Chapter 17 A Small Amount of 100 Taels
Before He Zhilin could reply to Gu Lintan, he saw Huang Fu walking towards him with a small wooden box in his hand.
Huang Fu walked up to Gu Lintan and stood beside him respectfully.
"If you can help me, sir..."
"Why not?" He Zhilin interrupted Gu Lintan before he could finish.
He smiled and said, "Doctors never reveal patients' private affairs. This is originally my job, why do I need you to entrust me?"
Gu Lintan stood up, bowed to him with a look of gratitude on his face.
"On behalf of my cousin and the Gu family, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you, sir."
He turned around and opened the lid of the wooden box in Huang Fu's hand, revealing the silver inside.
"These silver coins are the medical fees this time." Gu Lintan said to He Zhilin.
"So much?!" He Zhilin leaned in to take a look. There were at least a hundred taels of silver in here. He was a little shocked.
"Sir, even if it costs ten thousand gold, it would not be too much for you to treat the princess." Gu Lintan said.
"These are just small sums. Unfortunately, I am poor and cannot spend a lot of money."
Small number?
He was just a newly crowned top scholar, and no matter how high his official rank was, it would not be higher than the sixth rank.
At that time, my grandfather was the director of the Imperial Medical Bureau, a fifth-rank official, and his annual salary was only eighty taels of silver.
Before Gu Lintan passed the imperial examination, he was just a poor candidate from Hedong.
He was born into an ordinary peasant family, not a wealthy merchant family, nor a member of a prominent family.
Therefore, after he passed the imperial examination, people regarded this as a good story for a while: A poor scholar passed the imperial examination and succeeded. Isn’t this the best story?
Gu Lintan casually threw a hundred taels of silver to the man in white, and it was cash!
He Zhilin was shocked and suspicious, but his expression remained calm.
He waved his hand and said, "This, this is too much. In the past, I charged a consultation fee of five taels of silver at most, even if it was from a wealthy family."
Gu Lintan said: "Sir, you have great ambitions. When you achieve great success in the future, you will be a master of the academy that many people will flock to. With just a hundred taels, I can make friends with you. I am the one who benefits."
"Sir, you have just arrived in Beijing, so you must have a lot of expenses. This little money should be used as a contribution to your future."
"I will have to trouble you a lot in the future. I will leave my cousin's wife and children, as well as the princess's health, in your hands!"
He Zhilin hesitated and thought again and again.
Huang Fu directly stuffed the wooden box into his hands and said, "My master is really grateful to you, sir, please accept it!"
He Zhilin said anxiously: "I can accept it, but, but I can't just walk back with such a big box, right?"
Huang Fu stopped stuffing the box awkwardly and looked back at Gu Lintan.
Gu Lintan secretly sneered in his heart, a famous doctor from Jiaodong? Even famous doctors can't get around the hurdle of fame and fortune.
He smiled and said, "Don't worry, sir. I will send someone to take you there."
He was about to order Huang Fu to prepare a sedan chair when he saw a servant guarding the gate running over in panic.
"My lord, Her Royal Highness the Princess is looking for you. It's time to return to the palace."
Gu Lintan frowned and said, "I understand."
He turned to He Zhilin and said, "Sir, you have been running around for a long time. You haven't had your meal yet, right? Why don't you let the servant take you to have breakfast first and then send you back."
This is to avoid Jiang Xue, He Zhilin thought.
He went with the flow and said, "Okay, I'll also use the food at the Prince Consort's Mansion."
Gu Lintan said, "I have to accompany the princess back to the palace to express my gratitude, so I will leave first."
"Huang Fu," he called, "please accompany Master Yan for me and be sure to serve him well."
After Gu Lintan left, Huang Fu took He Zhilin back to the East Courtyard and had breakfast in the side hall.
He Zhilin thought about it again and again, and after finishing his meal, he turned around and told Huang Fu:
"I will deliver the medicine I prescribed for Her Royal Highness the Princess to you myself in the evening."
