“Besides ordinary soldiers, you should also try to win over more talented people. As the saying goes, gaining a thousand soldiers is not as good as gaining one general. However, most of these capable and unusual people have difficult temperaments, so you must be more patient with them.”
“Father, please rest assured. I will certainly keep the bigger picture in mind.” Li Yuan nodded and continued, “Do you still remember Liu Hongji?”
Li Jiancheng frowned and said, “Father, are you referring to the son of the Governor of Hezhou?” After Li Yuan nodded, he continued, “I heard that to avoid being conscripted for the campaign against Goguryeo, he deliberately slaughtered farming cattle and was imprisoned. After his release, his whereabouts became unknown.”
“After his release, he became an outlaw, supporting himself by stealing horses. There are reports that he has settled in Hedong. This person likes to associate with light-hearted knights and has good relationships with many people of the martial world. When you reach Hedong, you can seek him out and see if you can win him and his associates over to our side.”
After Li Jiancheng agreed to everything, he also discussed the departure date with Li Yuan. He had originally wanted to leave immediately, but Li Yuan believed that if Wang Wei and his companion arrived and couldn’t see Li Jiancheng, they might become suspicious. Therefore, he told Li Jiancheng to wait until after Wang Wei and his companion left before departing. After all, a few more days wouldn’t make much difference.
While Li Jiancheng was busily preparing for his upcoming journey, Jirong was also shut up in her room all day concocting medicinal powders. She knew Li Jiancheng’s temperament well – he meant what he said. Once she failed to produce the Tendon-Mending Muscle-Growing Powder, Li Jiancheng would definitely not let her off easy. So for the past two days, she had claimed to be unwell and hadn’t gone to the pleasure quarter to practice dancing, focusing all her attention on preparing the medicinal powder.
She had already combined the half of the prescription her father knew with her grandfather’s notes, attempting countless modifications and improvements. However, the medicinal powder she prepared, whether in scent or color, still fell short compared to the bottle her grandfather had left behind.
For the past two days, she had thought until her head nearly exploded, still unable to figure out where the problem lay. She could only continue flipping through piles of medical texts, hoping to find an answer.
After the second watch, Chunxiu rubbed her red hands and pushed open the door into the medicine-scented room, shivering as she said, “This cursed weather wants to freeze people to death. I can hardly bear the cold anymore.”
Since being transferred to work in the woodshed, her good days had ended. All day long she was either chopping wood or carrying water and washing rice. What she feared most was washing rice. When the weather wasn’t too cold before, she could still endure it, but recently each day had been colder than the last. Every time she finished washing rice, her hands were so frozen she couldn’t feel them. Even so, those people wouldn’t let her rest, urging her to continue chopping wood. Each time she finished her tasks, she was so exhausted she couldn’t straighten her back. It was truly killing her, and her hands had developed chilblains that hurt at the slightest touch.
Chunxiu held her hands near the candlestick to warm them for a while. Her frozen hands finally became warm again. She walked to the table and sat down, saying to Jirong, who had been buried in medical texts all along, “Sister, haven’t you successfully prepared the correct Tendon-Mending Muscle-Growing Powder yet? The day after tomorrow is New Year’s Day.”
Jirong was already feeling restless from reading, and hearing her say this made it even harder to concentrate. She forcefully closed the medical text and said irritably, “I’ve already tried every medicinal ingredient I could find, but I just can’t prepare one identical to grandfather’s.”
Chunxiu said helplessly, “Then what should we do? If sister can’t produce the Tendon-Mending Muscle-Growing Powder the day after tomorrow, the First Young Master will definitely blame us.”
Jirong rubbed her throbbing forehead without speaking. Since yesterday morning, she hadn’t closed her eyes. She had read many medical texts, but the more she read, the less confident she became. The Tendon-Mending Muscle-Growing Powder was more difficult to prepare than she had imagined.
Chunxiu waited a while without hearing Jirong speak, and couldn’t help saying again, “Sister, please think of a solution quickly – there’s no time left!”
“Am I not trying to think of a solution?” she snapped irritably, then took out all the remaining medical texts and piled them on the table, asking her to help look through them to see if they could find the key to preparing the Tendon-Mending Muscle-Growing Powder in the medical books.
Upon hearing this, Chunxiu’s face immediately fell. She had worked all day and was so exhausted she felt like falling apart. How could she have the energy to read these dry and boring medical texts? She made an excuse: “Sister, though I can read, I know nothing about medicine and can’t understand the symptoms and prescriptions listed in these medical books at all.”
Jirong took a damp cloth nearby and applied it to her red, swollen, and aching eyes, saying, “You don’t need to understand. You just need to find formulas related to medicinal powders and show them to me.”
Chunxiu rolled her eyes and said ingratiatingly, “Why don’t you read them yourself, sister? I’ll go to the kitchen to see if there’s anything to eat and prepare some late-night snacks for you.” As she was about to leave, Jirong removed the damp cloth from her eyes and said coldly, “If you want to be expelled from the Governor’s Manor, go ahead and shirk your duties!”
Chunxiu awkwardly stopped and said sheepishly, “Sister, where are your thoughts going? How could I be shirking? I’m just afraid of delaying your important work.” Seeing Jirong stare at her silently, Chunxiu felt guilty under her gaze and had to return to sit at the table, taking up a medical text and mumbling, “I… I’ll read them. Please don’t be angry, sister.”
“Look carefully and don’t miss a single one.” After saying this, Jirong pinched the bridge of her nose and once again focused her attention on the medical text before her.
The two women looked through medical texts under the lamplight. After reading for just a short while, Chunxiu couldn’t help but yawn. However, having just been scolded by Jirong, she could only force herself to stay alert and read through the yellowed medical texts page by page. She did see several formulas for medicinal powders, but after Jirong looked at them, she said they were useless. After reluctantly finishing one book, she muttered, “Old Master Ji was really something – if he had written down the prescription back then, we wouldn’t have to flip through books so aimlessly now.”
As she spoke, she opened another medical text. After reading a few pages, she yawned and said to Jirong, who was writing something on paper, “Sister, look at this ‘Motherwort Facial Remedy’ – is it useful?”
Jirong didn’t look up and said, “That’s a beauty treatment method. Both the ingredients and preparation method are different from the Tendon-Mending Muscle-Growing Powder.”
“Oh.” Chunxiu responded disappointedly, then asked curiously, “Is this Motherwort Facial Remedy really as miraculous as recorded in the medical text? Have you ever tried it?”
“The Motherwort Facial Remedy has a complex preparation process and is merely a beauty treatment formula with no benefit for healing people, so grandfather never made it. Besides, although motherwort isn’t particularly expensive, the recipe mentions rouge, which must be high-quality rouge costing several taels of silver. How could ordinary families afford to use it?”
“That’s true.” As Chunxiu was about to turn the page, she was suddenly stopped by a hand pressing down. She looked at Jirong in surprise and said, “Sister, what are you doing?”
Jirong didn’t speak but took the medical text and read it carefully. After a while, a smile appeared on her weary face. “I have a solution.”
Chunxiu was stunned, then said joyfully, “Sister, have you figured out what the problem is with the Tendon-Mending Muscle-Growing Powder?”
“No.” Before Chunxiu could understand, she said urgently, “Go to the pharmacy immediately and ask them for whole motherwort plants picked on Dragon Boat Festival day, without a speck of soil. Then go to the kitchen and get some flour. Oh, and bring a clay stove too.”