Doctor Chen had given Madame Su the gathering quota for a variety of medicinal herb at some point.
Whenever Madame Su came to sell herbs, she would smile and strike up a conversation with Lin Yue, talking about Wu Yang's illness and occasionally bringing her some wild fruits from the mountain.
Lin Yue refused many times, but Madame Su simply assumed she was bashful, setting the items down and leaving.
Unwilling to accept rewards without merit, Lin Yue carried the wild fruits to Madame Su's house and knocked on the door.
"Xiaya, what brings you here? Come in and sit for a bit," Madame Su invited her in with a smile.
Lin Yue walked inside and saw a young man sitting in the courtyard.
He wore loose dark-blue robes, his slightly raised eyebrows somewhat resembling the guy next door. He was tall, thin, and visibly malnourished, his skin extremely pale—a fragile, glass-like pallor stemming from illness, entirely devoid of color.
The young man sat leaning quietly back in his chair. Autumn was chilly, and a thin padded quilt covered his legs while he stared indifferently at the courtyard wall ahead.
Hearing the sound at the door, he turned his gaze over. His eyes were hollow and cold, devoid of life, like a pitch-black pool of stagnant water.
"This is Brother Wu Yang. Yang'er, this is Xiaya," Madame Su introduced.
"Brother Wu," Lin Yue greeted politely.
A trace of contempt flashed through Wu Yang's eyes before he immediately looked away.
Lin Yue lowered her eyelids to conceal the chill in her eyes. Following Madame Su into the main hall, she set the basket on the table and said, "Thank you for your kindness, Auntie, but our two families no longer have any connection. Please don't send me these things in the future. It wouldn't look good if others saw."
Lin Yue's frankness caught Madame Su off guard.
"Xiaya, Doctor Chen said you gathered the blood lingzhi, and that blood lingzhi cured Yang'er's illness. I know you're a good child, and I'm truly grateful to you. I don't have anything good to give you, so please just take these wild fruits. Don't look down on them."
As she spoke, tears welled up in her eyes.
"The blood lingzhi belonged to Doctor Chen, and it was Doctor Chen who saved him. The one you should thank is Doctor Chen, not me."
Lin Yue was somewhat surprised that Doctor Chen had actually been willing to part with the blood lingzhi to save someone else.
"We should, we should—we ought to thank you both. These things aren't worth much, so please just accept them." Madame Su thrust the basket of wild fruits back into Lin Yue's hands, her eyes carrying a pleading, almost ingratiating look.
Lin Yue politely declined once more. She wasn't someone who refused to repay kindness, but this matter really had little to do with her.
Madame Su was likely doing this out of self-interest, merely using this excuse to build rapport in hopes that Lin Yue might help her son in the future.
Lin Yue suddenly thought of something and asked, "Auntie, do you have any books at home? If you lend them to me to read, I'll pay you rent—at least ten coppers per book."
Although she knew how to read, literacy did not equal culture. She had no understanding of this world's civilization, and repeatedly bothering Chen Ping wasn't ideal either. Now that there were resources available, she had to seize the opportunity.
Madame Su immediately nodded repeatedly. "Yes, yes! Wait a moment."
She hurried out of the main hall, squatted beside the young man in the courtyard, and whispered something to him softly.
"What use is there for a woman to study?"
The young man replied with disdain, his voice not loud, yet clear enough to reach her ears.
"Xiaya works as a medicine apprentice at the shop. Doctor Chen is literate, and Chen Ping is literate too. If Xiaya doesn't know how to read, they'll look down on her..." Madame Su spoke up for Lin Yue.
"She's nothing more than a profit-seeking villain. Giving them to her would only dirty my books."
Hearing the disgust in his words, Lin Yue furrowed her brows tightly. Remembering her purpose for coming, she refrained from retorting.
Madame Su tried to persuade him for a long time, bringing up the favor Lin Yue had done them, how marriage was decided by parents, and how the Lin family had returned the betrothal money—rambling on about every detail.
Seeing the two locked in a stalemate, Lin Yue took her leave under the pretext of having chores to do. When she reached the doorway, she produced one mace of silver pieces and handed it to Madame Su as compensation for breaking off the engagement on short notice, demonstrating her sincerity.
