“How long have you been studying medicine?”

Lu Tong was startled and turned to look back.

The young man sat at the small table in the room, vigorously fanning with a palm-leaf fan in his hand. The medicine pot made “gurgling” sounds as it boiled, white steam rising up, making his expression blurry and unclear.

He always personally brewed medicine for Lu Tong.

Ji Xun’s driver had once offered to do it in his place, but Ji Xun refused, saying that if the heat and timing weren’t right, the medicine’s effectiveness would be wrong too, insisting on brewing it himself.

Lu Tong couldn’t understand him—a young master who appeared pampered and privileged personally brewing medicine for a stranger he’d met by chance.

Either Ji Xun had ulterior motives, or he was a big fool whose kindness had overflowed.

After a moment of silence, she said: “I’m not a physician.”

“When you opened your medicine box earlier, there were mulberry bark threads inside.” Ji Xun lifted the lid of the medicine pot, glanced at the medicinal liquid, then pushed the lid back on and stopped adding fuel to the fire.

Lu Tong couldn’t guess what he was trying to say, so she could only respond: “I learned haphazardly from others. It hardly counts as knowing medicine.”

Hearing this, Ji Xun paused slightly.

After a while, he shook his head: “The capital has an Imperial Medical Academy. If you truly want to study medical principles and pharmacology, you could go there to learn.”

Imperial Medical Academy?

Lu Tong frowned.

This was the first time she’d heard this name. She didn’t know what kind of place it was, but from his words, she could vaguely guess something.

Lu Tong found it absurd.

“Young Master Ji jests,” Lu Tong said. “I’m just a commoner. How could I go to the place you mentioned?”

She thought this young master of superior birth had probably never experienced commoner life and didn’t understand the invisible barriers between commoners and nobility that could separate so much.

“It doesn’t matter,” he still sat upright before the medicine stove, speaking in a calm voice. “If you ever come to the capital in the future, you can come to the Ji family at Changle Ward to find me.”

He spoke very seriously, not like he was joking.

Lu Tong was stunned.

A falling leaf from somewhere outside the window landed on the writing desk. She lowered her head to pick up the leaf, absent-mindedly pinching and rubbing it, feeling that her heart was as messy as that willow leaf.

After a while, she said quietly: “I won’t go to the capital.”

Of course she wouldn’t go to the capital. She had poison personally planted in her body by Yunniang.

Actually, for a brief moment, Lu Tong had thought about asking this young man from the capital for help, telling him everything about her situation and begging him to help her escape the swamp.

But in the end, she didn’t.

Ji Xun could detect “Cold Silkworm Rain” but hadn’t discovered the earlier poison Yunniang had planted in her body. As long as she couldn’t detoxify herself, she would remain under Yunniang’s control.

Given Yunniang’s temperament, unless she chose to, she would never be forced to give Lu Tong the antidote.

If she wanted to return alive to Changwu County, she could only stay at Falling Plum Peak and continue looking for another opportunity.

The willow leaf in her hand had been rubbed until it was wrinkled and unrecognizable. Lu Tong extended her hand outside the window, opened her palm, and the willow leaf fluttered down, gradually disappearing from sight.

Ji Xun’s medicine seemed very effective.

The cold poison in Lu Tong’s body grew weaker day by day.

Gradually, she didn’t need to wrap herself in heavy blankets. Even wearing single-layer clothes, she didn’t feel cold. Sometimes when the sun outside the window was too strong, it made her feel somewhat warm.

“Your poison is cured,” Ji Xun told her.

Lu Tong said: “Thank you.” Then she pressed her lips together and added: “I don’t have silver to pay you.”

“No silver needed.”

He handed Lu Tong a piece of paper along with several packets of prepared medicinal materials.

“This is the prescription. The poison you were afflicted with was unlike any I’ve seen before. Just to be safe, I’ve prepared several more doses. Take them for a few more days—it might be better.”

Lu Tong asked him: “Are you leaving?”

Ji Xun nodded: “I’ve delayed here too long.” He added: “I’ve paid for five more days of lodging. You can rest here a few more days.”

Lu Tong said nothing.

He walked to Lu Tong’s side. Outside the window was a vast expanse of verdant green. The young man’s figure was elegant and handsome, pure as spring moon and willow. The gaze with which he looked at her was like spring sun on Sunan’s bridges—warm and gentle.

He said: “Miss Seventeen, in the future when you’re injured, seek medical treatment promptly. As a physician, you should understand this principle even better.”

“After I leave, don’t avoid treatment out of fear.”

Lu Tong remained silent for a long time, then softly hummed in acknowledgment.

The next morning, Lu Tong got up early but didn’t hear Ji Xun’s usual knock at the door.

