The situation indeed worsened.
Lin Zhongyuan slept soundly for the first half of the night, but his brows furrowed more and more tightly in the second half. Unfortunately, Master Cui was also a bookworm who easily became engrossed in reading, and he didn't notice it for a while.
Just as dawn was breaking, Lin Zhongyuan even twitched slightly.
Master Cui finally noticed that his apprentice's face was burning red.
He was startled and didn't know what to do. Panicked, he quickly ran to find Lin Weiming.
"Zhongyuan has a fever?" Lin Weiming hurriedly threw off the thin blanket covering him and went to check on his eldest son.
Xuefu stopped him, "Wait a minute, don't rush, I'll go take a look too!"
Xuefu hastily threw on a coat and followed Lin Weiming to Lin Zhongyuan's room.
However, when they arrived, Lin Zhongyuan seemed to have calmed down a lot, but his two small eyebrows were still furrowed together, and he looked very painful.
Xuefu placed one hand on his forehead and the other on her own head, comparing the two, and indeed found that Lin Zhongyuan had a fever.
"Go to the kitchen and boil some water to wash the child and give him some warm water to drink." Xuefu had raised four sons and was quite experienced in taking care of a son with a fever. She took off Lin Zhongyuan's clothes to let him breathe and cool down.
Lin Weiming was also worried and didn't know what to do. Now, after listening to his wife's instructions, he rushed to the kitchen to light the lamp and boil water.
The Lin family did have servants, but they weren't used to having servants stand guard at night. Apart from a few gatekeepers on duty, they changed the rules for the rest.
Even now, I have to boil water myself in the middle of the night.
The commotion woke up everyone in the family. Lin Ziqiu rubbed his eyes and came over to see what was wrong. He found that his older brother was sick with a fever, so he volunteered to say, "He probably caught a cold from being exposed to too much cold wind. I'll prescribe a remedy to dispel the wind and cold for him."
Just then, Lin Weiming was boiling water in the kitchen. Because Lin Ziqiu was studying medicine, the family had specially set up a pharmacy, which was stocked with various commonly used medicines.
Lin Ziqiu went to the pharmacy and got some medicine, then took it to the kitchen for Lin Weiming to brew.
Fortunately, Lin Weiming was used to doing all sorts of chores when he was in the village, so stewing medicine was no different from stewing soup. Before dawn, he brought over a bowl of hot, dark, bitter medicine.
The family members also woke up one after another.
Knowing that their eldest brother Lin Zhongyuan was sick, the younger siblings all gathered around and watched as their mother, Xuefu, woke Lin Zhongyuan up and gave him a large bowl of medicine that looked bitter and astringent.
I felt so sorry for my older brother.
Lin Zhongyuan didn't want to drink such awful medicine, but his headache was so bad that he had no choice but to pinch his nose and force the medicine down his throat.
Seeing him like this, Lin Weiming couldn't help but say, "When you were in the countryside, you didn't catch a cold from just a gust of wind. Now that you're always by His Majesty's side, you've become quite spoiled. I think you just read too many books every day. If you went to the martial arts arena every day like the Second Prince, you would grow up tall and strong and definitely wouldn't get sick."
The second son, Lin Zheyun, is now the tallest in the family. Afraid of blocking people, he squatted down in front of Lin Zhongyuan's bed. Hearing his brother Lin Weiming's words, he nodded and said, "That's right, brother. His Majesty used to be sick all the time, but now he can play football with us. Why don't you practice kung fu with me in the future?"
"Okay... but I have a bit of a headache right now, let's talk about it later," Lin Zhongyuan said weakly.
Everyone could tell he wasn't feeling well, so they told him to rest a bit longer.
But around noon, Xuefu asked someone in the kitchen to cook a bowl of congee with preserved egg and lean pork and send it over, hoping that Lin Zhongyuan would get up, eat the congee, and then go back to sleep.
But they couldn't wake the person up.
Xuefu was so startled that she almost dropped the bowl in her hand, and hurriedly called Lin Ziqiu in.
Apart from Lin Weiming, who hadn't returned yet, everyone else in the family was eating in the main room.
Hearing the panic in Xuefu's voice, everyone rushed over.
"Mother, what's wrong?" Lin Ziqiu was the first to ask.
"Come quickly and see what's wrong with your brother? Is he asleep or something? I've called him several times, but I haven't been able to wake him up. Could his illness be getting worse?" Xuefu was a little panicked.
Lin Ziqiu walked over calmly, reassuring his mother as he went, "Look, I've been learning from my master for almost two years now. It's just a minor cold, no problem!"
He reached out and gently pulled at Lin Zhongyuan's eyelids, but couldn't see anything wrong.
Then she pinched Lin Zhongyuan's nose, trying to force him to open his mouth and wake up.
But Lin Zhongyuan's face turned ashen, yet he made no other reaction or movement, not even opening his mouth.
This terrified everyone in the family.
Lin Ziqiu lost his composure and felt a little flustered. He began to take Lin Zhongyuan's pulse, but his brows furrowed more and more.
"H-How is it?" Liu Junlan asked.
"Master, come and help!" Lin Ziqiu was really undecided, so he gritted his teeth and stamped his foot, deciding to ask for outside help!
Lin Wanyue quickly took out a stick of incense from her bosom and lit it.
After Hu Jiuyuan appeared, he glanced at Lin Zhongyuan with great disdain and said to his disciple, "It's just a minor cold, and you can't even handle that? You've been too lax these days. When we get back, copy the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic ten or so times."
Lin Ziqiu pouted, "No, Master, I already prescribed medicine for my elder brother this morning. The medicine is indeed for treating colds, but why hasn't he woken up yet after taking it? I'm scared."
"Maybe he's fallen asleep? Don't you know how late your eldest brother usually studies every night? People naturally want to sleep when they're tired," Hu Jiuyuan said dismissively. However, under the pitiful gaze of his eldest disciple, he still went over and took Lin Zhongyuan's pulse.
He felt that his apprentice's judgment was not wrong; it was indeed a cold.
But Lin Zhongyuan had not woken up for a long time, which worried the rest of the Lin family. So he investigated even more carefully.
"Wait... something's not right!" Hu Jiuyuan noticed something amiss when he was instructing Lin Ziqiu to help Lin Zhongyuan pry open his eyelids so he could see.
"What's wrong with Master?" Lin Ziqiu followed his master's gaze and looked into his elder brother's eyes, but he couldn't find the problem.
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