After Death, I Became My Shijie’s Palm-Sized Birdie – Chapter 59
by Little PandaA Taste of Sweetness
One kiss, and she goes soft all over.
Wen Qiwu had only just returned with the medicine when violent coughing erupted from her shijie’s room. She hurried inside — and was greeted by a scene so absurd she very nearly laughed out loud.
Her shijie lay propped against the headboard, her usual pallor flushed faintly pink from coughing. Her frame swayed, so fragile it looked as though a single touch might shatter her, and when the ailing beauty opened mist-veiled eyes toward her, Wen Qiwu felt her heart miss a beat.
But something about the picture was strange. The way she rested against the bed was unnaturally stiff — as if she had frozen there, not daring to move so much as an inch.
“Shijie, how did you—” Wen Qiwu’s voice cut off mid-word. Her eyes went wide, lips trembling, disbelief and joy welling up together.
A small white ball of fluff was perched on her shijie’s head. In the past, any bird that tried such a thing would have been tossed out long ago — but Yun Heng sat without daring to stir, terrified that the little white dumpling might topple off.
“Mother…?”
No. No, that wasn’t right.
A thread of sorrow crept into Wen Qiwu’s expression. Mother would never do something like landing on her shijie’s head. This could only be Qingtuan.
“Ah Que…” Yun Heng called to her softly, helplessness threading her voice. Ever since learning that Qingtuan was the Phoenix Lord’s avatar, she wouldn’t have dared offend this bird for the world. Her one fear was that when the Phoenix Lord one day came back and looked through its memories, her standing in Her Majesty’s heart would sink even lower.
And if that lady then took Ah Que away with her, she’d be left without so much as a place to weep.
“Could you please ask her to come down?” A trace of uncharacteristic caution edged Yun Heng’s tone — she had actually brought herself to say “please.”
Qingtuan was probably still airing its grievances over being locked in that cage.
Wen Qiwu came back to herself. The sight of her shijie like this wrung a helpless laugh out of her after all. She wiped away the tears that had slipped down, then extended a hand toward Qingtuan. “Come onto my hand, all right? Shijie’s the patient here — don’t bully her.”
Qingtuan cocked its head and studied her for a while. Perhaps it was the bond of bloodline — Qingtuan might look fierce with Wen Qiwu, but set beside how it treated anyone else, it was already being extraordinarily gentle with her. At the very least, when it pecked her, it never truly used force.
Deciding, perhaps, that Wen Qiwu looked rather pitiful in her little state of distress, Qingtuan finally unstuck its claws and toddled into her palm.
Yun Heng let out a breath. Some of the tension left her as she leaned back against the side of the bed, watching her shimei gather Qingtuan up.
Qingtuan didn’t cling to Wen Qiwu the way other birds did — standing obediently in her hand at all was already a mark of its indulgence. It hopped from her palm up to her shoulder, then touched its beak lightly to her cheek, almost like a word of comfort.
Wen Qiwu’s eyes grew hot. She reached up to stroke the feathers along Qingtuan’s wing, and for once Qingtuan didn’t peck her, simply standing on her shoulder for a good while.
“Ah Que, the Phoenix Lord can’t stop worrying about you. She told me that for your sake, she would fight her way out of there with everything she has.” Yun Heng gently took Wen Qiwu’s hand and drew her to her side. “Look — Qingtuan has come back. Perhaps it won’t be long before the Phoenix Lord does too.”
“Just wait a little longer. Your mother is remarkably strong — a promise from her lips will be kept, without fail.” Yun Heng patted her shimei’s back softly.
Wen Qiwu clung tightly to her shijie and managed a choked “Mm.” Qingtuan had been left behind by Mother to protect her — all she could do was comfort herself with the brighter thought: if Qingtuan hadn’t vanished, then perhaps that meant Mother was still out there.
Yun Heng soothed her, coaxing her a long while before the gloom between her brows finally began to lift.
Qingtuan, restless by nature, hopped down from her shoulder the moment it saw that Wen Qiwu had stopped crying.
“Chirp!” Qingtuan called at Wen Qiwu, then strutted to the door, bumped it open, and marched out.