After thinking for a moment, Lu Tong pushed open her door and immediately saw that the door to the adjacent room was wide open. When she walked in, there was no sign of Ji Xun or his driver. Even the luggage they had piled in the room and their own cups and bowls were gone.

Ji Xun had left.

Without saying goodbye to her, without informing anyone, on this spring morning—perhaps before dawn, while she was still asleep—the two had quietly departed.

Lu Tong stood in the empty room, suddenly feeling inexplicably lost.

It was very strange. When Ji Xun first brought her here, she had been completely unwilling, watching coldly as the two men busied themselves. Yet after half a month had passed, with Ji Xun brewing medicine and checking her pulse daily, caring about her condition—though he did so out of a physician’s concern for his patient, that patience and gentleness made Lu Tong think hazily of Lu Rou.

When she fell ill in Changwu County in the past, Lu Rou had cared for her in just this way.

Yet his coolness and aloofness, his strangeness and silence were completely different from Lu Rou.

Or perhaps it was because she had stayed alone at Falling Plum Peak for too long. In all these years, except for Yunniang, she had never been so intimately close with anyone. During this half month without Yunniang and without drug testing, being cared for and looked after by someone was like a piece of malt candy accidentally tasted while dozing under flower vines on a spring afternoon. This candy carried the fragrance of bitter medicine, yet unlike the heavy burden of the past, it actually produced a faint sweetness.

Lu Tong thought she must have gone too long without experiencing parting, which was why she felt reluctant to let go at this moment.

“Miss, miss!”

The innkeeper hurried upstairs from below. Seeing Lu Tong, he finally sighed in relief: “Good thing you’re here.”

He pressed the round white jade he was holding into Lu Tong’s hands.

“Last night, that young master who was traveling with you paid off all the room charges that were owed. I left the jade pendant at home, thinking to give it to him first thing this morning, but when morning came, everyone had already left.”

“Since you know him, giving this jade to you is the same. Please trouble yourself to return this jade to that young master. Our inn isn’t the kind of black shop that keeps people’s property without a word.”

Lu Tong instinctively looked down.

The white jade in her palm was smooth and cool, just like the young man’s gaze—always making people feel it was beyond reach. She lifted the red cord of the jade pendant to look at it, clearly seeing the carved image of a scholarly gentleman playing the qin.

It suited that person perfectly.

Lu Tong gripped the white jade pendant tightly and told the innkeeper: “I understand.”

When Ji Xun left, he had paid for five extra days at the inn. Lu Tong stayed at the inn for those five additional days, waiting for the two to remember the jade pendant and return so she could give it back to them.

But Ji Xun never came back.

She thought perhaps Ji Xun had forgotten, or maybe he remembered but was too lazy to come back for it. He was a young master from a prestigious family in the capital. One jade pendant meant nothing to him, just as this encounter in Sunan was merely an unimportant episode in his complex life.

Like scenery glimpsed while riding past wilderness—seen and then forgotten.

She took off the willow-leaf colored new dress Ji Xun had bought for her, carefully folded it and put it in her medicine box, along with the white jade pendant.

That beautiful dress was suitable for spring riverbanks, for mansion gardens, for restaurants and shops, for streets and markets…

It just wasn’t suitable for the mass graves of Falling Plum Peak, or for execution grounds full of blood and severed limbs.

It wasn’t suitable for her.

After the last day passed, she went to the execution ground, then returned to Falling Plum Peak carrying her medicine box. She thought Yunniang would be unhappy, but unexpectedly, when Yunniang saw her return, she just looked at her with interest for a moment before lowering her head to fiddle with the medicinal materials in her silver jar.

“How interesting. I heard you were rescued by someone?”

Lu Tong was startled.

Yunniang had lived in Sunan for many years. When she found out and how she found out, Lu Tong had no idea.

“I thought you might go with him.”

Lu Tong: “I…”

Yunniang interrupted her: “He’s a son of the Ji family from the capital.”

“What a pity. If you had brought him back to Falling Plum Peak, perhaps you two could have kept each other company on the mountain.”

Yunniang smiled, her tone somewhat regretful.

But Lu Tong’s scalp went numb.

A faint chill immediately ran down her spine, followed by relief at having escaped disaster. She was grateful she hadn’t dragged Ji Xun into this muddy water.

Yunniang smoothed her hair and went into the small room to make new medicine.

Lu Tong hugged her medicine box tightly, feeling that the usually light box had suddenly become very heavy.

Later…

She always kept that jade pendant, thinking that perhaps one day she would go down the mountain and return to Changwu County, everything would return to its original path. With the long road ahead, there might not be no opportunity to go to the capital, even if that chance was very slim.

