Unsheathed

There was no curfew in the small town, so Chen Ping'an was able to leave Clay Vase Alley at night before taking a slightly roundabout route to the Yang Family's medicine shop.

After knocking on the door, it was opened by a bleary-eyed young boy, who was most likely Old Man Yang's new disciple, one that had been brought up in Wei Bo's latter.

"Has your master gone to bed?" Chen Ping'an asked in an apologetic manner.

"What do you think?" the young boy asked in a displeased manner.

Chen Ping'an didn't know how to respond.

He had grown accustomed to the deceitful and indirect way that the people of Bamboo Scroll Lake liked to speak, and he was rather taken aback by the bullheaded young man.

"Why do you want to see my master? You sick?" the boy asked with slightly furrowed brows.

Chen Ping'an was rather amused to hear this, and he was silent for a moment before nodding as he replied, "I am indeed here for treatment."

The young boy's brows furrowed even deeper upon hearing this.

Under the moonlight, the young man's cheeks were looking very gaunt and sallow, and it looked as if he wasn't going to live for very long. The dialect that he spoke with indicated that he was a local resident, but the boy had never seen him before.

The young boy knew that his master didn't like to make appearances, so he most likely wasn't going to be willing to treat this sickly young man. In the wake of the recent debacle, the Yang Family's medicine shop was struggling in terms of both reputation and business, having made enemies out of a bunch of the nearby locals.