An Jiu glared at Mó Sīguī with bloodshot eyes, forcing out words through gritted teeth: “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Realizing the danger, Mó Sīguī quickly adopted a serious tone. “That won’t be necessary. Rest for now while I read.”

He sat in a chair behind An Jiu, lamp in hand, and resumed studying the medical texts. The Kònghè Army coveted Elder Qǐ’s medical knowledge, and these manuscripts would inevitably be seized sooner or later. While Mó Sīguī might not memorize other books in one reading, he had a photographic memory for medical texts. He needed to process them quickly.

Immersing himself in the study also distracted him from An Jiu’s pained twitches.

Rebuilding one’s body was a critical process that couldn’t afford any mistakes, so Mó Sīguī couldn’t leave her side. Even when he had to step out, he chose safer moments and hurried back.

Sand trickled through the hourglass as the two remained in seclusion, neither eating nor drinking.

Five hours later, Mó Sīguī turned to check on An Jiu. Her head rested limply on the edge of the tub, her face swollen and deathly pale with a bluish tinge. Her original features were barely recognizable.

Mó Sīguī removed the iron weight and, wrapping his arm in soft snakeskin, reached into the water to lift her onto the couch.

Where his arm touched her, An Jiu felt excruciating pain. Her vision went black.

“It’s time to change the medicine. You can’t pass out now – you must stay awake, understand?” Mó Sīguī said gravely.

An Jiu managed a weak groan.

Mó Sīguī gave her some salt water and, after a quarter-hour, transferred some qi to help sustain her. Only then did he begin cutting away the fabric on her body. “Bear with it,” he warned.

“Hiss!” As the cloth was gently pulled away, An Jiu felt as if her very flesh was being torn off.

Mó Sīguī’s brow furrowed as his movements became even swifter.

Even for someone as pain-tolerant as An Jiu, the intense agony made her whole body tremble. Tears flowed uncontrollably, mixing with large drops of sweat.

Mó Sīguī avoided looking at her face, treating her body as if it were a corpse. His actions were decisive and increasingly rapid.

As the bandages fell away, they revealed her swollen body. The skin and flesh were dark and bruised. Mó Sīguī’s experience told him these tissues were approaching necrosis. The torture her body had endured to reach this state was unimaginable.

Theoretically, this method of tempering the body would have some effect on rebuilding the meridians, otherwise, Mó Sīguī wouldn’t have suggested she endure such suffering. This was also his first time rebuilding an external cultivator’s body. The current state exceeded his expectations.

Looking at her body, he couldn’t fathom the level of pain she must be experiencing.

Mó Sīguī took a deep breath and steeled himself to begin cleaning away the remnants of medicine. When he reached her fingers, he paused.

One of An Jiu’s right fingers was broken, likely snapped by her hand in an attempt to distract from the pain.

Mó Sīguī silently reset the bone before applying another medicinal ointment to her entire body.

After all this, An Jiu barely had the strength to open her eyes. She allowed Mó Sīguī to lower her back into the water.

The cool sensation soothed her burning pain.

An Jiu felt her body relax completely. She quickly fell into a deep sleep, wishing she could stay asleep forever. However, after an unknown amount of time, an unbearable itching sensation forced her awake.

Pain could be endured, but this maddening itch made her want to claw her flesh off. When she tried to move, she realized her body was limp and powerless.

“Rapid tissue regeneration inevitably causes intense itching. To prevent you from damaging your body, I added a muscle relaxant to the medicinal bath,” Mó Sīguī’s voice came from behind her.

The itch seemed to emanate from her very bone marrow. In An Jiu’s current extremely agitated state, if she had even an ounce of strength, she might have killed Mó Sīguī before taking her own life.

Mó Sīguī moved to face her. He had initially planned to administer a sedative, but seeing her mental state, he changed his mind. “First, calm yourself and regulate your emotions. You indeed show signs of mental instability. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve had these symptoms for a long time.”

Mó Sīguī lightly slapped her cheeks. “If you can understand me, start regulating your breathing now! Don’t miss this opportunity.”

The slaps made the itching slightly more bearable. An Jiu regained a hint of clarity and immediately began adjusting her breathing and mental state.

However, the maddening itch made it impossible to achieve true calm. In frustration, she directed her spiritual energy to every nerve ending and pore – if she couldn’t escape it, she would face it head-on!

With her spiritual energy covering her body, her sensitivity increased a hundredfold. The itching sensation became so intense that she wished for the world’s destruction.

Yet, at the extreme of itching, a tingling pain emerged, which was slightly more tolerable than before.

Seeing An Jiu’s expression gradually relax, Mó Sīguī also sighed in relief.

Exhausted from battling her body’s torment, An Jiu fell into a deep sleep that lasted nearly twenty days.

