Golden Stage Chapter 10

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“Fu Shen!”

A murky call came through to his ears. He was still conscious, but his body had lost sensation, the sound of the rain following suit like a shadow. Someone leaned over to hold him, a sort of vague familiarity in their touch.

It was like the warm arms he had been taken into after he had fallen a few days prior, and like the gentle hands upon his back from a very long time ago.

Who was it?

He was carried into a narrow, arid cage, then forced to leave those warmth-producing hands and that embrace that was somewhere between soft and firm. Having not enough time to savor it, his temper worsened all of a sudden, and he abruptly reached out to latch onto the other person's collar, viciously pulling it forwards——

Bang.

Mr. Yan, who hadn't been able to straighten out his back yet, busted into the carriage, his body now pressing down on the Marquis of Jing Ning in a position that completely went against public decency. And Fu Shen lived up to expectations by returning to his senses from the impact.

Four eyes were opposite each other. Yan Xiaohan hadn't foreseen that this sick, fainted devil would make a sudden move like he was a corpse coming back to life, but he happened to meet with Fu Shen's gaze just as he went to get mad about it.

There were still raindrops suspended on his lashes, and with the scattered light in his eyes, it looked like he had been crying. Even if he knew well that that wasn't a reality, Mr. Yan's fire was extinguished anyways, and he picked himself up to sit back down. “We'll go to my Estate first and have Shen Yi'ce come take a look at your injury, alright?”

He was a little uneasy about Fu Shen's condition; having a handicapped person kneel on stone brick for a shichen was truthfully no laughing matter. Fu Shen may or may not have heard properly, as he vaguely ‘mm'ed.

He had his eyes half-lidded languidly, seeming to not have the strength to speak, and leaned bonelessly against the carriage's wooden wall. The capital roads that the buggy took on its way to the Yan Estate were flat, but still he jolted and swayed from left to right. Yan Xiaohan observed him with unflinching attention for a very long time until finally trying to reach out to him. As expected, he wasn't even close when the person who was dozing off with closed eyes struck out with lightning speed, holding his hand back by the wrist. “What are you doing?”

“Are you uncomfortable anywhere?” Yan Xiaohan asks.

A trace of perplexity flashes past Fu Shen's face. “I'm uncomfortable everywhere. Why?”

His fingers were cold as ice while his palms gave off an abnormal heat. Yan Xiaohan sighed, inverting his wrist and making a maneuver to get out of his grasp, then raising that hand and placing it on the other man's forehead to take his temperature. “You're burning up.”

It's hot enough to scald.

On the contrary, Fu Shen felt nothing. He raised his own hand to feel it for himself. “But it's not hot?”

“Feel my hand,” Yan Xiaohan says.

Using the back of his head as a fulcrum, Fu Shen turned his body around so that his side was facing the other. “It's nothing…” he replied nonchalantly, “I'll be just fine once I go back to sleep.”

This is only going from the palace to the Yan Estate, but his non-treatable, hidden injuries and suffering of the chill from getting drenched by the rain has caused a flare-up. His tumultuous illness, coupled with a psychological overdraft and overall exhaustion, leaves Fu Shen a bit delirious from fever. He was out cold when it was time to disembark, not rousing no matter how he was called. With no other option, Yan Xiaohan had to carry him all the way inside.

Each and every subordinate here doesn't so much as spare them a side glance, not daring to impose. Yan Xiaohan maintains strict control, the servants and maids being far and above more swift and efficient than the old, weak, and sickly help of the Marquis's Estate. It was but a moment later that a basin full of hot water for bathing was completely ready, along with blankets and clothes, as they invited the two to go bathe.

Too mistrusting to have someone else do it, Yan Xiaohan undressed Fu Shen himself. His drenched, single-layer white robe is adhered to him, giving an almost full view of his lanky, leanly-muscled body. What a shame that Yan Xiaohan couldn't have any charming thoughts about it right now, as his full attention was on Fu Shen's legs.

The layers upon layers of bandages had since been soaked through. It wasn't clear before due to the red clothes obstructing them before, but now that it can be seen, it's simply ghastly. Yan Xiaohan bent over and picked him up, manipulating his legs around to carefully place him into the wooden tub filled to the brim with hot water, which overflowed and got itself on him with a splash. “Marquis… Fu Shen?” he spoke up, not quite able to handle how poorly the man looked.

His fingers unintentionally brushed over the side of Fu Shen's neck and pushed his dark hairs to the side, revealing a light-colored scar right next to a main artery. The location is dangerous enough to cause fear in anyone seeing it after the fact, and if it went a bit deeper, this man might not have been able to lie peaceably here in this tub today.

