Chapter 15

After he walked into the shop and explained why he was there, a pharmacy apprentice behind the counter led him to the back courtyard to meet the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper was taken aback by the herbs Chen Jue brought. Forget the fact that they were neatly sorted and clean—the roots were all cut to the same thickness, that's some serious knife skills.

The shopkeeper smiled at Chen Jue and said, "I can tell right away you've been picking herbs for a while, young fella. That saves us a lot of hassle. And these herbs are indeed excellent. This angelica and astragalus look to be at least thirty years old based on their thickness. I'll give you a fair price right off the bat—I'll take them all at our top-tier rate."

Every herb comes in high, medium, and low grades, just like apples come in big, medium, and small sizes and cost different amounts. Apples might have the same nutritional value no matter the size, but with herbs, size changes everything.

A ten-year ginseng and a hundred-year ginseng are like night and day.

The herbs Chen Jue brought today were all top-grade anyway—when he first started picking, he only grabbed the good stuff.

So when he heard the shopkeeper's offer, he just nodded and said, "Sounds good."

He had fifteen kinds of herbs in his basket, each one dried to about a kilo.

That didn't count the wild chrysanthemum and honeysuckle, which Chen Jue had stuffed into a separate bag. The bag looked big, but the two together weighed less than ten grams.

The shopkeeper grabbed the special herb scale, weighed everything out, then used a fine abacus to tally it all up for Chen Jue, item by item, and wrote it down on a scrap of rough paper.

His handwriting was neat and tidy, in that small standard script. Chen Jue took a look and was surprised the shopkeeper had such nice penmanship.

It was the first time in days he'd seen anybody write anything. Even though it was traditional characters written top to bottom, it felt strangely familiar.

Director Zhou's handwriting was just as clean. She used to say that old-school Chinese medicine doctors all wrote this neat—unlike you Western medicine types with your chicken scratch, like you're scared the patient might actually read it.

That comment really did Western medicine dirty. These days Western doctors just type everything on computers in standard Song font. Traditional if you want it, simplified if you like, and they can even translate it into another language for you.

Chen Jue spaced out for a second. When he snapped back to it, the shopkeeper was holding the paper out for him to look at. He figured Chen Jue probably couldn't read, so he read it all out loud—same way that old doctor had done for the old guy, no cheating anybody, young or old.

Chen Jue waited till he was done reading, then nodded and said, "Good, thanks, shopkeeper."

The fifteen herbs went for ten taels of silver.

The shopkeeper gave him a fair price.

That sounds like a lot—one tael a day, which is about a thousand yuan in today's money.

It wasn't that Chen Jue was making bank—it's just that herbs were crazy expensive back then. Chen Jue had spent more than ten days climbing three mountains to pick these herbs, and some of them had actually been gathered by the guy who owned this body before him.

Chen Jue looked over the receipt, folded it up nice and neat, and tucked it into his inner pocket. Then he reached inside his clothes and pulled out a little bag.

That was one good thing about old-timey clothes—cross the lapels, tie the belt, and you never know how much a guy's got stashed in there.

In his innermost pocket, he had a ginseng root and a small bag of cordyceps.

The shopkeeper grinned when he saw the ginseng. This kid looked cold on the outside, but he was pretty sharp—if the shopkeeper had tried to lowball him, he never would've pulled out that ginseng.

Chen Jue didn't beat around the bush. He set the ginseng on the table and said straight up, "Shopkeeper, take a look and tell me how much this ginseng is worth."

The shopkeeper picked it up carefully off the table, smoothing out each little root hair one at a time: "This ginseng was freshly harvested."

Chen Jue nodded.

Fresh ginseng and dried ginseng have about the same medicinal kick, and the price is based on size and age, not weight, so the shopkeeper's words had a double meaning.

Chen Jue answered right away: "If you give me a good price, I'll bring any rare herbs I find straight to Jishi Hall from now on."

The shopkeeper smiled and nodded—this kid was pretty clever.

He started his appraisal: "Going by the thickness of the root and the root hairs, this one's about fifteen years old. For a fifteen-year mountain ginseng, the best I can do is ten taels of silver."

