Chapter 284: Chapter 117 I’ll Help You_2
He droned on, "Do good work and have others steal the credit, mess up and get blamed, the official salary can’t buy a few white cabbages, take the risks and you could lose your head. You only see the surface glamour; how could a young girl like you bear the costs involved?"
Lu Tong asked, "What costs?"
"What costs?" Miao Liangfang muttered, suddenly hitching up his trouser leg, "This is the cost!"
Lu Tong focused her gaze and her eyes flickered slightly.
The wide trouser leg was lifted to the knee, revealing the other person’s leg, scarred and riddled with marks. The leg was completely withered from the calf down, showing a terrifying dark purple hue, resembling a shriveled and waterless piece of dead wood, rigidly grafted onto the body of its owner.
Seeing the expression on Lu Tong’s face, Miao Liangfang snorted, then let the trouser leg fall back down and said, "Do you see now, you..."
"Who injured your leg?" Lu Tong interrupted him.
Miao Liangfang was taken aback.
Is this the crucial point of concern?
Lu Tong looked at him, "Why were you driven out of the Hanlin Medical Institute?"
"You..."
"Who harmed you?"
"..."
With each question, calm in her voice, she confused him. The hand Miao Liangfang placed near his leg clenched slightly, and he lowered his head to take a deep breath, saying, "This is none of your..."
"I can help you get revenge."
The words on the tip of his tongue stopped abruptly, and he suddenly looked up.
Lu Tong looked at him, "I don’t know who hurt you so badly, but if you help me pass the spring exam and enter the Hanlin Medical Institute..."
"I can help you get your revenge."
The young female doctor spoke with a tranquil expression, her cool promise falling from her lips as if it were the most ordinary of dialogues. Wisps of steam rising from the tea cup veiled her beautiful face with a faint white mist, her eyes as cool as the deep sea.
She was enticing him to accept the terms.
Miao Liangfang’s face twitched a few times, feeling for the first time in years a faint pain creeping into the leg that had long lost all sensation.
"What a joke..." he murmured, followed abruptly by a look of anger, glaring at Lu Tong: "What a joke!"
With a clatter, a tea cup was swept to the ground by the sleeve of his hand, spilling water all over the table.
Before Lu Tong could speak, Miao Liangfang grabbed the cane that lay next to him and charged out of the door.
The neglected tea trickled drop by drop from the edge of the table onto the floor, forming a small, damp puddle.
Behind the door, Du Changqing and the others who had been eavesdropping hurried in through the felt curtain, and Du Changqing, looking outside, couldn’t comprehend what had happened: "Hey, why did he leave?"
Lu Tong also looked out the door to find no sign of Miao Liangfang, only the disordered footprints and the shadow left by the cane imprinted on the snow-covered ground, reminding them that he had just been there.
"He’ll come back," Lu Tong uttered softly.
...
The night grew deeper.
Shops on West Street closed one by one, and the red lanterns under the eaves gradually lit up.
The bright moonlight spilled onto the snowy street, stopping abruptly when it reached a thatched hut, as if neither daylight nor nighttime, sun nor moonlight, could penetrate inside.
Weeds growing by the door were brushed aside, and the half-worn broken wooden door creaked as it opened, accompanied by the sounds of a walking stick tapping the ground, Miao Liangfang entered the house.
Now at night, there were no lit lamps inside the house.
He never lit lamps.
Like a foraging beast returning to its pitch-black den, the darker it was, the more reassuring it became.
After wandering aimlessly in the streets all day, he only felt the fatigue in his other leg once he was back inside. Usually, at this time, he would grope his way to bed, fall asleep when drunk, but today, as if possessed, Miao Liangfang supported himself against the wall and hopped to the window, forcefully pushing open the small window that wasn’t very wide.
A sliver of moonlight slipped through the crack in the window, and Miao Liangfang instinctively raised his hand to shield his eyes. After a while, he slowly lowered his arm, gradually getting used to the bright night.
There was a jar of wine on the table. Miao Liangfang reached out, took it, tipped it back for a long time, but only a few drops of leftover wine came out.
With a sigh, he wiped his face and threw the jar onto the ground with a "thud," the sound especially crisp in the night. He took no notice of the broken shards on the floor, looking up at the small patch of moonlight through the window.
The crescent moon was small yet bright, its edges blurred with a hazy white, like a tiny, glowing banner stretched across the dark canvas of the sky.
Suddenly, he remembered the day at the Renxin Medical Hall, when the young clerk at the door was drying a flag with an embroidered text that shone and captivated the eyes just like this.
"A Compassionate Physician Relieves Ailments, Magical Skills Silently Cure Diseases"—
Such symbols of glory, words of gratitude, even the rewards of wealth and honor... he once had them all.