“It’s not going to be easy to treat such a ruthless hit.
Cough, cough… Look at this, it looks like the back of his head is already blistering.
Young lady… what I’ve been trying to say is, it’s time for you to pay the medical fees.”
The doctor sitting next to the hospital bed finished speaking and retracted his gaze.
He stroked his small mustache with one hand, his eyes squinting slightly, while his other hand kept flicking the abacus, murmuring something under his breath.
The young girl standing to the side was somewhat distracted, only snapping back to reality after hearing the doctor’s demand.
‘I actually wounded someone…’
‘But this guy was the one who said something was wrong with the twelve chapters first!’
‘Why do I have to be responsible for this…’
The girl glared fiercely at the youth who was still unconscious on the bed, her teeth gritted in frustration.
About 15 minutes ago, after hearing what the boy said, Liu Yao had picked up a teapot full of hot tea and hurled it under the dumbfounded gaze of the waiter.
“What the hell are you saying?!”
“Ugh!”
The container filled with hot tea accurately struck the back of the youth’s head on the floor below. A loud *thud* rang out, followed by the youth’s tragic cry before he lost consciousness.
The youth who was struck didn’t even understand what he had done wrong before he collapsed face-first onto the ground in a pathetic state.
Old Mr. Liu, the storyteller, watched the boy suddenly collapse in front of him. Stunned, he looked up at the girl in white on the second floor and swallowed hard.
He then looked pityingly at the Youth in Green lying on the ground. He couldn’t help but feel a lingering fear mixed with relief; the clothes on his back were already completely soaked with sweat.
“He’s hurt! Someone’s been killed!”
“Quick, go get Doctor Niu! Saving him is the priority!”
It was unclear who shouted first, but the stunned crowd suddenly began to grow noisy.
The girl, who had been peering down to check the situation, finally realized that things were going south.
Liu Yao, who had just been feeling smug about punishing a brat with a loose tongue, felt the smile on her face stiffen.
‘Oh, no!’
She thought she was just teaching a young lad a lesson, but she hadn’t expected to cause such a disaster.
‘This must never reach my teacher!’
She clutched her head, regretting her impulsive moment. Though she had been traveling the Jianghu for a long time, her personality was something both her friends and teacher had commented on.
Although she wasn’t as reckless as she used to be, she still retained some of that impulsive streak.
‘Whew! Don’t think too much. With how I look now, few people should be able to recognize me. It’s better to check on that guy than to worry about this.’
The girl shook her head, her delicate brows furrowing as she looked downstairs.
However, the crowd was noisy and dense. A group of people surrounded the fallen youth, and she could only see wet footprints treading on the hot water that had spilled with the teapot.
‘Honestly, the last time I saw this many people crowded together was when the beggar sect members were fighting for food.’
Liu Yao clicked her tongue at the crowd. After watching anxiously for a while, she chose to grab the railing and flip over the fence.
Her toes touched the ground lightly. Once she stabilized herself, Liu Yao plunged into the crowd and drifted toward the youth’s side to check his injuries.
She breathed a sigh of relief after confirming he was still breathing.
“Someone help me out here, he can still be saved!”
Reminded by Liu Yao, the customers who had been watching the scene finally stepped forward to help. Several people struggled to hoist the unconscious boy onto the girl’s slender back.
Liu Yao adjusted the youth’s weight and tried to stand up, but her boot suddenly slipped, sending her tumbling backward.
In that flash of a second, the thousands of hours of bitter practice she performed daily awoke like an instinct.
Her waist twisted violently, and her inner power sank from her dantian into her heels, stabilizing her momentum within a fraction of an inch.
To others, her body seemed to wobble twice, but she ultimately managed to stand firm without further incident.
She panted slightly, a layer of fine sweat forming on her forehead. She thought to herself:
‘How dangerous!’
‘Is this kid made of lead? If I hadn’t been diligent with my daily training, you would have hit the ground again.’
Bearing the heavy boy on her back once more, Liu Yao suppressed the confusion rising in her heart and ran toward the door. A clear shout erupted in front of her:
“Get out of the way! Everyone, move!”
