Emperor Qiwen’s manner toward Feng Jiu had always been quite cool. He barely gave her bow any notice.

From the moment he arrived here, his attention had been fixed entirely on that tightly shut door.

The Head Eunuch said: “Master, the Lady is waiting.”

Feng Jiu gave a nod, stepped down from the cool pavilion, and walked to the door.

Inside, one of the palace maids opened the door and welcomed her in.

This palace maid’s name was Qing Zhi. She appeared to be around twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. The older palace maid looked considerably more senior — she must have been in her thirties.

The previous time, Feng Jiu had heard the veiled lady address her as Qing Ye.

Qing Ye and Qing Zhi — the names seemed casually chosen, yet they had a certain charm to them.

Feng Jiu stepped inside. The veiled lady, as was her habit, was reading. She seemed particularly fond of military strategy texts — was she someone who enjoyed studying tactics of war?

So very different from those consorts in the harem.

“This humble one greets the Lady.” Feng Jiu approached, set her medicine chest to the side, crouched before the veiled lady, and began to examine her legs.

Although the veiled lady was never one for conversation, it was also plain that she had little patience. So saying anything extra was unnecessary — being direct suited her far better.

And so Feng Jiu, upon arriving, went straight to examining her legs without a single pleasantry, without so much as asking permission. Far from seeming discourteous, it came across as clean and efficient.

This time, Feng Jiu dissolved her prepared medicinal powder into warm water of around forty degrees. She first had the veiled lady soak both legs for about half an hour, then proceeded to a massage, and finally administered an injection of medicinal fluid.

This method was essentially unheard of in this era.

The injection tubes had been custom-made on her orders, but even the most skilled craftsmen in the land could not fashion needles as fine as those of the twenty-first century.

The needle was too large, and the insertion would inevitably cause some discomfort — yet the veiled lady’s leg tendons had been necrotic for so many years that the nerves in her legs had atrophied, and she could barely feel any pain at all.

Still, this manner of administering treatment — injecting medicinal fluid directly into the human body — was something no one here had ever witnessed before.

It did appear rather strange.

At first, both Qing Ye and Qing Zhi had hesitated, uncertain whether such a thing was truly safe. Both had wanted to intervene.

But she was a divine healer, and a divine healer had her own ways of treating patients. If they interrupted, it might sever the Lady’s last remaining thread of hope.

In short, the whole process was tense, filled with worry — and yet carried a thread of anticipation.

Feng Jiu injected the medicinal fluid into several points on the veiled lady’s legs. Afterward, she put away the silver needles and syringes, tidied everything up, and sat to one side.

“Master…” Qing Ye could not help but want to ask something, yet she did not know where to begin.

Feng Jiu had not yet left, which suggested there was still more to be done. But what exactly were they waiting for now?

They did not understand. Nor, most likely, did the Lady.

“Do not be anxious. The medicinal fluid has entered the body and needs time to be absorbed. I will shortly administer needles to invigorate the circulation of blood, but first, we must allow the fluid some time to absorb.”

Though the phrasing was not something they would necessarily understand fully, the general meaning was clear enough.

Feng Jiu added: “Roughly half an hour.”

Half an hour, with nothing to do but sit — Feng Jiu’s gaze drifted to the military strategy text the veiled lady had been reading just before.

“Would you like to look at it?” The veiled lady glanced at her. A long sleeve swept lightly outward, and the volume fell into Feng Jiu’s hands.

It landed lightly, as though it weighed almost nothing — yet the book itself was not light.

Feng Jiu quietly drew a breath. The inner power of this veiled lady was beyond anything she could fully imagine.

She opened the text, and her eyes lit up at once: “A hand-copied manuscript?”

It was entirely hand-written, completely unlike the reproduced copies circulating in the market.

This era did have its own printing technology. Though far from advanced, it was passable enough — whether in paper quality or brushwork, the reproduced copies were all neat and easy to read.

But the veiled lady’s copy of this text was different. The handwriting was hasty, and in some places one had to connect it with the surrounding text just to work out the meaning. It was clearly a draft — unpolished, in its raw original form.

The veiled lady said nothing, accepting a cup of tea from Qing Zhi and taking a small sip.

Qing Zhi offered Feng Jiu a cup as well, but Feng Jiu’s full attention was absorbed by the text. She had no capacity to spare for anything else.

It was not Sun Tzu’s Art of War. It was none of the well-known, celebrated texts. It was a personal journal of notes — unheard of, without any renown whatsoever.

And yet, laid out within it were battles — each formation and each tactic, compared against roughly-sketched terrain maps — with analysis and method that could only be described as breathtaking.

So this was how war could be waged on such a scale! So this was how an army could be deployed!

Every campaign recorded was a victory of fewer against greater numbers. The records chronicled the wars of this dynasty — some written in response to specific battles, others purely theoretical.

Let no one say that pure theory was meaningless. In truth, anyone who read it could analyze for themselves that this was exactly right.

If you read it, then considered the actual conditions of the battles involved, any participant would have slapped their knee and berated themselves: why had they not done it this way? Why had they not arranged the formation like this? Why had they never thought of this!

Strictly speaking, this was not quite a military strategy text — it only wore the outer cover of one. In truth, that cover was simply there to protect the journal, to keep it from deteriorating with the passage of years.

The first few battle records were from the journal’s original content. By the midpoint, Feng Jiu noticed that someone had made additions — annotations in the margins.

No explanations — just a scattering of symbols and marks. Yet Feng Jiu could see clearly: these were formations annotated by a later reader — and they were even more rigorous, even more formidable, than the methods written by the original author.

“Lady, these annotations — could they be your…?” Feng Jiu suddenly looked up, fixing her gaze on the veiled lady seated in the chair, face filled with excitement.

She had already found the original author astonishing enough — yet here was someone even more extraordinary still.

She could not say precisely why, but she felt certain that those annotated passages had come from the hand of the veiled lady before her.

The veiled lady said nothing. It was Qing Ye who spoke in a measured tone: “Master, half an hour has passed. Shall we continue?”

Feng Jiu startled. Only then did she realize she had already turned through at least half the journal — without noticing, a full half hour had slipped by.

“Lady, this journal…”

“Put it down.” The veiled lady’s voice was not loud, yet it left no room for argument.

Feng Jiu let out a quiet sigh, feeling genuinely regretful. If only she could take it back and read it at leisure, study it carefully — how wonderful that would be.

She returned the journal to Qing Zhi with both hands and respectful care, then opened her medicine chest once more, took out her needles, and settled in to administer acupuncture to invigorate the veiled lady’s circulation.