A master of both medicine and martial arts, he picked up a beautiful CEO as his wife.

Those human bones tore a hole in the atmosphere of the entire alchemy gathering.

Ji Qingyao stood up from the main seat. She walked down the stone steps to the stone table, picked up the grayish-white object with two fingers, and examined it against the sunlight for a long time.

"Three years ago," she finally spoke, "this ingredient was something my father infiltrated. In that year, out of 182 medical families, not a single one stood out."

She placed the bone back on the table, turned around, and for the first time, looked directly at Ye Feng.

"Three years ago, my father said something. He said that in the end, there are two kinds of people on the path of medicine: those who know medicine and those who know people."

"A good doctor is one who recognizes the medicine."

"Only those who know people—" she paused, "are worthy of entering the gates of Medicine King Valley."

The audience erupted in uproar.

Ye Feng smiled and said, "You're too kind. I just have good eyesight."

"Then let's try your eyes again."

Ji Qingyao raised her hand and waved it behind her. The white curtain hanging behind the stone platform slowly opened. Behind the curtain, there was a wooden couch.

A person was lying on the tatami mat.

He was a young man in his early twenties, covered with a thin blanket, his face a pale, ashen color from being deprived of sunlight for so long. His eyes were open, staring straight at the sky, but there was nothing in them—no pain, no fear, no spirit.

His chest rose and fell very slowly.

"This is my younger brother," Ji Qingyao said. "He is my father's only son, Ji Yunzhou. In the sect, we address each other as senior and junior. Three years ago, he went up the mountain to pick a medicinal herb and fell off a cliff that was thirty feet high."

"When he was brought back, his pulse was still there, and he was still breathing. But from that day on, he couldn't move, couldn't speak, and couldn't eat. For three years, he's been kept alive by medicine."

"In the past three years, I've consulted with every renowned medical lineage in the secluded world." She paused for a moment, "Ninety-eight in total, and they all said the same thing."

"What did you say?"

"The person is still alive, but dead."

The audience was eerily quiet.

Many have heard of this incident—the only son of the Medicine King Gu Gu Master is the most embarrassing scar on the reclusive medical community during these three years. The family most skilled in healing in the world cannot cure their own son.

"At every Pill Gathering, I bring him up." Ji Qingyao's voice was still as cold as ever, but the last sentence trembled slightly. "The more people watch, the greater my hope becomes. It's been three years."

She looked at Ye Feng.

"If you want to leave the field, I'll let you leave."

"Do you dare touch this person?"

Ye Feng didn't answer immediately. He walked over and squatted down beside the bed. First, he looked at the eyes. Then he flipped the eyelids over. Then he felt the pulse in the neck, wrist, and feet.

Finally, he gently placed his palm on the back of Ji Yunzhou's neck and closed his eyes. The entire audience of two thousand held their breath, waiting.

Take a breath.

Ten breaths.

A stick of incense.

The sun had already begun to set. Ye Feng suddenly opened his eyes.

"He can hear."

Ji Qingyao's body jolted violently.

"What did you say?"

"I said," Ye Feng stood up, brushing the dust off his knees, "that for the past three years, he has been able to hear you all talking."

"Impossible!" an elderly man with white hair exclaimed from the crowd. "I personally examined his Shen Ting acupoint, and there was no reaction whatsoever! His soul has long since dissipated!"

"His soul hasn't dissipated," Ye Feng said. "It's been severed."

"Truncate?"

"A person's entire body, from the brain to the hands and feet, is connected by a single thread." Ye Feng stretched out his hand, gesturing from the back of his neck down to his waist. "This thread of his is broken two-thirds of the way down here. The remaining third is still connected. That's why he can hear, see, and think."

"But he couldn't move a single finger, nor could he utter a single word."

Three years.

A gasp went up in the stands. The gasp spread like wildfire, until the entire audience gasped in shock.

An elderly gentleman in the front row accidentally knocked over a teacup, scalding water splashing onto half of his leg. He was oblivious, staring intently at the pale face on the couch.

He had visited the child three years prior. He remembered shaking his head and saying "Please accept my condolences" to Master Ji in front of the child.

He remembers that after he said those words, he turned around to wash his hands and chatted with the person next to him for a bit about this year's rainfall.

Among all those people in the stands, the same thing was on their minds at that moment—over the past three years, each of them had stood by this couch and uttered a judgment before these open eyes.

That wasn't a living dead. It was a living person who had been trapped inside her own body for three whole years. Ji Qingyao's face was as white as paper.

For the past three years, she carried him through the hidden world, and every time she heard people say in front of him, "He's still alive, but he's dead."

every time.

"How did you know?" Her voice trembled uncontrollably.

"Because when I pressed down on the back of his neck," Ye Feng said, "his heart rate increased by six beats per minute. Pain, fear, or anxiety don't usually increase by only six beats per minute. That meant he wanted to speak."

Ji Qingyao turned around, her back to everyone, her shoulders shaking violently twice. When she turned back, the water on her face was still wet, but her eyes were steady.

She walked to the bedside and tucked in the thin blanket that had slipped down for her junior brother. She had done that action for three years, so much so that she didn't need to look at it.

"Can it be cured?"

"I can accept it," Ye Feng said, "but I need to make three things clear."

"you say."

"First, for this connection, I need to use my inner energy to guide the way, and I need to rely on a single external yin energy to suppress his meridians. I need to borrow both of these from elsewhere."

He turned around and looked towards the stands. The woman in the white shirt had already stood up and was walking down the stone steps towards the platform.

Two thousand eyes were fixed on her. She walked slowly, her back ramrod straight, her heels clicking softly on the bluestone.

Walking up to Ye Feng, she naturally offered him her wrist.

"And the second one?" Ji Qingyao asked.

Ye Feng took her hand.

"Secondly, I will use three needles to insert into the third, fifth, and seventh vertebrae of his neck. He will feel pain when these three needles are inserted."

"How painful is it?"

"I'll pay him back for the pain I've endured for three years."

Ji Qingyao's throat moved slightly: "The third item?" Ye Feng's gaze fell back on the pair of eyes on the bed that remained open and empty.

He bent down, leaned closer, and asked, word by word:

"Ji Yunzhou, can you hear me?"

"I'm going to heal you. It will hurt a lot. And it might not be curable."

"If you'd like—"

"Blink."

Those eyes stared blankly at the sky. One breath. Two breaths. Five breaths. Ten breaths. Some people in the audience had already turned their heads away.

The fourteenth breath. Those eyes, their eyelids, trembled very slightly and very slowly.

Close.

Open your eyes.

Ji Qingyao gasped and covered her mouth, tears streaming down her face.