Chapter 80 — Treating Wounds and Brewing Medicine (Please Give Recommendation Votes, Please Bookmark for Support)

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From the look of it, the girl's stockings had most likely fused to the wound; to pull them off directly would tear at the wound and cause even heavier bleeding.

Wei Zhao frowned. There was not a single emergency surgical tool in the room. When he had pulled off the girl's leather pants earlier, his hand had brushed against something hard, which by the feel of it ought to be a dagger, and with no other tools at hand, that dagger was all Wei Zhao had to work with.

Picking the leather pants up off the floor, Wei Zhao drew the dagger out of them, swiped it back and forth through the air a couple of times to get the feel of it, and then began slicing to and fro across the girl's stockings.

With a knife, Wei Zhao was a master; the close-combat concealed weapon he had trained in under his master since the age of six was the dagger. It was also one of the weapons most often used against an enemy.

Wei Zhao used only the tip of the blade to lift apart the fibers where they joined on the stockings, doing no harm to anything else, and in a few strokes the girl's stockings had become shreds, which he casually peeled away and tossed to one side.

Beneath the stockings, Wei Zhao at last saw where the wound was: at the root of the right thigh. It had already been given a crude bandaging, but plainly the bandage had done little to stanch the bleeding, which would not stop; otherwise the girl would never have gone to the pharmacy for that Divine Doctor Kang's Golden Wound Medicine.

Apart from the bandaging gauze, nothing remained on the lower half of the girl's body but a pair of panties, yet Wei Zhao had no other thoughts at this moment. Wei Zhao was no madman; toward a woman drenched head to foot in blood, be she as beautiful as a goddess, he could not rouse that kind of interest.

Using the knife to lift away the gauze on the girl's leg, Wei Zhao began to examine the condition of her wound.

The wound was indeed severe, but Wei Zhao breathed a sigh of relief: the femoral artery had not been struck. Had it been, then with no professional surgical equipment to hand, he could only have sent her to a hospital — and whether she could hold out until they got there was another matter entirely.

The wound was triangular, plainly punched in by some sharp instrument such as a triangular blade, and because it was triangular, ordinary styptics would find it very hard to stop the bleeding unless it was sutured.

Judging by the situation, it was most likely that after being wounded, the girl had bandaged herself, only to find that the wound had not healed and would not stop bleeding. In desperation she had gone to the pharmacy for that Divine Doctor Kang's Golden Wound Medicine, and in the end had not even managed to buy it. On the way back, blood loss had finally brought her down in a faint.

Wei Zhao could understand what the girl had done. The assassin's trade was a peculiar one; even when wounded, few of them would go to a hospital. Whatever they could handle themselves, they handled themselves, to lessen the chance of exposing their identity.

Now that he understood the girl's injury, Wei Zhao could treat it accordingly. Deep as the wound was at this spot, it had not struck the artery or the sinews, so there was not much of a problem.

Wei Zhao rose and took out the Chinese herbs he had bought earlier at the pharmacy, quickly dropping several of them into a vessel and grinding them. This was familiar work to Wei Zhao; in the jungles of North Africa, his own herbal medicines had been the thing his teammates welcomed most, and every time Wei Zhao had to grind a whole bagful before there was enough to go around.

The gauze from before was out of the question now, soaked through as it was with blood. Because the thing had come up so suddenly, Wei Zhao had made no preparations, and could only consider substituting something else.

His school uniform had been freshly changed that morning, but Wei Zhao had no wish to tear off a piece of it to bandage this female assassin. He got up and walked to the washroom, where he saw a disposable sterilized bath towel on the rack; beside the towel was a little price tag reading forty yuan.

Bought in bulk, this sort of disposable sterilized bath towel would cost twenty yuan at most, but in a hotel the price doubled. Of course, besides towels of this kind there were also the free ones the hotel provided — only those were not disposable.

Such towels were supplied only for those with a cleanliness fixation who love to keep things spotless, and could hardly be called a forced purchase.

Wei Zhao took one of these sterilized towels; as gauze for bandaging, the thing would just barely do.

He sprinkled the powder he had ground earlier onto the girl's wound, and a moan barely audible came from her mouth, no doubt the medicine's nature stirring the wound. Wei Zhao paid her no mind — what medicine does not hurt when it is applied?

After applying the medicine, Wei Zhao tore the disposable bath towel into several pieces and, with practiced hands, finished bandaging the girl's wound.

"Whew." Wei Zhao let out a breath. It was done at last. As things stood, the girl had merely lost too much blood; if the bleeding was stopped now, her chances of living were still very good.

Of course, assassins generally had tenacious vitality, and Wei Zhao could roughly see that the girl had pulled her life back. When she woke, apart from being a little weak, there would be nothing seriously the matter.

With the female assassin dealt with, Wei Zhao turned to his own affairs. Earlier, when he had compounded medicine for the girl, he had been in a hurry and had prepared only exactly the amount required; his own wound was still unattended.

That had all relied on grinding, which was nothing much, but the medicine for Yang Huaijun had to be slowly decocted, with the order in which each herb was added and the timing held to strict standards, not the slightest error permitted. Otherwise, though the constituents of the Chinese medicine would be much the same, its medicinal power would be greatly reduced, and the expected effect would not be achieved.

This too was why Wei Zhao had not given the prescription to Yang Huaijun but had compounded the medicine for him himself. For one thing, this prescription was not as easy to compound and decoct as the painkiller he had given him before: that painkiller needed only the purchase of all the Chinese herbs on the prescription and the grinding of them together, whereas decocting medicine was another matter.

For another, it was because Wei Zhao did not want this prescription to get out. Though he trusted Yang Huaijun, he feared that Yang Huaijun might inadvertently let it slip; this prescription was enough to stir up a mighty uproar in the world of Chinese medicine.

Wei Zhao set the alcohol burner and the clay pot he had used earlier on a level spot, and began to decoct the medicine for Yang Huaijun. Though the hotel also provided an electric appliance for brewing tea, Chinese medicine was still better decocted over fire.

Decocting medicine was a wearing, patience-draining task, but for Wei Zhao, who often wove straw sandals at home, it was nothing at all.

Watching the time on his phone, Wei Zhao deftly put one herb after another into the clay pot. How long had passed he did not know, when he heard a faint stirring from not far behind him.

Had Wei Zhao's hearing not been abnormally keen, he could never have caught that tiny sound while concentrating on the decoction.

Wei Zhao did not turn around. This was the critical moment in the decocting, and he could not spare the attention; pinching several herbs in his hand, he watched his phone and counted out the time.