Chapter : 771
“Deep within your son’s chest,” he continued, his gaze steady and direct, “there is a growth. A cluster of his own cells that have… forgotten their purpose. They have turned rogue. Instead of working to support his body, they are now at war with it. They are growing, uncontrollably, forming a dense, dark mass. A… a tumor.”
He spoke the word, a piece of alien terminology from another world, with a quiet, clinical precision. The word meant nothing to them, but the way he said it, the weight he gave it, made it sound like a death sentence.
The Royal Physicians exchanged a look of pure, condescending disbelief. The alchemist let out a short, derisive snort.
“A ‘tumor’?” the elder of the two physicians scoffed, his voice dripping with academic disdain. “What fanciful nonsense is this? The boy’s body is wasting away. He is shrinking, not growing. Your theory is a logical absurdity.”
“You are mistaken, Master Physician,” Lloyd countered, his tone still respectful but now with an edge of cold, hard certainty. “You see only the external effects. I see the cause. This growth is a parasite. It is stealing the nutrients from his food, hijacking his blood supply, and poisoning his system with its waste. His body is wasting away because this… this internal thief… is starving him from the inside. The growth is the only part of him that is thriving.”
He then turned his attention to the creeping paralysis, the symptom that had most baffled them. “This mass is pressing against the great nerves of his spine, slowly crushing them, cutting off the flow of life from his brain to his limbs. It is a slow, relentless siege.”
He had described the mechanics of cancer in the simple, metaphorical language of a medieval war. It was an explanation they could understand, and it was utterly, terrifyingly plausible. He saw the flicker of dawning horror in Lord Qadir’s eyes. He saw the first seeds of doubt being sown in the minds of the physicians.
“Preposterous,” the alchemist sneered, though his voice lacked its earlier conviction. “To even suggest such a thing without proof… it is the height of fraudulent arrogance. What proof do you have of this… this ‘growth’?”
“My proof,” Lloyd said, his voice dropping to an almost inaudible whisper, “is that I have seen it.”
The statement was so simple, so audacious, that it stunned the room into silence.
“You have seen it?” the younger physician repeated, his voice a squeak of incredulity. “How? Did you cut the boy open while we were gone?”
“There are methods of perception,” Lloyd said, deliberately being as vague and mystical as possible, “arts of healing that are not taught in your esteemed academies. They are passed down through certain bloodlines. An ability to see the inner life of the body, to perceive the sickness not just by its symptoms, but by its very shape and form. I have this… sight. And I have seen the shadow in your son’s chest.”
He was treading a dangerous line, hinting at a power that was beyond their comprehension, but framing it within the accepted reality of inherited, bloodline abilities. He was a freak, a prodigy, not a liar.
Lady Zira, who had been a silent, weeping ghost throughout the entire exchange, suddenly spoke. Her voice was a thin, fragile whisper, but it cut through the room with the force of a thunderclap.
“Where?” she asked, her haunted eyes fixed on Lloyd. “Show me where this… this shadow… is on my son.”
Lloyd walked back to the bed, the others following him as if pulled by an invisible string. He gently pulled back the linen sheet, exposing the boy’s frail, pale chest. He placed his hand on the boy’s sternum, his fingers spread wide.
“The growth is here,” he said, his voice soft and certain. “Deep inside. It is roughly the size of a clenched fist. It is anchored to the back of his heart and has begun to invade the lower lobe of his left lung. Its densest point is approximately… here.” He pressed a single finger down on a specific point on the boy’s chest, just to the left of his breastbone.
It was a moment of pure, unadulterated bluff. There was no way for them to verify his claim. He was relying entirely on the sheer, unshakeable force of his own conviction.
But then, something unexpected happened. As his finger pressed down on that specific point, the boy, who had been lying in a near-comatose state, let out a soft, pained whimper. His brow furrowed, and his head tossed weakly on the pillow.
It was a reflex, a subconscious response to the pressure on the inflamed, tumor-ridden tissue deep within his chest. It was a one-in-a-million chance.
Chapter : 772
And it was all the proof they needed.
Lady Zira let out a choked sob. The faces of the physicians went pale. Even the arrogant alchemist took an involuntary step back. He had not just described the location of the invisible sickness; he had made the boy react to it. He had touched the ghost.
In that single, breathtaking moment, all their skepticism, all their pride, all their academic certainty, was shattered into a million pieces. They were no longer looking at a slum doctor. They were looking at a seer, a prophet, a man who possessed a divine and terrifying power they could not begin to comprehend.
Lloyd removed his hand, his face a mask of somber, sorrowful confirmation. He had done it. He had not only diagnosed the undiagnosable, but he had provided irrefutable proof. He had their absolute, terrified attention. Now, it was time to set his trap.
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The atmosphere in the sickroom had undergone a seismic shift. The air, which had been thick with skepticism and condescension, was now heavy with a new, potent mixture of awe and terrified hope. The Royal Physicians and the master alchemist were silent, their faces a mixture of professional humiliation and a dawning, fearful respect. They were looking at Lloyd as if he were a creature from another world, a being who had just casually rewritten the fundamental laws of their reality.
Lord Qadir, the man of iron and war, was visibly shaken. His granite-like composure had been pulverized. He stared at his son, then back at Lloyd, his stormy eyes now filled with a desperate, pleading intensity. The proud lord was gone. All that remained was a father, clinging to the first glimmer of genuine hope he had seen in months.
“You have seen it,” he whispered, the words a statement of profound, disbelieving faith. “You have truly seen it.” He took a step closer, his massive frame trembling slightly. “If you can see it… can you fight it? Can you cure him? Is there a way?”
This was the moment Lloyd had been building towards, the nexus of his entire, intricate deception. The fish had not just taken the bait; it had swallowed the hook, the line, and the sinker.
Lloyd let the silence stretch, his expression a carefully crafted mask of deep, troubled contemplation. He looked from the grieving father to the dying child, his face etched with the weight of the terrible decision before him. He was not just a healer; he was now the sole arbiter of this family’s fate, and he played the part to perfection.
“There is a way,” he said at last, his voice a low, somber murmur. The collective hope in the room surged, a palpable, almost audible wave of relief. But Lloyd immediately crushed it. “But the path is… perilous. The procedure I would have to attempt is something that has never been done before. It is radical, it is violent, and its chances of success are… slim.”
He had to manage their expectations, to frame the cure not as a simple certainty, but as a desperate, high-risk gamble. This would not only make his eventual success seem all the more miraculous, but it would also provide him with the leverage he needed.
“What is it?” Lord Qadir pressed, his voice raw. “What must be done? I do not care about the risk. Any chance is better than no chance at all.”
“The growth, this tumor,” Lloyd explained, his gaze sweeping over the assembled experts, forcing them to be his students, “cannot be dissolved with potions. It cannot be purged with herbs. It is a part of your son’s own body, a fortress of corrupted flesh. It must be… physically removed.”
The concept was so alien, so brutally direct, that it stunned them into a fresh silence. The medicine of this world was a gentle art of balancing and persuading the body. The idea of cutting into a living person to remove a part of them was the work of a butcher, not a healer. It was a barbaric, terrifying thought.
“Surgery?” the elder physician finally managed to say, the word tasting like poison in his mouth. “You would cut open a child? A child in his weakened state? It is madness! The shock alone would kill him instantly!”
“You are correct, Master Physician,” Lloyd said, giving the old man a nod of grim, professional respect. “Under normal circumstances, it would be a guaranteed death sentence. The boy’s body is too weak. His life force, his spiritual energy, is a flickering candle flame. The shock of such an invasive procedure would extinguish it in a heartbeat.”