Qiu Yunru wasn't one to jump into a situation without a plan.
Though this all had progressed far faster and more dangerously than he had anticipated, he still wasn't unprepared.
With trembling lips, he rasped across the room to Li Chenyuan:
"Close your eyes...Lord Li."
"Why?!" Li Chenyuan shouted, struggling to free his legs from the Binding Ink. He looked both furious and panicked, hair coming loose everywhere from his carefully pinned style.
Qiu Yunru sighed. With the last of his energy, he shot out a low-level spiritual blast from a hand glued to the ground. It hit Li Chenyuan square in the chest, causing him to flail and fall backwards into the hallway, his feet still attached to the floor.
Quickly, Qiu Yunru selected an item from his inventory.
Out of the sky dropped a bright blue orb. It fell to the ground between Qiu Yunru's arms, and he looked up at the ceiling, even as it glowed so brightly beneath him that his eyes began to water just from the reflection.
Xie-Jie chirped with interest, crouching down to take a look at this thing. All the while, her scholar's brush continued to suck the life force out of Qiu Yunru's aching bones.
"What's this?" She cooed, turning it over with a finger.
As soon as she saw what it was, her snow-white face somehow went three shades paler. She screamed, the sound tearing through the air and almost making his ears bleed:
"You insolent--!"
She never had the opportunity to finish her sentence. In a matter of seconds and with great cracking noises, her body had turned to polished stone.
There was a an ear-splitting shattering noise, followed by the a high-pitched ringing as her scholar's brush shattered into a thousand shards above Qiu Yunru's back. Purple light flashed, then dimmed.
With his limbs at last free from the Binding Ink, Qiu Yunru collapsed onto the ground, his whole body trembling. Even though his life force had been freed and was slowly returning to his meridians with the shattering of Xie-Jie's weapon, he still felt as though he had been thrown into a trash compactor three times over. Every muscle in his body burned and shook uncontrollably.
What's more, the metallic, bitter taste of ink was flooding his mouth. Gross!
Lying there half-dead, Qiu Yunru called up the game menu and returned the Blue Three-Headed Snake Eye to his inventory. It disappeared from the ground, leaving the room dark, stinking of ink, and with a new, beautiful, but terrifyingly furious statue in the middle.
The last thing Qiu Yunru saw before losing consciousness was that kid, Li Chenyuan, crawling across the ground to him, splattered in ink and cursing, with eyes as wide as marbles.
__________________________
It wasn't long before he woke up in a different room.
Not much time must have passed. The smell of ink was still thick in the air, and the first thing he saw was Li Chenyuan's face hovering over his, that kid's snow-white cheeks still dotted with ink.
Li Chenyuan was incredibly focused. He was carefully wiping Qiu Yunru's face with a cloth. When Qiu Yunru's eyes fluttered open, Li Chenyuan startled and went red, nearly shoving Qiu Yunru's face and smudging it with ink once more. He opened his mouth and closed it, then opened it again, in the end saying nothing.
Then he jumped up and ran out of the room.
Qiu Yunru lay there, still unable to move well. He immediately felt a little morose. Had he just been abandoned in this state? He couldn't help but nurse a bit of self-pity. This really wasn't the kind of solitude he enjoyed, half on his deathbed!
"In here, my lord?"
"Yes, hurry up!"
Into the room hurried a man with a medicinal kit. He was clearly a doctor. On the chest of his robe he wore what Qiu Yunru recognized as the clan mark of the Li household. So this was a personal doctor of the Li family! Only the most affluent of families could afford such a service in their home.
Perhaps it was an effect of recently having half his life force drained and returned, but Qiu Yunru was grateful to the point of tears.
This kid hadn't abandoned him after all! What's more, he'd even run to get him good-quality medical assistance! What a good kid!
Seeing Qiu Yunru's eyes tear up, Li Chenyuan's face grew dark. He snapped his fan open and prodded the doctor's shoulder rudely. "Hurry up! If you don't fix him, you won't be welcome in this house anymore!"
Terrified, the doctor rushed to the bedside, kneeled down, and began examining Qiu Yunru thoroughly. After a moment, he stood and bowed his head to Li Chenyuan.
"His condition is stable, though my lord is correct; his meridians have been gravely injured. Though there is no permanent damage, he requires intensive recovery. Qi circulation, herbal remedies, and hot springs will be essential..."
Li Chenyuan nodded to a nearby servant. "Write it down!"
As the doctor rattled off treatment plans, Qiu Yunru managed to sit up in bed. Not longer after, by Li Chenyuan's orders, servants began to flood in with the various treatments prescribed.
Being fed medicine after medicine and checked again and again by the doctor, Qiu Yunru began to feel embarrassed. He couldn't help but think of a princess being doted on left and right by maidservants. Though he felt like shit, this really was a bit much, wasn't it? He was still alive and stable, wasn't he?
Meanwhile, Li Chenyuan paced back and forth on the other side of the room, snapping his fan open and closed again and again. He ran back and forth from the room to the kitchens to order more medicine, called for new robes, and hovered over the doctor's shoulder like a hawk, watching his every move. However, despite doing all this, he didn't say one word to Qiu Yunru.
Every time their eyes met, Li Chenyuan's face went a different shade of red, and he would turn away and run the other direction.
Qiu Yunru really couldn't understand this. Was it that he had done so poorly in taking care of that demon that Li Chenyuan couldn't stand to look at him longer than a moment? Or, was it that he had vomited all over the place? Surely, that must be it. It was quite an embarrassing and vulnerable thing that must have brought him five notches lower in Li Chenyuan's pampered eyes. Qiu Yunru sighed internally, a little depressed. He had truly wanted to make a good impression and rack up good Reputation Points on this first mission.
One person truly can't have everything--wasn't that always true?
After about ten minutes of being doted on until his stomach was full of medicine, someone burst into the door.
It was Fang Hai, his face sweaty, as though he'd run a good ways.