While An Jiu slept comfortably, Mó Sīguī was nearly worn out.

“Mó Sīguī?” An Jiu woke to a sour smell emanating from the tub.

Mó Sīguī, dozing in his chair, was startled awake by her voice. The medical text in his hand slipped to the floor.

“You’re awake?” He picked up the book, stood to stretch, and then approached to check under the bandage on her neck.

He held his breath until he saw the fresh pink skin underneath. His face lit up with excitement. “Excellent, excellent.”

Smiling, he removed the tub’s cover. “Can you stand? Go to the adjacent bathhouse to wash up.”

An Jiu stood and looked down at the tub. A layer of black substances floated on the surface – whether medicine or her body’s waste, she couldn’t tell.

Covered in bandages and deathly pale, she climbed out of the tub like a vengeful ghost from a swamp. Each step left a dark footprint as she made her way to the bathhouse, supporting herself against the wall.

After scrubbing herself for half an hour, she finally felt clean.

An Jiu’s skin was now a tender pink. Some areas were wrinkled, either from the bandages or other reasons, like a newborn infant’s. Even her old clothes felt abrasive against her sensitive skin.

As she emerged from the bathhouse, she saw Mó Sīguī standing in the corridor, holding a lantern.

He had lost a lot of weight, with dark circles under his eyes. Yet, with his flowing sleeves and windswept hair, he carried an air of otherworldly elegance.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

An Jiu flexed her wrist. “Very light. More agile, too.”

“That’s because while resisting your body’s pain, your spiritual energy became more integrated with your physical form,” Mó Sīguī explained. “The higher your spiritual energy, the greater the integration. This allows you to control your body in ways normal people can’t, achieving extraordinary speed and strength. Perhaps even more…”

Mó Sīguī imagined that at extreme levels of integration, one might be able to leap four or five zhang high or move as nimbly as a martial arts master – potentially rivaling internal energy cultivation.

So for external cultivators, spiritual energy was indeed more crucial. Without sufficient spiritual energy, control over the body would be inadequate, halting further progress. However, if spiritual energy were easy to cultivate, the world would be full of masters.

Mó Sīguī checked An Jiu’s pulse, only relaxing when he confirmed it was stable and strong.

As the tension left his body, he suddenly felt overwhelmed with fatigue and began to fall backward.

An Jiu, quick to react, caught him. “Mó Sīguī!”

“I need to sleep…” he mumbled.

An Jiu checked his breathing and neck pulse, confirming he had indeed fallen asleep.

Just as she was about to drag him back inside, she sensed the presence of an eighth-level martial artist. Turning her head, she saw a slender figure land on the far end of the corridor.

It was Lóu Míngyuè.

An Jiu paused for a moment. Seeing that Lóu Míngyuè made no move to approach, she carried Mó Sīguī inside.

When An Jiu came back out, Lóu Míngyuè still stood motionless.

“He’s unconscious now. If you want to see him, go ahead,” An Jiu said.

After a long moment, Lóu Míngyuè barely moved, her voice hoarse. “No, I won’t.”

What good would it do to see him? Her heart was filled with hatred. She would only drag Mó Sīguī into an abyss, leaving them both shattered in the end.

“You’re Qiū Níngyù,” An Jiu stated, her tone certain despite it being a guess.

Lóu Míngyuè didn’t deny it. “Yes. He’s probably figured it out too, but part of him doesn’t want to accept it. He doesn’t want to be bound, nor should he be. A medical prodigy like him is heaven’s gift to humanity. If he must die, it should be for the sake of medicine. As long as I don’t confirm it, he still has reason to deceive himself. I hope you won’t expose this either.”

To understand Lóu Míngyuè’s background, one must start with the story of the Lóu Clan’s leader.

The Lóu Clan leader didn’t want his daughter to dedicate her life to the Kònghè Army, so he secretly arranged to send her away from the clan. At that time, Madam Qiū had finally conceived after many years of marriage to the Qiū family but unfortunately faced a difficult childbirth where only the mother or child could survive. Mister Qiū, sighing that it was “fated to be childless,” unhesitatingly chose to save his wife. The Lóu Clan leader, upon learning of this situation, secretly left the infant Lóu Míngyuè at the Qiū family’s doorstep.

The Qiū couple, finding the baby, believed it to be heaven’s will. They concealed the death of their child and raised Qiū Níngyù as their daughter.

Mister Qiū and Mó Sīguī’s father were close friends. After Mó Děnghún’s death, Mister Qiū naturally took extra care of Mó Sīguī. Someone spread a rumor that the Qiū family possessed Mó Děnghún’s medical records, leading to the family’s destruction.

