Chapter 819 - 821: Hanging by a Thread_1
Because of the pain from the arrow being pulled out, Bai Zepei suddenly woke up and let out a pained cry. His vision was somewhat blurry as he saw Bai Ruozhu with a face covered in blood; a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He weakly raised his hand, wanting to help wipe her clean, but it fell back down due to his lack of strength.
"Ruozhu, your face is really dirty..." Bai Zepei said weakly.
"Er Lang, don’t talk. I am trying to stop your bleeding," Bai Ruozhu’s voice choked up as she spoke. Even in such a state, he still had the mood to jest with her—it was just like him.
Tears mixed with the blood in her eyes, and her vision cleared once again. She sniffed and continued the urgent task at hand.
After a busy flurry, the bleeding finally stopped, and Bai Zepei, due to his weakness, fell into unconsciousness again.
Bai Ruozhu wiped the sweat from her forehead, only to smear blood across her face. Her body swayed, her legs weakened, and she collapsed into a warm embrace.
"Don’t move, just rest like this for a while," Jiang Yichun said softly.
Bai Ruozhu stayed quiet for half a minute before standing up straight and saying, "I’m fine now. Dad and mom are still worried, let’s open the door."
As soon as the door was opened, Lin Ping’er was the first to rush in. She saw that the arrow in Er Lang’s chest was gone, and he lay there with white bandages wrapped around his chest, but his face was so pale it showed no signs of life.
She asked uncertainly, "Is your Er Lang okay now?"
Bai Ruozhu didn’t speak. Her assurance of a forty-percent chance wasn’t about the bleeding following the arrow removal. With Jiang Yichun’s help in reducing the internal organ damage, stopping the bleeding wasn’t that difficult. The real danger lay ahead.
Internal bleeding and infection could cause him to develop a fever, and the days ahead would be extremely perilous.
"Er Lang had just woken up earlier; he even made a joke with me," Bai Ruozhu hurriedly said as she saw her mother about to cry again.
"Dad, Mom, don’t think too much. You need to take good care of yourselves. If you fall ill because of this, then Ruozhu won’t be able to concentrate on treating Er Lang," Jiang Yichun advised from the side.
Upon hearing this, Lin Ping’er hastily dried her tears. "Okay, okay, I won’t cry. Er Lang will definitely get better, right?"
Jiang Yichun nodded solemnly, "He’ll get better soon."
Lin Ping’er heaved a great sigh of relief and her expression calmed down.
Afterward, aside from bathroom breaks, Bai Ruozhu did not leave Er Lang’s room. She ate hastily in the evening with no appetite whatsoever, and the couple of bites she did eat were only because Jiang Yichun had threatened her.
"If you get so hungry that you’re dizzy and faint, how will you take care of your Er Lang?" Jiang Yichun said. But Bai Ruozhu only had a few bites of plain rice to keep up her strength then didn’t want to eat any more.
As darkness fell, Bai Zepei suddenly awoke, but his eyes lacked focus and he soon showed a look of intense pain. His body violently convulsed and he coughed up two mouthfuls of fresh blood.
Bai Ruozhu and Jiang Yichun both sprang into action— one supporting him while the other performed acupuncture. Bai Ruozhu’s face grew even paler. "It’s internal bleeding. Achun, can you use your inner strength to heal him?"
"I’ll try, but your Er Lang has no martial arts or inner strength. Otherwise, I could work with his inner strength to heal him. Since he’s an ordinary person, my help is very limited to him."
"Just give it a try," Bai Ruozhu said as she rubbed her temples.
Jiang Yichun began to use his inner strength to heal Bai Zepei, and after half an hour passed, Jiang Yichun was drenched in sweat, but Bai Zepei’s condition hadn’t improved much. Soon, Bai Zepei’s face flushed red again, and he started to have a fever!
Bai Ruozhu asked her older brother and sister-in-law to accompany their parents back to the main house; she was afraid that seeing this would only make her parents more distressed, and she never wanted to hear her mother’s heart-wrenching sobs again in her lifetime.
She paced anxiously around the room, wondering what to do. With the medical resources of ancient times, the chances were really slim.
As she was worrying, her second brother’s body suddenly convulsed violently before he vomited blood again, and this time it was even more severe, and they couldn’t stop it.
Despite trying everything she could think of, Bai Ruozhu couldn’t stop his bleeding, and she began to cry out in desperation, "What do I do? What do I do? Er Lang mustn’t die, he can’t die..."
In her distress, she went to pull on Jiang Yichun, who had used his inner strength to treat Bai Zepei’s injuries, but now his own inner strength was of no use; Jiang Yichun was also helpless and finally collapsed to the ground, exhausted by the depletion of his inner strength.
"It can’t be, it can’t be; I must be able to save Er Lang, I must..." Bai Ruozhu murmured to herself, frantically searching her space for various medicines. When one didn’t work, she flung it to the ground, and if another failed, she tossed it away in anger like trash. Soon, the floor was littered with a myriad of discarded medicines.
Suddenly, she focused her eyes anew, "Yes, this one, this one should work."
She poured out a pill, and instantly the scent of the medicine filled the room, revitalizing them both as if part of their fatigue had dissipated.
She hurriedly stuffed the pill into Er Lang’s mouth. A pill of such high quality had the advantage that it would melt upon entering the mouth and could easily slide down the throat to the stomach. As the pill dissolved, Bai Zepei’s bleeding quickly stopped.
"It worked, he’s saved!" Bai Ruozhu exclaimed with a burst of excited laughter, and then she too weakly sat down on the floor.
"What was that pill? Its scent is truly unique; it’s good that you found it just in time." Jiang Yichun said with a wry smile.
Bai Ruozhu glanced around; the floor was strewn with so many medicines that it was definitely more than what her sleeves or chest could hide. She laughed awkwardly, not sure whether she should pick them up or leave them be.
Jiang Yichun shook his head helplessly, "You better pick them up quickly. It’s fine for me to see, but it would be troublesome if others did."
Bai Ruozhu laughed sheepishly and began picking up the medicines from the floor, and after a long while, she finally managed to put them all back into her space.
Exhausted, she sat back down on the floor and said with a self-mocking smile, "Today, it was you who saved my Er Lang’s life."
"Oh?" Jiang Yichun looked at her, baffled.
Bai Ruozhu coughed awkwardly and said, "That pill was a gift from Princess Diao Bin. When you went to Qizuo Mountain to wipe out bandits, Dengdeng developed a rash, and your great aunt started rumors that Dengdeng had contracted smallpox. Princess Diao Bin brought that pill over, saying it could save Dengdeng’s life. I explained that Dengdeng just had measles and asked her to take it back, but she refused, saying you often face danger while working outside, and it might come in handy."
She hung her head shamefully as she spoke, "I thought it was very valuable, so I took care and stored it properly, but then got so busy that I completely forgot about it."
She had truly forgotten, otherwise she would have mentioned it to Jiang Yichun earlier and then given it to Er Lang.
Jiang Yichun sighed, "We now owe a favor to Diao Bin, that pill was no ordinary thing."
Bai Ruozhu had to nod in agreement; in a situation where she was helpless, that single pill had brought a person back from the brink. Could it possibly be a common item?