Chapter 4 — Distractions (2)

Compared to his broken bones, his exterior wounds were easy to deal with. The largest wound was on his left shoulder. It looked like he had been shot with an arrow, although there was no sign of the arrow now. Since then, the wound had been soaked in cold water and burned under the hot sun. The injury was inflamed and some of the flesh surrounding it slightly rotten.

“This is infected,” she warned him. “I have to cut away the rotten tissue. Are you afraid?”

He answered her with a silent stare.

I guess that means no, she thought. He’s a martial arts practitioner. He must be used to getting injured by now.

They were barely visible against his pale skin, but her careful touch had found many old scars. She’d tried to avoid touching directly while cleaning him, but she couldn’t help but notice the evidence of so many past injuries.

What a pity. So much damage to such a beautiful body.

Zhao Xi would never leave marks on such a fine form as his. To her, it was like seeing a flaw in a beautiful piece of jade. She wanted to remove it, but there was nothing she could do about it. Those scars were old. It was obvious they hadn’t been tended to properly at the time they were inflicted, and it was too late to do anything about them now. Not unless she reopened them and treated them properly. That would be cruel. All she could do was apply some medicine and hope it would help them subside with time.

“Just tell me if it hurts.”

She held the knife above the flame of a candle to disinfect the blade. A hot knife would slice off the flesh in one go, and the patient would focus more on the heat than the pain. It still wasn’t ideal, but at least it would lessen his pain.

The edges of the blade gleamed a dull red. Zhao Xi rinsed it off in clean water and deemed that good enough. She pulled the quilt up to the man’s chest. It was autumn now and the weather was turning chilly. The man was in a sorry state. It would be a pity if he ended up dying of a fever, so she took every precaution she could. Zhao Xi wasn’t naturally the nurturing type, and she rarely wasted her breath on unnecessary words, but she’d already warned this man several times already.

There was no more putting it off. She laid her free hand on his neck, then trailed it down his chest and underneath the quilt. The man shuddered beneath the blanket. She moved quickly, sliding the knife into his wound and swiftly cutting away the rotten flesh. It was gone before he even realized.

“There.”

She cleaned the wound, applied medicine, and wrapped a length of clean bandage around his shoulder. She turned away to wash her hands.

“You’re lucky. The archer was far enough away so the arrow didn’t penetrate your shoulder. Otherwise, I’d need to find another way to distract you.”

She hadn’t really been intent on molesting him. It was just a ploy to distract him long enough to carve away the infection, and it had worked perfectly. The deed was done before he even had time to react. The medicine had a soothing effect, so he’d be more comfortable for the next few hours.

“It’s also going to hurt when I tie the bamboo splints,” Zhao Xi told him. “If you can’t take it, I’ll just do it while you’re asleep.”

This seemed to annoy him. He ignored her, turning away and burying his head in the pillow.

Zhao Xi chuckled. She didn’t mind if he didn’t feel like talking. She left the cottage to look for suitable lengths of bamboo to make splints.

He would probably have to stay in bed for a year; his left arm was fractured and dislocated, and he had a lumbar injury. His arm would be easy to deal with, but the lumbar injury wasn’t so simple.

While cleaning him, she’d noticed that he seemed to have little sensation in his lower body. Unlike his upper body, he barely reacted when she touched it.

Perhaps he’d been born that way, but it was more likely to have been caused by his tumble down the waterfall. There was a risk he wouldn’t regain the use of his legs. It didn’t really matter; Zhao Xi didn’t expect him to do any physical labor. He didn’t need to do anything other than be beautiful. She’d saved him because of his handsome features, and for someone to talk to when she was bored.

When she talked to Ping An, the bear was usually asleep, or simply didn’t understand human speech. He certainly couldn’t respond.

She returned to the cottage with two freshly chopped lengths of bamboo. They were thick and hollow, wide enough to fit a man’s arm inside.

Her chopping had attracted the bear toward her. Ping An seemed rather put out about being abandoned earlier. Zhao Xi sent him off to his cave to sleep. The cave wasn’t too far from the cottage she’d built. In fact, the bear had been instrumental in its construction, pulling all the trees back for her.

Inside the cottage, she got to work, polishing the bamboo to smooth down the surface, lest it scratch the man. She padded it with a layer of cotton wool, then stitched a cover to slip over the entire splint.

Her new husband was sleeping lightly. He came to as Zhao Xi approached and stared at her, silent as ever.

“Did you get enough sleep?” she asked him. “If you’re ready then I’ll get your arm splinted.”

Once again, no reply. Perhaps he was defending himself against her.

It wasn’t tying the splints that would hurt him, but the bone setting that had to happen first. If she didn’t do it, his arm would heal crooked. She took hold of his arm, meaning to set it quickly, but his unrelenting stare was impossible to ignore.

“Why do you keep staring at me?” she asked. “Do you want me to distract you again?”

She was silent for a little while, then posed a question that risked earning her a beating afterwards.

“You’re so good-looking. Have you ever slept with anyone?”