Upon hearing this news, the Lóu Clan leader rushed to the scene, only to find the Qiū family already annihilated. Learning that the Qiū family’s daughter had fallen into the river and was missing, he searched downstream for days, finally rescuing the barely alive Qiū Níngyù.

As a child, Qiū Níngyù had been lively and fond of martial arts. Though her training consisted mostly of showy techniques, it made her physically stronger than typical sheltered young ladies. After returning to the Lóu Clan and learning of her true identity, she harbored a deep hatred. The Qiū couple had raised her for many years, loving her as their flesh and blood. Their murder drove her to train relentlessly for revenge. Through the Lóu Clan’s information network, she discovered that those who killed Mó Děnghún and the Qiū couple were the same group.

Initially, Lóu Míngyuè thought someone merely coveted Mó Děnghún’s medical skills. She didn’t expect to uncover a palace secret. Now, she had killed all the direct perpetrators, but the mastermind still resided safely in the palace.

“It seems I was born under an ill star, destined only for vengeance,” Lóu Míngyuè said, her young eyes already world-weary. “If that’s the case, why drag another person into this?”

If Mó Sīguī valued her above all else, he wouldn’t have questioned whether she was Qiū Níngyù. He could have found many ways to confirm it if he truly wanted to know. But he hadn’t, yet he couldn’t let her go either. He was likely still conflicted.

If anyone in the world understood Mó Sīguī, it was Lóu Míngyuè. She might even understand him better than he understood himself.

An Jiu remarked, “You bear all this for him, yet he doesn’t know.”

Lóu Míngyuè shook her head with a faint smile. “No. Because I understand him so well, I know that medicine weighs a hundred times heavier in his heart than I do. So I don’t value this kind of sentiment.”

Lóu Míngyuè’s hatred ran so deep that she could never let it go. Her love must be equally intense.

Despite her words, An Jiu still felt that Lóu Míngyuè’s feelings for Mó Sīguī were profound.

“Perhaps it’s also because he’s one of the few close friends I have left in this world. I don’t want anything to happen to him,” Lóu Míngyuè added. Her connection with Lóu Xiǎowǔ was more a matter of blood ties. Lóu Xiǎowǔ had also been raised outside the clan, and after returning, they lived in separate courtyards. The two hadn’t spent much time together, unlike childhood playmates who had grown up side by side.

Yet she didn’t want this feeling to become a shackle or a burden.

An Jiu met her pleading gaze. “I won’t interfere in your affairs.”

“Thank you,” Lóu Míngyuè said with a slight bow.

An Jiu nodded and returned to the room.

With Mó Sīguī passed out from exhaustion, An Jiu couldn’t leave him sleeping so vulnerably. She kept watch, lighting a lamp to read the “Duànjīng Zhang” manual.

Just as she reached the third page, she sensed a ninth-level expert rapidly approaching.

She continued reading, pretending not to notice.

“Mó Sīguī truly lives up to his reputation as the disciple of a divine physician,” Gù Jīnghóng said, landing lightly in the chair opposite her. After carefully examining her, he added, “The reconstruction is perfect.”

If anyone else had said this, An Jiu wouldn’t have found it inappropriate. But coming from Gù Jīnghóng, it felt like he was evaluating a doll. Her gaze turned cold. “What are you doing here?”

“There’s no need to be so surprised,” Gù Jīnghóng said, seemingly oblivious to her wariness and disgust. “As long as the Méi Clan exists, I have the right and responsibility to oversee you.”

Gù Jīnghóng was the Kònghè Army’s designated mentor for the Méi Clan. If not for the clan’s misfortune, he would still be teaching the Méi Clan disciples.

An Jiu glared at him coldly. In the past, she would have lashed out immediately, but now she knew she must restrain herself. There was no benefit in offending Gù Jīnghóng.

“Take this to Shèng Zhǎngkù. He will show you the classified records of former external cultivators in the Kònghè Academy,” Gù Jīnghóng said, placing a token carved with a black tortoise on the table. “Learning more will be beneficial for you.”

Purely focusing on external martial arts training has an advantage over internal cultivation: the body, once tempered, becomes much more stable than internal energy. It is less likely to be affected by disruptions. Even if one studies various chaotic martial arts techniques, one won’t experience the confusion of internal energy.

Gu Jinghong noticed Jian An Jiu’s apparent distaste and guessed she had learned about the duties of the Longwu Guard. He said, “Rest assured, letting you join the Longwu Guard is not to make you serve the Emperor.”

So you want my mother to take on that duty instead!? An Jiu wanted to retort, but she held her tongue tightly, resisting the urge.

Casually asking wouldn’t necessarily yield a truthful answer and might betray Chu Dingjiang. Besides, would his promise of not being forced to sleep with the Emperor hold? Weren’t all the women in the Longwu Guard tasked with this duty?