Chen Yu frowned and took another look at the woman, spotting a wound on her fair ankle that looked like she had been bitten by some kind of snake.
He intercepted her slender waist with one arm and reached out to check her pulse with his fingers.
"Acacia Boa venom!"
Catching the faint fragrance wafting from the woman, Chen Yu made an educated guess and asked, "Miss, do you need help?"
The woman's complexion grew even more flushed. She raised her head, pulled several hundred-yuan bills from her jacket pocket, and said in a somewhat hurried tone, "Take... take me to Jiang Group."
"Huh? Where?"
Chen Yu didn't catch it clearly and shouted, "What group? I don't know the way!"
However, the woman was unable to reply. Soft as water, she leaned weakly against the crook of Chen Yu's arm, her eyes closing as if she had drifted off to sleep.
Seeing this, Chen Yu gave a wry smile. Without further hesitation, he picked up the woman and sprinted toward Dongling.
About twenty minutes later, sweating profusely, he carried the woman to a small inn, rented a room, and had the attendant bring up a bottle of alcohol.
"To think you'd get bitten by an Acacia Boa just for picking rhodiola—you really are unlucky."
Leaving the rhodiola the woman was clutching for dear life untouched, Chen Yu began to slowly untighten her outer garments, wiping down her body with alcohol.
Chen Yu moved gently, his eyes involuntarily and carefully examining that marvelous jade-like body. Her exquisite facial features went without saying; the ratio of her waist to her hips was mouth-watering, and coupled with her incomparably slender jade legs, she was simply a top-tier stunner!
On an impulse, he reached out his hand wanting to give a little pinch.
"Please... let me go... ugh..."
Suddenly, the woman murmured.
Before she could finish, her voice turned into low moans under the influence of the venom, and she began tearing at her underwear, exposing a large patch of snowy white...
Knowing the woman had misunderstood, Chen Yu hurriedly explained, "Listen to me, Miss. While I don't have much of a bottom line, I would definitely never take advantage of someone's vulnerable state."
A trace of gratitude surfaced in the woman's watery eyes, but right after, she felt a pair of large hands pressing down upon her skin.
Actions not matching words—damn man!
The woman was furious to the extreme, yet powerless to resist. Driven by the venom, she even instinctively thrust her body forward.
Anger and shame clashed wildly within her heart.
Yet very soon, she noticed something was amiss.
Chen Yu wasn't taking things any further; instead, as she instinctively pressed closer, he used force to keep her body apart from his.
At the same time, a trace of coolness radiated from Chen Yu's palms, helping to dispel the feverish heat within her body.
"So comfortable..."
The woman bit down hard on her red lips, trying her best not to let out any embarrassing sounds, yet the flush on her cheeks grew even more intense.
Seeing this, Chen Yu furrowed his brow slightly. "Is this venom really this potent?"
As he grew nervous, he increased the pressure of his hands.
***
By the time the Acacia Boa venom was completely purged, the sky had turned pitch black. He shook out a quilt, covered the woman with it, and leaned back against a stool, preparing to make do for the night.
Early the next morning, as Chen Yu was sleeping soundly with his feet propped on the bed and his head resting against the chair back, a shrill scream suddenly shattered the air.
Startled, he went to jump up, but someone kicked his leg, and with a loud *thump*, he and the chair crashed heavily to the floor.
"Bastard! Pervert! What... what did you do to me?"
Jiang Wushuang shrank back into the quilt, exposing only a small face as she looked warily at Chen Yu, her eyes brimming with water droplets as if she were about to burst into tears at any second.
That explosive temper of Chen Yu's flared up with a full belly of anger, but upon seeing Jiang Wushuang's tear-streaked face, the words he was about to say were swallowed back down. He only said unhappily, "Big Miss, what could I possibly have done? Have you completely forgotten what happened yesterday?"
He irritably pulled himself back up onto the stool, looked at Jiang Wushuang's guarded expression, and snapped, "You were bitten by an Acacia Boa in the mountains yesterday, and I happened to run into you... and then saved you, alright?!"
"Even... even if you did save me."
Jiang Wushuang fell silent for a moment, pulled back the quilt to take a look at herself, and said with angry shame, "Then why did you undress me?!"
"Because to force the venom out of your body, naturally I had to..."
Chen Yu said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but before he could finish, a pillow came flying at him from Jiang Wushuang.
"Big Miss, I'm your life-saver, is this how you repay kindness with enmity?"
