Chapter 19 – A Missing Person (1)

After fifteen days had passed, Zhao Xi found more wounds on Shen Fei’s body. They spread from his chest all the way down to his knees. His palms were covered in small grazes, as if he’d been dragged along the ground. The only part of him that was still in good shape was his face.

What had happened?

She was starting to wonder if she was sleepwalking in the middle of the night and beating this guy up. But that wasn’t the case. Some nights she stayed up until dawn and still found fresh wounds on Shen Fei the next day.

After some time of watching carefully, she figured something must have happened while she was gone. If only she could question Ping An, but of course he was a bear and couldn’t speak. It always happened while she was gone. When she was at the cottage, no change, but whenever she left new wounds would appear.

How could Shen Fei be hurting himself like this while he was immobile in bed?

Zhao wanted to keep an eye on him, but she was the only doctor in the village. After her fame had spread, more and more people were coming from nearby villages to seek out her medical treatment. If she stayed in the mountains all the time, she might not be able to reach urgent patients in time. What if someone died because she was too far away? She had to go back now and then to check on her clinic.

Luckily, Shen Fei and Ping An got along, which saved her a lot of effort. When she was sure they could happily co-exist, she went up into the mountains to gather her herbs, then back down into the village to treat her patients. She’d been running like a headless chicken between the valley, the mountain and the village.

But now she’d discovered Shen Fei’s wounds, she couldn’t concentrate on her work. Multiple times throughout the day, her thoughts went back to those strange injuries. What was causing them?

Zhao Xi was so distracted that she completely forgot to buy new clothes for him. He secretly believed it was on purpose, so she could keep ogling him while he was naked, but in truth the security in the city had been raised of late and the soldiers were pulling people up on all sorts of small transgressions. She didn’t want to arouse any suspicion, so she planned to go to a city further away to buy the clothes. That, however, would take at least two days.

What if he starved to death while she was gone? Even if he didn’t, his wounds might fester if she wasn’t there to take care of them. What would she do if she came back to find him dead of a fever?

No, first she needed to find out where these strange injuries were coming from. She told the villagers that she would be gathering medicinal herbs in the mountains for the next two days, and told Shen Fei that she would be running errands in the village until evening.

She hid herself in the shadows in a spot where she could watch and see what exactly was going on while her back was turned. Was Shen Fei doing something? How did he manage to injure himself constantly?

Or was someone else doing it to him?

Zhao Xi might not be the only person who had discovered this valley. Maybe some passing stranger had found it, found the beautiful, vulnerable Shen Fei, and raped him? The thought of this sent her rushing back in a panic.

She told him that she wanted to take a bath and boiled the water, but as soon as the bath was ready, she changed her mind. There was no point wasting the hot water, so she asked Shen Fei if he wanted to take a bath, knowing he wouldn’t refuse. He was eager for any chance to clan himself.

He never voiced an opinion or an objection, lying there passively, but taking a bath was one of the few things he would willingly cooperate with.

She added the pot of boiling water to two buckets of cool river water to create a warm bath. Shen Fei raised his arms when he saw her approach, enabling her to lift him more easily. She set him on the bench to undress him, then soaked a towel in the warm water.

As she wiped him down with the cleaning cloth, Zhao Xi surreptitiously ran her eyes over his skin, trying to work out whether the wounds had been caused by rough activities. Had someone taken advantage of him while she was away?

If Zhao Xi’s master came while she was gone, the woman could easily drug Ping An and Shen Fei and do whatever she wanted. Her master loved beautiful men. If she laid eyes on Shen Fei, there was no way he would escape unmolested.

I was too careless! Zhao Xi thought in despair.

If it was the master’s doing, then even Shen Fei might not know where his wounds had come from. What if he believed that Zhao Xi had done it, but was forced to keep silent and uncomplaining because of how he had to rely on her now?

A bitter taste filled her mouth; she couldn’t ask him about it.

The man had a strong sense of modesty and pride, so every time she wiped his back, he would bury his head in his arms on the bench, silent and refusing to look at her. This made it easy for her to get a look at the full scope of his injuries. She examined the bruises.

To her great relief, they didn’t look as if they had been caused by a fight or worse, a sexual assault. More like he’d been bumping around into furniture. Just to make sure, she poked and prodded his bruises. Shen Fei had no feeling below his waist, so he didn’t even notice when she pressed a little too hard.

Combining her medical knowledge with her careful examination, Zhao Xi was positive those bruises were left from knocking into things. But how did he get so many? Is he some kind of masochist?