Antidote, the dawn of hope?
At this time, Ruan Yunsheng brought Shen Yunzhou to the Tzu Chi Institute. After all, Gu Nanzhi had been infected for a long time. If she turned into that ghostly appearance, Qi Xiuming, the big fool, would not know how much he would cry.
In the east wing of the Tzu Chi Institute, Qi Xiuming was holding a celadon bowl, scooping up a spoonful of white porridge and blowing on it carefully.
"Nanzhi, have another bite." He clumsily handed the spoon to Gu Nanzhi's lips, "You've been unconscious for two days, you need to eat something..."
Gu Nanzhi turned her head away, her pale face full of disgust: "Second Young Master Qi, you've blown this spoonful of porridge for half a cup of tea."
Who knows if there is his saliva on it!
The curtain was suddenly opened, and Ruan Yunsheng and Shen Yunzhou walked in. Qi Xiuming hurriedly put down his bowl and stood up: "Why are you here?"
Gu Nanzhi breathed a sigh of relief as if she had been granted amnesty, and quietly pulled up the quilt. Ruan Yunsheng suppressed a smile and looked at the bowl of porridge: "Master Qi is really good at taking care of people."
"Of course!" Qi Xiuming puffed out his chest proudly, not noticing Gu Nanzhi rolling her eyes behind him. "I even made some ginseng soup this morning..."
Everyone's attention turned to the steaming ceramic medicine jar on the table. Shen Yunzhou's gaze fixed on it. He stepped forward, opened the lid, and stirred the dark brown soup with a medicine spoon.
They had deduced on the way here that since the people selling fake medicine had already been dealt with by Liu Changxing, but the number of new infections was still increasing, the only explanation was that someone continued to poison!
Obviously there is more than one person behind this matter.
"Is there something wrong with this soup?" Qi Xiuming didn't know what was going on and scratched his head in confusion.
Ruan Yunsheng recounted what happened today.
"Poison!"
The celadon bowl in Qi Xiuming's hand fell to the ground with a clang, and the broken porcelain mixed with the medicine splashed onto Gu Nanzhi's plain white pajamas.
He was shaking all over, his voice as hoarse as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper: "How could this happen..."
Gu Nanzhi leaned over the bed and coughed violently, her pale fingertips clutching the quilt tightly. "But what do they want? They want to take the lives of everyone in the city with them."
Ruan Yunsheng gently stroked her back: "Miss Gu, think carefully, have you ever accepted food or medicinal herbs from a stranger?"
"I... I don't know," Gu Nanzhi thought, covering her temples. "I've been staying in the Tzu Chi Center since I arrived. I've never left the house, and I've been eating normal meals..."
Shen Yunzhou walked over, and Wenger asked, "Miss Gu, is it convenient for me to take a look at it for you?"
Gu Nanzhi nodded slowly. He placed three fingers on her wrist pulse. Time passed slowly and his brows were furrowed.
He withdrew his hand and said in a deep voice, "I'm sorry."
Under Qi Xiuming's horrified gaze, he gently pushed open Gu Nanzhi's collar. On her snow-white neck, spider-web-like black lines were wriggling from the collarbone upwards, jumping like a live worm.
"What's this……"
The bizarre scene made Qi Xiuming's breath skip a beat. A huge sense of panic surged in his heart. He grabbed Shen Yunzhou's front like a broken string, and said, "Speak!"
"This poison... is unheard of."
"How could the heir of Medicine King Valley not recognize poison?" Qi Xiuming's eyes were bloodshot, and his fists were clenched so hard that they made a creaking sound. "Are you a quack?"
Gu Nanzhi weakly pulled at his sleeve: "Xiuming, don't embarrass Doctor Shen."
Qi Xiuming collapsed to his knees, his forehead pressed against the edge of the bed, sobs choking out from deep in his throat: "I've been with you for so long and I never realized it. I really am an idiot!"
Big tears fell on the back of Gu Nanzhi's hand, burning her fingertips and making them tremble. The boy's brows, which used to be flying high, twisted into a bitter knot. Every tear seemed to shatter his proud mask: "I should have been more careful... more careful..."
