The next morning, the rain gradually ceased. Before the sun had even risen, the air was nippy, and a thick mist rolled off the banks of the Daixiao River.
A night of torrential rain had turned the dirt road at the edge of the village into a bog of sludge. Early-rising tenant farmers had scattered broken stones to create a path; passersby picked their way across them on tiptoe. Occasionally, someone would lose their footing, let out a curse, and spend the rest of the day with mud-splattered trouser legs.
As winter slumber gave way to spring's awakening, the weather fluctuated wildly between warmth and chill—a fickle transition that made life miserable.
If it was hard for the healthy, it was an ordeal for the frail. Those with lung ailments feared these seasonal shifts most; a moment’s carelessness would trigger a coughing fit that refused to stop. While not immediately fatal, it was enough to keep a person tossing and turning through the long, lonely hours of the night.
Dou Wuniang stood before Guoran Ju with dark circles under her eyes, shaking the mud from the hem of her skirt while calling out toward the brushwood gate.
"Manager Qin! Manager Qin! Qin—"
Every few shouts were punctuated by an exaggerated cough. Yet, the dilapidated gate of Guoran Ju remained tightly shut. Within the half-collapsed courtyard walls, all was silent.
Dou Wuniang refused to give up. Thinking the girl was playing dead to avoid settling last month’s petty debt of a few dozen copper coins, she hiked up her damp, coarse linen skirt and shuffled toward the eastern side of the wall.
To the east lay the kitchen and the medicinal stove. Usually, white smoke would begin billowing from there before sunrise and continue until dusk.
Today, however, the soot-blackened chimney was cold and still.
*Is she truly not here?* Dou Wuniang wondered suspiciously.
But her cough was becoming unbearable. Going to the Green Pine Hall in the city would take half a day and cost at least dozens of coins more. After weighing her options, she steeled her resolve and decided to try one last time.
"Manager Qin! I’ve come to settle last month’s account! If it’s inconvenient, I’ll just come back next time..."
Before the words had even fully left her mouth, the house door "thudded" open. A disheveled figure with messy hair and one bare foot dashed across the courtyard and swung the gate open with a flourish.
"Ah, it's Dou Wuniang! I was just reviewing the ledgers last night and reached your entry when you arrived this morning. Perfect timing. You haven't been waiting long, have you?"
Dou Wuniang’s eyebrow twitched. It took her a long moment to squeeze out two words.
"I haven't." She paused, standing on her toes to peer behind the girl. "But why are you so late opening the door today? Could it be that last night..."
Dou Wuniang’s eyes darted about, but Qin Jiuye stood firmly in the doorway, blocking her view completely.
"The rain was too loud last night, very disruptive. Then the rooster woke me early this morning, so I was just catching up on some sleep."
Dou Wuniang clearly didn't believe her.
*This hovel of a place, keeping a rooster?* It would be a miracle if Qin Jiuye didn't go out and steal someone else's chickens.
Qin Jiuye knew exactly what the woman was thinking, but she maintained a polite smile, refusing to let her inside.
Dou Wuniang’s mouth was leakier than the spout of a teapot in Tang Shenyan’s teahouse. If she found out Jiuye had rescued Yuan Shuqing—or even if Jiuye had merely helped the neighbor’s sow give birth—the news of how many piglets were born would be known throughout the village and beyond by the next day.
After a brief standoff, Dou Wuniang finally remembered why she had come.
"The medicine from last time—give me another dose, Manager Qin."
Qin Jiuye unhurriedly lifted the hem of her robe and produced a paper-wrapped bundle of herbs from a strange hiding place, her smile perfectly composed.
"The weather has been turning. I figured you might come looking for me, so I prepared it first thing this morning."
Despite having dealt with her for years, Dou Wuniang still felt a strange mix of respect and wariness toward this scrawny girl.
Everyone knew that the manager of Guoran Ju was clever. It was just a pity her lot in life was so bitter, leaving her to scramble for a living in the mud.