When that time came, she could go see the Imperial Medical Academy that Ji Xun had mentioned. If she had the chance to see him again, she could personally return this round jade pendant to him…

“Sister Lu,” Lin Danqing’s urging voice came from behind: “It’s getting late. Hurry and get on the bed to rest. We have to get up early tomorrow.”

The lamplight in the room flickered. The spring warmth of Sunan dispersed, leaving only the clear cold of the long night.

Lu Tong put the white jade back in her medicine box and secured it.

“Coming.”

…

The moon fell into the pond outside the window like a piece of cold jade.

In the room, the medicine apprentice spoke in surprise: “She’s the one you encountered at the pharmacy before, Young Master… that domineering sitting physician?”

Ji Xun nodded.

He remembered why Lu Tong’s face seemed so familiar. It wasn’t because of their chance encounter on Sparrow Street, but much earlier.

They had already met once before at the pharmacy in the capital.

At that time, he had gone to the pharmacy to deliver medicine records when a woman brought guards from beside the wife of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices Minister and barged in aggressively. He was behind a screen and heard Lu Tong talking with Lou Si, the medicine verification official.

Though her tone was gentle, it was like a needle hidden in silk—every word and sentence used the power of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices Minister to pressure people.

Lou Si feared the Dong family’s power and ultimately made accommodations.

This made him feel displeased.

As a physician, if one’s heart wasn’t upright and only knew how to rely on power, one’s medical ethics would be damaged.

But at that time he didn’t pay much attention. The pharmacy had its own administrative body to handle such matters. No matter how powerful the Court of Imperial Sacrifices Minister was, he couldn’t go too far.

The second time he heard Lu Tong’s name was regarding a medicinal tea called “Xianxian” in the capital.

This medicinal tea was very popular among noble ladies in the capital. Having devoted himself to medical theory for years and remaining deaf to outside affairs, he was curious when he heard about this.

Ji Xun had someone buy back those two medicinal teas to examine. They were indeed impressive formulations, just somewhat domineering and aggressive in their use of medicine.

The third time he heard Lu Tong’s name was during the Imperial Medical Academy’s spring examination. He had personally set the questions, and the students’ answers to the diagnostic section were disastrous, with only one examination paper being near perfect.

That person was this year’s top candidate on the red list for the Imperial Medical Academy’s spring examination—a commoner medical official.

Ji Xun had been busy treating the old master at the Censor’s residence for the past two months, so he hadn’t been able to see what this Dr. Lu looked like. Only after seeing her tonight did he realize this newly appointed female medical official was the same domineering sitting physician he had encountered at the pharmacy.

The medicine apprentice remembered something and reminded him: “Speaking of which, Young Master, when you encountered Madam Dong a few days ago, she spoke to you with hidden meanings. Now that you’re back at the Medical Academy, there are rumors everywhere that you praise that female physician highly, and even Director Cui says so… Could it be that she spread these words herself to create a connection with you, Young Master?”

The Court of Imperial Sacrifices Minister’s wife, Madam Dong, had no previous contact with Ji Xun. This time they met by chance on the road, yet she surprisingly had her carriage stopped and spoke a few words with him. Her words, both directly and indirectly, were about how he had chosen Lu Tong as the top candidate in the spring examination, and how rarely he showed such appreciation for someone.

The words were confusing and somewhat sarcastic. Ji Xun didn’t quite understand them.

When he returned to the Medical Academy, there were rumors everywhere that he held Lu Tong in high regard.

But he had never even met Lu Tong.

The Hanlin Medical Academy had indeed had such officials in the past who used others’ influence to show off their power. If Lu Tong had spread these words herself, her thoughts would be quite calculating.

“Watch your words.”

Ji Xun lightly scolded: “Without evidence, you cannot slander others’ words and actions.”

The medicine apprentice quickly fell silent.

Ji Xun shook his head.

Regardless of whether these words came from Lu Tong or not, he would keep a respectful distance from her. He had always despised power struggles most. Lu Tong had already stirred up so much controversy upon first entering the Medical Academy. Getting close to her would naturally invite much gossip.

He didn’t want to be drawn into others’ disturbances.

In the pond, a red carp secretly surfaced, its tail tip swaying gently, and the cold moon in the water suddenly shattered.

Ji Xun’s brow furrowed tightly.

He had no interest in Lu Tong’s past.

He was just puzzled.

Earlier, when he saw the two people collecting medicinal materials in front of the medicine storehouse, the medicine basket Lu Tong was carrying had some herb fragments and leaves showing at the corner.

That was…

Red Fragrant Catkins?

…

After several spring rains, the weather grew warmer each day.

