Chapter 275 The Tycoon (First Update)
Gu Jiao's clinic today is located in a three-courtyard house in the east of the city. Her husband is a scholar who has passed the imperial examination and teaches at a nearby academy. Her wife's family is also quite well-off, so the family is relatively well-off.
This time, the patient was their eldest son, who was twenty years old this year. He had just passed the imperial examination and become a scholar, which made the family extremely happy. However, he unfortunately contracted a serious illness a few days ago.
They took the person to a nearby clinic, but were turned away, told it was smallpox and to treat the person at home.
The clinic did prescribe medicine, but after taking it for several days there was no improvement. They heard from a student at the academy that the medical skills at Miaoshoutang were quite good, so they went to ask for help as a last resort.
But the woman who came was a doctor.
The couple were quite disappointed.
Having practiced medicine for so long, Gu Jiao was already used to such looks. In Zhao Kingdom, there were no female doctors, and female doctors had a low status, which could not be overturned by her rescuing a few accidents.
Fortunately, she didn't aspire to be a great person.
Gu Jiao went inside.
Since they had already come, the couple couldn't very well refuse to let them receive treatment.
The scholar was not in good spirits. He lay on the bed, somewhat panicked and agitated. Judging from his symptoms—fever, headache, and papules—it did indeed resemble smallpox.
However, after careful examination, Gu Jiao discovered that it was not the case.
“It’s allergic rash,” Gu Jiao said.
This is considered a severe allergy. It's not easy for him to have survived until today. Many severe allergies can cause shock or suffocation. You can only say that this scholar is really lucky to be alive.
Gu Jiao took a few loratadine tablets from her small medicine box, put them in a porcelain bottle, and handed them to the couple: "Take one tablet once a day with warm water. Come back to the clinic for a follow-up appointment after you finish the course."
"This...that's it?" The woman stared at the small medicine bottle in her hand, her mouth agape in disbelief. "But they said it was smallpox."
Gu Jiao said, "He had a mild cold, plus an allergic rash, which at first glance does look like smallpox, but it really isn't. You two don't need to worry. Even though an allergic rash isn't a minor illness, it can be fatal if it gets serious. He was lucky this time, but you must be careful in the future. What did he come into contact with that caused this?"
“He…” The woman recalled carefully and said, “He ate a peach that day, and in the afternoon he started saying he felt unwell all over. I didn’t pay much attention to it, thinking it was just peach fuzz stuck to his body. I had him take a bath, and he seemed to feel a little better, but it got worse the next day.”
Gu Jiao didn't have any allergy test strips at the moment, so she could only try keeping the patient away from peaches for now: "Don't let him come into contact with peaches again."
"Ah, okay, okay," the woman replied.
She's clearly just a young female doctor, so why do her words somehow convince people?
Never mind, since no other doctor can cure my son, I can only try this young female doctor's method first.
The woman went into the house to feed her son his medicine.
Xiao Sanzi collected the consultation fee: two taels of silver for the consultation and one tael of silver for the medicine.
This is right under the emperor's nose, so this fee is already quite reasonable.
Gu Jiao carried a small basket on her back and left the house, then got into the carriage.
After collecting the consultation fee, Xiao Sanzi sat on the outer seat of the car and said to Gu Jiao, "Miss Gu, shall we go back?"
Gu Jiao nodded: "Okay, let's go back."
That's all.
"Alright!" Xiao Sanzi grabbed the whip and spurred the carriage to move smoothly.
Not long after the carriage left, several men suddenly rode up on horseback at great speed, showing no regard for the people on the street.
The people hurriedly made way, but an old man carrying a load couldn't avoid it. His load was knocked over, and he fell to the ground.
The culprit didn't even turn his head and walked away.
The old man lay on the roadside for a long time, unable to get up.
This incident naturally caused a great deal of sighs and lamentations.
A young man from out of town spoke up, asking one of the onlookers, "Brother, isn't this the capital? How dare someone ride a horse like that?"
The waiter said, "You don't know this, do you? Didn't you see the clothes they were wearing?"
The young man said, "It was too fast, I didn't notice."
Watching the group's departing figures, the waiter said, "Those are people from the Marshal's Mansion."
"The Marshal's Mansion?" The young man frowned, clearly having only recently arrived in the capital and unaware of the situation there.
The waiter patiently explained, "He was originally the General of the Cavalry of Tiger Mountain Camp, and just a few days ago he was appointed Grand Marshal of the Armed Forces of the Realm. Those people are from the Marshal's Office."