Thinking of this, Dou Wuniang felt a bit better about herself. She reached out to take the medicine, but Qin Jiuye extended her other hand.
"This dose is thirty-seven wen. Adding the previous debt, that makes exactly one hundred and eighty-three wen."
Dou Wuniang stared at the medicine wrapped in tattered yellow paper. Her hand shot out from her sleeve like a lightning bolt; in the blink of an eye, the bundle was in her grasp.
"Put it on the tab. I'll settle it next time."
With the medicine in hand, Dou Wuniang’s feet seemed to grow wings. She was ten paces away in an instant. Qin Jiuye opened her mouth to protest, then looked down at her left foot, which was clad only in a holey sock. With a bitter laugh, she turned back into the brushwood gate.
In the waterlogged courtyard, Jinbao was shrinking behind a pillar, peeking out. Seeing Qin Jiuye return, he quickly grabbed a nearby winnowing basket and pretended to shake it.
Qin Jiuye walked up behind him without a word and stood there silently for a moment. Finally, Jinbao couldn't take it anymore and turned around.
"What is it?"
The next second, the tuft of hair sticking out from the back of his neck was yanked hard.
"I told you to prepare a standard cough remedy! Why did you stuff an extra five qian of licorice in there? Do you think I can't feel the weight?!"
Jinbao let out a wail. "My hand just slipped!"
"Hand slipped? Don't think I don't know what you're up to! You’re just trying to get on her good side because she’s acting as a matchmaker for the Xue family at the east end of the village! That Xue Si is a proper bailiff in the neighboring Yuxiang Village; his family has land, oxen, and tenants. What do you have?! When will you ever wake up and see sense!"
After venting her frustration, she finally let go.
Both were panting. They glared at each other with resentment for a moment before looking away simultaneously, as if nothing had happened.
"I'm going inside to check on him. Go brew the medicine I prepared last night."
Having said her piece, Qin Jiuye walked toward the inner room without looking back.
Rubbing her ribs, she muttered a mantra: *Don't get angry, don't get angry.*
If she hadn't sworn an oath to her grandfather never to profit from the medicine or life-saving needs of the poor, she would have cracked Dou Wuniang’s skull open with a medicine spade!
When she was a child, her grandfather had entrusted an old physician to introduce her to the study of medicine. Though she had learned much more since then by seeking out medical texts on her own, she could not break the promise she had made.
Over the years, because of that single oath, she had endured more hardship, poverty, and obstacles than she could count.
When poor folk had a headache or a fever, they usually just endured it until it passed. No one went to a pharmacy to buy medicine. If they actually showed up, it meant they could endure it no longer; every case was an emergency. Even if they couldn't produce the silver, she couldn't truly leave them to die. She would charge a symbolic amount, often losing money on the deal herself.
Wealthy families, on the other hand, loved to take medicinal tonics for no reason at all, and they were generous with their gold. They didn't care if the difference between a thousand-year-old ginseng and a common mountain ginseng was just a few root hairs.
But such families would never come to a dump like Guoran Ju for a prescription. The city's Spring Return Hall, Centennial Residence, and Pleasant House used every trick in the book to keep those distinguished guests. As long as the silver was provided, those places would even fire up a furnace to refine immortality elixirs for them.
Qin Jiuye, for one, didn't know how to refine elixirs.
She only knew how to grow herbs, gather them, decoct them, and prescribe them.
And so, she grew poorer, and Guoran Ju grew more dilapidated.
Fortunately, heaven never closes all doors. She had eventually found a way to make a living.
The sects of the martial world weren't as fastidious as the wealthy city folk, especially when in dire straits. Moreover, those who walked the path of rivers and lakes suffered far more injuries and accidents than ordinary people. Even if they stayed perfectly still, they might still suffer a qi deviation or "fire possession" while practicing their techniques.
At such times, if someone lent a helping hand with a few divine doses of medicine to turn back the tide and bring them back from the brink of death, most were willing to pay several taels of silver.