Chen Jue thought about what Qing dynasty medical books said about ginseng prices—a hundred-year root went for at least a thousand taels. In modern times, a wild hundred-year ginseng could sell at auction for millions.

Of course, that was way later, and his ginseng wasn't a hundred years old anyway.

Fifteen years to a hundred is a pretty big jump.

Chen Jue nodded: "Alright, that price works."

Last, Chen Jue showed the cordyceps to the shopkeeper: "Shopkeeper Li, you know your herbs. Mind taking a look and telling me what this cordyceps is worth?"

Chen Jue didn't bother asking if Shopkeeper Li knew what it was—he just went straight to treating it like a medicine.

Sure enough, Shopkeeper Li stared at the thing that looked half bug, half plant, confused for a second, then held the little sprout up to the light to get a better look.

"What's it called... winter something grass?"

"Cordyceps," Chen Jue said simply. "In winter it's a bug, in spring and summer it's grass."

Shopkeeper Li was genuinely amazed, shaking his head while he looked it over: "Hold on a sec, young fella. Let me go get Doctor Tang to come check this out. I really don't know this herb."

After Shopkeeper Li left, Chen Jue stood in the back courtyard, looking at the herbs laid out for drying and processing in the sunlight. His eyes drifted to the books on the desk—one titled "The Classic of Herbal Medicine."

This book appeared to be the shopkeeper's daily reading, its pages yellowed with age. Chen Jue gave it a few extra glances.

In this era, books were expensive, and medical texts even more so—because they were rare, and rarity drove up value.

Chen Jue thought to himself that next time he saved up some money, he'd buy a medical text to help him identify herbs while gathering. What he remembered from his own knowledge wasn't nearly enough.

In traditional Chinese medicine, everything could be used as medicine—poisonous or not, complementary or antagonistic.

Chen Jue didn't touch the book. Better not to handle things in someone else's shop.

He stood there for a moment before hearing footsteps.

Chen Jue turned to look. The old gentleman Tang that Shopkeeper Li mentioned was none other than the old physician who had treated the middle-aged man earlier.

The old doctor's hair and beard were completely white, yet his body remained vigorous. From the resounding footsteps alone, you'd never guess he was a man of seventy.

His back was straight, his ears sharp, his eyes clear.

He looked intently at the herbs on the table: "Shopkeeper Li, what herb did you say you didn't recognize?"

Shopkeeper Li hurriedly replied, "Old sir, it's called cordyceps. This young man brought it."

Chen Jue nodded in greeting to Doctor Tang. Being new to this ancient world, he didn't know the proper etiquette—scholars in long sleeves were supposed to bow with clasped hands, while common folk were to cup one fist in the other palm.

But Doctor Tang's attention was fixed on the herbs on the table, so he didn't notice Chen Jue's manner.

Doctor Tang, like Shopkeeper Li, examined it in the light repeatedly, then asked Chen Jue without any impatience: "This herb really is an insect in winter and grass in summer?"

Chen Jue nodded: "Yes. It's a bat moth larva that, during its growth, ingests a plant seed. The seed gradually grows using the larva's body as its host."

Chen Jue tried his best to use vocabulary that would make sense in this ancient era.

But after he finished explaining, he thought Shopkeeper Li looked even more confused. Fortunately, Doctor Tang raised an eyebrow: "Is that so? What are the medicinal properties of this herb?"

Chen Jue looked at him: "It nourishes the lungs and fortifies the kidneys, replenishes vital essence, stops bleeding and resolves phlegm, treats consumptive coughs, and treats diaphragm ailments."

He rattled off the effects in a nutshell.

In fact, the effects of cordyceps go beyond these.

But since the doctors here didn't recognize this herb, that meant it hadn't been recorded yet.

Old Mr. Tang looked at Chen Jue with bright eyes: "You know medicine?"

Chen Jue slightly lowered his eyelids: "Just a smattering."

He called it a smattering, but then went on without a hint of modesty: "The lung ailment of that elderly man earlier could be managed with this, maybe buy him a few more years."

If he wasn't wrong, that old man had late-stage lung cancer.

According to TCM texts, cordyceps enters two meridians: the lung meridian and the kidney meridian.

