Alex stood outside the door for a moment, still fully prepared for a trap. As he thought, the Crown Prince walked up next to him, stopping for a moment.
The man seemed frustrated, not getting any answers from his fiance or his brother. He looked as if he wanted to say something but thought the better of it and walked inside.
Zhan Luoyang walked up to him as well. "I'm sorry to have brought you here under such a condition. I promised the 2nd prince that I wouldn't tell anyone he was here, so I had to try and bring you here without explaining what you were to do," she said. "I couldn't even tell you that it was for a patient."
"You must've had a difficult time then," Alex said. "Let us go in as well."
The girl nodded and walked in with Alex.
The room inside was simple with a regular bed, some small furniture, and a formation keeping the room warm. Everything else that wouldn't be of need seemed to have been thrown out.
Inside, sitting on the bed was a young woman in light green robes with a green veil covering her face. She had barely any presence in the room at all. Barely any aura to her. It was as if a corpse sat on the bed, but she was clearly alive.
"Your Majesty, this is my wife, and she's been poisoned. Can you heal her?" he asked.
"Your wife?" the Crown Prince seemed surprised. "How come you—"
Luoyang grabbed the Crown Prince's hands and shook her head. "Your Majesty, I've tried to heal her for the past 2 decades and have failed at every point. You are the only hope we have."
Alex looked surprised. "For the past 2 decades?" he asked. "Then you've used the pill recipes I gave you too?"
"I asked those for her in the first place," she said. "I was never trying to make pills for the test. That is why I'm still waiting."
"Oh," Alex said, slightly confused. He turned to the prince. "If she's your wife, then why haven't you taken her to the capital? There should be many poison masters more knowledgeable in poisons to help you."
"Right, Father can help you," the Crown Prince said.
"No," the 2nd prince said resolutely. "Please see if you can heal her."
Alex sighed and nodded. He could hear the Crown Prince whispering something to his brother, but the 2nd prince walked in front of Alex. He arrived next to his wife and took her hands. Then, he started fingering her palm, tracing along it in weird patterns.
"She can't hear us," the prince said. "She can't see us either, or smell us. She can only barely feel us."
Alex felt shocked. "And this has lasted 20 years?" he asked.
"No, longer. Much longer," the 2nd prince said. "She can feel, so I can talk to her this way. She is able to talk back, however."
Alex felt glowing red Qi flow out from the woman's hand, forming shapes in the air. They weren't pristine or even that orderly, but they formed letters and Alex could read them.
"Greetings, Your Majesty!" It wrote.
"What else is wrong with her?" Alex asked, walking close to the couple.
"Most of her meridians were destroyed, but I've managed to heal most of them. There is some sort of problem with her dantian, causing her Qi flow to still be stifled for some reason. Also, she cannot use her spiritual sense for some reason," Zhan Luoyang said.
"I see," Alex said. "I'll see if I can find something else."
So it hadn't been a trap in the end. They were just hiding a patient here. There were many questions in Alex's mind as to why a prince of the Empire would hide with his ill wife in a small house like this for nearly 2 decades.
That made no sense to Alex, but those thoughts would have to come later. With a patient in front of him, his integrity as a healer demanded his attention.
Alex took the young woman's hands, who flinched for a moment before opening up, accepting him. He grabbed both hands and closed his eyes to send his Qi and senses through her body. His senses followed his Qi, going through her meridians that weren't very healthy from what he could sense.
They followed through her body, sensing multiple problems until he reached the Dantian. He prodded the Dantian from the outside and found that something was wrong with it, but had no idea what that was at all.
He tried to figure it out for a bit but could come up with no answer. He didn't sense any poison there, but the Dantian seemed to have blocked itself on its own. That made no sense to him at all. What he could tell was that her dantian was not where the problem was.
He left the dantian and moved up to check her Spiritual sea and why it was being blocked as well. He worried that it was where the poison had taken effect. As his senses moved up, he found his spiritual sense hit some sort of barrier. It was blocked for some reason.
Alex pulled back his senses and found that it was due to something that was around her head. Some sort of earring maybe? Or a jewelry she wore on her hair?
"Is she wearing something to stop outside senses?" he asked.
"Ah!" the 2nd prince cried out. "Her mask. I'm sorry, I forgot."
He quickly walked to them and threw up her veil, revealing an orange mask. The prince took away the mask, inside which was a very wrinkled face, hollow lifeless eyes, and gray-white hair.
Alex saw all that and even with all that change, she looked no different to him than she always had in his memories.
"Sister?" he questioned before crying out in surprise. "SISTER!" He immediately embraced her in a hug.
She was alive. He couldn't believe it. She was actually alive and he had found her.
He had finally found Hannah.
