"I'll need time alone with her," Luo He said flatly, his tone brooking no any room for counter arguments.
"Lock the door behind me and do not enter, regardless of what you hear. Or rather, regardless of what you don't hear. Also don't peek through any gaps in the door." He gave very clear orders.
Wei Chen hesitated, confused by the specificity of the instruction. "Your wife requires complete exposure for proper examination." Luo He continued with clinical precision.
"The procedure will involve,direct contact with her body. Multiple people examining a woman in such a state would be improper. One is sufficient."
He said calmely. Understanding dawned on Wei Chen's face. Not the casual understanding of the medical necessity, but the social understanding.
A young, attractive man examining his wife's bare body, touching her in ways that would appear intimate to observers.
Even a physician required privacy for such work to avoid scandal.
"Of course," Wei Chen said quickly.
"I understand. Come, we will wait outside." Wei Chen clearly ordered.
He gestured to the servants to withdraw. Within moments, the chamber was empty except for Luo He and his patient.
Wei Shui lay in her bed, fever-hazed and only partially aware. Her mind was not focused. The illness had taken that from her.
But she was conscious enough to understand fragments of what was happening.
Her husband approached her bedside and leaned close, his hand gentle on her forehead. "Shui," he said softly. "I have brought another physician."
"A very skilled one. You must trust him. Can you do that?" She nodded weakly, her eyes barely focusing. Wei Chen's hand lingered on her head for a moment longer.
Reassurance, apology, hope all compressed into that single touch. Then he withdrew, leaving her alone with the stranger.
Luo He approached without hesitation.
"I need to examine you thoroughly," he said quietly, his tone clinical. "I'm going to remove all your clothing."
"This is necessary for the diagnosis." Wei Shui's fever-addled mind registered the words. She made no protest. She was too weak, too ill to resist.
And her husband had said to trust this physician. But the truth was more complex than that. Luo He could have diagnosed her condition without removing a single piece of clothing.
His scanning technology penetrated fabrics effortlessly. He could have mapped every internal organ, located every gallstone.
Identified every inflamed duct without her body being exposed at all. He could have crushed all the stones at once. A single application of spiritual force.
Efficient and complete. In a swift second, the procedure would have been finished.
But he didn't. Instead, he carefully removed her clothing first.
Exposing her body fully. There was no medical necessity for it. Only practicality of a different kind.
The truth was this, Luo He was a man who didn't believe in unnecessary restrictions.
Social norms, moral boundaries, the careful lines that civilized people drew, these were things he considered beneath him.
And when necessity provided an opportunity, when a situation could be leveraged into something more... satisfying... he took it without hesitation.
This woman was dying. She trusted him. Her husband had explicitly left the room, explicitly asked for privacy.
The seashell would ensure no one would hear anything, and no one would see anything. Luo He had no intention of wasting such a perfectly justified opportunity.
As he worked, Wei Shui became acutely aware of something that should have been impossible. A young man, handsome, no more than twenty-five years old.
Was now touching her body deliberately.
His hands moved across her abdomen, her sides, his fingers pressing gently but with clear intention.
Under normal circumstances, such contact would have been scandalous. Inappropriate. The kind of thing that would ruin a woman's reputation.
But these were not exactly normal circumstances, and Luo He was taking full advantage of that fact. Wei Shui felt heat rise to her cheeks.
Not entirely from fever. The young physician's touch was clinical, yes. But it was also, intimate in its thoroughness.
His hands traced the path of her bile duct, pressing deliberately as he located the stones within her body.
She wanted to protest. She wanted to feel violated. But her mind was too fogged by illness to sustain any emotion beyond a vague, floating awkwardness.
What Wei Shui didn't understand, what she couldn't comprehend through her fever, was that Luo He was deliberately prolonging this.
He was savoring it. His hands traced longer than it was actually nesasery.
His fingers lingered on her skin more delicately than it actually required.
Each touch was deliberate, calculated, designed to be as intimate as a medical procedure could possibly be.
Because this was his payment. He was performing this surgery without any compensation.
There was no promised reward waiting for him at the end, nor did he possess any great compassion for those involved.
Wei Chen could also provide no payment of value. So Luo He took his fun and compensation in other forms.
Because Luo He was not a man interested in efficiency when it came to medicine. He was highly fascinated by the procedure itself.
If he desired the company of a woman, he had countless options. His wives were available to him. Other women would gladly welcome his attention.
That was not what have had drawn him here. What drew him was this. The opportunity to practice medicine.
The chance to exercise absolute precision. To locate each stone individually. To crush them one by one.
To guide the powdered fragments through delicate passages with flawless control.
To Luo He, this was art like no other.
More than that, it was intoxicating. Holding another person's life in his hands thrilled him to the very core.
Knowing that a single mistake could bring death, while a single decision could grant life, filled him with a sense of power that few experiences could match.
For these brief moments, he stood at the boundary between life and death, deciding which side his patient would remain on.
It made him feel almost divine. And so he took his time in savoring every moment of being a god.
This was the advantage of being a man who considered social norms beneath him. He could see the opportunity where others saw only obligation.
Luo He's fingers found the first stone. She could feel it, somehow, as his spiritual resonance brushed against something deep inside her body.
The sensation was unlike anything she had experienced. Not pain exactly, but awareness. Presence.
Like he was touching something that should never be touched. "Remain still, sister Shui." He said quietly, his voice calm and detached.
But there was something underneath that clinical tone. A satisfaction that went beyond professional competence. "This will soon pass." He said.
His hand pressed firmly against her abdomen directly above the stone's location.
And then the stone shattered. Not violently, but with controlled precision. She felt it fracture into powder within her body.
Felt the fragments scatter. Her body jerked involuntarily, but no sound escaped the room. The seashell's enchantment held firm.
Another stone. His hand found it, pressed carefully, and it fractured under the pressure of his spiritual resonance. Then another.
But here was the thing. He could have done all of this at once. A single application of his power, all the stones crushed simultaneously.
Quick. Efficient. Painless. Instead, he did it slowly. Deliberately. One stone at a time.
Each one located through a combination of his medical scans and direct physical contact.
Each one deliberately crushed while his hand remained pressed against her skin, feeling her body's response.
Savoring the sensation of intimate contact with the patient that would be impossible under any other circumstance.
For Wei Shui, lying there half-conscious and increasingly embarrassed, it felt like an invasion. A violation disguised as medicine.
But it was necessary. And that necessity was precisely why everyone had been asked to leave.
Because what appeared to observers as a young man performing deeply inappropriate contact on a married woman was, in reality, a physician performing life-saving surgery.
The appearance and the reality were so divergent that they could not coexist in public.
But Luo He was exploiting that gap, using the legitimacy of medical necessity to justify something that satisfied him on a far more personal level.
The gallbladder stones required different technique than those in the bile duct. His hands pressed at specific angles.
His spiritual energy flowing through his fingertips in concentrated streams. The stones yielded to pressure applied in precisely the right way.
But beyond the technique was something else. The knowledge that he was doing this internally.
Every touch was intentional. Every point of contact was a location marker, yes.
But also a deliberate indulgence.
He was using his hands to guide his spiritual resonance to the exact position of each stone, then applying controlled force.
But he was also using this moment, savoring this moment, taking what payment he could in the form of sensation and satisfaction.
The satisfaction in being a literal god of sorts. A divine physician. The clinical nature masked what would have been scandalous to observers.
The necessity justified the impropriety. The medical procedure provided perfect cover for something far more personal.
And Luo He, a man who had never been bound by the moral restrictions that constrained ordinary people, was content to take what the situation offered him.