The young man asked in disbelief, "So arrogant?"
The waiter quickly made a shushing gesture: "Shh, you can't say things like that. They must be in a hurry, otherwise they wouldn't be like this."
What's the emergency? It almost caused a fatality on the street.
Everyone knew this was just an excuse, but no one dared to expose the truth in the street—that General Tang was a confidant of Empress Dowager Zhuang. When Empress Dowager Zhuang returned from recuperating, the first thing she did was to promote him to Grand Marshal of the Armed Forces, thus taking away the military power of Marquis Xuanping in a blatant manner.
"Sister, the Tang family has gone too far!" In a teahouse across the street, a girl in purple said to a Taoist nun across the street, "This isn't the first time they've bullied others by abusing their power! Earlier in Willow Alley, I saw a servant of the Tang family beating up a commoner, saying that the commoner owed the Tang family money. But even if someone owes money, they can't beat them like that!"
The nun didn't speak, but simply took a sip of tea.
The girl in purple leaned over the table, got close to her, and whispered, "Sister, do you think... that rumor is true?"
The Taoist nun glanced at her: "What rumors?"
The girl in purple: "It's just that... Grand Marshal Tang is the Empress Dowager's illegitimate son."
The Taoist nun looked at her coldly: "Do you have a death wish?"
The girl in purple stuck out her tongue, somewhat intimidated by her older sister, but still mustered her courage and said, "I heard that the Empress Dowager almost married Princess Ning'an, the daughter of Consort Jing, to him back then."
The nun pressed her younger sister back into her seat, glanced at the bustling street, and said, "Zijuan, go help that old man and buy all his tea leaves."
"Yes!" The maidservant bowed and replied. Just as she was about to go downstairs, she heard the Taoist nun say, "Never mind, it's not necessary. Someone has already gone."
The maid and the girl in purple both looked at the old man who had fallen. They saw a girl in green walk through the crowd, come to his side, and help him up.
"Ah, sister! It's her!" The girl in purple recognized Gu Jiao. "The top scholar gave the flower to her!"
No, it's that all three top scholars gave her hairpins!
"How did she get here?"
The girl in purple still couldn't forget the newly appointed top scholar, and she would also think of the woman who had been treated differently by him.
She wasn't even that pretty, but after the incident of wearing a flower in her hair, her appearance and style became fashionable throughout the capital. Even she put a small crabapple blossom on her face.
The Taoist nun looked at Gu Jiao and murmured, "Yes, it really is fate."
After Gu Jiao helped the old man up, she bought him a pound of tea. The surrounding people, perhaps feeling ashamed that their previous inaction was not as good as that of a young girl, also bought the old man's tea.
A basket of tea bags sold out instantly.
"Thank you, young lady! Thank you, young lady!" The old man bowed deeply in gratitude.
Gu Jiao turned and got into the carriage.
The nun only slowly withdrew her gaze after the carriage disappeared at the end of the street.
Gu Jiao handed the tea she had bought to Xiao Sanzi, and then returned to Bishui Hutong.
Gu Yan and Gu Xiaoshun haven't returned yet. Xiao Jingkong went to his great-uncle's place, and Granny Fang is cooking in the kitchen.
Xiao Liulang rushed into the study without even noticing Gu Jiao push the door open and enter.
He rarely seemed so lost in thought. Gu Jiao walked over and found him drawing.
"What is this?" Gu Jiao asked.
The room was dimly lit, so she moved closer to see the blueprints clearly.
When Xiao Liulang heard the voice, her forehead was close to his, and her warm breath mingled with his.
Xiao Liulang's heart skipped a beat. His eyelashes trembled slightly. He felt he should avoid it, but he didn't move.
“Arithmetic,” Xiao Liulang said, “I’m cutting a circle.”
"Extracting pi? You want to calculate the ancestral ratio?" Gu Jiao wasn't actually sure if this timeline called pi the ancestral ratio.
"You know about Zu Shuai?" Xiao Liulang was surprised. Even though he knew she had many secrets, he didn't know she had so many secrets and knew about Zu Shuai.
Upon hearing that it was indeed the ancestral rate, Gu Jiao understood that this timeline had also overlapped with the timeline she was in. For example, pi was originally calculated to four decimal places by Liu Hui and called Hui rate. Later, the ancestral lord calculated it to seven decimal places and called ancestral rate.
