Zhao Shengyu looked at him in surprise, then thought of something and his face fell. “That woman almost succeeded with the psychedelic technique, but luckily it was broken by someone, and she put a curse on me. She wanted to force me to find her for the cure.”

“Have you sleep with anyone these days?” Li Tianyan asked again.

“No, I knew that this thing would contaminate the people closest to me, so I never had contact with people again,” Zhao Shengyu denied firmly.

“Then Your Highness must know if the curse was transmitted to other people, half of the curse could be transferred away and the pain on the body could be relieved,” Li Tianyan observed as he saw the scales on the prince’s body covering his entire chest and about to spread to other places. He roughly estimated the number of scales had exceeded 10,000.

“This snake curse activated at night, scales would cut through the skin and grow out of the flesh. At least a hundred of them would grow in one night, which was equivalent to a hundred wounds on the body. It felt like ants crawling over the wound, until the whole body was covered with scales, and the mind would gradually degenerate into a beast.”

“If you had sex with your loved one, half of the curse could be transferred to the other person. It could also alleviate half of the pain of the attack, but it was only a slowdown. The final outcome was still the same, and the infected person would face the same fate.”

“I knew,” Zhao Shengyu nodded calmly.

Li Tianyan was a little surprised this time, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he turned around and opened the medicine box on the table, and brought up a cage with a gecko on the ground.

Zhao Shengyu stared at his movements with curiosity, wanting to see how the other party removed the curse. He saw Li Tianyan drip gecko blood into an ink-colored bowl. After draining the blood of the twelve geckos, only half of the bowl was filled. Then he added cinnabar and a white powder to the gecko’s blood. Cheng Qi picked up a piece of jade and stirred it in a bowl, mixing the powder and blood together.

After Li Tianyan drew forty-nine talisman papers with the gecko blood ink Cheng Qi had ground, he took out a pack of ground herbs from the medicine box and asked Cheng Qi to put it into each talisman and rolled them like a cigarette.

Li Tianyan dipped the remaining gecko blood with a talisman pen, drew a locking rune on Zhao Shengyu’s back, then picked up the rolled talisman, and released a wisp of orange flame from his finger to light one end of the cigarette.

When Zhao Shengyu saw the flames appearing out of thin air on Li Tianyan’s hand, a surprise looks flashed in his eyes.

“Bear with the pain.” After Li Tianyan said to Zhao Shengyu, he pressed the burning end of the rolled talisman to the Tianliao point on his left shoulder. Suddenly, traces of black smoke came out from the place where the talisman end came into contact with the skin.

Before Zhao Shengyu could react, his left shoulder felt like it was being burned, and there was a hot tingling sensation. He had been tortured by the curse for several months, so he was a little numb to the pain, and his body was only tense a bit then relaxed quickly after a moment.

Li Tianyan’s movements did not stop, and he quickly lit a second talisman. Forty-nine rolled talisman paper were placed on forty-nine different acupuncture points on the prince’s body. At this time, Zhao Shengyu’s whole body muscles were all numb and twitching slightly from pain.

Just when the guard looked worried, a strange scene happened. As the forty-nine-talisman burned slowly, the curse runes drawn on Zhao Shengyu’s body seemed to be flowing with black blood. The red talisman gradually turned into deep black as it went up.

Upon seeing this, Li Tianyan used a dagger to cut Zhao Shengyu’s back. He then put a wisp of flame into a narrow-mouthed clay pot, and aligned the mouth of the pot with the cut wound.

He saw the flowing black blood slowly surging in the same direction as if it was being pulled, falling into the clay pot bit by bit through the cut flesh.

When all forty-nine talismans were burned out, the blood flowing out gradually turned red and Li Tianyan took the clay pot filled with black blood from the prince’s back. His fingers lightly scratched the wound on the prince’s back. In the blink of an eye, the skin on Zhao Shengyu’s back had returned to its original state, and there was no trace of any wound that had just been made here.

The guard stared intently the whole time, until he saw this scene, his eyes were filled with unconcealable surprise.

At this time, Zhao Shengyu finally calmed down a little. He glanced sideways at the black blood on Li Tianyan’s hand and frowned. Thinking that this jar of foul-smelling black liquid flowed out of his body, Zhao Shengyu… felt an uncontrollable chill arose.

.

Cheng Qi took the black blood from Li Tianyan’s hand and sealed it with the lid of the pot. Li Tianyan wiped his hands with a cloth, looked at Zhao Shengyu and asked, “How do you feel?”

“It’s much better this time. Thanks to Doctor Li for coming to the rescue, no matter what you ask me to do from now on, I will do my best to do it for you.” Zhao Shengyu stood up and thanked Li Tianyan with clasped fists.

After seeing Li Tianyan’s methods, Zhao Shengyu couldn’t help but respect him a little more.

“Your Highness, there is no need to be polite. The scales will fall off on their own after a while. Just apply this medicine on your body when the time comes.” Li Tianyan handed him a small wooden box.

“Thank you, Doctor Li.” Zhao Shengyu carefully took the wooden box from his hand, and couldn’t help but ask, “Does Doctor Li know the origin of the evil concubine? What is her purpose?”

Li Tianyan had knowledge about the curse and how to cure it, it seemed he also knew something about that woman.

Zhao Shengyu had previously planned to forcefully seize the throne, kill the evil concubine, and then explain to his father about his action. Who knew that the concubine had so many magical powers that they could not kill her. Not only was his plan seen through, but he was also cursed, so he could only hide in the Prince’s Mansion to recuperate.

In just a few months, the court had been undergoing a major change. There were not many loyal ministers left who opposed those two people. Most of them had taken refuge in Concubine Li and the Imperial Master. The atmosphere of the Imperial City was also affected by those two people. They were extravagant and played night after night. On the surface, they were prosperous and peaceful, but in fact, they had shaken the foundation of Zidong Kingdom.

But he just couldn’t understand it, that evil concubine went through so much trouble. Did she want to take over the world of Zidong Kingdom, or did she want Zidong Kingdom to be destroyed?