Chapter 4 Treatment
Yunzhou hurriedly helped the man up, saying anxiously, "Young Master, wake up quickly."
Hearing the noise, Meng Yutong turned back and quickly walked to Ji Ming's side.
She crouched down, reached forward, and was about to touch Ji Ming's forehead.
"Wait!" Yunzhou blocked with his arm, a short dagger flashing coldly in his sleeve. "Miss, do not come any closer."
Bai Zhi reacted swiftly, ignoring the gleaming dagger, and slapped his arm away, saying urgently, "My young lady is skilled in medicine and was just trying to take a look at your young master. Why are you stopping me?"
Yunzhou paused, still holding the dagger in his hand. This little maid was really fierce.
He looked at Meng Yutong with some skepticism, but she remained calm and patiently explained, "My family runs a medicinal herb business, and I've learned some traditional Chinese medicine techniques from them. If you trust me, please let me take a look."
"It hurts..." Ji Ming curled up in Yun Zhou's arms, his face pale, clutching his stomach and crying out.
Yunzhou was anxious. It was still two streets away from Jishetang, and it would take at least two incense sticks' time to walk there.
But the young master is in abdominal pain right now, and I'm afraid he won't be able to hold on for long... He gritted his teeth and weighed the pros and cons for a moment before finally stepping aside: "Then I'll trouble Miss Meng to take a look. The young master was just in good spirits, but after taking a few steps, he suddenly couldn't straighten up due to the pain."
Meng Yutong nodded and reached out to place her hand on Ji Ming's wrist.
The pulse is deep and tight like a rope, with all three positions (cun, guan, chi) feeling rough.
She released her hand and examined her abdomen again. The Zhongwan acupoint was as hard as a rock, and the muscles around the Tianshu acupoint were stiff and rigid, indicating that the cold evil had directly invaded the Taiyin meridian.
It seems like it was caused by my gluttony again.
Her eyes narrowed slightly: "What did he eat before coming to the teahouse?"
"Before leaving, I had some tea snacks from the manor, including crab roe pastries, pea flour cakes, and sesame brittle. Just now, I bought some preserved plums from a stall and also had a bowl of iced drink..." As she spoke, Yunzhou's voice gradually weakened.
The young master has always been weak and had a poor spleen, so he asked people to take extra care of his diet and not allow him to eat or drink indiscriminately.
Therefore, whenever he was outside, he wanted to eat everything. He couldn't resist the young master's behavior, so he had to turn a blind eye.
Meng Yutong sighed softly: "That's it. Crab meat is salty and cold, which can harm the spleen, while plums are sour and can astringe evil. Coupled with iced drinks, the three coldnesses are stacked together. Young Master Ji has always had a weak spleen yang, how can he withstand such a depletion?"
"I'll take the young master to the clinic right away." Yun Zhou felt extremely guilty and picked up Ji Ming to get up.
"Wait a minute." Meng Yutong stopped him. "The bumpy ride will only worsen his condition. You take him to Jufu Inn ahead for temporary accommodation, and leave the rest to me."
Yun Zhou hesitated. Just now, Miss Meng's pulse diagnosis technique was skillful, and she even diagnosed the young master's weakness in one sentence, which showed that she was indeed quite capable.
But she was, after all, a young lady confined to her chambers... He couldn't help but feel uneasy about entrusting the young master to him like this.
Seeing that he was not moving, Meng Yutong frowned slightly, stood up and made way for him, "Since you don't trust me, you might as well take him to Jishetang quickly, rather than wasting time standing here like an idiot."
Just as they were at an impasse, Ji Ming quietly tugged at his collar and said in a weak voice, "Brother Yunzhou, just listen to Sister Meng... I trust her."
Ji Ming felt cold and weak all around him, but he still managed to lift his head from Yun Zhou's arms and force a weak smile at Meng Yutong.
For some reason, even though it was my first time meeting Sister Meng, I felt a sense of familiarity, and a strong desire to get closer to her...
Bai Zhi stamped her foot anxiously: "What are you all standing there for? Hurry up and send it to the inn!"
Yunzhou suddenly realized what was happening and, carrying Ji Ming, hurried towards Jufu Inn. Seeing their flustered expressions, the waiter quickly led them to a room on the second floor.
After Yunzhou settled Ji Ming on the couch, Meng Yutong asked the waiter to bring pen and ink, and wrote down a prescription on the side.
