LRD Chapter 6: Specializing in Difficult and Stubborn Ailments
Her delicate frame shrank back instinctively by just a fraction, and her lips pressed together of their own accord, a short, barely audible sound escaping from her throat, almost a whimper.
Right at that moment of flustered, sudden shyness,
Ximen's left hand shot forward and lifted Wang Xifeng's chin from below.
"Mm!" Wang Xifeng was startled by the cold touch and her lips snapped shut instinctively, her tongue curling slightly as the peculiar, faintly bitter taste of the medicine spread through her mouth.
It was so bitter!
How could anything possibly be this bitter?
Wang Xifeng's face scrunched up from the bitterness, so completely that even her headache seemed to ease a fraction.
She thought to herself, this medicine is so bitter it might actually be real. Could this man truly be a physician, with those inherited techniques?
Her gaze cut toward Ximen like a blade, but he had already stepped back half a pace, wearing the warm, benevolent expression of a physician of good conscience. He said, "Lady Lian, please swallow it down quickly, and do not let the medicine go to waste."
Wang Xifeng had no choice but to work it down bit by bit, swallowing with what moisture she had.
She swallowed several times before the bitterness in her mouth finally began to fade but the improvement was undeniable.
"Lady Lian, I am going to begin the massage now. Please turn around," Ximen said in a low, steady voice.
Wang Xifeng studied him with half-narrowed eyes for a moment.
In the lamplight, tall and handsome, an undeniably fine-looking man.
Having swallowed that bitter medicine, bitter enough that even her headache seemed to have eased a little, she found herself inclined to believe him, just a fraction.
The revulsion she had felt naturally lessened quite a bit.
She gave a short sound of assent and shifted to sit sideways.
Ximen's two hands pressed through the jacket and bore his finger-force down deep.
Xifeng gave a sound, low and drawn out, carrying a slight tremor of pain, yet somehow edging into a sigh of relief.
His palms moved like someone kneading dough, turning and pressing in slow circles at her rounded shoulders and along her slender neck, pressing, squeezing, kneading, pinching in turn.
Everywhere his fingertips fell, warmth and softness met him.
Even through the jacket, the flesh of her shoulders was generously full, smooth beyond holding, and yet firm at the foundation beneath, supple and yielding in a way that was extraordinary.
At first, Xifeng held herself rigid. But she had never experienced a technique like this before.
She was well looked after in her daily life, but the moment a woman passes out of girlhood and gains a few years, the bones and joints quietly accumulate their share of aching soreness.
The moment those broad hands pressed down, years of accumulated aches vanished all at once, and she improved considerably.
Gradually she was kneaded into a state where her bones felt soft and her tendons pliant, and wherever a sore spot was pressed and ironed out with firm pressure, a strange, pleasurable tingling arose.
A sensation of ease and release moved through her entire body in a way she could not have described even the headache eased a great deal then those broad hands shifted and moved to the thick tendons at the base of her neck.
He worked slowly, lifting and pressing the buried tendons beneath her nape like drawing a taut string, and her whole body stiffened further then suddenly his thumb pressed hard and flicked sharply across the great tendon at the back of her neck, and Xifeng could not help letting out a sharp cry, her whole body shuddering at once.
A wave of tingling numbness spread instantly through her from head to foot, and fine beads of sweat appeared unbidden at her temples.
The headache eased markedly in that very instant.
She sat with her eyes closed, lashes trembling faintly, beads of sweat gathering at her temples, two patches of rosy color blooming across her cheeks against the snow-white line of her neck, like a crabapple jeweled with dew, or a peony half-veiled in mist.
Her already dazzling face had, in this moment, added to its usual sharp and lively expression a deep and unguarded beauty ten times more alluring.
She did not know how much time passed then those broad hands came to a sudden stop.
The man's voice said, "How do you feel, Lady Lian?"