Only now did Yan Xiaohan become aware of how many scars were on his body, both old and fresh and never obvious in front of others, engraved into the young Marquis as annals to a bygone time of being devil-may-care.

He suddenly understood what Fu Shen said – ‘difficult to be complacent'.

If he had never trusted the Emperor, never cherished the country within his heart, then why should he take the burden of his heavy armor and go into the warzone time and time again — are the broad branches of a third-rank Duke's inheritance not able to shelter a wealthy Young Master so he can live a life of luxury?

Yan Xiaohan called in a boyservant from outside and pointed him towards the Marquis of Jing Ning in his tub. “Keep watch and don't let him fall into the water.”

A screen was placed within the bathing room, part.i.tioning out two s.p.a.ces. Yan Xiaohan went around to the other side, washing himself up with calculated efficiency, using a towel to wring out his long hair, pulling the hairpin out from the top of his head, and changing his clothes before he returned to Fu Shen's side. The boyservant, having never seen him be so meticulous for someone, was secretly astonished.

A piece of formless chaos boiled with Fu Shen's mind, only one portion of his consciousness still running. The sense of sinking into warm water all of a sudden after a freezing cold, rainy day made him comfortable enough to start nodding off, but someone suddenly propped him up a moment later, a familiar voice speaking right into his ear. “Stick out your arms, and hold onto my neck tightly.”

The scent of agarwood incense gently wafts about, a bit enticing in a way that couldn't be explained.

As if bewitched, Fu Shen held up his arms towards him. The other clasped an arm around his shoulders with a small amount of force, and, along with the sound of crashing water, he was taken out of the tub.

The instant he separated from the warm water, the chill of the air attacked him from every direction, as if he were thrown back into the desolate environment of a bitter storm. He made indistinct groaning, whining noises, subconsciously attempting to struggle free in an effort to try to huddle himself into a ball.

Yan Xiaohan nearly plunged headfirst into the water due to the sudden force, but his anger was cut off when he noticed what the other was doing. He promptly shook open a blanket and wrapped him up in it. “It's okay, don't flail about. Are you still cold?”

Fu Shen mumbled something that Yan Xiaohan couldn't make out, so he leaned a bit closer. “Hm?”

Fu Shen didn't say anything else as his limbs slowly unwound from under the warm blanket, though his brows were still as tightly scrunched as before, like he was doing everything he could to bear with it. “Do you hurt somewhere?” Yan Xiaohan inquired in an attempt to figure out his expression.

Fu Shen made a vague sound from his throat. Yan Xiaohan had originally wanted to put on clothes for him, but now he's completely against moving him about randomly for fear of b.u.mping into any hidden injuries. It just so happened that someone had come to report Shen Yi'ce's arrival at this time, so he moved himself and the blanket-clad person straight into the bedroom.

Shen Yi'ce looked at the one he was holding, who was naked with his hair in disarray, and his eyes went so wide they very nearly fell out. “Th-th-that's…”

“Don't stutter. It's the Marquis of Jing Ning.” Yan Xiaohan placed Fu Shen atop his bed. “He was kneeling in the rain for a little under a shichen, and pa.s.sed out due to fever just now. Can you take a look and see if you can do anything for him?”

Shen Yi'ce feels that the Marquis of Jing Ning has been cropping up a bit too frequently these days, but doesn't think too deeply about it. He talked as he took Fu Shen's pulse. “How did that happen? He can't walk anymore, so what's he doing running off to kneel in the rain all w.i.l.l.y-nilly for? Were you just rained on too, Sir? Call for them to cook up a bowl of ginger soup.”

Yan Xiaohan made an annoyed gesture, not wanting to bother with such a trivial matter.

Shen Yi'ce gives him a look full of meaning, but doesn't ask again. He concentrates on thoroughly checking the pulse on both of Fu Shen's wrists, then lifting the blanket to look at Fu Shen's legs. He wrote down three prescriptions to take, washed his hands with strong alcohol, and replaced the bandages on Fu Shen's legs for him.

“He just shouted in pain. Are there any other wounds?” Yan Xiaohan asked, frowning.

Shen Yi'ce suspects that Mr. Royal Inspector Envoy's brain was soggy from steeping in the rain. “Kneeling on the ground for a shichen would be hard to bear with even if his knees were made of iron, and his are broken. Furthermore, the wound has gotten painfully inflamed from being drenched. Further still is that—” he points out the window here, “those from the battlefield like the Marquis of Jing Ning fear weather like this the most, and I'm guessing he has many old injuries. To be frank, were an average person to be going through this kind of pain, they would be rolling about on the ground right now.”

Yan Xiaohan followed with his own soft lament. “The average person couldn't become like him.”

