Chapter 2 Buying Medicine
Jun Qiulan stepped back cautiously, turned around, and saw an old man dressed as a Taoist priest.
He did have a bit of an immortal temperament, though he was a little unkempt. In his left hand he held a bunch of sizzling meat skewers, and in his right hand he held a glass of steaming drink.
This caused Jun Qiulan's stomach, which was already hungry, to growl again.
"Don't be nervous, old man. I'm not a bad person." The old Taoist priest said to himself, "I'm the Taoist priest of Qingfeng Temple on the mountain next to us. You can ask the locals about Taoist Qingheng. They will know it's me. I met someone similar to you decades ago."
Jun Qiulan was still alert in his heart, but these seemingly ambiguous words from Taoist Qingheng made him feel like he had grabbed a life-saving straw.
He only asked, "How can I go back?"
Qingheng walked away leisurely, chewing the skewers, leaving only a vague sentence, "I miss where you came from, and I miss where you are going."
Jun Qiulan chewed on these words, but didn't understand what they meant. He wanted to catch up with him, but he didn't expect that the old Taoist priest with white beard was so agile. After a while, he rushed into the crowd and bought a big chicken leg to chew on.
There were several young girls surrounding him, each holding a small cube in their hands, gesturing at Taoist Qingheng.
Jun Qiulan didn't dare to chase after them rashly. He happened to notice that several middle-aged men in blue uniforms looked at him a few more times and then walked towards him. He had a bad feeling and quickly merged into the dark alley behind him.
He was still repeating what Taoist Qingheng had said.
I miss where you come from and where you are going.
He thought of his parents and little sister who were still suffering in the cowshed, and his heart ached. What would they do if they couldn't find a way back?
Just as this thought came to his mind, he suddenly stumbled, his body swayed, and when he raised his eyes again, he was face to face with Big Brother Niu in the cowshed.
Cow: “Moo~”
"Brother." Jun Shuwan supported him anxiously.
Jun Qiulan only shook it for a moment, and when he saw the familiar place, his heart settled down.
He is back.
Jun Shuwan's eyes were filled with anxiety, and her eye sockets were red. "Brother, why did you suddenly disappear and suddenly appear now? Where did you go? Daddy and I are so worried."
Jun Qiulan touched his little sister's head. A few months ago, she was still a beautiful girl, but now her hair was dry and yellow, and she was so thin that she could be blown down by a gust of wind.
"I don't know either. It's like I've experienced a bizarre dream."
If the lunch box in his hand was not still warm and the banknotes in his hand were not still stained with sweat from his palms, he would have thought it was a dream.
Jun Yu, who was in the corner of the cowshed, also stood up, holding onto the wall. "Lan'er, what happened? Didn't you go to collect herbs for your mother?"
Jun Qiulan hurried over to help his father sit down, "It's a long story."
More than half an hour ago, Jun Qiulan's mother, Song Xirong, had a high fever again and was talking nonsense. If she didn't get treatment, she might not be able to hold on.
But they had been exiled all the way here and were penniless, so how could they afford a doctor?
It just so happened that Jun Yu, a member of the royal family who had no more time to work, could only be a powerless prince for his entire life because his own son was adopted by the emperor. Because of this, he had a lot of free time, so he read a lot of books and knew several medicinal herbs that could reduce fever.
But Jun Yu injured his leg on the way to exile, and even standing became a difficulty for him. Jun Shuwan was a girl who had just come of age, so how could he let her go out to collect herbs without any worries?
The burden of collecting herbs naturally fell on Jun Qiulan.
Jun Qiulan had no recollection of how he came to another world. All he was thinking about was how to save his mother. Then he filmed a scene in a daze.
Faced with that strange world, he was completely confused.
But from the perspective of Jun Yu and Jun Shuwan, the moment Jun Qiulan walked out of the bullpen, his figure flashed and then disappeared without a trace.
They were also anxious, but they dared not make a sound and only searched secretly nearby.
The matter was too bizarre. The father and daughter couldn't find anyone, and no matter how anxious they were, there was nothing they could do. They could only discuss it and wait until dawn.
After waiting for another half an hour, Jun Qiulan suddenly appeared again.
Jun Qiulan's mind was also in a mess. "I must have had some chance and traveled to a bizarre world."
He tried his best to use the simplest and most straightforward words to describe all that he had seen and heard, but Jun Yu and Jun Shuwan were still confused, and even suspected that Jun Qiulan had been possessed by evil spirits.
"Oh, by the way, this is the lunch box distributed by the crew." Jun Qiulan didn't say much. He hadn't had a full meal for a long time, and the same was true for his family.
He opened the lunch box and said, "Father, little sister, you guys eat first. We'll talk about the things in that world in detail later."
When two warm meals fell into the hands of the father and daughter, they felt as if they had just woken up from a dream. They didn't care about their image anymore and picked up the lunch boxes to eat.
There was still one copy left. Jun Qiulan looked at his unconscious mother and wanted to try whether he could go to that world again.
On that colorful street, he vaguely saw the word "pharmacy".
He still had 150 yuan in his hand. Although he didn't know if it was enough to buy medicine, since God had given him this opportunity, he still wanted to give it a try.
Jun Qiulan wiped the sweat from his mother's forehead with his sleeve, and felt a strong pain in his heart.
His mother gave birth to him after ten months of pregnancy and nursed him for a year. As soon as he was weaned, the emperor issued an edict to select six children from the royal family to enter the palace.
Even if the parents were reluctant, they were powerless to resist since the imperial decree had been issued.
The reason was that the emperor was assassinated by other princes during the struggle for the throne, and he would never be able to have his own children in his lifetime.
