An hour later, Liu Haiping returned with a look of barely contained excitement, carrying a bloody human head in his hand. He came forward to report, “My lord, fortunately, I have fulfilled my duty. This is Heiguangzu’s head.”
Xie Xuanying glanced at the bloodied, mangled head. “Is there anyone else in the county office? Bring someone here.”
A guard dragged the county magistrate’s assistant over.
“Is this the wanted criminal Heiguangzu?” Xie Xuanying asked.
The assistant magistrate’s legs trembled as he fought down his fear and examined the head. He quickly nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” The coldness in Xie Xuanying’s voice eased slightly. “Have the rest of the bandits been brought to justice?”
Liu Haiping replied, “We kept one alive. All the rest were beheaded.”
“Find out exactly what the situation is aboard the ship. If there are still bandits there, deal with them as quickly as possible.” After a moment’s thought, he turned to the assistant magistrate. “Write a letter and have someone deliver it to the Regional Military Commission, to the Commander.”
The Regional Military Commission was one of the Three Provincial Offices.
“Yes, yes.” The assistant magistrate hurriedly agreed, inwardly breaking into a cold sweat on behalf of the Huai’an Chiliarch Offices.
Sending a letter straight to the head of the provincial military command, a second-rank official, at the slightest disagreement – truly befitting a young master of a marquis’s household. He gave people no room to breathe.
Still, the military and civil administrations were separate, so it would not implicate them anyway. What harm could there be in simply writing a letter for him?
With no pressure on him whatsoever, the county assistant decided to report everything exactly as it had happened.
“Oh, and one more thing.” Xie Xuanying stopped Liu Haiping and fixed his gaze on him. “Liu Zongqi, since I promised the people of the village that their past offenses would be forgiven, make sure there aren’t a few extra heads when the time comes. Understood?”
It was as though a bucket of cold water had been poured over Liu Haiping’s head. The excitement that had been running through him after earning the first and greatest credit suddenly vanished, and his mind cleared.
He wanted to distinguish himself. He wanted to rise through the ranks. And the number of heads he brought back would directly determine how much he could be promoted this time.
Even he could not guarantee that, once he had worked himself into a killing frenzy, he would not turn his blade on those fishermen.
After all, they were “indeed” bandits, weren’t they?
But Xie Xuanying had given his order. Anyone who still set their sights on those fishermen would be openly disregarding him.
Besides, even if one personally claimed a severed head, there was no guarantee that it would actually be credited to them.
As was customary among military commanders, keeping half of the heads for oneself was already considered enough of a reward for a promotion.
“I understand, sir.” Liu Haiping’s previously excited voice steadied. “I would never dare jeopardize your orders.”
“Go.” Xie Xuanying waved him away.
At this point, there was no longer anything he needed to do personally. Seeing that it was already getting late, he did not linger and hurried back to the inn to check on Yan Hongzhi.
Mo Dian told him, “Doctor Cheng prescribed a calming decoction. The master has already gone to sleep.”
“I’m terribly sorry that he was frightened.” Xie Xuanying was filled with guilt. “Take good care of him. What about the others?”
Mo Dian’s expression darkened. “Guard Zhao has already… Guard Qian’s arm was severed. Doctor Cheng said she would try to sew it back on.”
Xie Xuanying froze. “What do you mean, sew it back on?”
“Literally, sew the severed arm back in place.” Mo Dian was confused himself. “She said that if they’re lucky, he’ll still be able to use his right hand. If it doesn’t work, they’ll have to remove it again. She asked whether he wanted to try, and Guard Qian agreed.”
A severed arm could actually be sewn back on and used again? Xie Xuanying found the idea utterly inconceivable. “Where are they?”
“In the guest room.” Mo Dian led him there. “Doctor Cheng said she needed somewhere clean and well lit.”
Xie Xuanying could already see her.