Sometimes, if her luck was poor and she arrived too late, she wouldn't return empty-handed either. She would pick out a few corpses that looked impressively dressed and carry them back, waiting for their sects to come claim the bodies so she could ask for a "retrieval fee."
In this manner, she had actually managed to save up a fair amount of silver over the years.
Thinking of her silver, neatly stacked in her money box, the stagnant air in Qin Jiuye’s chest finally cleared. She strode to the bed and carefully examined Yuan Shuqing.
Last night, it had taken two large basins of fresh water—both turning into bloody soup—before she could peel the blood-soaked clothes off his body.
She was always loath to burn too many candles, and combined with the exhaustion of her rainy night trek, she had fallen asleep before she could get a good look at him. Now that the light had brightened, she finally saw what kind of physique lay beneath those bloodied clothes.
A full chest, a tapered waist, and well-proportioned, fine-grained muscles that rose and fell with his breathing. Every inch of bone and sinew exuded a burgeoning power, as if one could hear the blood surging beneath the surface.
Qin Jiuye couldn't help but click her tongue.
Compared to those wandering Taoists outside Jiugao City who looked like scrawny bamboo poles from fasting, this "immortal physique" looked a bit too robust. Then again, she had never seen a proper cultivator before; perhaps those who truly attained the Way looked exactly like this.
She looked down at her own flat stomach and withered, stick-like arms, suddenly feeling a surge of envy and jealousy.
"The food at Fangwai Monastery must be truly excellent," she lamented.
After her sigh, she took a row of fine needles from her medical kit and performed a round of acupuncture on the body with swift, precise movements.
Jinbao had started the medicine brewing and brought over the ointment she had prepared earlier, seemingly having forgotten their previous spat.
"He looks like he's about to die. Will your prescription really work?"
"What good would it do you if he died?!" Qin Jiuye spat at him, taking the ointment and working it quickly. "Right now, the man lying here isn't the Sect Leader of Fangwai Monastery; he’s your God of Wealth. Whether we can put food on the table this month depends entirely on this medicine."
*Slap.* Qin Jiuye applied the ointment to the man's major acupoints with practiced, fluid motions.
Watching from the side, Jinbao couldn't help but smack his lips.
"That ointment is only for external use. Can it really do anything? Besides, his external wounds stopped bleeding long ago, yet he remains unconscious. I fear his internal organs have been shattered by internal force."
"He is indeed heavily injured. The external wounds were dangerous enough, but the force from the person who struck him has dissipated into his bones and sinews. It’s a miracle he managed to escape at all. Of course, if he hadn't met me, he’d be dead for sure by now, no matter how much he struggled."
Qin Jiuye had a fair amount of confidence in her medical skills—a confidence forged through years of scraping out a living.
To save him, she had invested heavily.
Recalling her trembling hands as she grabbed half an ounce of crushed ginseng, Qin Jiuye felt a pang of bitterness. She looked up gloomily at Jinbao.
"Why haven't you left yet?"
Jinbao leaned against the doorframe, looking unsteady.
"You said you were going out to buy rice yesterday, but you came back empty-handed. Now you've stayed up all night. I'm about to faint from hunger. If you don't go buy rice soon, you might have to spend a few extra taels on a coffin for me."
"The day after tomorrow! I'll definitely go buy rice the day after tomorrow, and a chicken too!" Qin Jiuye declared with a grand wave of her hand, as if she could see a beautiful life unfolding before her. "Once I save this Sect Leader and send him back to Fangwai Monastery, I won't hesitate to squeeze a massive sum of silver out of them. When that time comes, forget one chicken—eating chicken every day won't be a dream!"
Listening to her, Jinbao nearly started drooling. "You’d better keep your word."
Qin Jiuye turned back, casting a "benevolent" gaze upon the man on the bed.
"For the sake of our chicken, you’d better stay alive."
***