"Truly so much better!" Wang Xifeng said, and then caught herself all at once. This man was still a stranger she had only met today.
How had she allowed herself to be this unguarded, sitting this close, practically leaning into his arms?
She glanced instinctively toward the doorway.
Thankfully, no one had seen.
She quickly twisted at the waist and shifted back, putting more distance between them.
She could feel that her inner clothes were soaked through entirely, yet the pain at her temples was completely gone.
The dark cloud that had been pressing over her mind swept clean away in an instant, and she felt a lightness spreading all the way through her chest and lungs.
She drew in a long, deep breath without thinking.
Her whole body felt extraordinary. Even the deep-seated aching in her bones that had been with her daily was gone without a trace.
Her entire being felt light as a fairy about to take flight.
She felt as though she had been returned to the body she had lived in when she was young, in the tender years of girlhood.
This was undeniably a divine physician.
It seemed she had misjudged this man.
The fierce hatred that Wang Xifeng had harbored toward him, enough to wish him cut into a thousand pieces, had been washed away together with the pain, dissolved entirely by the medicine's remarkable power, without a single trace remaining.
Now she looked again at the man called Ximen Qing who stood before her with his hands at his sides.
He really was tall and fine-looking and he stood perfectly composed, his gaze lowered to her shoes, his expression charming but clear and free of any improper intent, not once letting his eyes stray across her.
Just as Wang Xifeng was about to speak, she noticed his nostrils flare slightly, as though he were smelling something.
A wave of scorching, tingling heat shot straight up from the soles of her feet to the roots of her hair.
Every joint and crack in her bones felt as though it were swarming with ants, both numb and ticklish at once.
The flush that had only just faded from her cheeks came blazing back with a heat more vivid than any rouge, burning and fierce, and the tips of her small, neat ears went red enough to drip.
Even her own husband, to say nothing of the other men in this household, had always seemed subtly drawn to linger in her presence for this very reason.
She opened her mouth to scold him, but her throat felt as though invisible threads had wrapped around it and she could not get the words out.
Could she really scold him by saying, why are you breathing in my scent?
Yet allowing this man to inhale so openly, so unhurriedly, felt like a kind of invasion she could not name.
While she sat suspended in that awkward, ambiguous moment, the sound of You Shi's voice rose half a note above its usual pitch in the outer corridor, accompanied by a scuffle of hurrying footsteps, "Xifeng? Are you feeling any better? Master Ximen, have you finished the examination? May we come in and see?"
Before the words had fully faded, the curtain was lifted. You Shi led the way, and behind her came Lady Xing's attendant, Lady Wang's concubine Zhou Yiniang, and several of the usual busybody household stewardesses: Lin Zhixiao's wife, Bao Er's wife, each one wearing a face full of surface-level concern while their dark little eyes darted busily back and forth between Ximen and Wang Xifeng, privately savoring the sour-sweet flavor of something worth gossiping about.
Ximen gave Wang Xifeng a deep bow, "Congratulations, Lady Lian. The medicine has taken effect! I am glad to say I have not fallen short today!"
He turned to bow in a sweeping arc toward the crowd that had poured in, "It is entirely thanks to Lady Lian's clear-eyed perceptiveness in trusting me that the illness was able to be relieved!"
With all eyes on her, Wang Xifeng quickly composed her face, setting aside its soft and flustered expression.
Her voice returned to its usual tone, "Mm, it does feel considerably lighter. Nothing like the unbearable state I was in just before."
Her gaze settled on Ximen, "This physician brought by Brother Zhen truly possesses an extraordinary set of inherited techniques. Who would have thought that a headache which left even the finest doctors in the capital and the imperial physicians of the palace at a loss could be lifted so easily!"
"His earlier claim that he specializes in difficult and stubborn ailments, and difficulties with conception, must certainly be true!"
At these words, the room fell briefly quiet, then erupted in a rising buzz.
Every woman present began jostling forward at once.
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