Chapter 32

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

Zhu Yan was stunned, “Star Ocean Cloud Pavilion? And what is that?”

“I’m not going to hide it from you, Princess,” the housekeeper paused a little awkwardly and said, “This Star Ocean Cloud House is the most famous… ahem, youth brothel in Yecheng.”

“Huh?” Zhu Yan was momentarily dumbfounded. When the housekeeper thought that the Princess was too delicate to hear about such places, he saw her eyes light up and she clapped and cheered, “Great, I’ve never been to a teahouse! Why don’t you take me there with you and let me have a look! Can you put it on the royal account too?”

“…” The housekeeper nearly spat out a mouthful of blood, “How can that happen!”

“Yes, yes, yes! It’s a deal!” She was so full of joy that she jumped on the carriage at once, “I won’t tell Father! I’ll be sure to put in a few more good words for you in front of him in the future!”

In the carriage, the doctor held the little shark in his lap and pressed the acupoint on his chest with his middle finger. I don’t know what technique he used, but the child woke up on his knees, opened his eyes and immediately shrank back with disgust.

Isn’t it true that this sort of dragon slayer whose hands were covered in blood had an innate aura that made the sharks retreat? However, that child was locked in his body by Zhu Yan with a magic spell, and was unable to move.

Master Shen Tu took the child’s pulse on the bumpy carriage and said indifferently that it was not a big problem, just that he had been malnourished and his body was too weak, and the ups and downs of the journey had led to the invasion of wind and wickedness into his body; he would be fine after taking a special pill to make him sweat and clear his Qi.

“So simple?” Zhu Yan, however, was somewhat unconvinced.

“It’s as simple as that! What do you know, young lady?” Doctor Shen Tu opened his strange eyes and laughed coldly, “Although sharks are a bit delicate, their body structure is simple, unlike humans who are always suffering from all kinds of inexplicable diseases. I’ve cured eight hundred or even more, one thousand sharks in my time, so how could I not know?”

Zhu Yan had rarely been subjected to such a harsh tone, so she was slightly annoyed for a moment, but for the sake of the fact that this doctor might be the child’s only savior, she didn’t lose her temper, and only said, “Wait until the Master takes a closer look.”

The carriage raced on and in no time, they arrived at the Red King’s Palace. Grandma Sheng had been waiting for them for a long time, and immediately welcomed them in with great joy when she saw that they were back safely.

Faced with the splendid residence of the feudal lord, doctor Shen Tu entered with a high degree of dignity and without a trace of fear. As soon as he sat down, he asked for a drink, pulled out a piece of paper, and while drinking, he scribbled with his pen, and finished writing the prescription with a brush, shouting loudly: “It’s all good. It’s all good! Drink this for three days and everything will be fine!”

When he concluded the prescription and drank the last drop of wine in his glass in one gulp, he patted his thighs and stood up, pulling the housekeeper by the hand with impatience: “Can we go to Star Ocean Cloud now? You have to keep your word!”

“Wait a minute! Why are you such a hasty doctor?” Zhu Yan, frowned and looked at the child, “Since you’re here, take one more look at this young one – this belly is bulging so high, isn’t there something wrong with it?”

The child was wrapped in a loose cloth scarf and no abdominal abnormality could be noticed, yet when Zhu Yan uncovered the garment, Master Shen Tu’s impatient eyes immediately changed, “What?”

He didn’t want to go off looking for women anymore, he immediately sat down again, held the child over, reached out and carefully pushed and pulled, his expression gradually becoming somewhat more serious, and muttered, “Strange, actually there’s not a lump in there?”

“Huh? It’s not a lump?” Zhu Yan’s heart was troubled, “Could it be a fluid accumulation in the abdomen?”

“No.” Master Shen Tu pressed his hand against the child’s small abdomen, moving his fingers to the location of the sea of Qi exerting slight pressure, yet the child only frowned but did not show too much pain.

“It’s strange…” Dr. Shen Tu muttered, “In there, it seems to be a fetus?”

“What?” Zhu Yan was startled, “A fetus?”

Everyone was taken aback and looked at the child – thin and pale, it looked like a human child of six or seven years old, had not yet differentiated between the sexes, so how could it be a fetus?

“You’re kidding, right?” Zhu Yan couldn’t hold back any longer and let out a loud laugh, causing the room of people to laugh along with her, “Such a small child, how could he be pregnant!”

“I never joke!” Hearing their laughter, doctor Shen Tu became furious and grabbed the child and placed him on the table, pressed the protruding abdomen with his bony hand, and said sternly, “Right here, there’s a fetus! And, it’s a stillborn baby! If you don’t believe me, go get a knife, I’ll cut him out right away! If it’s not a fetus, I’ll cut my head off and give it to you as trophy! If it is, you can cut up yours instead!”

He gave Zhu Yan a fierce look, “How about it, do you dare to make this bet with me?”

“…” Zhu Yan got caught up in his instant anger. According to her temper, she would have jumped up when she was provoked like that. However, at this moment, she looked at the skinny child on the table, whose eyes were full of disgust but could not move, and swallowed her words.

She took a breath and reluctantly asked, “Then… why is there a fetus in there?”

“How the hell should I know!” Doctor Shen Tu said hatefully, letting go of his hand, the look of disgust in the child’s eyes finally eased a little as he desperately moved his body, trying to escape from where he was. Zhu Yan looked at him with compassion, she reached out her hand and took the child into her arms, and only then he managed to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Where are the parents of this little one? Where are they?” Master Shen Tu sat down and Grandma Sheng poured him another glass of wine, “Go ask the parents, I guess you can find out something more from them.”