She didn't agree with treating marriage as a transaction, but where could one find free love in this era? At its core, it was an exchange of benefits, impossible to eliminate completely.
"You owe Doctor Chen a lot of money, and Brother Wu also needs to build up his health. Right now, you are in desperate need of cash, so please accept it, Auntie."
Madame Su broke down in tears. Constant day-and-night toil had caused her hair to streak with white despite being only in her thirties. "Thank you, Xiaya."
A few days later, Madame Su came to the medicine shop to tell Lin Yue to come read the books whenever she had free time.
Although the process had been somewhat unpleasant, the goal was ultimately achieved. Lin Yue's expression softened, and she asked with feigned hesitation,
"Will Brother Wu mind?"
Madame Su laughed excitedly. "Yang'er agreed! Just come on over."
"Alright, thank you, Auntie Wu."
Lin Yue agreed, intending to read the books on her days off.
Freshly gathered medicinal herbs were drying in the courtyard. The young man sat alone in the yard, casting a malicious glare at her the instant he saw her.
Lin Yue ignored him completely and went straight to the study, where Madame Su carefully pulled a dozen or so books out of a large earthenware jar in the corner.
Lin Yue scanned them—they were all books for the imperial civil service examinations, along with local gazetteers, the Great Qian Legal Code, and one book specifically teaching punctuation and sentence-parsing, which caught her eye.
To reduce printing costs, texts were often condensed into Classical Chinese. She had only learned a rough outline from Chen Ping, mastering some common phrasing and sentence structures—her knowledge level was merely at an elementary school tier, incapable of deciphering the scholars' dense classical rhetoric.
Having a dedicated instructional textbook now was as good as it got. Lin Yue thrust ten copper coins to Madame Su and began reading.
The paper was somewhat brittle, likely having quite a few years on it, so Lin Yue turned the pages carefully.
Before she realized it, the light coming through the window dimmed as night fell. She exited the study to find the young man still in the courtyard, sitting there like a ghost, radiating an eerie chill just to look at.
The second time Lin Yue came to read, she saw Wu Yang sitting at the desk with an indifferent look on his face, his eyes cold as he stared at her.
Knowing they were mutually repulsed by each other, Lin Yue grabbed her book and sat in the courtyard to read.
The more books she read, the more questions she had. Classical Chinese offered no answer keys, leaving Lin Yue unsure if her translations and interpretations were correct.
After thinking it over back and forth, she set her sights on Wu Yang. She had heard he was literate at age three, had studied for ten years, and had received Scholar Wu's entire body of knowledge; teaching some elementary concepts shouldn't be hard for him.
As for pride—success belonged to those willing to put themselves out there.
Lin Yue entered the study holding her book, only to find Wu Yang wearing an oversized old padded robe, staring silently at the desk like a statue.
The sound of her knocking made his eyelashes quiver. Wu Yang turned to look at her with displeasure in his eyes.
If his mother hadn't pleaded with him, he never would have let her touch his books.
Lin Yue turned a blind eye to it. "Brother Wu, there's something I'd like to discuss with you."
Seeing him stare straight at her without speaking, Lin Yue pulled up a stool and sat down. "What are your plans for the future, Brother Wu?"
"What does that have to do with you?" Wu Yang spoke coldly, his voice somewhat raspy—he clearly hadn't spoken in a long time.
Lin Yue said self-containedly, "Your health is poor, making you unfit for physical labor. The best path for you is studying."
"Even if you have the chance to take the imperial civil service exams in the future, you still need to scrape together enough travel expenses to go to the county seat, which will take at least ten taels of silver. Yet your mother is the only one working in your household, earning barely a hundred coppers a month. Your monthly medical expenses alone cost one tael of silver, not to mention the heavy debts you've accumulated. How do you expect to pay all that back?"
Hit in his sore spot, Wu Yang remained silent, his expression icy.
"None of your business."
Having laid the groundwork, Lin Yue stated her purpose: "There are some parts of these books I don't understand. If you teach me, I'll pay you ten coppers every half-hour. If you teach well, I can increase it to twenty coppers. Once you've taught me everything, you'll earn at least two taels of silver."
Wu Yang reexamined the woman before him. Her pitch-black eyes held a maturity and calculating sharpness unbefitting her age, as if he were facing not a rural village woman, but a master controller who held everything in her grip.