The guest-room windows were open, and candles had been lit all around the room. Cheng Danruo had removed the Daoist robe she had been wearing over her clothes, revealing a simple dress underneath, but she was wearing a square cloth cap on her head, which looked rather odd.
In the flickering candlelight, she held a needle and thread, stitching a severed arm back together.
Li Bowu stood beside her, holding a candle stand high to illuminate her work.
Both of them were wearing cloth masks over their faces, though Xie Xuanying had no idea what purpose they served.
For a moment, Xie Xuanying hesitated, unsure whether he should speak. But Li Bowu had already spotted him.
“Young Master.”
Only then did Xie Xuanying ask, “What is the situation?”
“Doctor Cheng is stitching the wound.” Li Bowu’s expression was rather peculiar as he recounted what he had seen and heard. “She used iron nails to reconnect the broken bones, then used silk thread to stitch the nerves back together. She’s stitching the flesh now.”
Xie Xuanying frowned.
In truth, stitching wounds with needle and thread had existed since ancient times. But people had discovered that, rather than stitching flesh back together, it was easier to survive by sacrificing a severed limb and stopping the bleeding. This was especially true in Guard Qian’s case. His arm was almost completely severed, and as long as the bleeding was stopped, his life could be saved. There was little reason to take the risk.
“Miss Cheng,” he could not help asking, “how confident are you?”
Cheng Danruo looked up and temporarily set down the needle holder. She rolled her stiff, aching neck and sighed. “Not very. I’m just going to give it a try.”
Attempting a limb replantation in ancient times was, frankly, an exercise in futility.
She had only suggested it because she was excited at the rare opportunity.
She had never seen a severed limb in such ideal condition. The sword had been extremely sharp, leaving a clean cross-section, and a quarter of the arm was still attached. Qian Ming had bound it securely himself, so the limb had not suffered much crushing or compression, and the wound was relatively uncontaminated.
When he was brought back, less than half an hour had passed since the injury. Qian Ming was also only twenty-one, strong and in excellent physical condition.
That was why she had ventured to ask.
She had not expected Qian Ming to be willing to take the risk.
He had explained why.
“I began studying martial arts under my master when I was six. I spent five years at his home chopping wood and carrying water before he taught me a rudimentary form of spear fighting. Later, when my junior fellow apprentice got into trouble, I took a knife wound meant for him. My left hand was never as nimble afterward, and only then did my master teach me his own secret saber technique.
“If I lose my right hand, I’ll never be able to work as a guard again. Doctor Cheng, my mother is getting old, and my daughter is still young. My elder brother died of illness two years ago, leaving behind my sister-in-law and nephew…
“Even if there’s only a one-in-ten chance, I’m willing to take it.”
Every family has its own troubles, and life was difficult in countless ways in ancient times.
Grateful for the way he had risked his life earlier, Cheng Danruo decided to take the risk with him.
Although limb replantation was a high-risk, complicated, and technically demanding type of surgery, it had one advantage: it did not require sophisticated equipment.
There was no need for electronic devices. Simple surgical instruments had already been made, and substitutes for surgical sutures could also be found.
The textile industry was highly developed in Jiangnan, where all kinds of thread were available. Skilled embroiderers could even separate thread by hand into strands finer than a human hair.
The same was true of suturing.
Suturing tiny blood vessels required a microscope, which certainly did not exist in ancient times. But many of the embroideries produced at the time were incredibly lifelike, with details so fine that every individual strand could be seen. Stitching blood vessels could hardly be more demanding. This was how embroiderers trained their eyes – and how they eventually ruined them.
Cheng Danruo had been handling needlework since childhood, and she also knew how to take care of her eyes. Her eyesight was still reasonably good.
As for anesthesia, ancient China was not actually lacking in it. There were both topical and oral methods.
Most importantly, she had the foundation required for surgery: a complete knowledge of human anatomy stored in her mind.
There was an intriguing coincidence here.
