The air in the hall seemed to freeze.
The young emperor, Li Chengqian, rubbed his eyes and looked again at Li Ce, still frozen in a jumping-rope pose. A trace of alarm entered his voice. “Imperial Uncle... are you... performing an exorcism?”
Behind him, the imperial physicians erupted. Their leader, Physician Liu, nearly seventy, pointed at the rope in Jiang Yuejian's hand, his beard trembling with anger.
“Absurd! Utterly absurd! His Highness possesses the exalted body of a golden dragon. He should be resting quietly and taking ginseng and deer-antler tonics. You demonic Daoist... making him perform such... such shockingly vulgar movements! If you damage his vital energy, can you bear the consequences?”
Li Ce slowly lowered the rope, his handsome face black as ink. He didn't immediately lose his temper. Instead, he instinctively looked at Jiang Yuejian—without realizing that he was waiting for her response.
Unhurriedly, she set down her bowl of water and stood. Somehow, she wore those plain white Daoist robes with the authority of a doctor's white coat.
“Vital energy?” Jiang Yuejian gave a cold laugh, her gaze scraping across Physician Liu's face like a scalpel. “Lord Liu, is it? When you say recuperation, are you planning to prescribe Five-Stone Powder to calm him, with some dragon bone and oyster shell for a good strong tonic?”
Physician Liu puffed out his chest. “Precisely! A method of strengthening the root and nourishing the vital essence from the Treatise on Cold Damage—”
“Strengthen my ass.” Jiang Yuejian cut him off, her tongue at full venom. “He has a blocked ureter. Your dragon bone and oyster shell are full of calcium. Apart from putting more stones in his belly and making him hurt so badly he wants to kill himself, they won't do a fucking thing!”
“You... you ignorant girl! How dare you insult the prescriptions of the sages!” The physicians bristled with outrage.
Jiang Yuejian didn't retreat an inch. Pointing at Li Ce, she addressed the young emperor and the physicians. “You call him a golden dragon. To me, he's currently a broken sink with a failed drainage system. Your medicine is cement poured into that sink. My jump rope, on the other hand—”
She picked it up and snapped it hard through the air.
“Uses gravity to shake loose the cement blocking him. Since Lord Liu thinks I know nothing about medicine, tell me: when His Highness was in such agony last night that he wanted to kill someone, which of you did anything besides kneel outside and kowtow? Who dared to drain even one drop of urine?”
The entire hall fell silent.
Drain urine? Such a filthy procedure, even involving... private parts? The imperial physicians hadn't dared so much as imagine it.
“D-drain it?” The young emperor only half understood. He looked at Li Ce. “Imperial Uncle, did she really get it out?”
The corner of Li Ce's eye twitched violently. Hearing Jiang Yuejian announce that mortifying experience so openly made him want to gouge out every pair of eyes in the room.
Yet he felt the unprecedented ease around his waist. Then he looked at Jiang Yuejian's clear, resolute, even faintly scornful eyes.
Suddenly, he spoke, his voice low and commanding.
“Physician Liu, my... my condition is under Priestess Jiang's control. All of you, withdraw. Return to the Imperial Medical Bureau and find out what ‘stone strangury’ and ‘expelling stones through vibration’ mean. If you cannot, tomorrow you will all jump rope outside Shangqing Temple.”
“Your Highness!” Physician Liu tried to argue.
“Out.” The single word carried Li Ce's long-absent killing edge.
The physicians scrambled from the hall. At one look from Li Ce, guards escorted the young emperor back to the palace as well.
The doors closed again.
Li Ce turned and stared at Jiang Yuejian. Sweat had soaked his inner shirt, molding it to his heaving chest with a wild, masculine beauty.
“Jiang Yuejian, you broadcast my private affairs in public?”
She shrugged, utterly unmoved by his murderous aura. “Doctors don't see secrets. We see cases. Well? Are you jumping or not? We were interrupted. Add another hundred.”
Li Ce glared at her for a long time. Then, as though surrendering to fate, he picked up the rope again.
“Jiang Yuejian, if I really do jump that damned stone out, what... what do you intend to do?”
She crouched, drew an exquisite red brocade pouch from her robes, and weighed it in her hand. Her smile was that of a devil with ill intentions.
“Nothing much. I'll put it in here and give it to you as a token of love. Then you can look at it every day and remember: this is the firstborn son you personally gestated through your terrible habits.”
Li Ce stumbled, nearly tripping over the rope.
“Jiang! Yue! Jian!”