“Nonsense! How could the Crown Prince, a living person, have no pulse?” Shen Xihe’s expression turned cold as she sternly rebuked.
Both the physician and Xiao Changyan’s advisor fell to their knees with a thud. Their minds were in turmoil. They had considerable achievements in medicine – one had seen countless difficult cases, while the other had studied under renowned masters.
A living person without a pulse was truly inconceivable, unheard of, making their hearts pound with fear.
“The Yellow River’s waters descend from heaven, rushing towards the sea never to return…” The unconscious Xiao Huayong mumbled these two lines of poetry repeatedly, intermittently, like someone delirious with fever. However, apart from his usual sickly pallor, there wasn’t the slightest flush on his face.
There were no symptoms of illness.
“Mo Yuan, go bring Zhenzhu back and summon more doctors. Call for every physician in the county,” Shen Xihe commanded loudly, her urgency evident.
Finally, Shen Xihe had summoned all available physicians. Even when Zhenzhu was brought back, she couldn’t detect Xiao Huayong’s pulse either, nearly frightening her soul out of her body. Fortunately, though she knew nothing beforehand, at the crucial moment she remembered something A Xi had once mentioned briefly, which helped calm her heart.
People knelt everywhere, inside and outside the room, each with panic on their faces and fear in their eyes.
Shen Xihe was furious, and neither Xiao Changyan nor Xiao Changqing knew how to or dared to try to console her.
“What use are these incompetent doctors?” Shen Xihe’s face was like frost, the gloom in her eyes chilling people to the bone.
The physicians kneeling under the eaves suddenly felt the cold wind in the rain, and their backs inexplicably chilled as they watched armed guards, hands on their sword hilts, stride out and wordlessly begin to drag away several doctors from the edges.
This scene caused some physicians to faint from fright, and some to lose control of their bodily functions, but one seemed to have a spark of wisdom in the crisis. Just as a guard was about to grab his arm, he suddenly jumped up: “The Crown Prince has no illness—”
His loud cry drew everyone’s attention, even making the guards pause their actions.
“Bring him in,” Shen Xihe’s cold voice came from inside.
The young physician swallowed hard, both terrified yet resolved to face death, and stiffly followed the guard inside.
“What did you mean just now?” Shen Xihe asked sternly.
The young physician prostrated himself on the ground, able to see only the light purple hem of a skirt, adorned with extremely intricate patterns embroidered in silk thread, with a crescent-shaped apricot-colored silk shawl draped upon it. He suddenly began to stutter: “In… in response to Your Highness the Crown Princess… this humble one, I have… have heard… of people possessed by deities showing no pulse while alive…”
“Do you know the punishment for spreading baseless rumors and defaming the Crown Prince?” Shen Xihe looked down at the person before her.
She had arranged for someone to speak the words she had prepared, but this person wasn’t the one she had arranged.
“Your… Your Highness, this humble one isn’t speaking nonsense. This… this one has seen symptoms like His Highness the Crown Prince’s in a book…” the young physician said, trembling.
“What book? Where is it?” Shen Xihe pressed.
The young physician hemmed and hawed until suddenly a cold sword pressed against his neck, making him shudder and blurt out: “The ‘Book of Strange Dreams,’ I have it at home!”
Shen Xihe glanced at him. She had never heard of this “Book of Strange Dreams” before: “Mo Yuan, go with him to retrieve the book.”
“Yes,” The young physician was dragged away by Mo Yuan.
Shen Xihe’s expression was solemn. She didn’t notice that Xiao Huayong, lying on the bed, could barely keep still, nearly breaking character as even his shoulders twitched, before finally returning to stillness.
After about a quarter-hour, Mo Yuan returned with an oil paper-wrapped book, but his expression was somewhat strange: “Your Highness, this book does indeed contain similar records. Shall I send it to His Highness Prince Xin and His Highness Prince Jing to review?”
Shen Xihe raised her eyes and gave Mo Yuan a faint glance. He wanted to show it to Xiao Changqing and Xiao Changyan without even letting her see it. Not only was Mo Yuan’s behavior strange, but his tone was odd, and even his voluntary speaking up was unusual: “Is there something improper about this book?”
Mo Yuan kept his head bowed extremely low and didn’t respond.
“Very well, just deliver it to Their Highnesses,” Shen Xihe didn’t insist on seeing it.
Though she noticed the oddity, she didn’t think about its erotic nature. It was a book describing intimate relations between men and women in detail, with a misleading title. The meaning of the title “Strange Dreams” came from “different dreams in the same bed.” The book had over ten chapters, each a separate story, mostly about various bedroom troubles between husbands and wives, where either the husband or wife encounters supernatural beings and engages in shameless intimacy with them.
Xiao Changqing and Xiao Changyan’s expressions changed dramatically after seeing a few explicit terms. Xiao Changyan turned his head away directly, while Xiao Changqing took several deep breaths, trying to clear his mind, gripping the seal on his wrist tightly before skimming over the erotic descriptions to roughly finish the story.
Such books naturally couldn’t insult deities. It told of a young woman forced to marry into a wealthy family. Her family, greedy for riches, not only broke up her romance but also killed her lover. After death, the lover’s resentment accumulated, transforming him into a fierce ghost who possessed the wealthy husband’s body to be intimate with the woman. By chance, a physician friend of the wealthy man encountered him, noticed his poor complexion, and knowing his friend’s usual aversion to doctors, secretly took his pulse, only to find none…
Probably terrified, the young physician thought of this fabricated story but naturally didn’t dare say the Crown Prince was possessed by a fierce ghost, so in his panic, he cleverly mentioned deities instead.
At the story’s end, the solution was to sever the ghost’s earthly attachment. Adjusting this, to cure the Crown Prince would naturally require fulfilling the deity’s instructions.
After reading, Xiao Changqing selected what could be told and related it to Xiao Changyan and Shen Xihe.
Shen Xihe didn’t think much of it, realizing it was just a book of supernatural nonsense. Both Shen Yueshan and Shen Yun’an had forbidden her from reading such books, no wonder Mo Yuan hadn’t handed it to her directly.
Without delving deeper, Shen Xihe felt as if someone had offered a pillow just as she was getting sleepy. She had already quietly arranged for someone to investigate this young physician, and the report showed nothing amiss. Having such a person appear spontaneously was more suitable than her planned arrangement.
Even if Prince Xin or His Majesty sent people to investigate later, they would find almost no trace of human manipulation.
“If this is so, are there deities wanting to use His Highness’s body to provide guidance? What guidance?” Shen Xihe dutifully played her role.
By this point, Xiao Changyan had also understood – what urgent matter in Dengzhou now required divine guidance?
Wasn’t it just the pressing flood crisis right before their eyes?