Volume 3, Chapter 198 – It’s Not Impossible to Overcome

Chi Xiyan saw that the emotions of the girl in her arms had gradually calmed down.

So she reached out her hand and gently patted Lu Zhuxin’s thin, weak back.

“Zhizhi, are you feeling a bit better?”

“Don’t be afraid anymore. It’s already okay.”

The softly crying girl rubbed against Chi Xiyan’s chest without a sound.

Though it was a very comfortable sensation, a trace of coolness suddenly emanated from her neck, extinguishing the spark that had not yet ignited.

“Sister, I’m fine now…”

Lu Zhuxin straightened up with great regret. She wiped the moisture from the corners of her eyes.

“I just… remembered some… unpleasant things from the past…”

Speaking to this point, the girl before her pressed her lips tightly together again.

“Things from the past?” Chi Xiyan asked. “Did you encounter something?”

“Mm… don’t talk about it, Sister, don’t talk about it.” The girl’s expression was somewhat pained. “I don’t want to recall it anymore.”

“Alright.” Chi Xiyan said helplessly. “Since you’re okay now, I’ll go call the maids to come help you bathe.”

After speaking, she stood up, preparing to walk outside.

“Don’t go!” A trace of panic flashed across the girl’s face. She hastily grabbed Chi Xiyan’s sleeve. “Please, Sister, I don’t want others to see me like this.”

“How can that work?” Chi Xiyan turned her head, her face stern. “The wound on your neck still can’t be touched casually. It needs to be treated again.”

“You can’t see it yourself. There’s no way for you to wash it yourself!”

“Sister, please… I really don’t want others to touch me…” The girl’s face turned pale, tightly biting her lower lip until it turned purple.

She pleaded bitterly. “Please… Sister…”

Chi Xiyan furrowed her brows looking at her, asking, “Do you really hate others touching you?”

“Mm.” The girl nodded heavily.

Looking at the girl’s face full of resistance, Chi Xiyan hesitated.

The terror on Yu Lizhi’s face wasn’t fake. She feared others’ touch.

Chi Xiyan understood this feeling. She also didn’t like others’ contact or approach.

“But the wound on your body must have someone help you treat it.” Chi Xiyan said. “This can’t be delayed!”

“Sister…” The girl still hung her head low, her voice as thin as a mosquito’s buzz. “I want you to help me. Is that okay?”

“Me?” Chi Xiyan immediately froze. She stood there blankly for a while. “You’re sure you want me to do it?”

“Is it okay? Sister.” Lu Zhuxin raised her head, looking pitifully at Chi Xiyan. “I really can’t accept anyone other than you…”

While speaking, the tears that had just been wiped clean from the girl’s face showed a trend of continuing to flow out.

“No…” Chi Xiyan pressed her lips, shaking her head in refusal.

Just getting close to filth made her feel unbearably uncomfortable all over.

Having her help someone else bathe was simply like having her undergo torture!

“Really not possible… Sister?” Lu Zhuxin said miserably. “I’ve already lost my mother. I thought Sister was the only person in this world I could rely on…”

“I’m sorry… my request has put Sister in a difficult position…”

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Lu Zhuxin raised her hand, gently wiping the tears from her face.

“Sister… you should leave. You don’t need to stay here with me anymore.”

“I still have a small mirror with me… later I’ll use the small mirror and slowly wash myself. I don’t need to trouble anyone else…”

Chi Xiyan looked at Lu Zhuxin’s pitiful appearance, and her brows furrowed again.

Her gaze fell on the wound at the girl’s neck, her eyes flickering with uncertainty.

After hesitating for a moment, Chi Xiyan suddenly took a deep breath.

“Zhizhi, you’ve misunderstood. I didn’t mean to look down on you… it’s just that I myself have difficulties that are hard to let others know about.”

Lu Zhuxin found it somewhat amusing.

Difficulties hard for outsiders to know? Wasn’t it just a cleanliness obsession? This girl still hadn’t gotten past that psychological hurdle.

“However…” After pondering for a moment, Chi Xiyan seemed to make some kind of decision and said to Lu Zhuxin. “How about this… let Heaven’s will decide, how about it?”

“Hm?” Lu Zhuxin looked at Chi Xiyan with incomprehension. “Heaven’s will… what does that mean?”

Chi Xiyan took out a round metal coin from her storage pouch.

She placed the coin in her palm and spread her hand open before Lu Zhuxin. “If it’s tails, then that’s Heaven’s will.”

“Zhizhi… you should try to overcome the fear in your heart…”

After hearing this, Lu Zhuxin sneered inwardly.

This girl spoke so righteously, but hadn’t she herself failed to overcome the fear in her own heart?

Unable to make this choice herself, she handed the choice over to Heaven’s will?

Was this girl Chi Xiyan an ostrich?

Eh? Wait? Something seemed off.

Leaving the choice to Heaven’s will, wasn’t that a gambler?

Lu Zhuxin’s eyes flashed. She realized the situation wasn’t simple.

