Chapter 9: The Clash of Medical Doctrines

Word of how Jiang Yuejian had saved the old garrison commander's son beneath the city wall, in front of everyone, spread fast—and the old fossils at the Imperial Medical Bureau could no longer sit still. This was no longer a mere Taoist outsider practicing medicine; it was a resounding slap across the face of the entire Tang medical establishment.

That afternoon, the quiet air outside Shangqing Temple was broken by the low, weighty rumble of carriages and horses. At their head came Physician Liu with four or five medical officers, faces dark as they strode into the temple grounds. Li Ce was sitting under the corridor with a copy of the Classic of Mountains and Seas in hand, though his gaze never left the plain-robed figure in the middle of the courtyard.

"Priestess Jiang. We hear your methods of healing are... unconventional. We have come to exchange pointers." Physician Liu smiled without a trace of warmth, waved a hand, and the medical officers behind him began the first round of probing.

They first quizzed her on intricate incompatibilities between medicinal ingredients. Then they produced a laborer who used a breath-holding trick to fake an uncanny pulse, hoping to make a fool of her—but she dismantled the trick on the spot, one item at a time, with modern chemistry and precise pressure-point technique.

"Lord Liu. You test a physician with a magic trick—do you think I have nothing to do, or that the Prince Regent does?" Jiang Yuejian eyed him sideways, disdain plain in her voice.

Li Ce coughed lightly at just the right moment, and the weight of his authority settled over the whole courtyard. Sweat poured down Physician Liu's back, and he finally played his real card. He had men carry in a stretcher. On it lay a middle-aged man, face white as paper, curled up like a shrimp; the pain was so extreme that his groans had broken into ragged gasps.

"This man has suffered stone strangury for seven full days. He cannot pass a single drop of urine; his whole body is swollen. Every fierce drug in the Imperial Medical Bureau has been tried, and he only vomits harder. Priestess Jiang—this is a death pattern, 'yin exhausted, yang collapsing.' Do you dare take him?"

Jiang Yuejian walked over. She didn't take his pulse. She lifted the man's inner garment, baring a pale, swollen lower back, and pressed hard three fingers' width beside the spine.

"Ah—!" Even unconscious, the man shrieked.

"That's no death pattern. That's a kidney abscess—pyonephrosis." Her eyes went sharp and professional in an instant. "A stone has sealed the outlet, and the urine has festered into pus inside the kidney. Without drainage, the toxins enter his blood—he won't last three hours."

"Drainage? Cut a hole in his lower back?!" The medical officers recoiled three steps. "The loins are the residence of the kidneys! A blade there is a death sentence!"

"Li Ce—I need a room that is absolutely clean, with candles lit in every corner!" Jiang Yuejian wheeled around. "And fetch that set of hollow long silver needles I had made. Quickly!"

Li Ce read the resolve in her eyes, rose to his feet, and gave the order in a steady voice. "Shadow guards. Do as Priestess Jiang says. Anyone who steps within one pace of that inner room, kill."

Inside the inner room, candlelight blazed. Jiang Yuejian took a porcelain bottle from her medicine chest and spread a pungent, cooling ointment thickly over the skin of the man's kidney region.

"Lord Liu, your datura pollen would stop this man's breathing. This is an essence of yellow azalea and toad venom, extracted with high-purity alcohol." She watched the skin's reaction as she explained. "It's called surface anesthesia. It numbs the nerve endings for a time."

Physician Liu watched the skin blanch white before his eyes and was struck speechless.

Jiang Yuejian drew a deep breath and picked up the hollow long silver needle, quenched in strong liquor—right hand on the needle, left hand marking the spot, her eyes carrying an almost cruel precision.

Pfft.

The long needle split skin and flesh, threaded cleanly through the layers of muscle, and pierced the taut, drum-tight capsule of the kidney. In that instant, a foul, turbid, rice-water-yellow pus erupted outward in a spray through the needle's hollow core.

"This... this is the filth inside the body?" Physician Liu sank to the ground, staring at the basin of reeking pus, his old face drained white.

"This is the pus all your ginseng soup couldn't dissolve." Watching the flow of pus slow, Jiang Yuejian calmly attached the drainage tube. "Now—his life is back."

As the pus drained away, the man's breathing—until now rapid as a bellows—miraculously steadied.

Exhausted, Jiang Yuejian walked out of the room and wiped the last of it from her hands. She looked at the old physicians standing there like statues and said coldly: "Medicine isn't a tool for dueling. It's for saving lives. Want to learn? Then take this Manual of Renal Anatomy and copy it out."

Physician Liu dropped to his knees with a thud. Staring at the basin of pus, old tears streaming: "I have practiced medicine my whole life and never knew such mysteries lay within the human frame... This old man is utterly convinced!"

Li Ce came over and handed her a warm handkerchief. He watched her fingertips trembling faintly from exhaustion—still warm from saving a life.

Then he looked around at the physicians clustered around her, begging to learn, faces full of worship—and the possessiveness in his chest flared to its peak. This woman: he would not allow her to stay one more day in this little temple where people came and went.