Ximen's heart gave a sharp lurch.
Even if he truly were a physician well-versed in medicine, there was no way he could relieve her pain quickly but Wang Xifeng's fierce reputation was known far and wide.
And backing her up at home was her uncle Wang Ziteng.
Wang Ziteng held the post of Inspector-General of Nine Provinces, a position of enormous power.
If she had him thrown into prison, there would be no chance of coming out alive.
Cold sweat soaked through his inner clothes in an instant.
He was gripped with anxious dread then he felt something hard and round rolling about inside his right sleeve.
What was that?
It came to him all at once. It was the medicine he had bought just before crossing over, and somehow it had come with him to this world.
Truly, heaven never seals off every road.
Ximen was bursting with joy on the inside, but on the outside he screwed his face into a look of bitter anguish, stamped his foot, and let out a long, grieving sigh in Wang Xifeng's direction, "Ah, Lady Lian's headache is a most severe and exceedingly difficult condition to treat. I am sure all of you have consulted no shortage of celebrated physicians."
"As it happens, I do possess a rare prescription and a set of techniques, handed down through my family, that specialize in stubborn and difficult ailments, including difficulties with conception. But the thing is... the thing is..."
At the words "stubborn and difficult ailments," the ears of every woman in the room pricked up.
And at "difficulties with conception," several women, Qin Keqing among them, felt their hearts give a sudden jump.
The looks they turned on Ximen grew thick and clinging all at once.
"The thing is what? Go on and say it!" Wang Xifeng's attending maid Ping'er could not hold her tongue any longer. "Every lady here is waiting on you, and here you are humming and hawing like this..."
Ximen deliberately dragged out his hesitation, "The medical techniques I have inherited are passed from father to son, never to women, and under no circumstances may outsiders observe them. This is a family precept that cannot be violated."
"And since all the ladies here are women, for a lone man such as myself to share a room alone with you would be a terrible breach of propriety!"
Before he had finished speaking,
Ping'er let out a cold, impatient laugh.
She had always been Xifeng's most trusted confidante, and her tongue was sharp enough to cut, "Ha! What a precious and exclusive art you have, great lord! I suppose that means we simply lack the refinement to appreciate it!"
"This household has had imperial physicians come to take the pulse from behind curtains, with gold needles passed through silk threads, with remedies worth a thousand gold pieces. What technique haven't we seen? Who among us is afraid of learning your secrets? What exactly are you playing at with all this mystery!"
Wang Xifeng was already suffering with her brows pressed tight from the pain, and Ximen's evasive posturing only fanned her irritation further. She thought to herself, "What a nerve this ruffian has! On the very edge of disaster and he still dares to play coy? I want to see what sort of tricks you're running."
She bit down quietly on her silver teeth and forced out a cold smile, "Fine, fine, fine! You have your grand rules to follow! It is my own head that hurts, after all! Ping'er, Feng'er, stand guard outside the curtain! I want to see what this inherited medical art of yours actually looks like!"
"Since the purpose is treatment, and with all these sisters present here, I will not give anyone cause for loose talk!"
"But I am warning you plainly. If my headache has not improved even a fraction, I will most certainly have the authorities deal with you as you deserve!"
With that, she pressed her fingers to her temple, her steps unsteady, and walked directly into the inner bedchamber.
Ximen quickly followed.
Watching the great millstone sway ahead of him, he could not help marveling inwardly. A figure that generous was a rare thing indeed.
The inner room was not as bright and spacious as the outer chamber. A single gauze palace lantern burned there, casting a dim, ambiguous warmth, and the air was thick with the mingling scents of agarwood incense and medicine.
Qin Keqing had been confined here recuperating for so long that even without illness she might have grown melancholy.
Wang Xifeng reclined sideways on the ivory mat of the carved canopied bed, her hair slightly loosened, a few dark strands damp with sweat and clinging to her cheeks.
Those phoenix eyes that normally cut and commanded with iron decisiveness were now veiled in a mist of pain.
Half-closed, they revealed a rare and unaccustomed vulnerability.
Her red lips parted with shallow breaths, her chest rising and falling.
