Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1119: Longnu Reclined

Xiao Longnu tried several times, but could not force the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill past Song Qingshu’s sealed lips. Her delicate brows knitted together in frustration.

His breathing was growing fainter with each passing moment. A look of uncertainty crossed Xiao Longnu’s face. If she could not get the medicine into him soon, there would be no longer even the option of treating the dead horse as a living one.

She also noticed that the pill, roughly the size of a pigeon’s egg, would take considerable time to dissolve and take effect even if she managed to feed it to him — and time was precisely what Song Qingshu had least of.

As though arriving at a decision that cost her greatly, Xiao Longnu hesitated — then placed the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill into her own mouth. She bit down with her teeth, only to find the pill hard as stone. The impact sent a sharp pain through her jaw.

With no other choice, she gathered her inner Qi and bore down again. The pill cracked at last. A pungent, rank smell flooded her mouth. Xiao Longnu’s expression tightened with revulsion, but she suppressed the nausea rising in her throat and chewed it to a paste. Then she bent down over Song Qingshu.

She pressed a finger to the acupoint beneath his chin, and in the brief moment his lips softened, she leaned close and used the tip of her tongue to part them. But his teeth remained clenched fast.

Xiao Longnu suppressed a surge of quiet frustration. Lives were at stake — she had no room for hesitation. Burning with an embarrassment she refused to acknowledge, she worked patiently, gently, until at last — as even the hardest steel must eventually yield — Song Qingshu’s locked jaw parted by the faintest sliver. She pressed through the gap and delivered the chewed medicine from her mouth into his.

When she felt him swallow, she pulled back at once. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, and felt the heat radiating from her own cheek even through her fingers. That face, ordinarily as cool as winter frost, had turned the deep red of a rose in full bloom.

“I haven’t even ki$sed Guo’er yet!” She stamped her foot softly, her expression a tangled knot of chagrin, regret, and mortification.

Then a sudden dizziness swept through her. Her lips began to go numb. Xiao Longnu stiffened with alarm. Such a powerful poison!

All self-consciousness abandoned, she spat out whatever remained in her mouth, drank from her vial of Jade Bee Royal Jelly, and sat cross-legged on the ground at once to channel her inner Qi against the toxin.

The Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill was a treasure refined through years of the Western Venom’s art — made to be worn, never consumed. An ordinary person who swallowed it would almost certainly die on the spot. Fortunately, Xiao Longnu had only chewed it without swallowing, so the poison had not penetrated deeply.

When she had fed Song Qingshu, her tongue and lips had made contact with his mouth and teeth, inevitably picking up traces of the Heavenly Devil Flower’s venom. But the concentration had been greatly diluted through his saliva, and with the protective essence of the pill still present in her mouth, she had been spared Song Qingshu’s fate — though not entirely unscathed. She had no choice but to sit and work the poison out with her true Qi without delay.

Then — “Wagh!”

Song Qingshu, still seemingly unconscious, lurched suddenly and coughed up a mouthful of bright blood. It was vivid and startling against the cave floor, gleaming with a faint, uncanny light.

Xiao Longnu’s heart clenched. Forgetting her own condition entirely, she hurried to him. “How do you feel?”

She had experienced the numbness in her lips and the dizziness — unmistakable signs of the Heavenly Devil Flower. But the revulsion and nausea she felt came from the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill. She was deeply afraid that Song Qingshu might survive the Heavenly Devil Flower only to be killed first by the pill she had forced on him.

But Song Qingshu slipped back into unconsciousness after the blood left him. His skin began to burn. A fever was taking hold.

Xiao Longnu had nothing more she could do. She left it to Heaven. She held his gaze for a long moment, then sat back down beside him and resumed her own internal circulation to finish purging the toxin.

This was the difference between Xiao Longnu and the others. Had it been Ah Jiu or Xia Qingqing sitting beside Song Qingshu at this moment, they would have hovered over him ceaselessly, every thought consumed by watching him, helpless and desperate. Xiao Longnu had trained since childhood to still all emotion and desire; her heart was, by long practice, like untroubled water. Once she understood she had done everything within her power, and that what remained lay entirely with Song Qingshu’s own fate, she sat in quiet composure and returned to her meditation.

By the time she had fully expelled the poison from her own body, Song Qingshu had not yet woken. But his breathing — and this was something — had grown far stronger than before.

She thought of the poison’s effects as Song Qingshu had described them. By rights, he should have been dead already.

“It seems the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill has done something after all.” Xiao Longnu gave a small nod. Quietly, without quite meaning to, she exhaled.

“Hot… so hot~”

Song Qingshu began to murmur in his fever, thrashing against his own robes. Before long he had torn his upper garments open, baring his well-muscled torso.

“Hmph.” Xiao Longnu gave a soft sound of reproach, looked away after the briefest glance, and retreated further into the cave to the lengths of rope she had suspended across the rock wall, which served as her resting place. She lay down.

Ordinarily, she could fall asleep on such a rope with ease. Tonight, sleep refused to come. She shifted to her side, lying there with one arm bent beneath her cheek, watching Song Qingshu’s condition from a distance.

Had there been a third person in that cave, they would have marvelled at her: Xiao Longnu rearranged herself on that rope as freely as though it were a wide, comfortable bed, changing her position at will without the faintest risk of falling. As she lay there on her side, one hand supporting her cheek, the slender lines of her figure were traced by the rope into something impossibly graceful — a picture of the Dragon Maiden reclined, which no one in the world was present to admire. The one man in the cave kept his eyes shut, balanced between life and death.

Time passed in silence.

Song Qingshu sat bolt upright without warning. Xiao Longnu’s bright eyes snapped to him, watching with quiet, taut attention.

He sat up cross-legged, eyes still closed. His hands began to move through slow, strange gestures. He was channelling his inner Qi — he had begun to heal himself.

Xiao Longnu’s expression brightened. If he could circulate his qi, the crisis had likely passed.

Not daring to approach for fear of disturbing him, she remained on her rope, lying on her side, watching him steadily with those large, unwavering eyes.

More time passed.

Song Qingshu coughed up another mouthful of blood — but this time, the blood carried the faintest tinge of gold. Thinking he might have suffered a qi deviation, Xiao Longnu slipped from the rope in an instant and landed lightly at his side.

Feeling the delicate drift of her presence — a faint, clean fragrance — Song Qingshu slowly opened his eyes.

“You’ve recovered?” Xiao Longnu found herself asking, a genuine curiosity she could not suppress breaking through her composure.

“Not so easily as that.” Song Qingshu gave a tired smile. “I didn’t have the chance to warn you earlier — the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill carries its own severe toxicity. And yet you went ahead and fed it to me.”

The memory of what feeding him had involved sent a faint unease across Xiao Longnu’s expression. “I had no other method at the time.”

“Had anyone else swallowed the Rhino Horn Earth Dragon Circulation Pill, they would almost certainly have died on the spot.” Song Qingshu spoke with residual unease in his voice. “As it happens, the Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin was already in my body. The two toxins clashed against each other — and in the chaos of that conflict, I managed to draw on a thread of true Qi to protect my heart meridian. That was all that kept me alive.”

“Is this what they call fighting poison with poison?” Xiao Longnu said, visibly astonished.

Song Qingshu sighed. “The two poisons inside me have reached a kind of uneasy equilibrium. The Heavenly Devil Flower should not resurface for some time. The question now is whether I can find a cure before it does.”