It was now the seventeenth year of the Taiping era, corresponding to 1558. Fifteen years earlier, in 1543, Andreas Vesalius, a professor of anatomy at the University of Padua in Italy, had published On the Fabric of the Human Body, laying the foundations of modern anatomy.
Cheng Danruo herself had been born in 1543 in this life – the very same year Copernicus died.
In other words, performing an operation in 1557 was not quite as far ahead of its time or as inconceivable as it might seem.
Cheng Danruo decided it was worth the gamble. After all, amputation carried considerable risks of its own, and the patient could still die from excessive blood loss or infection.
After briefly resting her eyes and neck, she returned to the suturing.
One stitch after another, the flickering candlelight illuminating the small area before her.
Every now and then, she looked up at Qian Ming.
He had not only been given anesthetic at the wound site; to keep him still, he had also been given datura to swallow for sedation and pain relief, leaving him somewhat groggy. But traditional Chinese anesthesia was not as effective as a true anesthetic, and he would occasionally suffer a sudden spasm of pain, causing his arm to jerk and interfering with the suturing.
“Hold him down,” she instructed.
A long, strong hand pressed down on Qian Ming’s arm.
Cheng Danruo looked up in surprise.
Xie Xuanying explained, “I sent Guard Li and the others out on patrol.”
His use of Liu Haiping and the others did not mean that he trusted them. With his teacher staying at the inn and the situation still unclear, Xie Xuanying could hardly feel safe enough to simply go to sleep. He had divided the guards into shifts to patrol the area and guard against any troublemakers who might take advantage of the night.
There was no way to be certain that the pirate gang had been completely wiped out.
It was always better to be cautious.
However, after a full day of rushing around, Xie Xuanying was exhausted as well. Afraid that he might fall asleep, he decided it was better to find something to do.
Cheng Danruo put down her needle and thread. “Young Master Xie, you’ve been out in the elements all day. You may have picked up fengxie, and approaching a patient without taking precautions could cause fengdu.”
Fengdu, or “wind toxin,” was the traditional Chinese medical term for tetanus.
When performing surgery in ancient times, tetanus was an unavoidable problem. The only option was to maintain as much cleanliness as possible and sterilize instruments with high heat.
“Please change into a clean set of clothes before coming back,” she said. “Thank you.”
Xie Xuanying was slightly embarrassed and quickly withdrew his hand. “Just a moment.”
He hurried out to change, while Cheng Danruo picked up the prepared gauze, quickly wiped the wound, and rinsed it with the saline solution she had prepared.
A quarter of an hour later, he returned wearing a blue-green robe.
“Hold him down.” Cheng Danruo looked up. Seeing that he was wearing green, she took another couple of glances. “We’re almost done.”
“Mm.”
Xie Xuanying pressed down on Qian Ming’s shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced around him, slightly puzzled. There were no bloodstains on him. What was she looking at?
Cheng Danruo looked away. Afraid that he might still be thinking about what had happened earlier, she deliberately said, “Young Master Xie, you treat the soldiers like brothers. You must be very well regarded by your men.”
Xie Xuanying pursed his lips. “I belong to the Embroidered Uniform Guard. I’ve never commanded soldiers.”
Cheng Danruo was surprised, but since suturing and tying knots had become muscle memory, her hands did not slow down in the slightest. “I really couldn’t tell.”
“I studied poetry, literature, and the Confucian classics under my teacher. My martial arts are only for keeping myself fit.”
After answering, Xie Xuanying finally realized how strange this was.
Whenever he spoke with women in the past, he had inevitably been careful with his words, worrying that he might be discourteous or offend them. Yet speaking with her felt completely natural, as relaxed as chatting with another man.
Cheng Danruo, however, noticed nothing unusual. She glanced at him and thought to herself: So this was his first time going into battle, and he managed to wipe out an entire band of pirates without even getting a scratch?
Did he have to be this ridiculously overpowered?!