"What use is it for a woman like you to learn these things?"
Lin Yue smiled and said unhurriedly,
"Doctor Chen said wealthy families hire female tutors to teach their daughters so they can manage inner households and family businesses in the future. Literate maidservants earn higher wages too, and many women do business in the streets, where doing business requires understanding contracts and paper notes... Families don't refrain from sending daughters to study out of principle; they just lack the money."
"Can a village woman like you compare to others?"
Wu Yang had contempt in his eyes, but she remained calm and unfazed.
"I am currently a medicine apprentice, literate, knowledgeable in pharmacology, and my family runs some small business. If I have the opportunity to step out into the world in the future, why shouldn't I?"
Seeing that stubborness still lingered on his face, Lin Yue refrained from wasting more words, leaving him time to think it over.
In her teens, it was precisely the age to study. Lin Yue wanted to master the fundamentals early on so she could better cope with risks out in the world. If she couldn't, she wouldn't force it.
It was ten days later when she went to read books again.
Wu Yang was still in the study. Lin Yue asked no questions, took a book, and turned to leave. Just as she turned around, a voice as soft as a cicada's wing suddenly came from behind her.
"Is what you said... true?"
Lin Yue turned around. The young man's face remained cold, but he shifted his eyes away uncomfortably when meeting her gaze.
"Of course."
Lin Yue placed ten copper coins directly on the table, flipped the book to the points she didn't understand, and had him explain. Wu Yang looked at it for a moment before beginning his explanation.
He explained several knowledge points in succession. While he wasn't necessarily a stellar teacher, she at least grasped what they meant.
Whenever she had a day off, Lin Yue went over to read, collecting her questions to ask all at once to save a lot of money.
Wu Yang wasn't difficult to get along with; to put it bluntly, he was just somewhat pedantic and steeped in feudal ideology. Whenever their views clashed, keeping quiet was enough—after all, she was there to learn, not to make friends.
This world had martial arts, and Lin Yue wanted to experiment a bit.
Using scissors, she cut paper into tiny slips and began drawing with a charcoal pencil. A circle, a few sticks, small curved lines—stick figures striking various poses leaped onto the paper one after another.
What she drew was her company programmers' morning exercise routine. As mature adults, jumping around like youngsters didn't suit them, so they had chosen Tai Chi—well-suited for the elderly—moving from Eight-Section Brocade to the Twenty-Four Form, then to the Fifty-Six Form. Once proficient in one, they moved to the next, which not only cultivated character and strengthened the body, but also allowed them to get acquainted with senior living ahead of time, becoming trendsetting overachievers.
Lin Yue snapped her fingers—her stick-figure version of Tai Chi was complete.
She bound the small slips of paper together with thread into a booklet to make a simple flipbook. As the pages flipped rapidly, the stick figure sprang to life with the Hunyuan stance, and flipping backward from the last page seamlessly connected to the preceding stance.
Once finished, she aged the flipbook. A month later, she took it to Old Doctor Chen, claiming she had picked up a secret martial arts manual!
Having passed Doctor Chen's inspection, Lin Yue practiced it in the backyard during her spare time. What youth didn't harbor a dream of martial arts? Even Chen Ping became obsessed with it.
Later, seeing them looking healthy and practicing with genuine flair, Doctor Chen began joining in to stretch his old bones as well.
That year, Sanya got married.
The groom was from Wang Family Village, the eldest son in his family, with an honest disposition. Sanya was marrying in as the eldest sister-in-law.
Sanya didn't wear a bridal veil, wearing only a dark green outfit, her hair tied behind her head with a red string. Standing there with a powder-white face, rosy cheeks, and red lips,
she looked just like a little ghost straight out of an Uncle Ying jiangshi movie.
The village folk lived their whole lives in the mountains and had never heard of jiangshi. Seeing the bride decked out in bright colors, they all stared wide-eyed with praise and envy, their faces beaming with joy.
There was a local custom of crying at weddings. Madame Wang said a few words about being dutiful to one's mother-in-law and eventually broke into tears.
By rights, Lin Yue, as her elder sister, should have cried too, but she couldn't produce any tears. She used to cry as a child, but as she grew older, no matter how tough things got—even when her parents passed away—she never cried. Instead, her facial expressions grew increasingly indifferent, and people around her called her heartless and an ungrateful wretch.
