Chapter 299

Chapter 299: The Female Physician with a Bad Reputation

Jiang Liu Bin was happy to receive a gift from his sister. He would have been even happier if the bracelet wasn’t so clearly made for women.

“You don’t want it?” Yu Zhi Yi arched a brow.

Jiang Liu Bin stuffed the bracelet into his clothes at once and said: “No, sister, I just…” He scratched his head. Fourth Young Master Jiang was terrible at lying, so he bolted into a run and called back over his shoulder: “I’ll find a physician first. Be right back.”

Yu Zhi Yi stood at the edge of the pit. She did not jump down or lift a hand to rescue anyone.

Mainly, there was no one left to save.

Whatever this place had been used for before, the ground beneath was hollow like a cavern, and the bottom bristled with dense, sharp stakes. Everyone who fell ended up like fish on a spit. In a short time, they were all dead beyond saving. The horses were different. Because their legs were long, many were injured but not fatally so.

Soon, dozens of bodies were lifted up. Jiang Liu Yun felt a phantom ache from head to toe. His face looked awful as he said with relief: “Sister, thank goodness you were here, or we would have ended up like them.”

The shock of it spread through all of Juxian Manor. People poured down from the stands. Some joined the rescue, others came to stare. The manor lord pushed through the crowd, pale-faced, to arrange what needed to be done next.

Yu Zhi Yi’s gaze settled on him. The Jia manor lord’s expression was sorrowful, and unease filled his eyes. She raised a brow. Interesting. Another person whose face she could not read. Even so, she could see dozens of threads of karma clinging to him, faint but real, enough to prove the deaths were connected to him.

At the same time, dozens of black karma threads drifted up from the pit and curled around one person in the crowd: Chen Xin Yue. Strangely, though the threads on her were already black as ink, Yu Zhi Yi could not spot any trace that Chen Xin Yue had acted with her own hands. This matter was truly puzzling. Chen Xin Yue’s face was not covered by any secret art that would block the Heavenly Mechanism Device, yet there seemed to be some other method at work that kept Yu Zhi Yi from reading the causes and effects through simple face-reading.

Before long, Jiang Liu Bin came back, tugging someone along as he called out: “Sister, sister, the physician is here… ow!” There was a thud. With Lightness Skill that was usually quite good, Fourth Young Master Jiang put on a show of what it means to trip on flat ground.

The earth was smooth, with no holes or bumps, but it felt as if he had stepped into a pit. His mind had not caught up when his body pitched forward. Worse, he was falling toward the sinkhole. People ringed the edge, but the spot he lunged toward was just where no one stood.

In that instant, he felt something burrow into his head. A stab of pain struck so hard he could not think. Everyone watched as he tumbled out over the open air above the pit.

Jiang Liu Bin wanted to curl up and roll from the pain. Before he could move, a warm, formless force slipped into his mind. The pain melted away. He opened his eyes and blurted out: “Crap!” Seeing the forest of sharp stakes below, he jolted, twisted his waist into an impossible arc, and kicked off hard.

He barely managed to spring back to the edge. The moment his feet touched solid ground, he let out a breath. Then he slipped again. The dirt here made him skid, and his body pitched toward the pit once more. He almost swore out loud.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed the back of his collar and hauled him up. He twisted around and saw Yu Zhi Yi’s calm face as she let go. Though she showed no expression, his eyes filled with grateful tears and he said: “Sis! You’re my only sister.”

Yu Zhi Yi’s mouth twitched as she said: “Cut it out. If I were your real sister, I would hang you from a tree and beat you for talking like that.”

“…” Jiang Liu Bin went quiet. [Sister is fierce, but I feel so safe.]

After being tossed around a few times, he ran into no more danger. Yu Zhi Yi stopped watching her unlucky brother and, instead, studied a young woman with interest. The woman looked eighteen or nineteen, carried a medicine chest, and was moving quickly from horse to horse.

Of course, since everyone who fell was dead, she wasn’t treating people. She was treating the horses.

Yu Zhi Yi was interested not only because most onlookers found the woman’s behavior strange, but mostly because her methods were different from other physicians of this era. The young woman was using inner energy to drive the power of the medicines. It looked like the physician the Yiluan Charity had been searching for was right here.

Her smile faded when she heard the whispers around them.

“This Miss from the Xia family grows more and more crazy, using inner energy to treat horses,” someone muttered.

“She already runs around touching men all the time. Now she even handles animals. She has thrown the Xia family’s face into the mud,” another sniped.

“I heard that not long ago she made a Luo family boy strip naked. The two of them stayed alone in one room for a whole hour,” a third voice said in a dirty tone.

Yu Zhi Yi glanced at the Xia girl. The young woman kept a cold face and did not answer the gossip, but Yu Zhi Yi could see the shame and anger in her eyes.

The girl’s name was Xia Ming Xia, and she was indeed deeply humiliated. The Xia family was a famous medical family in the Martial World. Before Xia Ming Xia stepped into the public eye, they were admired by all. People could not help raising a thumb in praise whenever the Xia family was mentioned.

Everything changed after Xia Ming Xia began to treat patients in person. People felt she was too rebellious. She treated anyone, man or woman, and she did it anywhere if needed. For example, when it came to men’s private problems, most female physicians kept away. Even if the rules between men and women were looser than a hundred years ago, there were still lines people expected you not to cross. If a woman treated ordinary illnesses and wrote prescriptions, no one would complain.

But the key was that this Miss dared to use her hands. She dared to treat any illness. Even if everyone knew she was doing proper medical work, once it spread by word of mouth, it sounded ugly.

As time went on, the talk about her grew nastier. It wasn’t only ignorant bystanders. Some of the very men she saved also smeared her with filthy words. Once, a man who had cut himself high on the inner thigh bragged after she saved him that she had taken advantage of him and touched his privates. After that rumor came out, Xia Ming Xia’s reputation became even worse.