Gu Nanzhi was stunned. Qi Xiuming, the dandy prince who had caused a sensation in the city for running away from his marriage, who had been scolded by her but still walked around in front of her with a playful smile, was now like a fledgling drenched in rain, trembling and revealing his weaknesses that had never been shown to anyone.
She hurriedly used her sleeve to wipe the tears from his face, but the tears were like a river bursting its banks, becoming more turbulent the more she wiped them.
When her fingertips touched his hot skin, Gu Nanzhi suddenly understood that the osmanthus cakes sent to her for no reason, the meticulous care, and even his madness in risking his life to break into the Tzu Chi Institute that day, were all the young man's clumsy confessions.
Ruan Yunsheng quietly pulled the corner of Shen Yunzhou's clothes, and the two of them retreated silently to the door.
In the dim candlelight, Gu Nanzhi suddenly held Qi Xiuming's face and said, "Don't cry."
She brushed her thumb across the corners of his red eyes, "I'm the careless one..."
The moonlight came in from the window, illuminating the overlapping shadows of the two people.
From that day on, Shen Yunzhou's pharmacy was lit with candles all night long. The sound of pounding medicine was intertwined with sighs, and occasionally there was the crisp sound of porcelain bottles exploding. That was his seventh failed medicine trial.
Qi Xiuming completely stayed by Gu Nanzhi's bedside, like a piece of sticky candy that couldn't be shaken off.
He clumsily tried to learn how to decoct the medicine, and boiled the pot until it became mushy three times. He then tried to feed her porridge, but almost stuck the spoon into Gu Nanzhi's nostrils.
Gu Nanzhi pushed him away for the umpteenth time: "Qi Xiuming, can you please go and destroy the herbs in the backyard?"
As dusk fell, Ruan Yunsheng sat alone on the porch looking at the sky. The clouds passed by the waning moon, just like her confused mood.
Suddenly, a warm chest pressed against her, and Wen Ciyuan rested his chin on her shoulder: "What are you thinking about, Madam?"
"I was wondering..." Ruan Yunsheng looked at the green smoke rising to the east, "Will there be spring in the northern border?"
Wen Ciyuan's arms tightened around her, and his nose brushed against her earlobe. "Of course I will. When spring comes, I'll go with you to the peach forest in the south of the city to pick some branches."
The night wind brought the sound of the night watchman's clapperboard in the distance, three long and two short, just like the footsteps of dawn.
Inside the pharmacy.
Shen Yunzhou irritably swept away the medicine residue on the table, his eyes bloodshot. The black line on Gu Nanzhi's neck had spread to his jaw. Time slipped through his fingers like sand, and the antidote was still missing the most crucial ingredient.
"The heir of Medicine King Valley... heh."
He smiled bitterly, crushing the coptis root in his palm, the juice staining his fingers yellow. "If you can't even cure a minor poison, what kind of miracle doctor are you!"
His fist slammed down on the table, causing the medicine bottles to clink. A small celadon bottle rolled off the edge of the table and "gurgled" into the white jade cup containing Gu Nanzhi's blood.
Shen Yunzhou recognized that this was the "Wan Gu King" found on Xuan Hong. The poisonous insects in the bottle were now hitting the bottle wall frantically, as if stimulated by something.
"Even you come to make trouble!" He didn't know the reason, and angrily threw the bottle of poison to the corner, and then began to research the antidote again.
A few days later, the dawn light shone on the earth. The morning mist had not yet dissipated. A hoarse cry exploded like thunder in the silent city: "Success! Success! There is an antidote!"
In an instant, countless wooden windows were thrown open, and desperate faces looked out of the windows.
The crowd rushed to the entrance of the Tzu Chi home like a flood. A paralyzed old man was dragged forward by his children on a cart. Babies in their mothers' arms cried, but these sounds were quickly drowned out by the waves of ecstasy.
"God has eyes!"
A young man who looked like a scholar knelt on the ground and kowtowed, his forehead hitting the bluestone slab and drawing blood, but he was laughing without noticing.
Sleepy-eyed people poured into the streets like a tide, some knelt down and cried, while others frantically grabbed medicine bottles.
