Chapter 525: Her appearance is restored, and she is as beautiful as a fairy!
"No, Brother Shen, don't take it off…"
Yang Qiuchan panicked when she saw Shen Anyu about to remove her mask. Her beautiful, autumn-water-like eyes were timid, and her body trembled.
At this moment, Shen Anyu had already led her to the top floor ward of Qinghe Hospital, saying he had a way to help her recover completely.
But seeing Shen Anyu about to remove her mask, Yang Qiuchan still panicked, extremely so. She didn't want the hideous burn on her cheek to appear before Shen Anyu, fearing he would dislike her.
Even though she knew Shen Anyu wouldn't, she was still uneasy.
If even Shen Anyu disliked her, she didn't know if she would have the courage to live on.
"It's alright. In a little while, you will be the most beautiful girl in the world."
Shen Anyu smiled faintly, his voice a low, reassuring murmur that cut through her rising fear. Yet, his actions were swift and decisive. His fingers moved with an unhesitating grace, lifting the elastic bands from behind her ears. The mask came away, and he gazed intently at her face. There was not a trace of dislike or disgust in his eyes, not a flicker of pity or sympathy. There was only a profound care and an encompassing tenderness that seemed to wrap around her wounded spirit.
The stark, sterile light of the private ward was unforgiving. It illuminated the cruel reality she had hidden for so long. The left side of her face was a canvas of ruin, a stark contrast to the flawless, creamy skin of her right. The burn was a vicious, puckered scar, a web of discolored tissue that twisted the delicate line of her jaw and pulled at the corner of her soft lips, forcing them into a permanent, subtle grimace. It was a ruin of what was once perfect beauty, a daily reminder of her trauma. A tear welled in the corner of her eye, a single, perfect diamond of despair, threatening to trace a path through the damaged landscape of her cheek.
Meeting Shen Anyu's unwavering gaze, however, the storm in Yang Qiuchan's heart finally began to calm. He wasn't looking at the scar; he was looking at her. His eyes held her own, a silent promise that the damage was only skin deep, that it held no power over his perception of her. The frantic thumping of her heart slowed to a steady rhythm, and the trembling in her limbs subsided. Her beautiful, expressive eyes, now shimmering with unshed tears, looked at Shen Anyu with a raw, burgeoning adoration. She parted her red lips slightly, her voice barely a whisper.
"Brother Shen, how will you treat me?"
She was also intensely curious. Her case had been reviewed by the best specialists in the country. Even this top-tier private institution, Qinghe Hospital, with all its advanced technology and medical expertise, had concluded that a complete restoration was impossible. What method could Shen Anyu possibly possess that surpassed modern medicine?
The head of the medical team had been explicit. They could perform skin grafts, smooth the tissue, and restore her face to a state that appeared "normal" from a distance. But her original skin was exceptionally delicate and fair, as translucent as fine porcelain. Any repair would be a crude patch against a masterpiece. The difference would be obvious, jarring.
It was like comparing the rough, porous shell of a boiled egg to the smooth, pearlescent egg white within—both were part of the egg, yet clearly, irrevocably distinct. She would forever carry the visible seam of her ordeal.
"Of course, I have a way." Shen Anyu's smile was suffused with absolute confidence. He had more than one method; he had a hundred, each more miraculous than the last. Under Yang Qiuchan's curious, questioning gaze, his tone became a little more serious, a little more profound.
"I am a cultivator," he stated simply, as if discussing the weather. "And I possess some secret techniques. I can use my own life force to activate the dormant vitality of your damaged skin, compelling it to restore itself to its original state."
Among the countless techniques swirling in his mind, the most perfect, most sublime art was the one recorded in the Two-Aspects Life-Death Medical Scripture. By invoking the Divine Ability known as the Two-Aspects Life-Death Mystical Light, he could not only heal her but completely rewind the damage, restoring Yang Qiuchan to her former glory without a single flaw or lingering hidden danger.