The imperial physicians in the palace and the medical experts in the folk prescribed countless medicines, but they were unable to change this fact.
The emperor had no heir, which was a national event, so the ministers proposed to adopt a descendant from the royal family.
Even the supreme emperor had no choice at that moment; the throne could not be without an heir.
So, Jun Qiulan and five other children were sent to the palace. The youngest was just one month old and the oldest was only three years old. In this way, they were transformed from children of the royal family into princes and were raised together in the palace.
The struggle for imperial power has always been cruel, and everyone knows that the future crown prince will be born among the six of them.
Whether it was the ministers in the court or the parents of these brothers, they all had their own ideas and took some actions in secret.
Only his father was obsessed with various books, and his mother was a merchant's daughter. Apart from asking someone to give him a few toys or clothes every year, the couple did nothing else.
When he was eight years old, the biological parents of his other brothers secretly did all kinds of things to build momentum for their sons.
The emperor finally couldn't tolerate it anymore and dealt with these relatives with thundering means. The lightest punishment was lifelong imprisonment, and the worst was demoted to commoners. Those brothers were also sent back to their parents and lost their status as princes.
It just so happened that he had always been the best student among his six brothers, so the position of crown prince fell on him.
The turning point of all this was the appearance of a miracle doctor three years ago. The emperor's concubines became pregnant one after another and gave birth to several little princes and princesses one after another.
And he, the adopted son, became the most embarrassing person.
Jun Qiulan was not greedy for power. He had mentioned to the man he had called father for more than ten years that he did not have to be the crown prince.
But the emperor certainly didn't think so. Who wouldn't want supreme power? He probably thought he was trying to retreat in order to advance.
He had long been at the center of the vortex. How could he easily escape the schemes of the concubines and the previous dynasty?
One careless move led to the current situation, and only implicated my parents and relatives.
He didn't believe that his father, the emperor, had no hand in this. It was understandable that he wanted his own son to succeed to the throne, but why was he charged with rebellion? The family of four was exiled three thousand miles away, and even his grandfather's business was confiscated, and the entire family was sent back to their hometown.
If he had not had some influence in the court and had not mediated, my grandfather's family would not have escaped the fate of exile.
Now that they think about it, it would have been better for their family to have been demoted to commoners back then. At least they could have escaped the fate of exile and lived the life of ordinary people, which would have been better than being so miserable now.
Jun Qiulan clenched the coins in her hand, "Dad, little sister, take good care of mom, I want to go there again."
Without waiting for a response from his father and younger sister, he went straight to recalling what the old Taoist priest had said and the world he had seen.
When he opened his eyes again, he appeared in the dark alley where he disappeared.
Jun Qiulan did not leave rashly this time. He remembered that when he escaped from the crew, he passed by a yard. There was a water tank outside the yard, which was probably for fire prevention.
He quickly reached over and washed his face and arms as clean as possible, then straightened his clothes and tried to make himself look as presentable as possible.
After doing all this, he returned to the bizarre street.
The money in my hand was already wet with sweat.
He found the pharmacy and hesitated to move forward. The shop was not big, but it was filled with transparent glass cabinets. There were some small boxes in the cabinets, and he didn't know what they were. There was a man in white clothes sitting inside, holding a glowing black cube in his hand, and laughing foolishly from time to time.
It happened that two little girls went in, and he followed them.
"Doctor, please give us a box of cold medicine. The weather is so hot and cold. I caught a cold while traveling here." One of the girls said in a muffled voice.
The man in white didn't even look up as he took out a small green box from a translucent glass cabinet. "Fifteen dollars."
The girl took out two gray-green bills and said, "Cash is OK, right?"
The boss nodded and found a purple banknote.
Jun Qiulan was even more shocked. It turned out that those boxes in the glass cabinet were all medicine?
Just then the man in white spotted him and asked, "Little brother, are you buying medicine too?"
Jun Qiulan was nervous. The cold medicine the little girl had just bought only cost fifteen yuan. He had fifty yuan here, which might be enough.
He said carefully, "I want to buy medicine to reduce fever and medicine for cold."
The man in white took out another green medicine box identical to the one from the cabinet, and also took out another flat box. "Forty-three in total."
Jun Qiulan felt relieved at once. He had enough money to buy medicine, but he had never seen this kind of medicine before, and he couldn't take any medicine casually.
He mustered up the courage to ask, "How do I take this medicine?"
Liang Feng naturally thought he was asking how many times a day to take it, so he explained, "Take Ganmao Ling three times a day, one pack each time, and Ibuprofen twice a day, one pill each time."
Jun Qiulan breathed a sigh of relief, paid the money, held the change of a few dollars, turned around with the bag, and happened to see a sign standing next to the counter.
Before he could even read the missing words on it, Liang Feng spoke again, "Recharge 500 and get a bag of rice, recharge 1,000 and get a barrel of cooking oil, will you recharge, little brother?"
Jun Qiulan didn't understand what this meant, so he just shook his head and then looked at the crystal clear rice next to him.
Now they have just arrived at the border town. Although the emperor, out of kindness, only exiled them and made them unable to leave the border town without a reason, and did not make them serve in the army, how they will live in the future depends on themselves.
He still had 107 yuan left in his hand. If possible, he wanted to take some supplies back. After all, he was not from here. If he went back and forth many times, he didn't know what kind of dangers he would encounter.
He asked, "Is this rice for sale?"
The author has something to say:
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Thank you all for your support. There was a small red envelope dropped in the previous chapter, don’t forget it.
The holiday is over and my serialization has begun, hehe.
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