Half an hour later, Xu Yi returned home. After feeding Little Huang, he went out again, placing all the money from home into his cloth pouch before leaving.
Jostling the money pouch in his sleeve, he mentally calculated how many medicinal herbs these coins could buy.
From two trips up the mountain, he’d earned seven qian and sixty-four wen in total. After deducting what he’d spent, he now had only two qian and eighty-one wen left.
It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t too little either. Still, Xu Yi felt somewhat uncertain.
Such a paltry sum… how could he be this poor?
His heart filled with myriad emotions. After holding back for a while, Xu Yi finally couldn’t help cursing under his breath. In just a few days, he’d come to understand that relying solely on selling medicinal herbs wasn’t enough to live peacefully and steadily in the county town.
Digging herbs depended on the weather, and going out in particularly harsh conditions was truly troublesome. If he wanted to build a reputation, selling herbs alone wouldn’t work either.
That said, solving this money shortage was just a matter of time. He had plenty of excellent pill formulas at his disposal.
He had the physician at Miracle Hands Hall selling Miraculous Hand Pills to thank for the inspiration. As for what kind of medicine those Miraculous Hand Pills actually were, Xu Yi didn’t yet know. He didn’t need to know what others were selling; he only needed to be certain about what pills he himself would sell.
South Street, Apricot Grove Hall.
The medical clinic was silent, with only the rustling sounds of the apprentice counting medicinal herbs in front of the medicine cabinet. The sitting physician, Sun Shitong, was resting in the inner room, holding a medical text in his hands. He read while shaking his head, his upturned goatee swaying left and right, looking quite content.
Reading a certain passage, he stopped shaking his head, his lips moved, and he muttered in a voice as faint as a mosquito’s buzz, “Strange, strange. Why does this prescription look somewhat familiar?”
Sun Shitong stroked his beard, unable to remember where he’d seen this formula no matter how hard he tried. It felt so familiar, as if he’d just seen it in the past couple days.
…Oh, right!
It was a prescription he’d seen this morning. Several of the medicinal ingredients used the same qian amounts, but that prescription had clearly been for treating… He froze in realization, finally knowing where the problem lay.
Though that prescription was for treating body deficiency syndrome, it differed considerably from the prescription he’d written. He was the only physician at Apricot Grove Hall, and when patients came with prescriptions to fill, if the apprentice noticed it differed from previous ones, he’d bring it to him for verification.
At the time, seeing that none of the medicinal ingredients conflicted with each other and wouldn’t kill anyone to drink, he’d allowed it.
Thinking back carefully now, that prescription didn’t just treat body deficiency syndrome. The “blood deficiency and blood withering” pattern type written about in this book used the same formula.
It was just that a few parts were different, which had made him think about it for so long.
Sun Shitong snorted coldly and slammed the medical text heavily onto the pear wood desk. This prescription hadn’t come from any of Yanting County’s other medical clinics. He’d never seen that handwriting before, and the use of medicines was unique. Could it be that a new physician had come to Yanting County?
The Yang family of Flat Road Lane on South Street… their son had been weak and sickly for so many years. Where had they found such a physician?
Sun Shitong’s small eyes gleamed as he shouted sternly toward the outside, “Li Ji, come in.”
“Doctor Sun, what do you need?” The apprentice called Li Ji lifted the cloth curtain to enter. Smelling the tea fragrance in the inner room, he swallowed.
Since arriving at the clinic today, he hadn’t stopped for a moment. Forget sitting down to drink some tea and rest, he hadn’t even had water to drink.
“Go to South Street and inquire whether any medical clinic has hired a new physician to sit in consultation.” After giving these instructions, Sun Shitong stopped him again. “Not just South Street, ask about the others too.”
Li Ji didn’t understand why, but seeing Doctor Sun’s gloomy expression, he didn’t dare ask questions.
After Li Ji lifted the curtain and left, Sun Shitong sat drinking a cup of tea, then rose with a flick of his sleeve and slowly made his way to the clinic’s main hall.
The hall was quiet. Usually, the rooms on either side for patients to rest had patients resting in them, but today they were completely empty. One rain had made the clinic’s business considerably colder.
This damned rainy season. When would it stop? Sun Shitong’s face showed disgust as his drooping eyes surveyed the area around the medicine cabinet, searching for any mistakes he could find to give him an excuse to scold the apprentice.
…
He found no mistakes, but a young man did enter the clinic.
