"Father, look at him," I said, my voice cutting through his rage like a cold blade. "Look at him with your own eyes, not with the ears of a man listening to rumors."
"You dare lecture me?" He raised his palm higher.
"LOOK AT HIS THROAT!" I commanded, my voice echoing with a modern authority that froze him mid-swing.
The sheer audacity of my shout caused a sudden, stunned silence. Even Ruo-Lan gasped, her "pitying" mask slipping. My father's gaze involuntarily shifted downward to the cradle.
At that exact moment, as if the universe itself were tired of the drama, my brother did something he hadn't done in months. He reached out his tiny, chubby arms toward the light of the candle on the bedside table. His eyes, which usually rolled aimlessly in the dark, locked onto the flame. He let out a soft, gurgling coo—a sound of pure, healthy recognition.
"He... he is looking at the light," Mother whispered from the corner, her voice trembling with a dawning realization. "My Lord, he isn't crying. He can see!"
Father froze. He leaned over, waving his hand tentatively between the baby and the candle. The boy's eyes followed the movement perfectly. The night blindness, the "curse" of the Tang family, was gone.
I stepped forward, my expression one of cold but triumphant.
The swelling in his neck has reduced by a visible margin in just three days, Father." I said, my tone shifting from defensive to predatory.
"Physician Zhang called it sea-sludge. I call it a cure. He claimed my brother was haunted by ghosts. I claimed he was simply starving for what the physicians were too ignorant to provide."
I turned my gaze to Ruo-Lan, who was trembling, her face turning ashen.
"And you, Second Sister"I continued, my voice low and dangerous.
"You were so eager to see me punished that you didn't even notice our brother's breath has smoothed. You were so worried about dark arts that you failed to see the miracle right in front of you. Tell me... is it lucky to wish for the death of a remedy, or is it simply convenient for those who want the Eldest Miss out of the way?"
Ruo-Lan choked on her words. "I... I only feared for him, Sister! I didn't know—"
"Precisely," I snapped. "You didn't know. And neither did the Physician. Yet you both felt qualified to bark at the heels of the one person who actually saved the Tang heir."
I turned back to my father. He looked diminished. The rage was gone, replaced by the profound, desperate relief of a man who realized his legacy had just been handed back to him.
"Father," I said, tilting my head with a sharp, mocking elegance.
"You said this house was a nest of failures. It seems you were half-right. The failure was in trusting those who prefer pretty lies over ugly truths. Now, shall we go to the Ancestral Hall? I would love to tell the ancestors exactly how I saved their line while everyone else was busy preparing my funeral."
Physician Zhang knew that his work and quite possibly his head, was on the line. If the Tang heir recovered through a sea-sludge he had mocked, Zhang would be labeled a fraud. To a palace-tier physician, losing face was a death sentence.
As my father stood in stunned silence, Zhang scrambled into the room, his face pale and his breath hitching. He didn't even look at the baby, he went straight for the empty bowl in my hand.
"Wait! My Lord, wait!" Physician Zhang cried, his voice shrill. He pointed a trembling finger at the traces of green paste. "Look at the master's eyes! Look at the flush in his cheeks! This is not healing, it is a Final Radiance[1]! A False Spring before the winter of death!"
Father flinched. The Final Radiance was a well-known medical phenomenon where a dying patient suddenly appears healthy just before the end. It was the ultimate fear of every grieving parent.
"You lie" I said, my voice cutting through his panic like a scalpel.
"I lie?" Zhang turned to my father, his eyes wide with desperate honesty.
"My Lord, the sea is home to many demons. This girl hasn't used medicine, she has used a Forbidden Stimulant! She has forced the young master's remaining life force to the surface all at once. He looks better now, yes, but by dawn, his Qi will be exhausted, and he will wither like a plucked flower! This girl, your daughter, I'm afraid has traded his future for a moment of her own glory!"
Ruo-Lan, seeing a lifeline, gasped and clutched her chest. "Oh, Heavens! Sister, how could you? To steal our brother's very life just to prove a point?"
Father looked back and forth between us, the seed of doubt beginning to sprout. "Physician Zhang... are you certain?"
"My Lord, I have seen this in the border wars!" Zhang lied through his teeth, gaining confidence. "Sorcerers use such pastes to make dying soldiers stand one last time. It is a curse! If the young master's dies tomorrow, it is because she drained him dry!"
I stepped toward Zhang, my heels clicking sharply on the wood. I was much shorter than him, but at that moment, I felt like I was towering over his entire profession.
"Physician Zhang," I said, my voice low and dangerous. "You are an expert on Final Radiance, are you? Then tell me, does a Forbidden Stimulant also cause a goiter, a physical mass of flesh to shrink in three days? Does a demonic curse provide the specific nutrients required for the optic nerves to function?"
"Goiter? Optic nerves?" Physician Zhang sputtered, the modern terms sounding like incantations to him. "More of your sorcerer's gibberish!"
"It is not gibberish, it is Logic," I snapped. I turned to my father. "Father, if this is a Final Radiance, then my brother should be exhausted. His heart should be racing, and his skin should be cold. Touch him. Feel his pulse yourself."
Father hesitated, then reached into the cradle. He pressed his fingers to the baby's wrist, then his forehead.
"He is warm," Father whispered. "And his heart... it beats steady and slow."
I turned back to Zhang, my eyes narrowed.
"If you are so sure this is a death-paste, Physician, then surely you won't mind the Sovereign's Gamble."
"What... what gamble?" Physician Zhang backed away.
"We wait until dawn," I said, my voice projecting to every servant in the hallway. "If my brother is dead or weakened by sunrise, I will take his place in the coffin. But if he is stronger, if he wakes up hungry and clear-eyed, then you, Physician Zhang, will admit your incompetence, surrender your medical license, and crawl out of the Tang Manor on your hands and knees. You will tell the city that a Thirteen-year-old girl did what you were too expert to understand."
The color drained from Zhang's face. He looked at the baby, who was now peacefully falling back to sleep, looking healthier than he had in months. The Final Radiance excuse was a gamble, and I had just called his bluff.
"I... I am a Chief Physician!" He stammered, his pride crumbling. "I do not gamble with children!"
"No," I said, leaning in so only he could hear.
"You only gamble with their lives when you're too proud to admit you're wrong."
I looked at my father. "Will you allow the wager, Father? Or shall we let this man continue to treat our heir with incense and prayers while the boy actually heals in spite of him?"
Father looked at Physician Zhang's sweating brow and then at my calm, steady gaze.
"The Physician will stay in the guest quarters under guard," Father commanded. "If the sun rises and the child is well... Physician Zhang will be sent back to the palace."
[1] huí guāng fǎn zhào - To have a sudden burst of energy before one's death