[Young Master Xian]—❈—49.1:: Interlude:: A Girl and Her Young Master

Hello, everyone.

So, it is done. it is finished. The burial has been seen to with all the 'i's crossed and the 't's dotted.

I'm... not okay. I don't think. But I am grateful. Both for the fact that it is behind me now, but mostly for how fortunate I've been to have a community that's supported me as you have.

I say this a lot. But I can never say it enough. Thank you. Truly. From the bottom of my heart.

Now, for this story, I must admit that I obsessed way more than is probably healthy over the kiss that ended the last chapter.

I kept worrying that it was too soon. That I jumped the gun, as they say.

Finally though, I realized that I was only focusing on Qigang's perspective of things. So, I decided to explore what Qigang's recovery was like for Meng Yi, and this was born.

Suffice to say, I don't think that I rushed it anymore.

Enjoy the chapter.

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Meng Yi

He had no legs when they brought him out of the storm. They were just… gone. From the thighs down.

Later, she found out that it was because they’d transformed into stone, fusing him to the earth where he stood, and his rescuers had had to break them off to move him.

His right hand had looked like that of some foul abomination’s, skin leathery, desiccated, fingers much too long and knuckles swollen.

It had reminded her of Old Xian’s, when his mask had come off and the truth of his corruption had been left for all to see.

Meng Yi had hated it.

The experts from The Suppression Division told her that it was a miracle. That he should be dead. That to only have this much corruption after the amount of exposure to Wild Qi he suffered was impossible for any cultivator, much less a noble rank yet to break into Qi Realm.

They also told her that, if it hadn’t been for his sacrifice, the corruption would have consumed all of the Bloody Fangs before they arrived. Likely all the way down to Verdant Plains and even beyond. They said that Xian Qigang had singlehandedly averted what would have been the worst Wild Qi disaster in recorded history.

They said that his sacrifice may very well have saved The Empire.

‘Sacrifice.’ They’d used that word a lot.

It made sense for them to do so, because while not dead, Xian Qigang had suffered deep wounds. Permanent and irreparable.

‘While not complete,’ they said, ‘the corruption had gone deep. Warped his cultivation. Marked his soul. No one recovers from that.’

They’d bathed and wrapped him in medicine that kept the corruption from progressing further, and then they’d settled him on a bed for further observation.

When she’d come to sit with him that first night, Doctor Lei had told her to leave.

To Meng Yi’s surprise and gratitude though, Xian Weiju, Qigang’s sister, had pulled rank, making the Doctor leave her be if it wouldn’t interfere with her brother’s health.

She’d admitted that it wouldn’t, and so Meng Yi had been allowed to spend the night beside his bed.

She spoke to him throughout the night. Told him pointless, silly stories that she knew he would have paid rapt attention to if he’d been awake, eyes bright and lips curved in that small smile. Like she was the most captivating thing he’d ever seen.

She couldn’t see those eyes or those lips now, with his face wrapped with medicine as it was, and even if it hadn’t been… well, his eyes and lips looked nothing now like they had.

All through the night, her qi sense was pushed to its limit, focused entirely on the spark of heat burning deep within his soul.

It was weak, much weaker than she’d ever imagined it could be. Once a sun, now little more than a candleflame. But it was recognizably him.

Meng Yi held on to that.

Qigang’s condition didn’t change for two days, and on the second day, Pan Cai had put voice to a question that Meng Yi had resolutely kept herself from pondering for the last two days; “What will you do if he dies?”

“He won’t,” Meng Yi had replied, tone as resolute as the course of a river.

“And if he never recovers?” the other woman had asked after. “If, at the end of this, all you are left with is Xian Qigang the cripple?”

Meng Yi’s gaze had settled on the older, far more powerful, woman like miniature suns.

“He will recover,” she said.

And she believed it. Because Qigang had always delivered on his promises to her: when he told her he would get her a peasant rank method, when he told her he would stop his former self if he were to ever return, and when he told her he would protect her home from the Wild Qi storm.

Every promise made had been kept, so she knew that he would survive this, because he’d told her that he would.

This would not be the thing that broke him.

If Pan Cai had thought her words those of a delusional girl, she didn’t show it.

Not that it mattered in the end, for by sunrise the following day, Xian Qigang had pulled off another miracle. He was healing.

Doctor Lei couldn’t explain how it was possible. She barely even understood what was happening. All she knew was that, according to everything she knew, Qigang’s recovery, especially at the speed he was recovering, was impossible.

This, of course, did not stop Qigang from recovering.

“This is impossible,” Meng Yi heard the Qi Realm doctor mutter once. “One does not simply fix a warped cultivation. A mark of corruption on an individual’s soul does not simply fade away.”

Meng Yi smiled to herself. Welcome to my world, she thought.

Qigang didn’t just repair his cultivation, he repaired his body too.

Over the next five days, his legs regrew. His right hand morphed back from the skeletal abomination it had been, and the left side of his face, which had hardened into a material like tree bark, dried up and peeled off, revealing fresh, pink skin underneath.

In five days, Xian Qigang’s lustre returned, physically and spiritually, and now that warmth in his soul was no longer a candle, it was back to being the sun whose warmth was familiar and always ready to soothe.

In less time than almost anyone thought possible, Qigang recovered from wounds which recovery seemed impossible.

Despite his body being in perfect condition however, he didn’t wake, and this too Doctor Lei could not understand. A fact that seemed to upset and unsettle the woman.

Meng Yi was unbothered. Qigang had healed himself when he was ready, he would wake when he was ready.

And when he did, Meng Yi would be there to greet him, because he was her Young Master, and he was a man that she would follow wherever he walked.

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Thanks for reading. Next chapter should be out by this time tomorrow.

Take care.