Chi Xiyan’s character was a merchant, also an alchemist.

She wasn’t a gambler.

“Sister…” Lu Zhuxin spoke while reaching out her hand, gently covering the coin in Chi Xiyan’s hand with her palm.

Her gaze kept looking at Chi Xiyan’s eyes.

When she reached out to press down on the coin, the Eighth Realm demon cultivator’s perceptiveness allowed Lu Zhuxin to keenly notice the evasiveness in Chi Xiyan’s eyes.

Ha! That coin was rigged.

This little girl was actually playing mind games with Lu Zhuxin over such a matter.

“Sister.” Lu Zhuxin tightly grasped Chi Xiyan’s hand. “I think this can’t be called Heaven’s will. This is proof of our sisterly bond.”

Hearing this, a trace of discomfort flashed across Chi Xiyan’s face.

Lu Zhuxin laughed inwardly. The current Chi Xiyan wanting to play mind games with her was still too inexperienced.

She actually wanted to use cultivator methods to deceive a little girl who had never cultivated?

Hehe! Who couldn’t do this level of thing!

Lu Zhuxin grabbed the coin from Chi Xiyan’s hand, then casually threw it on the ground.

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“Eh! Wait!” Chi Xiyan’s face showed surprise. “Just toss it in your hand!”

The coin fell to the ground, spinning with a gurgling sound, moving toward the corner wall beside Lu Zhuxin while spinning.

Until finally, the coin touched the wall and slowly stopped rotating.

The coin’s edge lightly pressed against the wall surface. It didn’t fall down.

“Sister, Sister!!” Lu Zhuxin grabbed Chi Xiyan’s sleeve, reaching out to point at the coin standing at the wall corner, her little face written all over with excitement.

“It’s not tails. So this is what Sister meant by Heaven’s will!”

Chi Xiyan looked at that standing coin, her face showing difficulty. She wanted to speak but hesitated. “Zhizhi… actually what I wanted to say was…”

“What does Sister want to say?” Lu Zhuxin said. “I know Sister always keeps her word, won’t deceive me, and won’t go back on her word, right?”

The girl blinked, looking at Chi Xiyan expectantly with watery eyes.

What Chi Xiyan had wanted to say was that the result just now didn’t count, but under such a gaze, she had to swallow it back.

Tails meant Heaven’s will. This was what Chi Xiyan herself had said.

And now, that coin indeed didn’t have tails facing up.

But that coin wouldn’t have landed heads up either!

Who could have thought it would actually stand on the ground, neither tails nor heads.

Under the girl’s burning gaze, Chi Xiyan could only say, “This… this is indeed… Heaven’s will…”

Merchants valued their reputation.

With Chi Xiyan’s temperament, she really couldn’t do something like going back on her word.

It was just that she rather felt like she had lifted a rock only to drop it on her own foot.

Something she herself had agreed to, no matter how unwilling, she could only steel herself and continue now.

Chi Xiyan took several deep breaths. She reached out and gently patted her own cheeks, comforting herself inwardly.

It’s fine. It’s just giving a bath. It’ll be done quickly.

The water is clean, and the person is clean too.

Feeling it’s dirty is just a psychological effect!

As long as I think in my heart that it’s clean, then she is clean!

…

A while later, Lu Zhuxin removed her pants and socks, slowly sitting down beside the steaming bath pool.

She used her feet to gently stir the clean water’s surface.

This water temperature was just right.

“Sister.” She turned her back on Chi Xiyan, saying softly, “The clothes on my body, I can’t take them off.”

Chi Xiyan looked at Lu Zhuxin’s back, her body stiff as she slowly walked over.

Beside the bath pool, the medicinal potions the maids had fetched had already been placed.

What she needed to do now was actually very simple for an ordinary physician. Just clean the wound on the girl before her.

But for Chi Xiyan, this was an ordeal.

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When she initially studied alchemy, learning the medical arts was incidental.

Traveling charitable clinics were also only for gaining fame and prestige.

Charitable clinics mostly only involved dealing with difficult and complicated cases. Most of the time, she didn’t need to personally handle things. What she needed to do was just write prescriptions, at most using the Medical Immortal Valley’s secret needling techniques.

Like now, personally cleaning someone else’s wound, this was the first time.

And the first time’s threshold was the hardest to cross.

Just when Chi Xiyan’s body was stiff and she found it difficult to act, she seemed to smell a faint, delicate fragrance.

This fragrance was very light. If Chi Xiyan weren’t an alchemist with a keen sense of smell, she might have directly overlooked it.

And after this light fragrance slowly permeated through Chi Xiyan’s nasal cavity into her body and mind, Chi Xiyan discovered that the discomfort on her body had actually subsided considerably.

This wasn’t the first time she had smelled this fragrance.

This seemed to be the body fragrance from Yu Lizhi.

Chi Xiyan realized she hadn’t actually rejected the girl’s fragrance.