Some people even rushed directly towards the white-robed messenger who was distributing the pills, and their dirty fingers tightly grasped the small porcelain bottle, as if grabbing the last straw on the edge of a cliff.
When Ruan Yunsheng was awakened by the noise, he saw an old woman swallowing a pill with trembling hands, and the dark lines on her face actually began to fade away.
"Could it be that Shen Yunzhou succeeded?"
Before she finished her words, she saw the young man with sunken eye sockets at the door of the pharmacy. Shen Yunzhou was tightly grasping a handful of withered herbs, his nails digging deep into his palms.
“It’s not me…”
His voice was as hoarse as a broken gong. "It's the Imperial Hospital."
Ruan Yunsheng grabbed a man in white who was distributing medicine and asked, "Where did this prescription come from?"
"Your Highness Prince Yong is benevolent!" The man held up the medicine bottle. "The Imperial Hospital worked tirelessly for seven days and seven nights before..."
Qi Xiuming rushed out from this chaos.
He didn't even wear an outer robe, and walked barefoot on the gravel on the ground, with his hair crown hanging crookedly on his messy bun.
When he saw the porcelain-white object in the messenger's hand, a terrifying light flashed in his eyes, and he rushed over like a wild beast, pushing through the crowd and saying, "Give it to me! Give it to me now!"
"Master Qi, please line up at the back..."
Before the messenger finished speaking, Qi Xiuming had already snatched the medicine bottle.
"Nanzhi! We can survive!" He screamed and kicked open the door, but saw Ruan Yunsheng standing in front of the bed.
"Wake up!" Ruan Yunsheng reached out to grab the medicine bottle, but Qi Xiuming bit her wrist.
Ruan Yunsheng felt pain, but was unwilling to let go of the crazy man. She held him tightly with both hands, but the man was so strong that he broke free and pushed her away.
Wen Ciyuan rushed over and quickly caught the staggering man. He instantly grabbed Qi Xiuming's neck with his iron palm and threw him to the ground.
The medicine bottle rolled to the corner. Qi Xiuming dug his limbs into the ground like a trapped animal, a discordant sob emanating from his throat: "Antidote! Antidote!"
Wen Ciyuan grabbed his shoulders and said in a low voice: "Wake up!"
Seeing that the other party was still stretching out his hands crazily, he raised his hand and waved it in a hurry -
“Bang!”
A slap sounded crisply, and Qi Xiuming's left cheek was instantly swollen with five finger marks. The corner of his mouth cracked and blood oozed out. He was completely stunned.
Wen Ciyuan looked at his palm in shock. He swore that he had only used 30% of his strength.
"I……"
Wen Ciyuan took a half step back guiltily and moved silently behind Ruan Yunsheng.
Facing the resentful look in Qi Xiuming's eyes after he regained consciousness, Ruan Yunsheng quickly smoothed things over: "It's a misunderstanding! He's just worried about you."
Qi Xiuming covered his face and said aggrievedly, "Why did you stop me from saving Nanzhi?"
Ruan Yunsheng picked up the fallen medicine bottle and said, "Think about it, even Shen Yunzhou has been researching for half a month without any results, so how could the Imperial Hospital suddenly come up with an antidote?"
"Of course it's because that Shen guy is not very skilled!" Qi Xiuming blurted out without thinking.
"Who are you calling incompetent?" Shen Yunzhou, who was named, was so anxious that he jumped up and down, still holding the pestle in his hand.
Ruan Yunsheng hurriedly separated the two to avoid a bloody storm: "The most urgent thing is to verify the authenticity of this antidote!"
Qi Xiuming looked at Gu Nanzhi, who was breathing weakly on the sickbed, and his fists clenched and unclenched. It wasn't that he didn't trust Ruan Yunsheng, or his companion who had been with him day and night for so long, but...
He squatted down dejectedly, buried his face in his knees, and choked with sobs: "But Nanzhi can't wait any longer..."
Shen Yunzhou patted him on the shoulder: "Brother, give me one day. I swear on my life that nothing will happen to your wife!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com