The meaning was clear: it was going out for a stroll, and would be back in a bit.
Having understood, Wen Qiwu only just got out a “Be careful!” before the little white fluffball had already flown off through the gap in the door.
And behind the door Qingtuan had shouldered open, the Medical Immortal — so stern and proper on any ordinary day — was having some trouble keeping the smile off her face. She had been standing at the entrance a while already, fully intending to compose her expression before going in, but Qingtuan had burst out so suddenly that she’d been caught with her guard entirely down.
The instant the door swung open, her eyes met those of the two people inside, the corners of the Medical Immortal’s mouth still curved upward. There was no denying it.
Well and truly caught, she threw caution to the wind and simply laughed out loud.
Wen Qiwu had only just sent her a frantic sound transmission, and the Medical Immortal had assumed Yun Heng’s condition had relapsed again — she’d dropped everything at hand and hurried over at once.
Who could have imagined she would instead walk in on Yun Heng with a bird standing atop her head? The illustrious Immortal Venerable, trodden on by a bird, not daring to resist, reduced to softly entreating her shimei to ask the honored guest down.
Thank goodness she’d come quickly — otherwise she’d have missed such an entertaining sight.
Pretending she hadn’t seen the pitch-black look on Yun Heng’s face, she strolled in as though nothing were amiss. “Good, you’re awake. You gave your shimei quite the fright.”
At the mention of Wen Qiwu, Yun Heng’s expression finally gentled.
“The curse has been dispelled, barely — but your troubles don’t end there. Now that Fellow Daoist Wen is back, stay put in the sect and recuperate properly. Don’t go slipping off without a word; it worries people so.” The Medical Immortal wasn’t worried in the least — but at those words, Wen Qiwu drew her hand back out of her shijie’s.
The Medical Immortal rather felt she was looking at a sulking little dumpling of a bird.
Yun Heng, for her part, duly panicked.
The Medical Immortal was busy wondering how the Immortal Venerable planned to explain herself when the woman’s face abruptly paled another shade. She clutched at her heart, her body trembling faintly — truly, what a heartrending sickly beauty1. Were this Immortal Venerable not the single most willful patient she had met in a thousand years of practice, even the Medical Immortal might have gone soft.
Never mind Wen Qiwu, whose heart had already melted. She hurriedly gathered her shijie into her arms and turned to the Medical Immortal in a fluster. “Senior Medical Immortal! Please, could you see what’s wrong with my shijie?”
Wen Qiwu knew a little medicine herself, but Yun Heng’s injuries were frightfully complicated — this was far beyond what any ordinary physician could handle.
The corner of the Medical Immortal’s mouth twitched. She looked over at Yun Heng nestled in Wen Qiwu’s arms — draped there in her finest display of delicate weakness, and studiously refusing to meet her eyes. If that wasn’t a guilty conscience, what was?
“Let me take a look.” She examined her once more. Yun Heng’s heart vessels were indeed injured: old wounds from years past, and newer ones she had carved out of herself not long ago as an offering for the Resurrection Secret Technique. They sounded terrifying, but set against injuries of the divine soul they were nothing much — besides, she had already nursed the wounds on those heart vessels back to mostly healed.
Honestly, if Yun Heng had clutched at her head instead, it would have been more convincing.
“It seems the old wounds on her heart vessels haven’t finished healing. Once I return, I’ll add some Jiuer Flower and Bitter Spirit Grass to her prescription.” The Medical Immortal didn’t call her bluff — Yun Heng’s heart vessels truly were wounded, and given how deeply Wen Qiwu favored her, the Medical Immortal half feared her own medical arts might come under suspicion.
Her brow arched faintly. She would teach Yun Heng exactly what it cost to cross a physician — a bitterness potent enough to draw tears.
“Jiuer Flower and Bitter Spirit Grass?” A trace of hesitation surfaced in Wen Qiwu’s voice. She knew these two spirit medicines — both were truly sacred-grade healing treasures. It was only their taste that… defied description. In the rankings of bitter spirit medicines these two placed second and third, which was why, as a rule, physicians substituted other herbs in their place.