From the perspective of Chinese medicine, the kidneys are the root of innate constitution, mainly in charge of storing essence, regulating water, and absorbing qi. They are the root of yin and yang, the source of life, governing the storage and release of the organs' essence.

The lungs thread through all meridians, govern qi, manage breathing, regulate water, connect to all vessels, and pair with the large intestine.

Most patients with lung issues tend to be constipated, which TCM diagnoses as lung qi deficiency.

Since neither of these two recognized cordyceps, this era probably didn't yet have medicines that entered two meridians.

Lung cancer is incurable even in modern times, let alone in this ancient era. So Old Mr. Tang focused on comforting the patient, hoping a good mood might buy him a few more years.

When Old Mr. Tang heard Chen Jue say "buy him a few more years," he shot up: "You can tell what's wrong with him?" Before Chen Jue could answer, he fired off another question: "Can you cure him?"

Chen Jue shook his head.

He couldn't cure late-stage lung cancer, and even if surgery were an option, there were no facilities here.

As for how he knew, it was because the patient was in the late stage—the disease showed on the surface.

The pain had spread across his chest and back, even reaching the liver, and what he coughed up probably had blood in it.

That, plus the old doctor's words, confirmed it for Chen Jue.

Old Mr. Tang slowly sank back down. He shook his head in defeat: "Right, even I can't cure it, and you're so young."

Then he thought of something and added: "Young man, I'm not saying you're too young to know medicine. I mean this disease is beyond help right now."

Chen Jue got his meaning. To be fair, the old doctor had put it kindly.

Chen Jue watched him pick up the cordyceps again and stepped closer. Old Mr. Tang stared at it for a moment and sighed: "They say a summer insect can't understand ice. Two creatures from different seasons fused into one—truly miraculous. I've been too sheltered."

He held the medicinal herb and looked at Chen Jue, shaking his head: "I've never seen this herb in all my years, so I don't dare prescribe it to anyone."

Chen Jue realized then that his medicine wasn't going to sell.

He had actually anticipated this. Doctors of this era stuck to what was in the books and what their masters taught them—they didn't dare experiment. Even modern doctors only dared to make drugs after hundreds of mouse trials.

Chen Jue looked at the cordyceps with some regret.

Cordyceps wasn't a lifesaver like bezoar, but it was a great, gentle tonic that boosted the immune system. With a healthier body, you could hold off illness for a few more years.

But Chen Jue also knew the cautious old doctor wouldn't take his word for it, so he didn't push.

Manager Liu looked at Chen Jue and cleared his throat: "Well, young man, since we don't recognize this medicine and aren't sure of its effects, we can't accept it."

Chen Jue nodded and tucked the medicine back into his chest.

His main purpose today was to test the waters and see which herbs sold well.

However, he left a small packet of cordyceps with the old doctor, suggesting he could try steeping it in water or boiling it in soup.

He took the rest with him.

When the price couldn't be raised, he wouldn't undersell it and disrupt the market, nor would he ruin the reputation of this medicine. Of course, he also hoped some doctor would come to appreciate it.

He added it to Zhou Qingshan's medicine. These past days, his body had been recovering well, except for his spirits.

Chen Jue now had twenty-five taels of silver in his pocket, enough to enjoy a leisurely stroll. He unhurriedly wandered through the main commercial street of Dongling County.

He first went to the snack street. His stomach commanded his nose, and his legs made the decision. With one turn, he arrived at the snack street.

Most snacks in this era had no additives, so Chen Jue wasn't worried about getting sick. As long as his nose didn't find it revolting, he would eat.

The snacks he never had time to eat in the past now made his mouth water intensely.

He swallowed his saliva in front of a pan-fried bun stall, barely able to wait for the vendor to serve him.

While waiting, Chen Jue mocked himself—when had he become such a glutton?

The golden-fried buns carried their aroma the farthest, and his nose had led him here first.

Chen Jue took the buns wrapped in oil paper and sat down at the noodle stall, grandly telling the vendor: "Large bowl, extra meat, extra egg, and extra cilantro."

Author's note:

Please bookmark! Please leave comments—the paragraph comments are now open. Thank you all. I've been revising the story these past few days to bring the male lead in earlier!