Chapter 393: Chapter 146 That Year_4
"Healers treating illnesses is a matter of course." He glanced indifferently at the medical box Lu Tong had placed in the corner and said, "You are a healer too, aren’t you aware?"
Lu Tong’s heart tightened.
She had never opened that medical box in front of him, nor had she ever mentioned her identity.
"I’ve seen you taking your own pulse." As if seeing her confusion, the young man offered an explanation.
Lu Tong didn’t know what to say and could only respond dryly.
He sorted the newly delivered medicinal herbs with care and said, "You’ve been living here for half a month, yet I still don’t know your name. What is it?"
As the herbs were scattered about, dust danced in the golden sunlight. Perhaps because most of the chill poison in her body had dissolved, Lu Tong even found the cold sunlight somewhat warm.
Her head lowered, the tip of her nose sticking out from her veiled face was damp with a fine sweat due to the warmth, and she said softly, "Seventeen."
Seventeen, that name was clearly not her real one, but the other party just paused briefly and didn’t ask further, saying, "My name is Ji Xun."
Ji Xun...
Lu Tong silently repeated the name in her mind twice.
Ji Xun was a strange person.
He never inquired about Lu Tong’s affairs.
Having stayed in the inn for about ten days, with no one coming to look for her and not returning home, most people would have grown curious about her background by now, but Ji Xun never brought it up.
He didn’t ask where Lu Tong was from, why she was poisoned, or even show the slightest interest in what she looked like under her veiled face. He seemed indifferent to everything around him.
Yet he was also considerate.
Every day he would borrow a stove from the inn and carefully prepare medicine, ensuring that Lu Tong took it before examining her pulse to see if she was improving.
He even had the coachman buy a skirt for Lu Tong.
Lu Tong’s old clothes had become torn from the rocks as she fell, ripping a gash by the knee, which looked quite improper. Ji Xun then instructed the coachman to buy a new skirt for her, a beautiful embroidered flower skirt in the color of spring willow leaves, a very fresh and vibrant shade.
Lu Tong took off her veil at night when everyone was asleep and tried on that skirt, staring blankly at the unfamiliar girl in the mirror.
Without the mud from picking herbs, without the tattered cloth wrapped around her because it didn’t fit, without the rotten scent from collecting bodies at Chaos Burial Mound...
She looked like an ordinary thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl.
If she hadn’t left her parents, if she were still with her siblings, this is likely what Lu San, the girl from Changwu County, would look like today.
The next morning, as soon as Lu Tong got up, someone knocked on the door.
She opened the door to see Ji Xun and the coachman standing outside.
The coachman looked at Lu Tong’s skirt with surprise, as if astonished that today’s Lu Tong was different from her usual self.
Lu Tong felt somewhat uncomfortable, but Ji Xun seemed not to notice and walked past her, heading straight into the room to fetch the stove and medicine pot to start brewing the medicine.
After the coachman left, Lu Tong silently went to sit at the long table by the window.
Ji Xun didn’t seem to have much concern for the proprieties of gender separation, perhaps because she was just a commoner from Su Nan, not a nobleman’s daughter, with no strict rules to follow.
Or perhaps, as a healer, Ji Xun naturally disregarded such concerns.
Lu Tong looked out the window.
New willows were planted thick on the arched bridge at the inn’s entrance. Looking down from above, the lake’s long embankment was a stretch of fresh green, further off lay the mountain shadow of Luomei Peak hidden in the clouds, the mountain in spring verdant, and the waters shimmering.
As Lu Tong watched, fascinated, she suddenly heard Ji Xun’s voice near her ear.
He asked, "How long have you studied medicine?"