“These two are far too bitter. Could you swap them for herbs of similar property?” Wen Qiwu asked.
“Paired together, these two are the best possible match for her injuries. Bitter, yes — but they’ll let her body recover that much more soundly. The Immortal Venerable survived injuries far worse than these; how could she fear a little bitterness?” The Medical Immortal carried no great surplus of anything so inconvenient as a conscience. Plenty outside already called her temperament peculiar — and as far as she was concerned, an unruly patient deserved to eat a little more bitterness.
If it meant recovering more fully… Wen Qiwu did waver after all. Yun Heng met the Medical Immortal’s eyes for a moment — and in the end, it was she who silently looked away first.
And so the new prescription was settled. On account of the whole Qingtuan affair, the medicine Wen Qiwu had just carried in still sat untouched to the side; the Medical Immortal told her not to bother with it — switch straight to the new brew.
The Medical Immortal personally made a trip to the medicine hall to decoct it, then carried back a bowl so bitter it nearly stung the eyes and pressed it into Wen Qiwu’s hands, instructing her to watch Yun Heng drink every last drop.
【The Immortal Venerable has been known to pour her medicine out in secret. Keep a careful watch — in her condition, she absolutely cannot be allowed to stop.】 the Medical Immortal transmitted to Wen Qiwu.
Wen Qiwu’s expression turned grave at once, and she promptly vowed to personally see her shijie finish every drop.
Under Yun Heng’s glare — one fast turning openly threatening — the Medical Immortal departed thoroughly satisfied. She had some serious deliberation ahead of her: just how many more days of heart-vessel medicine ought the Immortal Venerable to drink?
Wen Qiwu had agreed crisply enough, but one whiff of that brew dragged her back to the years she’d spent steeped in medicine. She had grown up drinking decoctions as routinely as meals, and even so she had never adapted to their bitterness. This bowl of her shijie’s — bitter enough to sting the eyes — was bound to be harder still to swallow.
Her shijie was already this frail from her injuries, and now she had to drink something like this on top of it. Wen Qiwu would simply have to find some spirit material that could stand in for those two herbs.
Yun Heng herself eyed the bowl with visible dismay. She had known the two herbs were bitter — she simply hadn’t imagined they could be this bitter. She sighed inwardly. Ah well. A pretext of her own making had to be performed through to the end.
“Shijie, do you have any sweets on you?” Wen Qiwu rummaged through her storage bag for a while, only to discover she hadn’t brought anything that could cut the bitterness.
“I forgot to make some. But there are still chestnut cakes in my mustard seed space — would you like them?” Yun Heng promptly produced a plate of chestnut cakes, still steaming, and set it before Wen Qiwu. She kept a small mustard seed space in which time stood utterly still — store pastries in there, and they’d never go cold.
Even bedridden, she had quietly baked a batch, just so she could produce them the instant her shimei had a craving.
“The sweets were for you, Shijie! That medicine is dreadfully bitter — without something sweet to follow, the taste will haunt your mouth all day.” Wen Qiwu knew that better than anyone. And yet…
It truly had been ages since she’d last tasted her shijie’s chestnut cakes. Under Yun Heng’s quietly hopeful gaze, Wen Qiwu picked one up and took a bite.
Every bit as delicious as always. Wen Qiwu’s eyes curved — and that smile was far sweeter than any cake.
Yun Heng breathed out, equally content. Good — her hand hadn’t lost its skill, and her shimei still loved them.
She lifted the bowl with something like delight and took a swallow of the medicine — and the bitterness, a wave that seemed to batter straight at her divine soul, nearly made her retch.
“Quick, eat a cake!” Wen Qiwu pressed a chestnut cake to her shijie’s lips — but alas, such an overbearing bitterness was not something one little cake could hope to suppress.
She was just about to ask one of the birds outside to fetch some sweet flower nectar — but the moment Wen Qiwu moved to rise, soft lips laced with the taste of medicine and the sweetness of cake settled over hers. She froze there, forgetting to refuse, and in that single dazed heartbeat her shijie kissed her until her whole body went soft.
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