After Discovering The Emperor Was A Woman… - Chapter 3

Seeing the blood, Liu Jiuning hurriedly withdrew the foot she had accidentally stained and tried to hide it beneath her long skirt, as though that might conceal the minor impropriety of having stepped directly on the stranger’s wound.

She truly had not done it on purpose.

The rain was pouring, the grass was tall, and she had been hurrying along. How was she supposed to notice someone lying there?

As the rain grew heavier, Liu Jiuning glanced up at the dark, oppressive sky, then lowered her gaze to the motionless figure on the ground. After a moment of silence, she crouched down.

A human life was still a human life.

Countless people died every day, yet this particular person had happened to cross her path.

That had to mean they were fated to meet.

As the saying went, saving one life was worth more than building a seven-story pagoda.

Since she planned to become a fake nun and future enlightened master, she might as well show some compassion and save someone. Being alive was the greatest blessing of all. Since she had encountered this person, she should lend a hand if she could.

Liu Jiuning’s gaze fell on the pool of vivid blood beneath the stranger, and she silently sighed.

Once, she too had lain on a cold sidewalk like this.

Had she been given the chance…

She would have wanted to live.

No longer hesitating, she examined the several wounds that resembled saber cuts and had already bled profusely. Then she reached out and turned the stranger’s face out of the mud.

She immediately sucked in a sharp breath.

This…

Wasn’t this person far too beautiful?

So beautiful, in fact, that Liu Jiuning wondered whether she had encountered some white fox spirit who would later repay her kindness. That face was even more striking than those of the male celebrities from her previous life. Although the features were somewhat delicate, the sharply angled brows added a fierce, heroic edge.

Even lying in mud and tangled grass could not hide the person’s bearing.

In the Great Zhao Empire, this face could easily rank among the most handsome men in the realm.

Naturally, first place still belonged to her eldest brother. Not only was he handsome, he was also extraordinarily capable—though he did have an annoying habit of meddling in everything. Besides, the person on the ground had a filthy face, while Liu Jiuning, as her eldest brother’s beloved younger sister, viewed him through a particularly flattering filter.

She quickly threw all the nonsense out of her mind.

Time was life. If she continued indulging in wild thoughts, even an immortal might not be able to save this person.

After a moment’s consideration, she copied what she had seen in novels and television dramas and placed a finger beneath the stranger’s nose.

…

A moment later, she withdrew her trembling hand.

Perhaps the rain was too heavy, or perhaps there was some other reason, but Liu Jiuning truly could not feel even the faintest breath.

Had she arrived too late?

She was about to stand when she felt that giving up so easily was wrong.

What if the stranger’s breathing was merely too faint for her to detect? What if this person could still have survived, only to die because Liu Jiuning abandoned them here in the pouring rain?

Then the death would weigh on her conscience.

Liu Jiuning stared at that beautiful face, studying it as she thought. She could not bear to let such a beauty perish alone in the wilderness. Even though she liked women, that did not stop her from appreciating beauty shared by all mankind.

She desperately searched her memory for the first-aid knowledge she had learned or seen in her previous life.

After failing to detect any breath, she decided against prying open the stranger’s eyelids. That sort of examination required actual skill, and there was a high chance she would not understand what she was seeing anyway.

Instead, Liu Jiuning pressed down on one of the wounds.

It was still bleeding, and the blood looked fresh.

That meant the person probably… was not dead?

She vaguely remembered her middle school once giving a brief first-aid demonstration. Drawing on that memory, top student Liu Jiuning reached out again and pressed around the stranger’s neck.

This time, she succeeded.

The artery was still pulsing, which meant there was still a chance of saving the person.

Liu Jiuning heaved a tremendous sigh of relief.

Thank goodness they were alive. Even though she herself had died once, spending so much time crouched beside a corpse would still have been terrifying.

The rain continued to fall, growing heavier by the moment.

Liu Jiuning looked down at the man, who was clearly much taller and larger than she was. Then she stood, rolled up her sleeves, and rubbed her hands together.

After expending enormous effort—and accidentally dropping the unconscious injured person once—she finally managed to hoist the stranger onto her back.

Fortunately, she often exercised under the pretext of helping her mother move flower vases. Otherwise, with the pampered body she had been born into, lifting someone this large would have been nearly impossible.

As Liu Jiuning half-carried, half-dragged the man through the rain in search of shelter, the person whose head had been knocked against several things slowly opened their eyes.

Through blurred vision, they caught a glimpse of the white jade hairpin repeatedly jabbing into their head.

