Zhan Qingcheng was momentarily stunned, and a faint, almost imperceptible flush of color gradually rose across his pale face.

He hesitated only briefly before reaching up to begin removing his own outer garment.

But after the outer robe had come off, just as he was about to pull off the inner single layer beneath it, his hands suddenly stilled.

He looked at Feng Jiu’er, and in a rare and rather unusual moment, seemed somewhat ill at ease. “I… have not bathed in quite some time. Perhaps we could wait until after I have bathed — and then, the two of us together…”

“Together doing what?” Feng Jiu’er nearly raised her hand to give him a knock on the forehead.

One look at the Ninth Imperial Uncle’s faintly flushed face, and those eyes that had turned a deep, misty shade of dark, and she knew perfectly well what small thoughts were running through his head.

He was injured this badly, and he thought she was looking to be close with him? The workings of this brain were a little too novel for their own good.

“You are injured. I need to apply medicine.” Though, to be fair, the Ninth Imperial Uncle was not entirely wrong about one thing — he truly had not bathed in quite some time.

Truly… this hopeless man.

Feng Jiu’er turned and stepped out the door. She returned not long after, with several servants following behind her, each carrying wooden pails. In short order, they had filled the bathing tub behind the folding screen.

“Come here. Let me wipe you down.” Once the servants had gone, Jiu’er looked at him and said this.

Zhan Qingcheng still hesitated — though this time it was not shyness, but rather that he had suddenly remembered his injuries.

“There is no need. After I return to the manor…”

“If you won’t take it off, then never come looking for me again.” Feng Jiu’er’s tone was firm and unyielding.

Zhan Qingcheng studied her. This girl rarely showed this side of herself in front of him, but once she did, he always ended up being the one to yield in the end.

The world saw him as cold as ice and frost. But only Zhan Qingcheng himself knew — in front of Feng Jiu’er, he had always been, in truth, remarkably obedient.

Though he could not quite explain why he chose to be obedient — if he was not, this girl truly would ignore him.

At last, he pulled off the inner garment as well.

“Wait!” Feng Jiu’er nearly cried out in alarm at what she saw before her. Even as a physician, even having witnessed many injuries, she was shaken to her core.

Most of all, her heart hurt — a deep, aching pain.

“Don’t pull it off yourself. Let me help you.” This wretched man. This wretched man had been carrying these injuries even before today.

The deep lacerations on his body were unmistakably the work of a wild beast’s sharp claws.

At the time of the injury, the wounds had not been treated. Parts of the inner garment had adhered to the wound, the flesh matted and raw. Was that truly painless?

The corners of Feng Jiu’er’s eyes stung. She turned her face aside quickly, brought the medicine chest forward, and set about cleaning his wounds, wiping him down at the same time.

The process was far from pleasant. Who claimed the Ninth Imperial Uncle did not feel pain? Right now, as she cleaned his wounds, he was tense from head to toe, every muscle rigid with it. He had been pushing himself all the way back on the road without once stopping to attend to this?

And then there was his arm…

“Did you truly use your own blood to sustain the Blood Ganoderma?” All he would have needed to do was pause somewhere along the road and purchase some birds — their blood would have served just as well.

This fool. If he were not covered in injuries right now, she truly would have liked to give him a sound beating.

This was the sort of question the Ninth Imperial Uncle would generally never answer. In any case, Feng Jiu’er had already guessed.

She simply, truly, deeply felt the ache of it — and ached all the more for every wound, large and small, covering his body.

After great effort, she finally had his upper body tended to — wounds cleaned, medicine applied, and bandaging done.

Feng Jiu’er lowered her gaze to his long trousers. “Any injuries there?”

Zhan Qingcheng shook his head. She looked at him steadily anyway and said, “Take them off. Let me check.”

“If you look, you must take responsibility.”

“…” She had known it all along — the Ninth Imperial Uncle was not a man who lacked words. He simply had no wish to speak to most people.

“If you keep running your mouth, I truly will stop speaking to you.” Jiu’er shot him a look of resigned exasperation, her hand reaching for the gold-inlaid sash at his waist, about to undo his trousers.

A large hand closed over hers, holding it lightly. “If you look, you truly must take responsibility. Promise me first.”

“I will not promise anything.” What was there to promise? It was not as though she had never looked before — only never quite so openly and plainly as this.

Besides, she was not undressing him entirely. She only wanted to remove his trousers to check whether his legs had any injuries. What on earth was he imagining?

“Whether or not you promise, you will still be held to it. I will not allow you to go back on your word.”

The Ninth Imperial Uncle gave a casual pull, and Feng Jiu’er very nearly cried out again. This time, not because his injuries were so severe — but because… Ninth Imperial Uncle, who in the world taught you to take off clothes like that?

He had managed to take everything off, completely and entirely…

Some unknown stretch of time later, a Feng Jiu’er thoroughly flushed and covered in perspiration emerged from behind the folding screen, and following behind her was the eternally devastatingly handsome certain Imperial Uncle.

Having bathed, and dressed now in the clothes she had sent someone to bring, the Ninth Imperial Uncle looked clean and refreshed, exuding an elegance beyond words.

Elegant — no longer cold and desolate — for tonight, Jiu’er had dressed him in a set of plain white robes, much the same as those he had worn before.

Jiu’er did not quite understand why, during this period, he had taken to favoring black, dark-toned, and deep charcoal-hued clothes. But tonight, seeing him in the main hall, something in her mind seemed to quietly come clear.

Dark black and deep-hued robes, carrying within the darkness subtle traces of deep red — so that even if blood soaked into the fabric, it would not show too plainly.

Just as when she had first caught sight of him — with the distance between them, she had not spotted the bloodstains on him immediately.

But regardless of whether it was the Ninth Imperial Uncle in dark robes or the Ninth Imperial Uncle in white, to any young woman, both were a fatal kind of poison — one glance, and the heart turned soft.

And so, now, looking at the Ninth Imperial Uncle in white, seated in the chair, the hem of his robe stirred gently by the evening breeze drifting in through the window — all the anger she had been holding onto simply dissolved.

In truth, everything he had done, he had done for her. What was there to be angry about? There was no reason to be angry at all.

She only… felt the ache of it.

“Your injuries are not only surface wounds.” A table of food had been sent in. Feng Jiu’er sat to one side, watching this man who was wolfing down his meal and yet somehow, inexplicably, still managed to look impossibly handsome doing it, and her expression grew subtly grave.

“Just now, you fought with someone? Who is so formidable as to be able to injure you?”

For someone to have injured even the Ninth Imperial Uncle — the other party’s cultivation was simply beyond imagining.

“She is more severely injured than I am.” So this was a minor matter, not worth speaking of.

“Who is it, exactly?” He was clearly choosing to conceal it deliberately. Could it be…

“A veiled woman.” Zhan Qingcheng had not eaten a proper meal in several days. All through this stretch of time rushing home, he had survived on nothing but dried rations and water.

So tonight’s meal — though not prepared by his own girl — tasted, even so, like something from the heavens above.

To have been injured by someone and still remain this thoroughly unbothered — did he not understand that in this world, there were truly very few people capable of injuring him?

Even if the other party had come away more severely hurt, she had still truly injured him.

Wait — a veiled… woman? Could it be… could it truly be her?