; otherwise, Mo Sigui would not have advised her to suffer like this. This was also his first time rebuilding a body for an external cultivator. The current state of disarray was beyond his expectations.

Looking at this body, he could not imagine how much pain she had endured.

Mo Sigui took a deep breath and steeled himself to begin cleaning the remaining medicine from her body. When he reached her fingers, he paused, startled.

An Jiu had a broken finger on her right hand, likely snapped in the throes of pain.

Mo Sigui silently reattached it, then applied another ointment all over her body.

After all this, An Jiu was too weak to even open her eyes, letting Mo Sigui place her in the water.

The cool touch soothed the burning pain.

An Jiu felt completely relaxed and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

She wished she could sleep forever, but unfortunately, she was awakened by an unbearable itch.

The pain was bearable, but the itch was excruciating. She wanted to scratch her skin raw, but when she tried to move, she found herself limp and powerless.

“Rapid muscle regeneration will inevitably cause unbearable itching. To prevent you from damaging your body, I added a muscle-relaxing powder to the medicine.” Mo Sigui’s voice came from behind her.

The itch seemed to emanate from her very bones, especially given An Jiu’s current extremely agitated state. If she had any strength left, she probably would have killed Mo Sigui first and then committed suicide.

Mo Sigui moved around to face her, initially intending to drug her into unconsciousness, but seeing her berserk state, he suddenly changed his mind. “You should regulate your breathing first and calm yourself down. You do show signs of madness; if I am not mistaken, you’ve had these symptoms for a long time.”

Mo Sigui reached out and patted her face. “If you understand me, start regulating your breathing! Do not miss this opportunity.”

An Jiu felt a little better from the two slaps, regaining a sliver of clarity in her mind. She quickly began to adjust her breathing and mindset.

But the itching made her restless and unable to calm down. In her anger, her mental energy reached every nerve ending, every pore—since she could not avoid it, she would face it head-on!

Who was afraid of whom?!

With her mental energy covering her, the sensitivity of her senses increased a hundredfold. The itching made her want to destroy the world along with it.

However, the intense itching gave rise to a slight pain, which was actually a little easier to bear than before.

Seeing her expression soften, Mo Sigui breathed a sigh of relief.

Struggling with the torment of her body, An Jiu fell asleep, utterly exhausted.

And this sleep lasted for nearly twenty days.

An Jiu slept comfortably, but it nearly wore Mo Sigui out.

“Mo Sigui?” An Jiu woke up to a sour smell emanating from the tub.

Mo Sigui, leaning back in his chair, was dozing when he suddenly heard the voice. He jolted, and the medical scroll slipped from his hand and fell to the ground.

“You are awake?” Mo Sigui picked up the medical book, stood up, stretched, and walked to her, bending down to remove the bandage from her neck to examine her.

He held his breath until he saw the exposed, pinkish skin, and then his face lit up with excitement. “Not bad, not bad.” He smiled and lifted the lid of the tub. “Can you stand up? Go to the bathhouse next door and wash up.”

An Jiu stood up and looked down to see a layer of black stuff floating in the tub; she could not tell if it was medicine or her metabolic waste.

She crawled out of the tub, her body covered in bandages and her face pale, like a vengeful ghost from a swamp, each step leaving a dark footprint. She made her way to the bathhouse, leaving a trail of mud.

After washing and scrubbing for almost half an hour, she was finally clean.

An Jiu’s skin was now tender and pink, but in some places, whether from the bandages or something else, it was wrinkled, like a newborn baby’s. Wearing her old clothes now felt slightly painful.

She came out of the bathhouse and saw Mo Sigui standing on the veranda, carrying a lantern.

He had lost a lot of weight; his eyes were dark and bluish, yet his flowing sleeves and lightly tousled hair gave him a somewhat otherworldly air.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

An Jiu moved her wrist. “Very easy; I feel more agile.”

“That’s because when you are fighting against physical pain, your mental strength and body are more in sync. The higher your mental strength, the higher the sync, the more you can control your body to achieve speed and power beyond what ordinary people can achieve. Even more…”

Mo Sigui imagined that if she truly reached extreme sync, she might be able to leap four or five zhang, or even scale walls and rooftops—probably no less powerful than internal energy.

So, for external cultivators, mental strength was actually more important! Once mental strength did not increase, control over the body was not ideal, and cultivation stagnated. However, if mental strength were so easy to cultivate, there would be countless masters of the Transcendent Realm long ago.

Mo Sigui grasped An Jiu’s pulse, confirming it was stable and strong before finally relaxing.

With his mind at ease, he felt completely drained and fell backward.

An Jiu reacted quickly, catching him. “Mo Sigui!”

“I am going to sleep for a while…” Mo Sigui murmured.

An Jiu saw him close his eyes. She checked his breathing and pulse, confirming he was indeed asleep.

Just as she was about to drag him back, she suddenly sensed the aura of an eighth-level martial artist and turned to look. A slender figure landed on the veranda.

It was Lou Mingyue.

An Jiu paused for a moment, and seeing that she did not intend to come closer, she helped Mo Sigui into the house.

When An Jiu came out again, she was still standing there motionless.

“He’s unconscious now. You can see him if you want,” An Jiu said.

After a long while, Lou Mingyue moved slightly, her voice hoarse. “No.” What good would seeing him do? She was filled with hatred; she would only drag Mo Sigui into an abyss, ultimately shattering him to pieces.

“You are Qiu Ningyu,” An Jiu said, though only speculating, her tone certain.

Lou Mingyue did not deny it. “Yes, he most likely knows, but he still harbors a reluctance to admit it because he does not want to be bound. He should not be bound. A natural-born medical prodigy like him is a gift from heaven; if he were to die, it should be for the sake of medicine. And now, as long as I do not admit it, he still has a reason to deceive himself. I hope you will not expose me.”