He hadn't even had his coming-of-age ceremony at twenty when he put on armor and went off to the front lines, risking his life for an outstanding military record and to guard the peace of northern Xinjiang for so many years. He had dodged innumerable hurled spears and stealthy arrows, but he couldn't avoid the knife coming from behind his back.

Honestly speaking, when the Yuantai Emperor suggested that he could take over the Northern Yan Iron Cavalry, Yan Xiaohan genuinely did feel a split second of temptation. Though the Flying Dragon Guard holds a great deal of weight, it reaps nearly the full condemnation of the Court. The Imperial Guard, then, is respected and n.o.ble, but it's not a good place to rack up achievements at the end of it all.

Is there any man in this world that had never imagined being like Fu Shen and holding the Northern Yan Cavalry in the palm of his hand, charging onto the sandy fields, and sweeping the enemy away as they invade? That had never thought ‘if that were me', and how he would put his ambitions to use, making whatever sort of great service for his own glory?

However, can the seat of the Commander of the Northern Yan be relied on to provide a good life purely by being perched securely on it?

Yan Xiaohan knows that he's incapable of replacing Fu Shen, and that there will not be another of him anywhere in the world. It's a shame that the Yuantai Emperor doesn't understand that.

The Great Wall, never once destroyed by an outsider's hands, will first be torn down by its own people, brick by brick.

“Sir.” Shen Yi'ce got up, having swiftly finished switching out Fu Shen's medicine while the other was lost in his musings. “You may not be willing to take this to heart, but I still must say a few things in my duty as a physician. I'm afraid that this injury of the Marquis's will be unable to be completely fixed for the rest of his life. He's had a fever twice, this one more dangerous than the last. His health won't be able to last any sort of torment.

Even if you dislike him, he's a… hero, in the end. If you can help him, do so, and don't have him struggle by himself. Or at least don't let anything like kneeling in the rain for one shichen happen again.”

No sort of emotion could be gleaned from Yan Xiaohan's face. “I don't remember you being familiar with Fu Shen, nor did I ever see you speak up for a patient before.”

“It's just me sticking my nose where it doesn't belong.” Shen Yi'ce placed his wares that he had spread out on the table back into his medicine box and closed it. “I don't really have any sort of relationship with the Marquis, but I just sometimes get the feeling that so long as he's doing well in the world, then it'll be calm in the capital as well, and we Han won't have to fight for our lives under the iron hooves of the barbarians.”

As Yan Xiaohan recalls, Shen Yi'ce was born in Xuanfu [3], which had once been occupied by the eastern Tartars before being later reclaimed by the Northern Yan Cavalry.

He didn't respond, also getting up to see Shen Yi'ce out. They walked silently through the winding corridors, and upon arriving at the front courtyard, Shen Yi'ce turned to face Yan Xiaohan with a stamp of his foot, cupping his hands in goodbye. “There is no need to escort me out further, Sir.”

“Jizhi,” [1] Yan Xiaohan called out to him, a glint deep in his eye. “Fu Shen's injury… how much confidence would you have in him being able to stand up again?”

Shen Yi'ce smiled grimly. “You put too much value in me, Sir.”

“Say what you think,” Yan Xiaohand replied. “You don't need to hold back. I want to hear the truth.”

Only after hesitating for a long time did Shen Yi'ce start to speak cautiously. “Only about ten, twenty percent sure. Broken bone is easy to come back from, but his muscles and tendons were damaged, particularly from when his kneecaps broke in half. It may take three to five years of effort to nurse him back to health. The amount of money that'd be spent on the medication doesn't need to be spoken of – the key point is that there needs to be someone at his side taking care of it. Even then, though, it might not work.”

A glint of hope is always better than having one's hands completely tied, though.

Yan Xiaohan nods, coming to a decision. “In that case, from tomorrow onwards, the Marquis of Jing Ning's treatment will be handed over to you. Come to my Estate if you need to check the wound or administer medicine.”

Shen Yice was astonished. “Sir?!”

“No need to be surprised. You would have known about this sooner or later,” Yan Xiaohand said mildly. “His Majesty issued an imperial edict just now. The Marquis and I are to be married.”

As thunder surged on throughout the sky, Divine Doctor Shen was rooted to the spot, mute as a wooden chicken. [2]

One moment later, an earth-shattering roar exploded from within the Yan Estate's courtyard. “Is the Emperor insane?!”

The translator says: Today marks novel #2 that I'm seeing butchered by someone copypasting MTL! My fears about GS being treated like that are being realized vicariously…

[1] 继之 = Another courtesy. Means roughly ‘continue on', or some such.
[2] 呆若木鸡 = Literally, “dumbstruck like a wood chicken”. What kind of idiom is this?
[3] May be an actual town in this novel's canon, but in real life, Xuanfu was a military garrison stationed along the Great Wall.