After Sun Shitong saw who had arrived, his small eyes narrowed slightly. He sat down leisurely, stroking his beard as he inquired, “What brings Young Master Xu here today?”
“Doctor Sun, I’ve come to buy medicine.” Xu Yi stepped forward and handed over the paper he’d written.
He glanced left and right but didn’t see the clinic’s apprentice, Brother Ji, so he asked Sun Shitong, “I’ll trouble Doctor Sun to look this over. If I want these medicinal herbs, what would the price be?”
Sun Shitong forced a smile. “Let me take a look.”
Taking the formula from Xu Yi’s hand, as he finished reading the medicinal herb names written on it, his expression visibly froze. This wasn’t a prescription.
The items written: zhishi, licorice, six spirit song, green tangerine peel, dried tangerine peel, and others, were all calculated by the catty.
He probed cautiously, “Why do you need so many medicinal herbs? These herbs can’t be used carelessly. Young Official Xu must have heard this from somewhere unreliable. It’s not that I won’t sell to you, but you must explain what you plan to use so much medicine for.”
Xu Yi looked surprised. “Do medical clinics now require medicine buyers to explain their intended use?”
Sun Shitong: “…”
No, they didn’t, but you’re a youth whose parents just passed away, suddenly buying so many medicinal herbs. He was very suspicious.
Especially considering that the Xu family also lived on South Street, in Stone Well Lane, three lanes away from Flat Road Lane. When this youth had come to the clinic seeking treatment, the memory was still quite vivid. The story of a scholarly young man who didn’t understand worldly matters seeking medical help everywhere for his parents would move other patients to tears when told.
“Ahem. There’s no such rule.” Sun Shitong gave a hollow laugh, the smile not reaching his eyes.
Xu Yi immediately understood. Doctor Sun himself wanted to know.
To prevent others from knowing exactly what medicinal ingredients this formula used, he’d only written a few herbs on the paper.
For the other items, like hawthorn and malt, he would buy them at other shops. Among the herbs he’d kept for himself when digging, there were also one or two varieties.
With no apprentice in the clinic, Sun Shitong sighed. Since he couldn’t delegate the task of measuring out herbs to someone else, he had to do it himself.
Having not done this kind of work for so many years, his speed at measuring herbs couldn’t even compare to an apprentice’s.
Xu Yi watched silently from the side, then suddenly spoke up. “Doctor Sun, you made a mistake. You measured ten qian too little of the green tangerine peel.”
“Crack—”
It was the sound of the scale colliding with the weighing pan.
Sun Shitong’s heart jumped because his movements had been quite skillful, deliberately done at a different angle, yet Xu Yi, standing three steps away from the medicine cabinet, had noticed.
At such a distance, being able to see the markings on the scale beam was something he never would have expected.
He quickly suppressed the panic on his face and pretended to laugh sheepishly. “I’m really out of practice. Having delegated this work to Apprentice Ji, I’ve become incompetent. It seems I’ll have to be more diligent and conscientious in the future and not leave everything to Apprentice Ji.”
“Is that so? Then that’s what should be done.” Xu Yi said matter-of-factly.
Sun Shitong: “…” He was just saying that to be polite. Did Xu Yi really expect him to do everything personally? That was absolutely impossible.
This wasn’t the first time Apricot Grove Hall had played such petty tricks. The original person hadn’t known, but Xu Yi was crystal clear about it and naturally wouldn’t go along with his words.
Next, Sun Shitong suppressed the melancholy in his heart and honestly measured out the proper weight of medicinal herbs Xu Yi was buying.
After weighing everything, Sun Shitong took the abacus and tapped and clacked at it in front of the medicine cabinet, making the beads click extremely loudly.
After several breaths, Sun Shitong cleared his throat and looked at Xu Yi. “Altogether it’s one hundred sixty wen. Did Young Official Xu bring enough money?”
Xu Yi smiled. “I brought enough.”
He took out his money pouch, counted out one qian and sixty wen, and placed it on the medicine cabinet.
Then he picked up the wrapped medicinal herbs beside him and walked out of the clinic without another word.
Just as he stepped over the clinic’s threshold, he ran into the apprentice, Brother Ji, who was hurrying back. Li Ji was quite familiar with Xu Yi. Back in the day, they’d even attended the same school together. It was just that Li Ji wasn’t good at studying, so his parents had arranged for him to become an apprentice at a medical clinic early on.
“Brother Yi…”
Li Ji opened his mouth, watching Xu Yi’s departing back with some bewilderment. Why was he walking so fast without even greeting him?