Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Saving Someone
Grandpa Ling didn’t ask questions.
He snatched a dead branch from the ground, tossed it ahead, then grabbed Ling Jin Sui’s sleeve and led her in a crouch the way the branch pointed.
“Move. This way.”
Ling Jin Sui huffed a laugh even as she ran.
“Grandpa, that’s your fortune-telling?”
Behind them, the shrine erupted in shouts and scuffling.
Constables and bandits poured out, hands clamped over mouths and noses.
Through the chaos came a hoarse yell: “Where’s that stinking Daoist? It’s gotta be his doing!”
Only after they crossed a stretch of woods and open ground—only after they heard the hush of running water—did they finally collapse.
Grandpa Ling wiped blood and sweat and tears and snot with his sleeve, then coughed until his ribs shook.
When he could speak again, anger and fear tangled in his voice.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay hidden and not come out?”
Ling Jin Sui answered without blinking.
“If I watched Grandpa die in front of me, I’d rather throw away this life.”
“If I couldn’t save you, then we go to Nai He Bridge together. At least we won’t walk that road alone.”
Grandpa Ling stared at her, stunned.
Then the anger melted, and laughter burst out of him—bright, rough, alive.
“Sui Sui’s gotten brave! Fine. From now on, whatever comes, we carry it together.”
He sobered quickly.
“Why were you alone in the wilderness? Did something happen at the Jiang family?”
Ling Jin Sui didn’t hide the truth.
The original owner had died too cruelly, and she feared Grandpa Ling would insist on sending her back if she lied.
When she finished, Grandpa Ling’s face went dark with rage.
His hand tightened around her. Regret and fury shook in his voice.
“I was blind. I trusted that man. I nearly killed you with my own hands.”
“Come. We go back. If I don’t break Jiang You Zhi’s dog legs, I don’t deserve the surname Ling!”
The words had barely left his mouth when he doubled over and coughed again, hard enough to fold him.
Ling Jin Sui steadied him.
“A gentleman’s revenge can wait ten years. We deal with him later. Right now we need to get away.”
She didn’t mention poisoning Madam Zheng mute.
The gap between her nature and the original owner’s was already wide.
She couldn’t afford to widen it further in Grandpa Ling’s eyes.
Once his breathing eased, Grandpa Ling pulled out a compass to check direction.
Then he took three copper coins and began to divine.
Ling Jin Sui’s lips twitched.
“Grandpa, why didn’t you divine before leaving me at the Jiang family? And before you got caught tonight—did you forget? Also… since when did Grandpa become a Daoist?”
Grandpa Ling glared.
“Who says I didn’t divine? We’re alive, aren’t we? That’s a good reading.”
Ling Jin Sui swallowed the sharp ache that rose in her chest.
The granddaughter Grandpa Ling loved had already died.
The one standing here was only an outsider soul borrowing her body.
Grandpa Ling tugged his worn robe straight.
“I was always a Daoist. Years ago I returned to ordinary life, married, had children. But I kept the robe and the ordination paper.”
“Now I don’t know what’s gotten into this world. Even entering a town needs a permit. Traveling as a Daoist is easier.”
He tapped the compass.
“This reading says great luck lies at water. We take the water route to Jiang Nan first. Then we find a merchant caravan heading to the Yan Lands.”
Ling Jin Sui snorted softly at the words Jiang Nan.
[If I’d known, I could’ve let the slave broker drag me there and escaped later. Would’ve saved a lot of trouble.]
Grandpa Ling went first, guided by the compass under moonlight.
Ling Jin Sui pressed her left palm.
Heat flared.
A point of colored light winked into existence.
The laboratory swallowed her whole.
It really was that simple.
Relief loosened the knot in her chest. She’d feared she would need some special trigger.
She grabbed infection-fighting pills, wound powder, a bottle of water, and a few energy bars.
She stuffed everything into a black bag and hid it under her clothes. Better Grandpa Ling didn’t see items appear from nowhere.
If not for the threat of pursuit, she would’ve dragged Grandpa Ling somewhere safe, made him rest, and studied the laboratory properly.
By the time they reached the riverbank, dawn was thinning the night.
Grandpa Ling, old and injured, slumped down at last.
Ling Jin Sui took her chance, pulled out food and medicine, and lied smoothly.
“Good thing I bought these in town and kept them on me. Grandpa, eat.”
In the dim light, Grandpa Ling didn’t question her.
Whatever she offered, he took.
He bit into an energy bar and blinked in surprise.
“This pastry’s sweet as honey.”
To hide the strange clear bottle, Ling Jin Sui kept it wrapped in the black bag as she let him drink.
They had only just begun to rest when something rustled in the reeds below the bank.
Ling Jin Sui jolted.
Grandpa Ling snatched a long stick and poked into the reeds.
A wild duck burst out, flapping away into the pale dawn.
Both of them exhaled.
Then Ling Jin Sui noticed it—where the duck had been hiding, a shape lay half in water, half in mud.
Grandpa Ling saw it too and started down the bank.
“Someone’s there.”
Ling Jin Sui grabbed him.
“Could be bandits.”
“If it is,” Grandpa Ling said grimly, “we push him back into the river.”
Together they dragged the body up onto the shore.
A man.
Tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, dressed in brocade that screamed wealth.
Wounds split his shoulder and belly, and a slash marked his cheek.
Grandpa Ling wiped mud and blood from the man’s face with his sleeve.
In the thin morning light, a handsome face emerged, sharp as if carved from jade.
“He’s still breathing,” Grandpa Ling said, already reaching to loosen the brocade and bandage him.
Then birds erupted from a distant grove.
Hoofbeats pounded closer.
Whether the riders were bandits or constables, it meant the same thing.
They had to move.
Ling Jin Sui yanked Grandpa Ling back.
“From my experience, men who collapse by the roadside can’t be saved!”
Grandpa Ling stared.
“What experience do you have?”
Ling Jin Sui almost choked.
[Every story ever written.]
This man’s clothes and belt alone said he was trouble.
Arrow wounds, blade wounds—the kind that came with pursuit and blood debts.
Grandpa Ling heard the hoofbeats too. Kind as he was, he knew what mattered more.
They took a few steps.
Both of them looked back.
They saw the same thing in each other’s eyes—reluctance, guilt.
Grandpa Ling clenched his jaw.
“We’ll bandage him enough to keep him from bleeding out and hide him in the reeds. Whether he lives after that is his fate.”
Ling Jin Sui nodded.
As a physician, leaving him to die outright would stain her hands.
“Fine. Fast.”
She tore a strip from the hem of her inner clothes, fed the man a pill, and forced a few gulps of water down his throat.
She dusted his wounds with powder, wrapped them tight, and ignored how crude it was.
In her old world he would be in intensive care.
Here, all she could do was give him a chance.
They hauled him back into the reeds, erased the drag marks, and scattered the mud smooth.
Before she left, Ling Jin Sui bent close and whispered into his ear, “Believe in yourself. You’ll live.”
She unwrapped an energy bar and pressed it into his hand.
Then she turned and ran with Grandpa Ling.
They couldn’t carry this trouble with them.