Chapter 390: Chapter 146: Back in the Day
The night was silent.
It was late, and the lamps in the lodgings of the Medical Officer Institute had long been extinguished. Only a sparse few stars dotted the ink-like expanse of sky above, but the moon at its center shone with exceptional clarity, casting a thin, chilly glow on the willows in the small courtyard in front of the institute hall.
Lin Danqing had gone to fetch water, and after having washed up, Lu Tong sat down at the long table in the room.
The lodgings at the Medical Officer Institute were much better than those at the Southern Pharmacy. Although the furnishings were not richly exquisite, they were clean and orderly. The writing desk, short couch, wooden cupboard, and bedding were all complete.
Lu Tong and Lin Danqing shared a room, one staying in the inner chamber and the other in the outer. This arrangement had been specially requested from Chang Jin by Lin Danqing.
Lu Tong bent down to lift her medical box onto the table. Opening the box, she didn’t touch the herbs inside but pulled open a small compartment instead. As the compartment sprang open, the contents were revealed.
A silver finger ring and a piece of White Jade Pendant lay there.
The ring had blackened with age, appearing somewhat old and tarnished, whereas the Jade Pendant was as lustrous and polished as if it were brand new, gleaming under the lamp light.
She picked up the Jade Pendant, her fingertips tracing around the red string looped through it, and the round jade that hung from it lined up with the moon outside the window, gradually reflecting the engraved patterns upon it.
A High Scholar Playing Zither Picture was etched upon it.
The pattern was exquisitely and intricately carved, lifelike even after many years. Bathed in the moonlight, it seemed as though the zither player in the image was about to step off the White Jade, carrying his zither to visit friends and compose poetry amidst the mountains.
As Lu Tong gazed upon it, she became slightly lost in thought.
Lin Danqing, carrying a basin of hot water, came inside and saw Lu Tong sitting in front of the desk, her back to the door, staring blankly ahead. Thinking she was worried about having met Ji Xun earlier that day, he set down the basin and consoled her, "Younger Sister Lu, although Ji Xun can be peculiar and lofty at times, occasionally presenting tricky questions, his character has no flaws."
"Don’t worry, he won’t trouble you without reason."
"A good person..." Lu Tong murmured.
She, of course, knew Ji Xun was a good person.
Always had been, from the past to the present.
Shadows cast by the round jade in the lamplight stretched out like tendrils of somber past, heavily weighing upon her heart.
Lu Tong lowered her eyelashes.
She had once met Ji Xun.
Not on the stone steps of the institute courtyard that night, not on Que’er Street near Liu’s Noodle Shop, but earlier.
In Su Nan.
...
That was probably four years ago, in the year thirty-six of Yongchang.
By then, she was learning to differentiate the pharmacology of the Poison Scripture with Lady Yun, occasionally treating the patients who came up the mountain to seek Lady Yun’s diagnosis—those who Lady Yun preferred not to treat were often passed on to her for convenience.
However, healing was one thing, continuing with poison trials was another.
Perhaps because her body had built resistance to common poisons after numerous trials, new poisons crafted by Lady Yun became increasingly fierce. In the past, a few days of rest sufficed after a poison test, but now, a single test often required a whole month or more to recover.
Lu Tong still remembered, it was a spring day in March.
Once again, a poison trial. Lady Yun had concocted a new poison that, upon ingestion, caused bone-chilling coldness throughout the body, making it impossible to sense the slightest warmth even in the height of summer.
"Silkworms fear the cold rain, and sprouts, the fire," Lady Yun pondered for a long while before finding a satisfying name, "Let’s call it Cold Silkworm Rain."
Lu Tong locked herself in the thatched cottage on Luomei Peak, wrapped in layer upon layer of blankets, yet still feeling as if she was naked and thrown into an icy cellar during the coldest days of winter. Her teeth chattered from the cold. For seven days and nights, she was like a corpse not yet fully cold or a spring silkworm soaked by the chilling rain carrying an erosive intent, bit by bit freezing her inside and out, from her visceral organs into shattered pieces.
After seven days, the chill gradually faded, and she began to feel warmth and could move her body slightly.
Lady Yun was quite satisfied with the new poison but wanted to refine the "Cold Silkworm Rain" further, prompting her to fetch a few fresh corpses.
So, Lu Tong descended the mountain, planning a trip to the execution grounds.
On Su Nan Street the crowd was bustling, and carriages never ceased. It was springtime and the townspeople often went out to enjoy the season.
Maybe because the cold poison had not entirely dissipated from her body, even under the brilliant March sunshine, Lu Tong failed to feel a trace of warmth, her body, as if thawing from being frozen stiff, was awkwardly learning to walk again, with steps that seemed faintly unsteady.
She had just stepped onto a bridge not far from the inn she was staying at when suddenly cries of alarm accompanied by the sound of horse hooves reached her ears. Hurried shouts came from behind: "Hey, what’s the person ahead doing? Move aside quickly—"
Confused, she turned around only to see a carriage barreling straight toward her on the bridge.
In a moment of great shock, Lu Tong instinctively stepped aside to escape, but the remnants of "Cold Silkworm Rain" still lingered in her body, and after enduring seven torturous nights on the mountain, her movements were far from agile. The speeding carriage narrowly missed her body as it whizzed by, but Lu Tong, carried by the motion, stumbled, crashing into the bridge’s stone railing.