Yunzhou clasped his hands in acceptance, then turned and hurriedly left.
After Yunzhou left, Meng Yutong asked the waiter for some moxa sticks and lit them with a tinderbox.
As the smoke from the moxa rose, she gestured to Bai Zhi to suspend the moxa stick three inches above Ji Ming's Guanyuan acupoint. She then took Ji Ming's soft hand, pressed her thumb against his Hegu acupoint, and began to massage it with even pressure.
"It hurts..." Ji Ming groaned in a daze.
"Bear with it." Her grip remained firm, but her voice softened. "When you're indulging, don't you ever think about the pain?"
As the moxa stick burned out, Ji Ming's pale face finally regained some color.
She wrinkled her nose, grabbed Ji Ming's sleeve, and smeared it on his face twice.
"Miss!" Bai Zhi's eyes widened. "I'll just go get a handkerchief, why are you..."
How disgusting!
"Isn't that clean now?" Meng Yutong raised an eyebrow and smiled, flicking Ji Ming's face, which had regained some color, with her fingertip. "It's his own sweat, after all, there's no need to be so particular."
Bai Zhi suddenly paused, as if she were seeing her young mistress for the first time.
The smiling girl before me was completely different from the dignified young lady I remembered, who would immediately brush off any dust from her sleeves.
"Miss today..." Bai Zhi hesitated, a strange feeling passing through her heart, as if some invisible, heavy shackles on her mistress had been quietly removed.
"Hmm?" Meng Yutong was rubbing her sore wrist when she heard this and looked up.
"It's nothing." Bai Zhi shook her head, feeling that she might have been overthinking things. Miss must have just acted rashly in the heat of the moment.
"Oh, by the way, Miss, in the heat of the moment, I mentioned that you are skilled in medicine. What if the Old Madam finds out..."
Meng Yutong paused, her fingers hesitating. A flicker of emotion seemed to rise in her eyes, but it quickly returned to calm.
"Saving a life is better than building a seven-story pagoda." She lowered her eyes, her voice gentle and soothing, and comforted her, "Grandmother is the most reasonable person, she won't blame you."
Grandmother went to the estate yesterday to check on medicinal herbs. She remembered that Grandmother would stay at the estate for six or seven days this time.
Meng Yutong gently rotated her wrist, thinking it best to take these next few days to think carefully about her future plans. Whether it was annuling the engagement or opening a museum, she couldn't avoid getting her grandmother's approval.
Bai Zhi was relieved to hear this.
Speaking of the old lady, she was truly a very strange person.
The old lady had a hideous scar across her right cheek, running diagonally from her brow bone to her ear; it was deep and long.
She was cold and hard as iron, and acted ruthlessly, so no one in the household dared to get close to her.
Ironically, this very woman single-handedly supported the Meng family's enormous medicinal herb business after the old master's death.
She still remembered the year the lady passed away; the young lady cried every day until she could no longer see.
Aunt Qin pretended to come and take her to the Begonia Courtyard, but the young lady refused. She locked herself in her room and didn't eat or drink for three days, becoming as thin as a bamboo pole.
That day, the old lady stepped into Xingtao Courtyard for the first time ever. She stood in front of the bed against the light, her shadow enveloping the frail young lady.
The old lady asked the young lady, "Your mother is dead, and you're not even going to live your own life anymore?"
The young lady's small figure huddled up: "My mother is dead, and I don't want to live anymore. I tried to jump into the pond the other day, but the water was too shallow and I couldn't drown."
"I thought about hanging myself, but the beams were too high for me to reach. Killing myself by smashing my head against the wall might be easier, but I was afraid of the pain. Then I thought about it and decided that starving to death would be better."
She licked her dry lips and continued, "Grandmother, I've been hungry for three days. In two more days at most, I should be able to see Mother again."
"Isn't there anything you want to do?"
Even after hearing her granddaughter's words about wanting to commit suicide, the old lady remained serious, cold, and unmoved.
The young woman paused for a moment, and after a long pause, she said, "I want to study medicine."
“I can teach you.” The old lady suddenly reached out and touched the scar on her face, lost in thought.
Bai Zhi seemed to see the old lady's fingertips trembling slightly.
"Hmm?" The young lady was probably starving, and she could hardly hear what the old lady was saying.
