Chapter 171: Untitled
After handing over Saito Dosan’s letter of succession and will to Yuan Ye, Izumi Heiji seemed to have shed a great burden. Mental relief and physical exhaustion appeared almost simultaneously, his aged face turning ashen in an instant.
Yuan Ye couldn’t bother to ask for more details; he first needed to treat his and A Qian’s and A Yu’s wounds.
A Qian and A Yu’s injuries were lighter, clearly having received good protection or not being the main targets of the enemy’s attack. They were not seriously harmed, but Izumi Heiji’s injuries were extremely severe.
He had four sword wounds alone, seven various sores resembling arrow wounds, and countless other abrasions. Furthermore, all his wounds had been submerged in water. Now, the flesh around these wounds was curled and swollen, appearing a dead fish white. Even after some emergency treatment like bandaging and cauterization, they had already begun to emit a faint smell of decay.
Izumi Heiji also looked down at his own gruesome wounds, no longer holding much hope of survival. After a day and a night of fighting and breaking through the mountains, he had waded through rivers multiple times to evade enemy pursuit. His wounds were contaminated, and he was already very old, his resistance far from what it was in his youth. Wound rot and suppuration were unavoidable, and he was practically as good as dead.
His ability to find Yuan Ye and deliver the letter of succession into his hands this time was both fortunate, as he wouldn’t have to drag his severely wounded body to Kiyosu Castle while being pursued, allowing him to complete his mission with ease. It was also a form of “entrusting his child” in a different sense – delivering the letter of succession to Oda Nobunaga would undoubtedly be a great merit, which should help A Man and the others receive better treatment from Yuan Ye after his death.
At his age, he had long since come to terms with life and death. He was about to advise Yuan Ye not to spend too much effort on him, suggesting a perfunctory bandage would suffice. However, to his surprise, Yuan Ye observed his wounds for a moment with a very calm expression, then looked up and said to him, “It’s not a big problem, it’s just… it will be painful. Old sir, you’ll need to bear with it.”
Izumi Heiji couldn’t help but look at his wounds again, asking strangely, “These wounds can be treated?”
“Yes, they can,” Yuan Ye replied with a smile to reassure him. Then, he turned to A Qing and instructed, “Prepare physiological saline and allicin!”
He had invested a great deal of effort in the army. To minimize casualties as much as possible, he had racked his brains to treat external wounds, even attempting to produce penicillin through crude methods. However, the effectiveness of crude penicillin was not as good as imagined; it contained too many impurities that were difficult to remove, had extremely low yields, was troublesome to use, and could easily kill the patient instead of healing them. Therefore, he settled for allicin, another crude medicine that could also fight bacteria and reduce inflammation, even though it was less effective than penicillin.
The main reason was that allicin was simple to produce. It only required peeling and crushing garlic, adding an appropriate amount of clean water, and heating it rapidly. The allicin would then be steamed out along with the water vapor, followed by condensation and purification. With his current medicine preparation conditions, the yield of allicin was more suitable for the army and more cost-effective.
Izumi Heiji didn’t understand these details. Yuan Ye was essentially a stranger to him, and he was quite skeptical. However, Yuan Ye had entered his “Mongolian divine doctor” mode and no longer cared about the patient’s thoughts. His casual remark was merely a habit to comfort the patient. Izumi Heiji’s wounds were actually quite tricky, so he directly resorted to potent medicine.
After carefully washing his hands, he began to clean Izumi Heiji’s wounds with physiological saline. Any necrotic or dead tissue was simply cut away. Then, depending on the depth of the wound, he applied allicin ointment or packed the wound with gauze soaked in allicin solution.
As Yuan Ye’s personal bodyguard who had been by his side for a long time, A Qing had cooperated with him many times. With just a gesture, he knew what Yuan Ye needed. To outsiders, it looked like telepathy, a strange sense of harmony.
Izumi Heiji silently watched A Qing for a while, feeling that this “granddaughter” had changed a lot. Then, wave after wave of intense pain struck him. He endured it with all his might to avoid groaning aloud, which prevented him from continuing to observe A Qing’s changes. Allicin was not a very good wound medicine; applying it directly to a wound would make one wish for death. However, this was how things were in ancient times. Anything that could save a life was good, even if it caused pain.
Soon, the overwhelming pain made him groggy and unable to think. Coupled with the exhaustion from continuous fighting and fleeing, which had depleted a large amount of his energy, he gradually fell asleep.
…
Izumi Heiji’s sleep was not peaceful. In his daze, he first felt intensely cold, then had medicine and soup constantly poured into him. At times, he seemed to hear someone calling him from a great distance, and at other times, he felt himself bouncing up and down, as if in the clouds.
When he slowly woke up, he opened his eyes to see his granddaughter, whom he had raised since childhood and the legitimate heir of the Kōka Life Preservation Style, A Man, sitting beside him with her legs crossed, dozing off with her chin in her hand. After looking at his granddaughter, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time and who had already established her own household, for a while, he turned to look around and realized he seemed to be lying in a tightly enclosed ox cart.