In the early morning, children began flying paper kites on the long embankment by the river in the capital. Swallow kites tangled in string often hung from the willow trees on both banks.

Outside Jin Xianrong’s courtyard at the Jin residence, a beautifully dressed woman was trying to charge into the courtyard while twisting her handkerchief, but was stopped by Jin Xianrong’s servant.

“Concubine Yao, you cannot go in—”

“Why can’t I go in?” Concubine Yao stamped her foot, frantically trying to peer inside. “Ever since Master fell ill, he hasn’t come to my courtyard. This past half month has been even better—I haven’t even seen him.”

The servant wiped his sweat: “Master is truly ill. There’s a medical official inside conducting treatment…”

“What medical official!” Concubine Yao sneered. “The maids in my courtyard all saw clearly—it’s obviously a young beauty!”

“Master carried her into the room. Not even three months and he’s already tired of me. Oh, how miserable my fate is…” Concubine Yao began crying pitifully, then cursed: “What kind of seductress is this? Originally, though there were many people in this mansion, Master would at least spend one night a month in my room. Now that this one has arrived, it’s been most of a month and he won’t even let her out…”

“What decent person has such an ugly appetite? Aren’t they afraid of being overstuffed!”

“…”

The commotion at the courtyard gate drifted into the ears of those inside through the door.

At the low table, Jin Xianrong sat upright, a large bead of sweat slowly rolling down his forehead.

This Concubine Yao had originally been part of a opera troupe hired to perform for his mother’s entertainment. While singing, she caught Jin Xianrong’s eye.

Concubine Yao didn’t want to suffer in the opera troupe, and Jin Xianrong was infatuated with her beauty. One thing led to another, and the two became involved.

But heaven was blind—he had only taken Concubine Yao as a concubine for less than a month when he fell ill. This neglect went on for a long time, naturally making her suspicious.

Concubine Yao had previously sung martial male roles in the opera troupe and had a loud, resonant voice. Now that she was crying at the gate, it was hard to pretend not to hear.

Jin Xianrong looked anxiously toward the person in the room.

At the table, Lu Tong held a silver jar and was seriously grinding medicine.

The beauty lowered her eyes, her eyebrows and eyes like a painting. That light water-blue dress made her appear like a secluded orchid in an empty valley, her elegant bearing captivating just to look at. Those hands were as tender as white scallions, holding the small silver medicine hammer in a delicate and adorable way.

The next moment, the beauty raised her eyes and expressionlessly pulled out a large handful of what appeared to be pig lungs or something from a ceramic jar, bloody and dripping, throwing it all into the silver jar.

“Clang clang clang—”

The silver hammer fell, and the splashing blood made Jin Xianrong’s lower abdomen go cold.

He felt as if certain parts of his anatomy were also being chopped up by this silver hammer.

The inappropriate thoughts he’d just had immediately vanished. Jin Xianrong gripped his knees tightly, sitting constrained and obediently.

It had been seven days since this Dr. Lu first came to treat him.

Lu Tong had come several more times during these seven days.

Her attitude was cold and her expression calm. Each time she came for treatment, she showed no other emotions.

At first, Jin Xianrong had harbored some wishful thinking because of her exceptional beauty, always wanting to flirt a bit. But each time his advances seemed like playing music to a cow—whether malicious or subtle, this female physician showed no reaction after hearing them. She was neither panicked nor shy, as indifferent as a block of wood.

Instead, Jin Xianrong had been frightened several times by this woman’s words.

She said: “Applying needles and medicine can easily go wrong. Master Jin had better cooperate, otherwise one wrong step and medicine will be powerless in the future.”

This was a threat… this was clearly a threat!

But Jin Xianrong was very susceptible to her threats.

Especially when Lu Tong obtained pig kidneys, cow kidneys, and sheep kidneys from somewhere, putting them in ceramic jars and cutting those kidney sacs into paper-thin slices right in front of him before throwing them into the medicine jar to be heavily ground—it was hard not to think she was making an example to warn others… killing organs to intimidate people.

Such behavior inevitably tainted even the most beautiful first impression with bloody overtones.

Quite stomach-turning.

The sound of the medicine hammer pounding the jar stopped.

Lu Tong scooped the bloody, mangled contents of the jar into a porcelain bowl, covered it with a lid, and looked at Jin Xianrong.

“Master Jin, today’s medicinal paste is ready.” She paused, then looked at him: “Do you need this official to apply the medicine for you?”

“No need!”

Jin Xianrong refused decisively. Seeming to realize his refusal was too quick and appeared deliberate, he hurriedly added with a dry laugh: “How could I trouble Dr. Lu? The servants can do it for me.”