The story of Lou Mingyue’s background begins with the Lou family patriarch.

The Lou family patriarch did not want his daughter to dedicate her life to the Konghe Army, so he secretly arranged for her to leave the Lou family estate. At that time, Madam Qiu had been married into the Qiu family for many years and finally became pregnant, but unfortunately, she suffered a difficult childbirth, and only one child was born alive. Master Qiu sighed, “It’s destined that I have no children,” and decided without hesitation to keep his wife. The Lou family patriarch, encountering this situation, secretly placed the infant Lou Mingyue at the Qiu family’s doorstep.

The Qiu couple, believing it to be a divine intervention, concealed the fact that Madam Qiu’s unborn child had died and raised Qiu Ningyu as their own daughter.

Master Qiu and Mo Sigui’s father were close friends. After Mo Dengxian’s death, Master Qiu naturally took better care of Mo Sigui. However, someone spread rumors that the Qiu family possessed Mo Dengxian’s medical records, leading to the family’s annihilation.

Upon learning of this, the head of the Lou mansion rushed to the scene, only to find the Qiu family already destroyed. She discovered that Qiu’s wife had drowned and was missing, so she searched downstream for days and nights, finally rescuing the dying Qiu Ningyu.

As a child, Qiu Ningyu was lively and loved martial arts. Although she practiced only flashy moves, it made her physically strong, unlike the typical delicate young lady. After returning to the Lou mansion, she learned about her true parentage. But the Qiu couple had raised her for so many years, loving her like their own flesh and blood. After their murder, she fueled her hatred, practicing martial arts relentlessly. Through the Lou family’s intelligence network, she discovered that the killers of Mo Dengxian and the Qiu couple were the same group.

Initially, Lou Mingyue thought someone coveted Mo Dengxian’s medical skills, but she never expected to uncover a palace secret. Now, she had killed the perpetrators, yet the mastermind remained unharmed in the palace.

“It seems I am destined for revenge; otherwise, I would not have been born for revenge,” Lou Mingyue said, her young eyes already filled with desolation. “Since that’s the case, why drag someone else into it?”

If Mo Sigui valued her more than anything, he would not have asked if she was Qiu Ningyu. He wanted to confirm; he likely had many ways, but he did not, and he could not let her go, his heart still conflicted.

If anyone in the world truly understood Mo Sigui, it was Lou Mingyue. She understood him even better than he understood himself.

An Jiu said, “You’ve taken on all this for him, and he does not even know.”

Lou Mingyue shook her head, smiling faintly. “No. Because I know him too well, I know that the importance he places on medicine far surpasses mine, so I do not value this kind of affection.” Lou Mingyue’s hatred was so deep that she could not let go, no matter what; her love must be equal.

So even though she said that, An Jiu still felt that her feelings for Mo Sigui were very deep.

“Perhaps it is also because he’s one of the few close friends I have in this world, and I do not want anything to happen to him,” Lou Mingyue said.

Her bond with Lou Xiaowu was more of a blood tie. Lou Xiaowu was also raised outside the mansion; after returning to the mansion, they lived in separate courtyards, and the two did not spend much time together, certainly not like childhood sweethearts who played together since they were little.

However, she did not want this feeling to become a shackle, a burden.

An Jiu met her pleading gaze. “I will not interfere in your affairs.”

“Thank you.” Lou Mingyue bowed slightly.

An Jiu nodded and returned inside.

Mo Sigui had collapsed from exhaustion. An Jiu could not leave him sleeping so defenselessly alone, so she stayed by his side, lit a lamp, and read the manual on the Severing Meridian Palm technique.

Just as she reached the third page, she sensed a ninth-level expert rapidly approaching.

She continued reading leisurely, pretending not to notice.

“Mo Sigui truly lives up to his reputation as a disciple of the Divine Physician,” Gu Jinghong said, landing lightly on the chair opposite her. After scrutinizing her for a few moments, he added, “The reforging is perfect.”

If anyone else had said this, An Jiu would not have found it inappropriate, but coming from Gu Jinghong, she felt he was evaluating a doll, and her gaze involuntarily turned cold. “What are you doing here?”

“You do not need to be so surprised,” Gu Jinghong said, seemingly oblivious to her wariness and disgust. “As long as the Mei family is alive, I will still have the right and responsibility to govern you.”

Gu Jinghong was the initiation master appointed by the Konghe Army for the Mei family. If the Mei family had not met with an accident, he would still be teaching the Mei family’s disciples. An Jiu stared coldly at him. In the past, she would have already punched him, but now she knew she had to restrain herself; offending Gu Jinghong would bring her no benefit.

“Take this to Headmaster Sheng. He will show you the secret files of the external cultivators from the Konghe Academy.” Gu Jinghong placed a token carved with a black tortoise on the table. “The more you learn, the better it will be for you.”

Pure external cultivators had one advantage over internal cultivators: their tempered bodies were much more stable than those with internal energy and were less easily affected. Even if they study many chaotic techniques, they would not suffer from internal energy chaos.

Gu Jinghong, seeing An Jiu’s strong aversion to him, guessed she knew the duties of the Dragon Martial Guards, and said, “Do not worry, bringing you into the Dragon Martial Guards is not to have you serve the Emperor.”

So you were having my mother do it for you?! An Jiu wanted to ask that, but she pursed her lips tightly and held back.

Asking casually would not necessarily get her the truth and would only betray Chu Dingjiang. Besides, was it really true that she would not sleep with the Emperor? All the women in the Dragon Martial Guards had that duty, did they not?