Among them, Liu Hui of the Wei and Jin Dynasties used the method of cutting circles. The method of joining hoops by Master Zu of the Northern and Southern Dynasties has been lost in any time and space. Otherwise, Xiao Liulang would have used the method of joining hoops at this time.
The method of exhaustion is a method of approximating the area of a circle by using the area of an inscribed regular polygon to calculate pi.
Liu Hui started with a hexagonal shape inside a circle and cut it down to a 3,072-sided shape before finally getting the precision down to between 1,415 and 1,416, which are four micro-digit numbers.
The computational workload is enormous and staggering; calculus would be much faster.
Gu Jiao said without changing her expression, "I've heard it from the female students at the academy."
The girls' school also had arithmetic classes, but Xiao Liulang wasn't quite sure what the specific content was.
However, he knew that Gu Jiao was extremely intelligent, and if she had really heard it, she would probably remember it.
Gu Jiao then asked, "Why did you suddenly think of calculating this? Is it part of your studies for the Hanlin Academy?"
"No." Xiao Liulang shook his head. He hesitated for a moment, but still told him about Xiao Jingkong and Master Sun. He mainly wanted to verify whether Gu Jiao had taught Xiao Jingkong the ancestral rules and those arithmetic problems.
He omitted the matter of making Master Sun cry and the bet, only saying that they had a harmonious discussion about ancestral rules.
Gu Jiao said "oh" and shook her head.
She did teach basic arithmetic, but not those specific problems, and she hadn't covered the ancestral rules yet.
"Can he really recite such a long ancestral script?" Gu Jiao was very surprised.
Xiao Liulang called Xiao Jingkong in.
When Xiao Jingkong saw Gu Jiao, he almost thought his bad brother-in-law had secretly complained about him. But seeing that Gu Jiao's expression was normal, he secretly felt relieved.
Xiao Liulang said, "Recite the ancestral rules you recited in front of Master Sun again."
Xiao Jingkong recited it obediently once.
Xiao Liulang: "I don't know if it's right or wrong, so I need to calculate it."
Most people would never believe that Xiao Jingkong was right, because the book only had seven digits, but he recited seventeen.
Xiao Liulang did not immediately deny Xiao Jingkong.
It's not that he thinks Xiao Jingkong is right, but that he can't prove Xiao Jingkong is wrong.
He wouldn't use his age or the extra years of education to intimidate others.
A scolding might intimidate a child, but that doesn't mean the child is convinced; rather, it means the child has given up their thirst for knowledge.
Gu Jiao knew that Xiao Jingkong had recited it perfectly.
"Who taught you that?" Gu Jiao asked.
"I read it in a book," Xiao Jingkong said.
"What book? Can you show it to us?" Gu Jiao asked again.
"Of course!" Xiao Jingkong skipped out, rummaged through his pile of tattered belongings for a while, and found a yellowed, curled-edge book.
He handed the booklet to Gu Jiao, saying, "Jiaojiao, here!"
Gu Jiao took the booklet and looked through it with Xiao Liulang.
They were both stunned after just one glance.
Gu Jiao was stunned because she saw familiar words and formulas, while Xiao Liulang was stunned because he saw unfamiliar patterns and words. At the same time, below these strange words and patterns, there were annotations in another language.
It is the script of the Yan state.
No wonder Xiao Jingkong can understand some of it; he's been learning the Yan language recently.
It's just strange that he has books from the Yan state.
and--
Xiao Liulang turned to the last page and saw a large imperial seal on it, and he gasped in shock!
Could this be a letter from the State of Yan?
The State of Yan was the strongest of the six states, but who would have thought that just a few decades ago it was merely a weak state?
One day, a powerful national advisor arrived in the State of Yan. He brought with him six great classic texts, and it was through the secrets within these texts that the State of Yan rose to prominence like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.
The treatment methods for leprosy also came from ancient books.
Ultimately, these six classic texts were designated as national books and stored in the Yan Kingdom's imperial palace, guarded day and night by hundreds of elite palace guards.
If this book is genuine, then is the one in the Yan Kingdom's palace a fake?
It shouldn't be possible, right? After all, Jingkong is just a little monk who gets dizzy from eating meat.
Gu Jiao didn't know anything about any kind of national book, but she could tell that the simplified Chinese characters and advanced mathematics formulas in the book did not belong to this time and space.
Could it be that there are other time-traveling predecessors here?
(End of this chapter)
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