She didn't know why she was like this either.
She had seen a doctor before, who said it was emotional blunting, a lack of appropriate response to external stimuli. It manifested in several ways: coldness toward friends and family, lack of enthusiasm in expression, a blank face devoid of inner feeling, a lack of interest in people or matters, no sense of responsibility or empathy, an inability to care for others, or neurological emotional suppression—sometimes cold, sometimes enthusiastic.
It was an illness, yet not quite an illness.
Lin Yue had taken tests; her symptoms were on the milder side. When it came to emotions, she genuinely was unwilling to take the initiative or express herself, and her emotions rarely suffered much volatility.
She had always acted according to her own perceptions and rules—resolving what could be resolved, and never wallowing in self-pity over what couldn't.
"Xiaya, boo-hoo..."
Madame Wang wiped her tears with a cotton handkerchief and called to Lin Yue, motioning for her to go through the motions.
Lin Yue didn't respond. Madame Wang wept noisily beside her and even pinched her a few times, but Lin Yue merely furrowed her brow.
Here, a daughter's dowry usually consisted of nothing more than the single set of new clothes on the bride's back. Using business promotion as a pretext, Lin Yue used all her persuasive powers until Grandfather finally added a bolt of linen worth a hundred coppers.
Having a dowry gave a bride immense standing in these parts, and word quickly spread across several villages, triggering a wave of envious gossip and rumor.
Lin Yue took advantage of Madame Wang stepping out to secretly hand Sanya one tael of silver.
Sanya was so overjoyed she forgot to cry. Clutching the hidden pocket containing the money, her eyes shone as she said, "Second Sister, so much money!"
Lin Yue made a shushing gesture. Sanya immediately covered her mouth, darted a quick glance toward the doorway, and swiftly stashed the money deep inside her garment's hidden pocket.
The bride was picked up by the groom's party, riding away on a shared ox cart. The ox cart moved slowly—clack-clack—traversing the yellow-dirt fields and weaving through the mountains, as if mirroring the slow passage of time.
Three days later, Sanya returned for her post-wedding visit, looking quite healthy. Thanks to her dowry and her connections to both the Lin family and the Chen family, the Wang family treated her well and did not mistreat her.
Spring departed and autumn arrived; cold gave way to heat. In the blink of an eye, three years passed, and Lin Yue reached seventeen years of age.
Inside the Chen family medicine shop, the young female doctor, her face calm as still water, took a woman's pulse.
"My husband and I have been sharing a bed for two years, but my belly still shows no sign," the woman said with a hint of bashful annoyance, as two men watched nearby.
Lin Yue felt her pulse for a while, then asked, "Have you had a miscarriage? How many days does your period last, is it regular, and do you experience abdominal pain?"
The woman nodded. "I had one miscarriage. My period lasts four days, sometimes delayed by three days, sometimes five, and when it comes, my lower abdomen aches severely..."
"Stick out your tongue."
Lin Yue observed it—the tongue body was dark red with ecchymosis along the edges and a thin yellow coating, while her physique was slightly heavy, and her pulse was wiry. She arrived at a diagnosis.
"Kidney deficiency and essence depletion, accompanied by blood stasis."
Lin Yue turned to look at Doctor Chen. Seeing him nod, she finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Lin Yue wrote out a prescription and handed it to Doctor Chen beside her. After reading it, Doctor Chen picked up the prescription written by Chen Ping, and ultimately gave Lin Yue's prescription to Chen Ping to fill.
After the patient left, Doctor Chen said to Chen Ping, "Ping'er, do you know why I didn't choose yours?"
Chen Ping responded, "The prescriptions we wrote are identical, but Sister Lin substituted one expensive herb with one of similar properties, then added assistant herbs to balance the medicinal nature, cutting the price by half compared to mine."
Doctor Chen nodded. "Prescriptions in books are good, but they are not necessarily suitable for everyone; one must tailor them to the individual. You simply lack the courage to substitute ingredients. Even with me present, you are scared of this and that. If you had even half of Little Lin's attentiveness and courage, I could close my eyes in peace."
Hearing this, Chen Ping lowered his head and hummed in agreement.
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