Seeing the young heroine rush toward the door with the youth on her back, Old Mr. Liu finally snapped back to his senses.
Seeing her frantic pace, he feared she didn’t know the way at all. Wouldn’t such reckless charging just waste precious time for saving a life?
Anxious, he didn’t care about anything else and hurried forward two steps, shouting toward the retreating figure about to disappear through the door.
“Hey! Young lady — wait! The nearest clinic isn’t that way! You have to turn right outside the door, go through two street blocks, and it’s inside Longyan alley, where there’s an old locust tree at the entrance! Make sure you remember it!”
The girl carrying the unconscious youth didn’t look back, diving headlong into the surging crowd outside the tea house.
The hustle and bustle of the market and the high-pitched chirping of cicadas were like an invisible tidal wave, swallowing her whole.
The above was everything Liu Yao could recall about the “accident” scene, but unfortunately, the aftermath of the story was far less graceful than her exit.
Because she had rushed out so fiercely, she hadn’t heard Old Mr. Liu’s reminder at all. After turning just one street corner, she fell into deep self-doubt.
Only after wandering around for quite a while did she find this place with the help of a kind passerby.
Recalling this, Liu Yao let out a long, resigned sigh and extremely reluctantly reached for the withered pouch hanging at her waist.
‘This… this is bad…’
‘I spent all my money back at the tea house. I can’t afford the medical fees at all!’
As it turned out, after settling the bill at the tea house, she truly couldn’t scrape together a single cent.
This explained why Liu Yao had been stubbornly lingering in the tea house earlier like she was waiting for a miracle. It was simply because… she was too poor to go anywhere else.
‘Sigh, if I had known, I wouldn’t have forced myself to go drink tea. I didn’t hear any intel, and instead, I just invited a bunch of trouble.’
Liu Yao looked up without a word, her small face showing a hint of embarrassment as she looked at the doctor sitting before her.
Her face flushed slightly as she asked softly, “Um, Sir, could I put this on a tab? I can’t gather that much money on such short notice.”
“No,” the old doctor said, his voice trailing off as he didn’t even lift his eyelids. His gaze swept over Liu Yao’s empty coin pouch while his hand continued to flick the abacus.
“I’ll give you 1 hour at most. Medicinal herbs are hard to find these days; every bit used is a bit gone. So, no credit.”
Liu Yao was stunned, almost laughing out of anger. Looking at the old doctor’s penny-pinching attitude, she couldn’t help but grumble internally.
‘You’re charging me even though you haven’t woken him up yet, and you won’t even let me use a tab? No wonder you don’t have many customers, hmph!’
But catching a glimpse of the youth lying unconscious on the bed out of the corner of her eye, Liu Yao ultimately shook her head helplessly.
‘…Fine, I’ll solve the trouble I caused myself.’
She steadied her expression and gave a solemn fist-and-palm salute to the doctor.
“Then I must trouble you, Sir, to look after this… youth. I will be back soon.”
Having said that, she didn’t linger. She gripped her sword, turned around, and her robes brushed over the threshold as her figure quickly vanished into the bustling street outside.
The sun hung brightly overhead, making Liu Yao’s cheeks burn.
The top priority now was to get some silver.
An option she was most familiar with flashed through Liu Yao’s mind — finding some bandits to “socialize” with.
But she immediately shook her head. Time was too tight, the cost was too high, and the return on investment for this “business” wasn’t worth it right now.
‘Go borrow some?’
The thought was extinguished as soon as it appeared. To get emergency help in the Jianghu, one had to “pay respects to the local boss” or “show their credentials.”
Currently, she was just an anonymous outsider. Who would dare lend her cold, hard cash on her word alone?
Liu Yao could only wander aimlessly through the streets for a long time, going through every possible method in her head, only to find that every path was a dead end.
Having exhausted all her brain cells, she finally gave up and began to look herself up and down, a sense of despair rising in her heart.
‘Dammit!’
‘Do I really have to sell…?’
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