Chapter 440: Chapter 161 Gold
"Have you heard? Several maids were beaten to death in Changchun Palace today."
"Ah? What happened?"
"They say soone bribed them to harm the dragon seed in Consort Zhen’s womb... Changchun Palace is now filled with kneeling figures, and Envoy rushed into the palace just to help Consort Zhen stabilize her pregnancy..."
In the front hall of the dical Officer Institute, two dical officers were chatting while holding bowls. Lu Tong passed by them, and upon seeing soone approaching, they lowered their heads to eat without speaking.
Other than serving in the dical Officer Institute, most dical officers spent a large part of their ti moving among the houses of officials and nobility, and they knew many of the secrets within these high walls.
Consort Zhen has received much favor lately; the Emperor is of advanced age now. Of his four sons, apart from the Crown Prince, the Third Prince is the most cherished. If the dragon seed in Consort Zhen’s womb turns out to be a male heir, it is still uncertain how the court situation will change in the future.
Changes always happen in the blink of an eye.
Lu Tong walked around tables and chairs to the kitchen, collected so leftover stead buns, wrapped them up nicely, and left the dining hall for the pharmacy in the back courtyard.
This row of pharmacies was always empty all year round, but since Lu Tong arrived at the dical Officer Institute, it has been rarely used.
Following the corridor, Lu Tong walked until he reached the second to last room and entered through the door.
Inside the room, a dicine furnace on the floor was bubbling and letting off steam, as Lin Danqing sat in front of it, her eyes slightly squinted from the smoke, with dical books and pharmacopoeia scattered all around her.
In the gap next to the dicine furnace, several green-shelled eggs were nestled, baked until the shells were slightly blackened, squeezed under the bottom of the dicine pot like pebbles.
Lu Tong extended the wrapped stead buns to her, and Lin Danqing smiled: "Thank you for bringing
food specially."
"Only cold buns," Lu Tong sat down beside her. "Won’t you eat in the dining hall?"
Doctor Chang forbade them from eating outside the dining hall, so Lu Tong could only bring a few buns out for her.
"I’m busy making dicine," Lin Danqing bit off half a bun in one go, nearly choking, then after drinking so water and swallowing it, she declared: "You know as well as I do that we doctors can’t leave our pots when brewing dicine."
Lu Tong remained silent.
These days Lin Danqing didn’t have much to do; the dical Officer Institute assigned her fewer tasks, and with plenty of free ti, she seed to have taken a liking to experinting with new dicines next to Lu Tong’s room.
The previously empty pharmacy was now occupied by the two of them. Lu Tong’s was the last room, while Lin Danqing’s was the one before hers. Like competitors, they outdid each other by staying up later at night.
Lu Tong bent down to pick up the scattered dical books on the floor and noticed that the "Mingyi dical Classic" by Lin Danqing’s hand was turned to the section on poisons, which made him slightly startle.
It seed that he had seen Lin Danqing reading that section late into the night before as well.
Lu Tong looked at the dicine pot in front of Lin Danqing.
The potion in the pot was boiled to white foam, and the herbs within were indistinguishable. He could sll a faint familiar bitter fragrance, which seed to be detoxifying ingredients.
After a mont of silence, Lu Tong asked, "Are you making a detoxifying dicine?"
"You’re really impressive," mumbled Lin Danqing with half a bun in her mouth, glaring at him, "I’m using precious ingredients and even specially reduced their potency; how could you tell just by sll?"
Lu Tong pointed to the "Mingyi dical Classic" on the floor: "Isn’t it turned to this page?"
Lin Danqing: "..."
After a mont of silence, she said, "So you guessed."
She then closed the "Mingyi dical Classic" in front of her and put it to one side, looking sowhat lancholic: "I originally thought the dical Officer Institute had extensive collections. Chief Physician Chang said that the ’Mingyi dical Classic’ has the most comprehensive recordings of poisons in the current Liang Dynasty, with over five hundred types. But having flipped through this book several tis, I realize it is just as it is, many poisons aren’t recorded at all, which shows that the field of dicine is a long and arduous journey."
She seed to be very disappointed.
After a pause, Lu Tong asked, "The poison you’re looking for isn’t in there? What poison do you want to counteract?"
Lin Danqing’s gaze shifted subtly.
After a long while, she sighed, using silver chopsticks to push aside the green-shelled eggs sitting on the furnace. She poked the eggshell with the chopsticks.
"Do you know about the poisons from the Southern Borderlands?"
Lu Tong: "I’ve heard of them."
The Southern Borderlands, a distant land, are ho to many poisonous snakes, insects and ants, and various rare and exotic plants. The poisons from there are fierce, and due to its distance from the Central Plains, the dical books of the Liang Dynasty can only docunt a fraction of them.
Lin Danqing rolled the roasted egg on the ground, felt it until it was not too hot, cracked it on the ground, and shattered the green shell into pieces. She peeled away the shell to reveal the tender white egg inside.
These were eggs personally selected by Du Changqing. They weren’t large, but they were said to be better than those sold at the stalls in Official Lane.
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