"I cannot give the prescription of this medicine to anyone else, lest there be any evidence of it."
"Report my words to Lord Gu verbatim, and he will understand."
After saying this, he left with the wooden box.
"He thought the medicine you were going to give him..." Jiang Yu said.
"He must have thought that I would send you medicine that would allow His Highness to recover from his illness."
He Zhilin sneered.
"As the saying goes, people will always get sick if they eat whole grains," he said, "Instead of waiting for Gu Lintan to tamper with your Highness's diet, it's better for me to bring it up."
"So that he may think that I am indeed someone with whom he can be reunited."
Jiang Yu's face was as gloomy as water.
"What are the identities of the woman and child you mentioned just now? Is she really your cousin's mistress?"
Concubine, he could actually arrange his original wife and son like this. Jiang Xue sneered.
"I don't know." He Zhilin said, "But Your Highness should know something."
He looked at Jiang Xue.
"I came to treat Your Highness this morning. Why did Your Highness take the initiative to ask me about this mother and child?"
"Xue'er, do you know them?" Jiang Yu asked.
Jiang Xue looked embarrassed and shook her head, saying, "I don't know him."
"Then why did Your Highness ask me about this mother and son? Could it be that Your Highness knew about the existence of this mother and son long before this?"
Seeing this, Jiang Xue thought about it again and again and decided to tell everything that happened last night.
Of course, she concealed the content of the dream.
In fact, she just quietly followed to the west courtyard and saw the woman. She was so frightened that she did not listen carefully to the conversation between the two and hurried back to the room.
She said, “That’s how it is.”
Jiang Yu felt suspicious and asked, "Since you only saw this woman, how do you know she has a child?"
Jiang Xue had a headache, and after thinking for a while she could only say:
"The west courtyard was quiet, and it was late at night. I hid not far from the window of the house where the two of them were talking, and heard a little bit."
"What did you hear?" Jiang Yu asked.
"I heard this woman asking Gu Lintan for help. She mentioned a child and a high fever."
Jiang Xue said, "Gu Lintan told me after he returned to his room that he had found a famous doctor to treat me because I was not feeling well. I guessed that he was most likely going to ask you to treat the child."
She looked at Yan Zhe, "Your reputation as a doctor is growing. If there is no invitation from the Prince Consort's Mansion, I'm afraid I won't be able to invite you in the middle of the night."
"If we send in the invitation, and Gu Lintan invites a famous doctor to treat others on the night of his wedding with the princess, if even the slightest bit of information gets out, I'm afraid he, Gu Lintan, will be unable to defend himself."
"I am sure that he will ask you to see the child under the pretext of diagnosing me."
"I have no trusted confidants or spies in the Gu Mansion. That's why I sent Huang Fu away this morning and took the risk to ask you."
After Jiang Xue finished speaking, Jiang Yu and He Zhilin both felt helpless.
"What if this person is not Zhilin, what if this person has impure intentions, what if this person is from Gu Lintan?"
Jiang Yu said, "It's a bit risky for you to act this way."
"I don't have any other clues. If I don't seize the opportunity to test it out, where should I look for people in the future?" Jiang Xue argued.
"You keep saying you don't know the identities of this mother and son, but you're so anxious to find them." Jiang Yu asked doubtfully, "Xue'er, are you hiding something from us?"
Jiang Xue didn't know how to explain. She couldn't tell them that she had a dream, right?
Suddenly He Zhilin spoke.
"If a married woman's child is seriously ill, even if she needs to seek help from a powerful relative, it is her husband who should go."
He Zhilin said, "Everyone in the capital knows that the Gu family had a wedding yesterday. On the wedding night, who would go straight to the groom and disturb his bridal chamber?"
"If she were a normal woman, why would she come to Gu's house at midnight? Huang Fu is an old man by Gu Lintan's side. He can make decisions on ordinary matters. If he can't make decisions, he can report to him. Why didn't she look for Huang Fu, but only for Gu Lintan?"
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