"Ah Ying." This was the first time the old lady had called her by her childhood name. "Just consider me your last bond in this world, and live a good life from now on."
The strange old lady said something peculiar in the Apricot Garden.
Even more strangely, the young lady gradually recovered.
From then on, she ate meals on time every day, got up on time every morning, and paid her respects to the old lady on time. Then she would stay in the old lady's Songfeng Courtyard for a whole day and only return in the evening.
The old lady taught her daughter medical skills, but never allowed her to show them to outsiders.
When the young lady asked for the reason, she remembered that the old lady said: "Women learn medicine and martial arts and develop their skills, but these skills are for their own benefit and are useless to men. If they talk about it, they will be criticized for being 'heretical'."
"I have no other expectations for you. When you get married, just be a gentle and virtuous housewife. It doesn't matter if you are mediocre. As long as you manage the household well and are quiet, your life will surely be smooth and peaceful."
The old lady herself was an eccentric woman who defied convention, yet she firmly believed that only sensible and obedient women could marry into good families and live happy lives. Therefore, she insisted on raising her granddaughter to be a well-bred lady who conformed to worldly standards.
"Miss Meng, the medicine is here!" Yunzhou burst through the door, the medicine bag he was carrying scattering onto the table with a clatter. He didn't even bother to clean it up, wiping the sweat and dust from his forehead, and anxiously asked, "How is my young master?"
Bai Zhi was startled by the commotion. When she came to her senses, she looked at him with disdain and said, "You brute, the young master has just recovered, and you're going to scare him to death."
“Brother Yunzhou…” Ji Ming rubbed his eyes and sat up from the couch, his complexion had recovered somewhat. “I’m fine now.”
Yunzhou finally breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Meng Yutong with earnest eyes: "What should we do now, Miss?"
"Just help him up."
Meng Yutong walked to the table, rolled up her sleeves, and asked Bai Zhi to open the medicine packets one by one. First, she soaked the cardamom and roasted hawthorn in warm water to extract the juice, mixed it with lychee honey to make an amber-colored syrup, and then squeezed the juice from the fresh perilla leaves and dripped it into the bowl.
"Perilla detoxifies crab poisoning, and honey protects the spleen and stomach." She handed the medicine bowl to Yunzhou, "Take it while it's still warm."
Yunzhou took the medicine, scooped a spoonful and brought it to Ji Ming's lips. Ji Ming hesitated for a moment, took a sip, and suddenly his eyes widened: "...Sweet?"
He took another bite in disbelief, his eyes lighting up. "There are sweet medicines in this world!"
You should know that in the Ji family, drinking medicine was like being tortured every time.
Although his brother's prescription was fast-acting, the thought of the taste made his scalp tingle.
The medicinal soup in front of me was completely different; it was not only refreshingly sweet but also had a subtle fruity aroma.
Ji Ming immediately picked up the bowl and gulped it down, then licked his lips with lingering satisfaction: "Sister Meng, this tastes a hundred times better than the medicine my brother prescribed!"
Yunzhou stared in disbelief. His little darling, who usually took half an hour to coax into drinking medicine, was so readily agreeing today?
Seeing that Ji Ming had taken the medicine and his complexion had improved considerably, Meng Yutong straightened her sleeves and bid farewell to the two of them.
"Since Young Master Ji is out of danger, we will take our leave now."
Upon seeing this, Yunzhou quickly stood up and bowed solemnly to Meng Yutong, saying, "Thank you very much, Miss Meng, for today."
"Sister Meng, once I feel better, I will definitely have my brother take me to your residence to thank you properly. I also want him to learn from you how to make medicine taste so good!"
Bai Zhi chuckled upon hearing this.
Meng Yutong's originally gentle face seemed to flash with a hint of coldness. She slowly said, "Today was just a small favor. Yesterday, your brother gave me an umbrella in the rain, so consider this my way of repaying him. I owe him nothing, so there's no need to worry about it."
Her tone was flat, carrying a clear sense of distance. After speaking, she didn't look at Ji Ming's instantly disappointed face or Yun Zhou's grateful eyes, and turned to walk straight out of the house.
"No debts, no losses"—Bai Zhi always felt that these words sounded strange, not like something she should say to her future husband.
In a daze, Meng Yutong had already turned and left.
"Miss, wait for me." Bai Zhi shook her head, not having time to think it over, and quickly followed.
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