He lay there for a while, then slowly clenched his fist, feeling a slight recovery of strength. He used his single arm to support himself and tried to sit up. This immediately startled A Man. A Man instantly woke up, looked at him with surprise for a moment, then quickly stepped forward to help him up, sighing with relief, “You’re finally awake. If you slept any longer, I would have thought you were kicking the bucket!”
If Yuan Ye hadn’t repeatedly assured her that sleeping for so long was normal and a natural sign of recovery, she might have already started preparing a coffin.
Izumi Heiji didn’t immediately respond to his talkative granddaughter. He first gently pressed on his deepest wound and felt no swelling. He was surprised that Yuan Ye had truly pulled him back from the brink of death. A Man, seeing his expression, knew what he was thinking. She immediately raised her Dou Dou Eyebrows and said proudly, “That guy does have some medical skill. He could at least rank in the top three in the world.”
Without waiting for Izumi Heiji’s reply, she remembered something else. She immediately lifted the curtain, stuck her head out of the cart, and shouted. Soon, the ox cart stopped. Then, she turned back to Izumi Heiji and said, “You must be hungry, right? I’ll have them make you something to eat. But you can’t eat anything fancy right now, just rice porridge to nourish your stomach. Make do with that for now! When you’re better, I’ll stew an old hen for you!”
Izumi Heiji wasn’t really hungry. In fact, his mouth was full of the smell of garlic, making him feel nauseous and without appetite. Nevertheless, he nodded while leaning against the cart wall. Then, he immediately asked, “Where are we going?”
“Xin Wanjin,” A Man replied directly. “Our territory!”
“Your territory…” Izumi Heiji repeated the words, then said softly, “Lord Yuan Ye’s domain, right?”
“No, it’s our territory,” A Man said unceremoniously. “I’m also a member of the Yuan Ye Family, and I have a share in Xin Wanjin. If you ask him, he’ll admit it, so it’s our territory.”
Izumi Heiji’s expression slowly turned serious. He looked at A Man for a moment before saying in a deep voice, “We are the Kōka Group. We only accept employment, and we never…”
A Man was no longer buying his act. She waved her hand and interrupted him, “Enough, enough. He’s different. I haven’t lost my freedom, and he’s never asked me to do anything against my will. Besides, only A Qing and I have faced life and death with him. If others begged to be his vassals, he wouldn’t even accept them, let alone you. He has no designs on you.”
She paused, then added, “A Qing and I are exceptions, and he doesn’t truly see us as vassals. We are more like his family.”
After speaking, she hesitated again, feeling that her words might be ambiguous. She quickly added, “Not that kind of family; I haven’t slept with him. I’m like a family member who’s a good friend. Old man… uh, Grandpa, you understand, right?”
Izumi Heiji looked up and examined her carefully. He found that she had grown up a bit, but her appearance hadn’t changed much, especially her Dou Dou Eyebrows, which were still the same. Paired with her small, round face, they were still very amusing, making her look like a large Shiba Inu. He couldn’t help but nod and say, “I believe that.”
His granddaughter had never relied on her beauty to win people over, and her personality was wicked and overbearing. He completely understood why she hadn’t developed romantic feelings with Yuan Ye.
A Man scratched her face, feeling that her old man’s words had a strange, sarcastic tone. But he was injured, so she didn’t argue with him. Instead, she began to complain again, “Don’t just talk about me. Did those two little brats… little guys, A Qian and A Yu, deliver the message I asked them to give you? I told you long ago to come find me, why didn’t you listen at all? How much money did that Saito Dosan guy give you? Look at yourself! You’re already old, can’t you give me less to worry about?”
Izumi Heiji sighed silently, realizing that A Man’s appearance hadn’t changed much, and her personality was still the same as before, just as annoying. He could only shake his head and say, “To take someone’s money is to avert their disaster. We are the Kōka Group; we can’t tarnish our reputation. As long as we’ve taken the money, we must do our best.”
“Fine!” A Man waved her hand again. She didn’t argue with this old fossil. “Anyway, you’re like this now. From now on, I’ll support you! Didn’t you always want to establish a small, humble village? I’ve already spoken with him. When we get to Xin Wanjin, he’ll allocate some land to you. You can do whatever you want. From now on, you can just retire peacefully!”
“He… is willing to give you land?” Izumi Heiji couldn’t help but be surprised again.
A Man felt smug inside but maintained a nonchalant expression, acting indifferent. “A piece of land is nothing. Even if you wanted to lie in his residence and be supported, with my relationship with him, he wouldn’t have any objections.”
Izumi Heiji fell silent for a moment. A piece of land… the lifelong pursuit of so many people…
However, after thinking about it, he felt that since he woke up, he had only heard A Man’s incessant chatter. He still knew nothing about the Yuan Ye Family. He immediately said to A Man, “Tell me about Xin Wanjin, and about Lord Yuan Ye!”
He wanted to compare Yuan Ye and Saito Dosan to see who was more outstanding.
