Chapter 112: Chapter 68 Rabbit Corpse_2
Lu Tong dropped the last Medicine Hammer, leaving it inside the jar, and Yin Zheng knew she had finished.
Lu Tong held the jar as she stood up, but she didn’t immediately leave; instead, she took a turn around the courtyard, her gaze finally settling on a half-human-height bamboo basket in the corner.
She walked over, opened the basket, and lifted out a white rabbit with dark circles around its eyes.
The rabbit had been bought by Du Changqing a few days earlier; he said that he saw a girl selling rabbits at the Guanxiang Meat Shop. The girl was pretty and appeared to have a tragic backstory, which kindled Du Changqing’s compassion, so he bought the whole basket of rabbits and brought them back.
After the purchase, they didn’t know what to do with the rabbits; neither Yin Zheng nor Xiang Cao knew how to cook rabbit meat, so they decided to keep them in the courtyard, with Xia Rongrong and Xiang Cao feeding them daily.
Lu Tong gazed down at the rabbit in her hands, which kicked aimlessly in the air as she held it by the ears. After looking at it for a moment, she took both the rabbit and the medicine jar to the kitchen.
On ordinary days, Lu Tong made her medicine in the courtyard and would not allow Yin Zheng to follow her into the kitchen. Yin Zheng rubbed her knees, stacked the silk handkerchiefs she had just finished sewing, and went inside to put them away in a chest.
The night was deep and silent, the chill of the autumn wind rattled the windows, shrouding Shengjing in a veil of darkness.
In the kitchen, Lu Tong clutched the rabbit, her eyes lowered in thought.
The Silver Jar sat next to the chopping board, its contents of herbs crushed into a mushy black mass coating the inside walls and slowly dripping down, leaving behind dirty, eerie shadows.
Lu Tong looked at the rabbit for a while, then suddenly reached into the jar, grabbed a handful of the black slime, and stuffed it into the rabbit’s mouth.
A mass of unidentifiable filth was suddenly forced into the rabbit’s mouth, causing it to struggle violently. Lu Tong held onto the rabbit’s ears tightly until the black slime was almost chewed up; then she let go. The rabbit escaped from her grasp, and once it landed and gained its freedom, it started running around the kitchen.
She watched the rabbit quietly.
A moment, two moments, three moments.
The rabbit’s sniffing and searching slowed down, and it stopped moving forward, staggering like a drunken animal. Then its body tilted to the side and it half-collapsed on the floor, seemingly trying to stand up with its legs kicking weakly, but then it stopped moving altogether.
A black streak slowly oozed from the corner of its mouth, and its blood-red eyes looked terrifyingly wide.
Dead.
This rabbit, which had been hopping about just moments ago, was now dead.
The dim light of the night, the faint glow from the lamp in the small kitchen, a woman, and a dead rabbit facing each other in a silence that was both desolate and eerie.
Just then, a cry of alarm suddenly came from behind: "Ah——"
Lu Tong’s eyes turned icy in an instant, and she whirled around to see Xia Rongrong standing at the kitchen doorway, holding a lantern, looking at her in bewildered fear.
Normally at this hour, Xia Rongrong would already be asleep—Xia Rongrong cherished her beauty and firmly believed that early sleep made a woman’s complexion radiant, and she always went to bed before the Hai Hour. Yet now it was past midnight.
Lu Tong frowned: "What are you doing here?"
Xia Rongrong, seeming scared, her face pale, replied instinctively, "Xiang Cao fell and hurt herself; I came to the kitchen to fetch some water." She quickly glanced at the rabbit on the floor, as if afraid to look closer, and then hastily averted her eyes, asking Lu Tong with a shaky voice, "This rabbit..."
"This rabbit inadvertently ate poisonous herbs, so it died," Lu Tong explained.
"Is that so?" Xia Rongrong said, her eyes quickly flitting over Lu Tong’s hand, Lu Tong’s left hand, stained black by the herbal medicine from the Silver Jar.
Lu Tong looked at her: "Aren’t you here for water?"
"Oh... yes." Xia Rongrong hastily agreed, suddenly remembering her errand and hurriedly filled a basin with water. She took the water basin and, as she passed by Lu Tong, her hands shook so fiercely she almost spilled it.
Lu Tong watched coolly as she carried the water basin out, waiting until Xia Rongrong entered her room in the courtyard, the sliver of lamplight from the door gap went dark, and the outside plunged back into darkness.
After a moment of silence, she stood up, walked to the rabbit’s body, and picked it up.
...
"It was terrifying; you have no idea what I just saw!"
The moment Xia Rongrong entered the room, she tossed the water basin aside and collapsed on the floor, her legs giving out.
Xiang Cao, startled, ignored the bruises on her knees from a recent fall and quickly got up to help Xia Rongrong to the bed, "What happened?"
Xia Rongrong’s face was pale as she looked at Xiang Cao with eyes filled with fear, "I just saw Doctor Lu in the kitchen. She... she..." Xia Rongrong grabbed Xiang Cao’s hand, "She poisoned a rabbit to death!"