Even weirder, it made her feel very comfortable.

How strange.

She bit her lip, saying to the girl before her, “Zhizhi, I’m going to start now. If it hurts, just say so.”

“Mm.” Lu Zhuxin nodded slightly.

Chi Xiyan moved her stiff wrists. She reached out her hand, using two fingers to lightly pinch the collar of the girl before her, slowly tearing it outward.

The girl’s body seemed to tremble lightly.

This frightened Chi Xiyan into stopping her movements.

She asked, “Zhizhi, does it hurt?”

“Mm… it doesn’t hurt…” Lu Zhuxin lowered her head, answering in a small voice.

Chi Xiyan didn’t believe her. This girl’s reaction just now didn’t look like it didn’t hurt at all.

Although her wound had already been sealed by Chi Xiyan using secret techniques, that didn’t mean the wound had healed.

For the wound to completely recover would still require some time.

Unfortunately, this girl had no cultivation. If she possessed cultivation, then Chi Xiyan could use spiritual medicines specially supplied to cultivators for her.

External injury spiritual medicines used by body cultivators could recover this degree of injury as easily as lifting a hand.

But this girl was an ordinary person. Her body couldn’t withstand the spiritual energy in spiritual medicines.

Ordinary people without cultivation or spiritual power were very fragile. Chi Xiyan could only use this primitive method to help her treat the wound.

Following Chi Xiyan’s movements, the clothes on Yu Lizhi’s body that had been stuck on by dried bloodstains were torn off bit by bit.

This revealed the girl’s reddened back and a long wound on her neck.

Pushing aside the inner garment soiled by blood, Chi Xiyan allowed herself to relax for a moment.

“Next, I’m going to clean your wound.”

While speaking, she picked up a clean soft silk cloth in her hand, sprinkling the pre-prepared medicinal liquid onto the cloth.

She used the silk cloth soaked with medicinal liquid to gently wipe around the wound for the girl before her.

The girl’s body trembled lightly from pain, but she didn’t make any sound.

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After the blood was washed clean, the wound on the girl’s neck was completely revealed.

This was a knife scar as long as Chi Xiyan’s index finger.

Chi Xiyan recalled that at that time, if the girl hadn’t used the sword sect’s pheromone detection stone to block the assassin’s attack at the last moment, triggering the spell restriction on that stone and causing the assassin’s attack to deflect, then that assassin’s strike would have been enough to completely sever the girl’s neck.

For Yu Lizhi to survive was truly Heaven’s will.

Chi Xiyan used fingertips wrapped in spiritual energy to gently touch the wound on the girl’s neck.

She lowered her eyes slightly, her gaze inscrutable.

“Sister, what’s wrong?” Lu Zhuxin noticed Chi Xiyan’s movements had stopped, so she asked. “Is my wound very serious?”

“No…” Chi Xiyan’s voice was somewhat heavy. “Just thinking about some things.”

“You originally didn’t need to experience these things. It was I who drew you into this dangerous turmoil.”

“Whether it was your mother’s death… or the wound on your neck…”

Two assassination attempts, both from Sin Moon Tower.

Both times because of Chi Xiyan’s aunt, Qin Qingfen.

These matters, Chi Xiyan couldn’t possibly speak of to the girl before her.

If Chi Xiyan had seen through Qin Qingfen’s insincerity and stopped her earlier, things wouldn’t have turned out like this.

“Sister, I don’t blame you.” The girl with her bare back lowered her head slightly, her voice somewhat downcast. “This was my own choice…”

“If not for Sister, perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to see my mother’s lucid moment.”

“At the end, being able to let Mother make up for past regrets a bit, I think that’s already enough…”

“Anyway… my mother couldn’t have lived much longer, right? Sister.”

Chi Xiyan was silent for a while, then said again, “I’m sorry… I didn’t accomplish what I initially promised…”

“It’s okay, Sister. Really, it’s okay…” The girl smiled. “I was already mentally prepared.”

“Now I have no more attachments. I can wholeheartedly stay by Sister’s side and help Sister achieve her goals. I think that’s quite good.”

Chi Xiyan’s words paused. She continued with the movements in her hands.

Faint pure white spiritual energy wrapped around her slender hands. Her movements were very gentle. Her fingertips picked up a bit of emerald green ointment, tenderly spreading it evenly on the girl’s wound.

A warmth slowly emerged.

Under the stimulation of Chi Xiyan’s spiritual power, the medicinal power of this ointment could be fully absorbed by this girl without cultivation.

After doing all this, Chi Xiyan felt relieved.

She discovered that once she made up her mind, the physiological sense of disgust wasn’t impossible to overcome.

Of course, it was also because the sweet body fragrance on this girl. She didn’t dislike it.

In fact, she rather liked it.

“I have a question. I don’t know if I should ask it.”

“Please speak, Sister.”

“Before your mother passed… what was that son-in-law she spoke of?”

“Also, where did she hear that absurd theory about women being able to bear children together?”