The life force required for such a feat would be catastrophic for a mortal, but for a titan like Shen Anyu, whose own sea of vitality was vast and boundless, it was less than a single drop in a raging ocean.
Hearing Shen Anyu declare himself a cultivator startled Yang Qiuchan. The concept was something out of novels and movies, not the sterile reality of a hospital room. But she was far more concerned with the latter half of his sentence, and a new wave of panic, born not of fear but of love, seized her.
"Brother Shen, you'll expend your own life force to save me? No, absolutely not!" Yang Qiuchan shook her head so vigorously her hair flew, her voice cracking with emotion. She moved to get off the bed, her hands held up in a gesture of frantic refusal. How could she possibly allow the man she was falling for, the man who had already saved her from despair, to make such an immense sacrifice?
She wasn't one of those selfish, ungrateful women who took everything offered without a second thought. Shen Anyu had already done more than enough for her. She would rather live with this scar for the rest of her life than see him weaken himself for her sake.
"Listen to my arrangements!" Shen Anyu's voice was not loud, but it carried an obvious weight. He moved in a single, fluid motion, his hands gently but forcefully pressing down on her shoulders, guiding her back onto the sickbed. He leaned over her, his eyes looking down into hers. They were gentle, yet they burned with a firm, unyielding light that tolerated no argument.
Yang Qiuchan froze, her entire body going still. Pinned by his proximity and the sheer force of his will, she found her protests dying in her throat. Her beautiful eyes gazed up at Shen Anyu, completely infatuated, her resistance melting away like snow in the spring sun. She could deny him nothing.
The scene that followed shattered her understanding of reality, shocking her to the very core of her soul.
The air in the room grew heavy, charged with an invisible energy. Shen Anyu's originally clear, black-and-white eyes began to transform. A darkness deeper than night and a white more brilliant than any star swirled into existence within his pupils. It was as if the primordial Yin-Yang Two-Aspects were rapidly rotating within the universe of his gaze. The black-and-white vortex pulsed, teeming with countless tiny, impossibly complex runes of light that shimmered and danced.
These mystical runes were so profound, so ancient, that looking at them felt like staring into the blueprint of creation itself. The ceaseless rotation of the Two-Aspects seemed to reveal the true essence of life and death, of Yin and Yang, a grand cycle of destruction and rebirth, continuous and unending. Then, with a final, blinding surge, the blackness faded entirely, converging into a beam of pure, holy white light that emanated from his eyes.
Divine Ability: Two-Aspects Life-Death Mystical Light!
This was the most terrifying and foundational great Divine Ability recorded in the Nascent Soul True Scripture—Two-Aspects Life-Death Medical Scripture. Its power was beyond mortal comprehension; a single glance could command life, a single glance could decree death. If one could cultivate this art to the tenth stage of Perfection, even a mighty Soul Transformation expert would have to tread with caution and fear.
At this moment, Shen Anyu had only just breached the first stage of the Two-Aspects Life-Death Mystical Light, yet it already possessed a power that bordered on the divine. Bringing the dead back to life and regenerating flesh from bare bone were, for this ability, mere trifles.
Immediately, this pillar of pure white Holy Light descended, falling gently upon Yang Qiuchan.
Her expression was one of utter shock as the light enveloped her. She braced for an impact, for pain, for anything—but what she felt was sublime. A warmth spread through her, as comforting as soaking in a hot spring on a crisp autumn day, as blissful as basking in the first warm rays of sun after a long, cold winter. An unprecedented comfort and vitality surged through every cell in her body.
Then she felt it on her face. The light was not just resting on her skin; it was seeping into it, a living, intelligent energy that targeted the damaged tissue with divine precision. The hideously burned skin and the atrophied subcutaneous muscles, exposed to the life-giving mystical light of the Divine Ability, began to visibly improve. The puckered, scarred flesh softened, unfurled, and began to regenerate at a speed that defied all logic. New skin, fair, tender, and impossibly smooth, bloomed in its place.