Once he had finished answering, Xie Xuanying could not help asking, “I know that deep wounds from blades can be stitched closed with needle and thread, but I’ve never heard of a method for reattaching a severed limb. Miss Cheng, will this really work?”
It was not that he distrusted Cheng Danruo. It was simply that the human body contained countless channels and nerves; reattaching a limb was surely not as simple as merely stitching flesh back together.
“It can be done.” Cheng Danruo paused, then suddenly said, “I tried it when I was eight.”
He stared at her in astonishment.
She continued, “The Cold Dew Rebellion is widely known, but around Datong, the Oirat tribes frequently launched incursions. If an attack was not serious enough, the capital might never even hear about it.
“When I was eight, I went to the countryside with my mother to visit my maternal grandparents. As it happened, we were caught up in one of these attacks. All the able-bodied young men in the village went out to defend it, including my maternal uncle. But the next morning, he was dragged back, his body already torn to pieces.
“The uncle who had taught me to ride a donkey. The only uncle in the family who had ever learned martial arts. The uncle who had praised me after my first time killing someone. I had known him for less than half a month, and then he appeared before me covered in blood.
“He knew he was unlikely to survive and begged his clansmen to find his severed leg and arm so that he could be buried with his body intact.
“One of my cousins searched through the pile of corpses and found his leg and arm.
“By then, I had already learned enough acupuncture to stop his bleeding. When I saw that the severed limbs were still in reasonably good condition, I secretly slipped into my uncle’s room and asked him, ‘Would you like me to stitch your limbs back on?’
“‘Yes,’ my uncle said. ‘Let me leave this world whole.’”
She had also been fortunate. So many people in the village had died that everyone could only focus on those with minor injuries. Someone as severely wounded as her uncle was simply left to wait for death.
No one stopped her, so she began.
“I stitched his severed hand and leg back on.” Once she had finished reconnecting the nerves, Cheng Danruo began working on the skin. That was the simplest part, and she did it quickly.
“The nerves in his hand recovered their function, and he could even bend his fingers. But the wound on his leg was too large. I wasn’t strong enough, and I didn’t secure the bones properly. The next day, the wound swelled, and the blood could no longer circulate back. I had no choice but to cut it open again. It was probably then that the fengdu entered the wound. He died that very night.”
The room fell silent.
She loosely tied off the final knot, completing the last step, then stood and smiled.
“That said, no one blamed me. My grandfather even praised me for being filial, saying that I had at least allowed my uncle to leave this world with dignity.”
Come to think of it, her father was somewhat old-fashioned, but her mother was a typical woman from Datong and was not nearly as bound by such taboos.
“So afterward, I stitched up the bodies of another maternal uncle, an aunt, and one of my cousins.”
For a woman to touch a corpse naturally violated the conventions of propriety. But gathering and preparing the body of a family member for burial was unquestionably considered understandable.
Besides, the northern frontier saw frequent warfare and was not as strict about such matters as Jiangnan or Shandong. They were all neighbors and relatives, and as long as no one was harmed, at most people would mutter to themselves that the girl had an odd temperament, and that would be the end of it.
Filial duty came first. Even Chen Zhixiao himself would have had nothing to say, let alone Xie Xuanying, who was by no means a rigid or old-fashioned man.
He fell silent for a moment before saying hoarsely, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all in the past.” Cheng Danruo looked at the unconscious Qian Ming and sighed softly. “I hear Guard Qian’s elderly mother is still alive, and that he has a wife and children at home. I hope we can make it work this time.”
“He was injured because of me. If anything happens to him, the Xie household will naturally take care of his family.” With such a large marquis’s household, there would be no shortage of ways to provide for them. Xie Xuanying did not consider it a problem. Instead, his attention was drawn to her cheek.
Earlier, half her face had been hidden in shadow, and he had failed to notice the scabbed-over wound on her right cheek.
Memories of what had happened during the day suddenly came flooding back, and Xie Xuanying’s heart sank.
Could it be… that she had been wounded by the arrow he fired?