Chen Yu tilted his head and dodged the pillow.
"From the time I was a child until now, my hands haven't even been touched by a man!"
Jiang Wushuang clenched her pink fists, opened her almond eyes wide, and ground her teeth as she said viciously.
Chen Yu shrugged. "I can't be blamed for this. Yesterday you were clearly the one who threw yourself at me!"
Hearing this, Jiang Wushuang bit her lip, blinked her eyes, and tears rolled down, her expression full of grievance.
Chen Yu was thoroughly distressed. Spreading his hands, he said, "Big Miss, I really only helped you force out the Acacia Boa venom, I didn't do anything else."
Jiang Wushuang certainly was very pretty, but he hadn't come to Dongling this time to go philandering.
"You... you're a doctor?"
After quite a while, Jiang Wushuang finally stopped sobbing, wiped away the traces of her tears, and asked.
"As genuine as they come!"
Chen Yu stood up, tossed Jiang Wushuang's clothes onto the bed, and said, "I saw you picking rhodiola; you're taking it home for an elder to take, right? He should be a martial arts practitioner who wants to use this herb to clear his qi and blood and treat hidden injuries?"
"Ah? You can even guess that!"
Jiang Wushuang was stunned, her eyes widening.
Her grandfather had suddenly passed out while practicing martial arts a few days ago, and after inviting a divine doctor from the Jiangdong Region to take a look, the man bluntly stated that it was a relapse of an old hidden injury and that four or five rare herbs needed to be decocted and taken to treat it.
For this brat in front of her to guess most of it based solely on the rhodiola, Jiang Wushuang was naturally immensely shocked.
"What's so difficult about that? I've studied medicine since I was a child, and one glance is all it takes to know the general picture..."
Chen Yu flashed a brilliant smile and murmured, "Based on my experience, taking rhodiola won't have much effect for your elder at all. It would be much better to use snow crystal orchid and sun-yang grass—these two herbs have yin and yang properties respectively. Decoct them and have him take the medicine, then make the rhodiola into a plaster and apply it to the hidden injuries. You'll see results in just three hours!"
He was a newcomer here and couldn't get by without money. The reason he blurted out this ancient formula was to repay the money Jiang Wushuang had given him yesterday, since after paying for the room, only a few red bills were left.
A look of suspicion crossed Jiang Wushuang's eyes. With a slight frown of her pretty brows, she probed, "You aren't making this up to fool me, are you? Looking at how you're dressed, you don't look like a practicing physician."
"Big Miss, did you forget who saved you yesterday?"
Feeling displeased, Chen Yu said, "There are no end of people begging me to treat their illnesses whom I might not even agree to help, and yet you're still judging a book by its cover."
Jiang Wushuang opened her mouth, a trace of awkwardness flashing across her face.
"If the prescription you mentioned is real and can cure my grandfather's hidden injuries, I will definitely reward you handsomely! However, if you're tricking me... as long as you're in Dongling, even if I have to dig three feet into the ground, this young lady will definitely find you!"
"Suit yourself."
Dropping those two flat words, Chen Yu turned around, waved his hand, and headed for the door.
"Hey, what's your name? How am I supposed to find you later?"
Seeing him about to leave, Jiang Wushuang wanted to get out of bed to pull him back, but upon lifting the quilt, she felt a chill on her body and quickly wrapped herself back up with a blush.
"Chen Yu, until we meet again!"
With that, he pushed the door open and left.
Jiang Wushuang watched Chen Yu's departing back. She raised her hand, but the words of thanks on the tip of her tongue ultimately remained unspoken...
Stepping out of the inn, Chen Yu fished out the remaining red bills in his pocket, counted them, and walked toward a nearby taxi.
"Driver, take me to this address!"
He pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to the driver. It was the address of his fiancée given to him by his Master's wife right before he left.
"Oh, Gao Family Villa?!"
The driver exclaimed in surprise. This was a prominent and prestigious family in Dongling City.
Looking at the bumpkin-like Chen Yu, he asked, "Young man, not bad! Are you going to visit relatives or deliver a wedding gift?"
"Huh?"
Chen Yu asked in confusion, "Deliver what wedding gift?"
"Don't you know?"
The driver explained, "Today is the big day for the engagement between the Gao family's eldest miss and the young master of the Zhou Family! Who knows how many big shots are going to offer their congratulations..."
Yet Chen Yu didn't hear a single word of it.
"My own fiancée is getting engaged to someone else?!"