Inside the ward, the white light lingered, suffusing the entire room with a sacred, ethereal glow. If this mystical scene were to be witnessed by anyone else, they would surely fall to their knees, convinced that an angel had descended from the heavens or an immortal had graced the mortal plane. How else could one explain such an incredible, miraculous power?
Just a few minutes later, the light receded back into Shen Anyu's eyes, and the impossible was complete. Yang Qiuchan had recovered. No, she was more than recovered—she was even better, even more breathtakingly beautiful than she had been at her previous peak.
'It probably consumed less than one ten-thousandth of my life force. The magic power consumed was more, though…' Shen Anyu looked at the stunning, reborn beauty before him with appreciative eyes, his mind calmly calculating the cost.
For him, resolving Yang Qiuchan's disfigurement was a trivial affair. The cost in life force was negligible, almost unmeasurable. This was also because he had taken the opportunity to channel a larger portion of the energy into cleansing her entire body, washing her marrow and strengthening her constitution from the inside out. That accounted for the bulk of the expenditure. After all, with a life essence foundation already comparable to a Land Immortal, such an act was effortless.
However, activating the Divine Ability, the Two-Aspects Life-Death Mystical Light, did consume a considerable amount of his spiritual energy, his magic power. As he was currently only at the seventh layer of the Qi Refining Stage, his reserves were not yet oceanic. He could probably use the first stage of this Divine Ability ten or eight times at most before needing to recover.
In short, the true cost was a mere drizzle, an insignificant expense.
But this fact did not prevent Shen Anyu from deliberately putting on a very convincing act. His handsome face, which had been a mask of serene concentration moments before, was now covered in pea-sized beads of sweat. He let out a long, shuddering breath, his shoulders slumping as if under an immense weight. He looked utterly exhausted, as though the process had drained him to his very limits. Doing good deeds silently was the act of a fool. Without demonstrating the effort, ten parts of credit would be diminished to one or two. By showing the struggle, one or two parts of credit could be magnified into ten.
When Yang Qiuchan opened her beautiful, autumn-water-like eyes and saw Shen Anyu looking so pale and tired, covered in sweat for her sake, her heart shattered into a million pieces of adoration and gratitude. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks. Overwhelmed by an emotion so powerful it stole her breath, she launched herself off the bed and directly into his arms, offering her sweet, rosy lips voluntarily.
"Brother Shen," she sobbed against his mouth, her voice thick with love, "how can Qiuchan ever deserve such devotion from you?"
Yang Qiuchan's gaze towards Shen Anyu was now utterly and completely infatuated. Her heart was no longer hers to give; it was hopelessly, irrevocably lost to him. At this moment, Shen Anyu became the single most important person in her heart, surpassing her family, her career, her very life—surpassing everything.
"You are worth it." Shen Anyu smiled, his own lips brushing against hers. He gently wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Seeing that she was about to speak again, to drown him in more heartfelt gratitude, he preempted her with a gentle smile.
"Now, go look in the mirror. I can guarantee that you are now beautiful enough to overthrow kingdoms."
A flicker of her old fear returned, and Yang Qiuchan felt a deep-seated unease. Ever since the fire had disfigured her, she had not once willingly looked in a mirror after that first horrific glimpse. Her loving parents had even removed every reflective surface in their home to spare her the pain. In public, the occasional glimpse of revulsion or pity in a stranger's eyes when they saw beneath her mask had been like a dagger to her soul, leaving her heart riddled with holes.
But under Shen Anyu's warm, encouraging gaze, Yang Qiuchan found her hesitation melting away. He was her anchor, her strength. Even if an infernal purgatory of a mountain of knives and a sea of fire lay ahead, as long as Shen Anyu was by her side, she felt she would have the courage to face it. She took a deep breath, turned, and walked toward the full-length mirror on the ward door.
Then, when Yang Qiuchan saw herself in the mirror, she was utterly stunned…
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