Capital, Imperial Palace.
An eight-hundred-li urgent dispatch arrived.
"Reporting to Your Majesty, the Mountain God showed no reaction to any of the three Imperial Edicts."
"We asked the temple's steward, and he actually said that this was a true immortal, and how could mortals command him?" Grand Eunuch Chen Gong of the Directorate of Ceremonial said as he knelt on the ground.
"So he means I must pay three visits to his thatched cottage? Did you find out anything?" the Emperor said sarcastically.
Chen Gong hurriedly answered with great care, "We investigated thoroughly and also obtained some so-called divine medicine from there. The local gentry had sought it out themselves."
As he spoke, Chen Gong raised an embroidered box in both hands.
"Did you open it and look?" the Emperor asked coldly.
"This servant did. This servant also personally saw someone take it."
"Then open it and let me see." The Emperor remained very cautious and suspicious.
What if it was poison? That would be disastrous. Soon, Chen Gong opened the box ten paces away from the Emperor.
The Emperor and the eunuchs, great and small, all saw several capsules inside the box, marked with patterns and writing.
The simplified characters for "clearing heat."
There had been two forms of writing since ancient times: simplified and traditional.
Many people had begun using simplified characters.
"This medicine is for colds and high fevers. It is especially effective on children. According to the local gentry, in the past, children who could not survive a severe fever would die young."
"Since this medicine appeared, very few children have died from high fevers."
"Hmph. Their children survived, but my sons never lived to see an immortal!" The Emperor was unhappy.
He thought of his three sons who had died young.
He had originally had