Seeing her in this state, any man with blood in him would have felt a heat rise inside him yet Ximen put on a face of great reluctance and discomfort, "Forgive me, Lady Lian! This secret method requires me to use my hands to press on several acupoints along your shoulders and neck, so that the medicine's effect may be drawn downward through the body. But with the proper distance between a man and woman... how could I presume to lay a hand on Your Ladyship..."
Wang Xifeng's head was splitting with pain, and she had already made up her mind that this man was a ruffian sent by Jia Zhen to test the waters. She was used enough to Jia Rong's suggestive remarks and loose speech. But now Jia Zhen had gone as far as sending an outsider to come sniffing around her. And now this man was asking to massage her neck and shoulders on top of everything else. The thought of those sordid hands touching her sent a wave of revulsion surging up alongside her fury.
But she was so gripped by the violent pain that she could not act on it and somewhere in the back of her mind, a small hope stubbornly persisted.
If he truly could ease the pain, even a little, then at least this wretch had some genuine ability, and enduring his touch for a moment was a price she could bear but if this wretch was only trying to take advantage of the situation...
Hmph!
She snapped her eyes open, and those phoenix eyes, still bright with a film of tears, drove into Ximen with a look that could slice through skin. The words were practically squeezed out between her teeth, "Propriety between men and women! You claim to be a man of good works practicing medicine. Then you should know that a healer's compassion stands above all else!"
"All this shilly-shallying and posturing, it makes it look as though our Rong Mansion is too narrow-minded to accommodate your precious rules!"
"A physician's heart is like a parent's. There is no room for all this endless fussing! If you are going to do it, then do it quickly! Stop dragging your feet!"
At these words, Ximen let out a breath of relief.
It was not as though he truly had any designs on taking advantage of Wang Xifeng through the massage.
He had lived in the modern world, after all. Never mind those old instructional videos. Even on short video apps, there were countless women in full makeup dancing provocatively right before your eyes without a second thought.
Could he really be so thoroughly bewitched at the mere sight of a woman?
It was simply that administering medicine alone, without some expenditure of effort, would not hold up as an explanation for how his inherited medical techniques were supposed to work and on top of that, once the medicine was taken, he needed to buy a little time before its effects could show.
Ximen's outward manner was one of utmost care and respect. His hand slipped beneath his sleeve with practiced speed, and the large white bottle dropped into his palm.
He turned his back, tipped out a single capsule.
With a careful flick of his thumbnail, he broke open the red-and-white wax-sealed capsule and tipped the fine white powder entirely into his left palm.
"My Lady, please open your mouth. This medicine has remarkable efficacy, but it is extremely bitter."
Ximen kept his voice very low and leaned forward with a slight bow.
"As the saying goes, good medicine is bitter to the taste. The more powerful the remedy, the more bitter it is. That much I understand perfectly well." Wang Xifeng's thoughts were muddled from the pain. She finished speaking and opened her mouth.
She was also growing flustered and unsettled by his secretive, hunched-over movements with his back turned to her, but she thought nothing of it and instinctively parted her lips ever so slightly.
In the dim lamplight, those cherry lips had lost three shades of their color, and yet they appeared all the more soft and pitiable for it. The faint gleam of pearly teeth showed faintly within, and beyond them the warm, moist pink of her delicate tongue.
Her red lips moved softly, waiting to be given the medicine.
Ximen drew close, so close he could almost smell the faint warmth of her breath drifting across his face.
He extended his right hand, his index and middle fingers dusted with the medicine powder, looking as though he would gently place them on her tongue, but just before his fingers grazed her lips, he stopped abruptly, raised his hand slightly, and made as if to tip all the powder from his palm straight into her open mouth at once.
The gesture was both dangerous and uncomfortably intimate.
Wang Xifeng had never been in such close proximity to a strange man before.
A foreign, overwhelming masculine presence, thick with the sharp scent of medicine, enveloped her all at once. That hand dusted with white powder hovered at her lips, barely a hair's breadth away.
A rush of shame and panic, the most acute embarrassment she had ever felt, flooded burning hot up through both her cheeks, turning the sickly pallor of her face into a flush as rich and vivid as sunset clouds. Even the delicate tips of her small, neat ears went red enough to bleed.
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