"I came along with Xiaoyi to see whether he might have a way..." Guan Xuemin was a scholar, and had never cared a whit about face. If Wei Zhao was better than he was, then better he was, and he never tried to hide it. But before he could finish, Shen Yushu cut him off.

"Brother Arrow, you're finally here! Look at Sister Yaoyao, quick — you have to cure her!" The moment Shen Yushu saw Wei Zhao, she was like a drowning woman clutching at a straw, seizing him by the arm and dragging him to Gu Mengyao's bedside.

"All right." Wei Zhao nodded, his expression grave as he took Gu Mengyao's hand and felt her pulse.

Terribly weak — like that of an old man on the verge of death. From Jiao Yazi's vantage, however, it meant that the energy within Gu Mengyao's body was draining away fast, and the moment it was gone entirely would be the moment her life reached its end.

Wei Zhao frowned slightly. The situation was bizarre, and many things could produce it. One was a matter of constitution — an inborn fatal illness — but Gu Mengyao plainly was not such a case.

Another was a sudden malignant disease, cancer or the like; yet judging by how Gu Mengyao had been before, she had shown none of the signs of a cancer patient.

Beyond those, only two uncommon possibilities remained. The first: she had been struck by an expert, injuring her internal organs, which would produce this rapid withering of life. The second: poison. Certain poisons can swiftly destroy the body's physiological functions and drive a person headlong toward death.

Wei Zhao had not looked at the case file, nor did he have time to. He simply asked Guan Xuemin, "Grandpa Guan, what do you make of it?"

At Wei Zhao's question, Guan Xuemin hurried to answer, "The panel of experts currently has two theories. One, infection by some unknown bacterium. Two, poisoning."

"Bacteria? Poison?" Wei Zhao nodded. "Both are possible."

"Both are possible?" Guan Xuemin was taken aback. He had not expected Wei Zhao to endorse the bacterial theory as well, and it surprised him somewhat.

"I once made a careful study of gu poisons. In fact, many gu poisons are a kind of bacterium, and those afflicted by them show exactly this condition," Wei Zhao said. "But when you boil it down, it is still poisoning. Gu poison can be counted as a poison too."

"I see!" Guan Xuemin had not thought of gu poison; only after hearing Wei Zhao say it did he understand. It seemed he had been somewhat rigid in his thinking — and Zhang Weikang's words had not necessarily been without merit. Of course, Zhang Weikang had hit the mark purely by accident, which was something he himself had never expected.

For now Wei Zhao could only conjecture; he had no absolute certainty as to whether Gu Mengyao had been poisoned. But given the present circumstances, waking her was in fact no difficult matter — the trouble was that once awake, she could not be kept that way.

"Elder Guan, the tests on the contents of her stomach — nothing wrong?" Though his own guess ran the same way, Wei Zhao still asked.

"Nothing!" Guan Xuemin said. "At least, judging by the current lab reports, there is no poison. But some poisons from Chinese herbs, or from insects, cannot be detected by chemical means."

Wei Zhao nodded. "I know. I have studied poisons. The Tang Sect Classic of Poisons covers, in the main, every poison under heaven and the methods to counter them."

It could be said that Wei Zhao was well versed in poisons, and this too had to do with the old man at home. Wei Zhao had never understood why the old man was so enamored of poisons and gu and the like, but the result was that Wei Zhao had gained considerable insight into poisons and their antidotes.

"The Tang Sect Classic of Poisons? You have read it?" Guan Xuemin's expression changed abruptly, and he stared at Wei Zhao in disbelief. In an ancient text he had once read, when the rarest poisons of the ages were discussed, that same Classic of Poisons — famed through the ages — had been mentioned.

The Tang Sect Classic of Poisons, as the name suggests, is one of the secret manuals written by the Tang Sect. The Tang Sect is located in Sichuan and is also called the Tang Fort; it is renowned throughout the world for its use of poison. But it has long since been lost. The occasional mention of it appears only in martial arts novels and television dramas, and whether such a sect ever truly existed remains a matter for study.

So whether the Tang Sect Classic of Poisons mentioned in the ancient text had ever existed, Guan Xuemin did not know either. Medical texts of that sort were not orthodox medical literature but rather anecdotal in nature; the matters they recorded were strange tales and marvels, some true and some false, impossible to judge.

"I have read it." Wei Zhao nodded. At home there was not only the Tang Sect Classic of Poisons but many other books on poison, such as The Secret Manual of the Five Poisons.

Guan Xuemin was stirred. Could Wei Zhao truly come from some ancient medical lineage? Why else had he read so many medical texts long since lost? Of course, Guan Xuemin knew this was no time to ask such things. Suppressing his delight, he asked, "Then do you have a way to cure her?"

"If it is poisoning, I should. Let me try." Wei Zhao did not make any promises. When he had come down the mountain, the old man had said he had mastered a third of his skills, enough to laugh proudly at the world — but Wei Zhao was no megalomaniac. Who could say whether he could neutralize it?

As for Gu Mengyao's safety, though, Wei Zhao was not worried. So long as he kept channeling true qi — what Jiao Yazi called energy — into her body, he could keep her alive indefinitely. Even if he could not neutralize the poison himself, he could take her to the old man and she could still be saved.

The old man was forever boasting that he was the finest physician under heaven, but Wei Zhao knew in his heart that he had the goods to back it up. As for himself, he was still a notch below.

Wei Zhao silently roused the inner-art method of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art and channeled energy swiftly into Gu Mengyao's body. Fortunately, her body was not like Feng Xiaoxiao's had been — a bottomless pit that drained him dry and even, tragically, cost him a level.

Gu Mengyao was an ordinary person, so the energy she required was very little — a drop in the bucket for Wei Zhao, which came as a relief. Had she truly been like Feng Xiaoxiao and sucked all the energy out of him at once, keeping her alive would have been unrealistic; after all, he needed time to recover.

Once the energy entered Gu Mengyao's body, her physiological functions began swiftly to recover, and life filled her whole frame. Before long her eyelashes trembled, and Shen Yushu, who had been watching her without blinking, tense with anxiety, suddenly noticed the movement and cried out in joyful surprise, "Sister Yaoyao, are you waking up?"

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