Zhu Yan shook her head, “The parents are nowhere to be found.”

“What about the siblings?” Dr. Shen Tu asked again, “Does anyone know anything about him?”

Zhu Yan sighed, “It doesn’t seem to have either, he’s an orphan.”

“That makes it difficult…” Master Shen Tu finished his drink, wiped his mouth and flexed a finger, “Let me guess, there’s only one possibility, but it’s slim.”

“What?” Zhu Yan asked.

“The fetus in this child’s belly was in his mother’s womb.” Doctor Shen Tu reached out and plucked the child in her arms, turning him over and over for a closer look, “Which means that is his younger brother.”

Zhu Yan froze and said out of breath, “What? A younger brother?”

“There is a precedent for this,” Dr. Shen Tu shook his head, “I have once seen a case where a mother was pregnant with twins, but conceived with so little nourishment that only one of the fetuses was able to survive – by the time she finally gave birth, one of the fetuses had disappeared into thin air. Neither remained in the mother’s body nor was it born.”

Zhu Yan murmured, “Then where did it go?”

“Consumed!” Doctor Shen Tu said in one word, “The fetus that was born, competing for nourishment to live, devoured the other brother within the mother’s body!”

“What?” Zhu Yan was stunned, looking at the skinny child in her arms in disbelief.

The child’s body was shaking slightly as he listened to Master Shen Tu’s diagnosis, and without a word he turned his head away, as if unwilling to see any of them, with an expression of disgust in his eyes.

“Of course, the child doesn’t remember any of these things himself, most certainly.” Doctor Shen Tu shook his head, “It was still a fetus, what memories would he have? He did it all unconsciously.”

Zhu Yan lifted her arm and embraced the skinny, fragile child in her arms, stroked his soft hair, and after a moment of hesitation, asked, “Then… this stillborn child in his womb, can it be removed?”

“Huh? The Princess wants to have it removed?” Hearing this, Master Shen Tu’s excitement suddenly rose, “Excellent! Such cases are very rare and it’s lucky to come across one – I’ll do it! When do you want to have it removed?”

“…” This time Zhu Yan did not speak and looked down at the child.

The child was also looking at her silently, its azure eyes deep and shadowed by a vague struggle, like a small beast that has fallen into a deep well and cannot climb out.

She frowned and asked worriedly, “Is it a big risk to take it out?”

“Big, of course it’s big! It’s a lot harder than breaking a shark’s body and splitting his legs, probably only one in ten chances of survival.” Dr. Shen Tu shook his head and held up three fingers. “I’m not going to lie, in that last case, all three, mother and children, ended up dead, none of them were saved.”

The child in her arms trembled, and Zhu Yan, alarmed, immediately balked off, “Then forget it!”

“Do you really not want to perform the surgery?” Master Shen Tu was a little disappointed and looked at the child, intensifying his tone, “But, if we let the stillborn fetus remain in his body and don’t take it out, I guess this child won’t live to be a hundred years old… By that time, I will be long dead, there may not be anyone else in this world who could be able to operate him for you, this child won’t even have one tenth of a chance to live then.”

“…” Zhu Yan’s arm trembled as she frowned at the child.

The child crouched in her arms, his thin face pale and silent, showing no sign of consent – was this child willing to live with the body of his dead twin inside until the day of his death?

“Still no.” She finally gritted her teeth and declined the offer.

“That’s a pity… what an extremely beautiful child!” Doctor Shen Tu shook his head and just turned the child over and over as if he was studying the most exquisite artifact, his mouth tsk-ing repeatedly, “I’ve been a dragon slayer for decades, but I’ve never seen a face like this – if he didn’t have that tumor in his belly, he could probably be sold for a sky-high price, right? Even the Autumn Water Singer back then didn’t have such a look!”

The child dodged his fingers in disgust, his eyes so fierce they almost wanted to bite him.

“Huh? This is…” However, as the old dragon slayer turned the child over, his movements suddenly stalled again.

He leaned over, the tip of his nose almost touching the child’s pale, thin body, a look of bewilderment and shock in his dim old eyes as he stared fixedly at the child’s back.

Zhu Yan felt the trembling and displeasure of the child in her arms, and hurriedly stepped back a little, raised the back of her hand to block the child’s skin, and said, “On this child’s back, there is also a large black mole.”

“A black mole? Impossible.” Doctor Shen Tu frowned and murmured, reaching out his finger once more to touch the child’s back, “It doesn’t look like a black mole, it’s…”

“Don’t touch him!” Zhu Yan slapped away the hand that reached over and shielded the child in her arms like a female beast protecting her cubs, “I didn’t ask you to treat this either!”

“…” Doctor Shen Tu stopped his hand and stared in awe for the next half minute, then suddenly slapped his thigh and whispered, “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Could it be…”

“What’s the matter?” The housekeeper saw the sudden change in his expression and couldn’t help but be alarmed.

“Nothing, I just remembered something I didn’t get done, I have to go first!” Doctor Shen Tu stood up instantly, almost knocking over his tea, “Farewell, farewell.”

The housekeeper couldn’t help but frown and asked, “You’re leaving now? You’re not going to the Jade Pavilion?”

Loved my translation? Buy me a coffee! Scan on Click the image.

Thank you for your generosity!💖

NOTE: This translation belongs to me. It is prohibited to copy / Re-translate / Re-distribute my translations without my prior permission. Thank you.

Like this:Like Loading...

Related