Then they lost consciousness again.

Liu Jiuning noticed none of this.

She struggled onward through the rain, marking her path while searching for a cave. Then a thought suddenly occurred to her.

The person on her back had been wounded all over with blades…

Perhaps rescuing someone like this was not particularly safe.

She quickly suppressed her unease.

She had already chosen to save the person. Abandoning them now would be wrong and would go against the principle she had adopted in this life—to cherish and respect life.

In their half-dead state, they could not hurt her for the time being. As for whether they were good or evil, there was no way to determine that so quickly.

She would save them first and explain everything to the old monk after returning.

And if the situation became too troublesome, handing the person over to her eldest brother would also be an excellent solution.

With that decided, Liu Jiuning stopped leaving marks. Relying on her excellent memory, she carefully fixed the route in her mind and was soon fortunate enough to discover a cave that could shelter them from the rain.

The moment she stepped inside, she noticed traces of someone having stayed there before.

Dry branches and fallen leaves had been piled on the ground, although they were covered in a thick layer of dust. There was no telling how long ago they had been left there.

That worked perfectly for Liu Jiuning and the unfortunate half-dead stranger.

She quickly lowered the injured person to the ground. After massaging her aching shoulders, she pulled a flint from the oversized emergency pouch she carried.

Starting a fire was not particularly easy.

Still, practice made perfect, and with the help of the dry leaves, she eventually managed to get a small fire burning.

She had intended to dry her clothes, but there was still a severely wounded, unconscious person lying on the ground. After weighing the situation, she abandoned that idea. She merely wrung some water from her clothes, warmed herself briefly by the fire, and crouched beside the handsome stranger whose survival remained uncertain.

Liu Jiuning stared at the blood still pouring from the wounds. Its color seemed to be changing from red to black.

Her brows furrowed.

Something was clearly wrong.

According to the conventions of television dramas and novels, this person had definitely been poisoned!

Besides, the wounds were bleeding far too heavily. Even if the poison did not kill them, they might simply bleed to death first.

She might as well see her good deed through to the end.

Liu Jiuning decided to bandage the poor person’s wounds. As for materials, she could simply tear up the stranger’s clothes.

She could not leave the injuries bleeding like this. She had brought cooled boiled water, so she could rinse the wounds, sprinkle on some essential wound medicine straight out of a novel, then wrap them tightly.

That should stop the bleeding…

Probably.

Once she made up her mind, she acted immediately. After roughly assessing the wounds, she quickly finished wrapping the smaller injury on the stranger’s leg.

Her nimble technique came entirely from the master embroiderer whom the household had specially invited from Suzhou to teach the girls needlework.

The other young ladies had spent one month learning how to wind thread.

Liu Jiuning had spent three.

Once that was done, she began pulling open the stranger’s clothes.

She had no choice. The wounds across the chest and abdomen had become stuck to the fabric. If she did not remove the clothes now, they would eventually adhere completely to the injuries, making everything much more difficult later.

As for the supposedly proper distance between men and women, she had not even considered it.

She was a teenager from the age of technology. Who had not seen a few shirtless men before? Those with more adventurous tastes might even have secretly watched plenty of adult films.

However, as Liu Jiuning continued undressing the stranger, she began to sense that something was not quite right.

Once the outer clothing had been removed…

Why was the person’s chest wrapped in layer after layer of thick, tightly bound cloth?

…

Was this the legendary art of disguising oneself as a man?

The flimsy attempts she had seen on television in her previous life could not compare to this at all!

Marveling inwardly, Liu Jiuning quickly loosened the chest binding. Much of her hesitation disappeared as well.

They were both women. What problem could there possibly be?

She had to admit, this young lady’s disguise was astonishingly convincing. Anyone who did not know the truth would genuinely believe she was a man!

After removing the binding, Liu Jiuning glanced at the slight but unmistakable curve of the woman’s chest. She quickly covered it with a piece of cloth, then silently lowered her head to look at her own modest little chest.

Whether this woman was older or younger than her, she probably had not been eating well.

Liu Jiuning wasted no more time. Looking at the deep saber wound filled with bits of leaves and debris, she took the gourd of cooled boiled water from her waist and carefully poured it over the injury.

Her options were limited.

She had no alcohol and no saline solution, so cooled boiled water would have to do.

Just then, the unconscious woman’s eyes snapped open.

She immediately seized Liu Jiuning’s wrist—the one holding the gourd and pouring the water—and fixed her with a gaze as sharp as a sword.