In the rear courtyard of the World-Aiding Hall, the assembly line of medicine production began to turn.
Water stains still lingered on the flagstones, left from washing medicinal ingredients early that morning. Drying racks stood beneath the sun, their bamboo trays spread with white peony root, angelica, and Sichuan lovage. The sliced herbs were neatly arranged like little, wafer-thin pancakes.
At the cutting benches, several laborers hunched over their work, their knives rising and falling in an even rhythm. At the grinding trough, someone pushed a grinding wheel back and forth, producing a dull rumble.
Herb sieves shook, fine powder sifting down in a soft rustle. Heat rose from the earthen drying platform in the drying room. Bitterness mingled with medicinal fragrance, steeping the air of the entire courtyard.
Only the sounds of work filled the courtyard. Cutting, grinding, sifting, drying—each had its duty, each its place, their rhythms aligned as regularly as a piece of music.
The sounds of ingredients being picked up, set down, and constantly processed formed a kind of ancient percussion that played from morning until night.
No one spoke. After so many years, the World-Aiding Hall had squeezed every last bit of productivity out of every position.
The cutters had to slice thirty catties of herbs a day; the grinders had to grind twenty catties of medicinal powder; the sifters had to sift fifty catties of fine powder. Everyone had a quota, and only by keeping their hands and feet moving could they finish.
No one had spare time to chat while working.
Talking meant slowing down. Slowing down meant not finishing. Not finishing meant staying late, with no pay for the extra hours.
A former steward had once said, "If you won't do it, plenty of others will."
And it was true. Working as a laborer at the World-Aiding Hall counted as respectable employment.
There was no exposure to wind and sun, no digging in the fields, no hauling heavy sacks at the docks until they could no longer straighten their backs. It was merely dull and mechanical, without so much heavy physical labor.
But in times like these, having shelter from the wind and rain, a hot meal, and a few copper coins left each month already made them a hundred times better off than the refugees outside the city.
Inside Chen Chong's room.
A servant came knocking at his door.
He had finished refining a batch of True Martial Pills and had just put out the fire. The pills were still cooling on a porcelain plate.
The servant was in a hurry. Normally, he would knock softly and wait to be summoned, only daring to push the door open after receiving permission.
Today, however, the pounding on the door was loud, urgent, and erratic. Chen Chong frowned and set down the porcelain plate in his hands.
"Come in."
The servant pushed the door open and entered, panting, his forehead covered in sweat. He had clearly run all the way there.
"Head Steward Chen, Miss Li asks that you come to Head Steward Wang's room."
Chen Chong glanced at him and nodded, wiped the medicinal residue from his hands, and went out.
This was Chen Chong's first visit to Head Steward Wang's room.
It was not much larger than Chen Chong's own quarters, but stepping inside felt like entering another world.
A thick scarlet carpet covered the floor, soft beneath his feet, swallowing every footstep.
Four meticulous paintings of flowers and birds hung on the walls, their red sandalwood frames inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
A large couch stood against one wall, draped with a leopard skin. The leopard's head drooped over the edge, glass beads set into its eye sockets reflecting a dim gleam in the shadows.
Beside the couch stood a square table bearing a set of celadon tea ware on a brocade mat. Its glaze had a lustrous sheen; it was from the Ru Kiln.
A gilded Boshan Censer sat at the corner of the table, burning sandalwood, thin wisps of smoke curling upward. In another corner stood a white jade screen inlaid with gemstones of various colors, forming a landscape.
It hardly looked like the room of a head steward at a medicine shop and clinic. It looked more like a wealthy man's den of lavish indulgence.
Several people stood inside.
Li Zhaoning stood in the center of the room, with two men behind her. Both were in their forties. One was tall and thin, wearing a gray-blue robe, his hands hanging at his sides, his knuckles thick as bamboo roots; the other was short and stocky, dressed in a coarse brown tunic, with broad shoulders, a thick waist, and a neck almost as wide as his head.
Both men were expressionless, but the faint aura seeping from them made Chen Chong's eyelid twitch.
He sensed their strength—the Tendon-Tremor Realm.
This was an ability he had paid to acquire. Improving his cultivation art had given him a more direct sense of others' strength.
The aura of the Tendon-Tremor Realm was deep and densely woven, like an invisible wall of energy wrapped around the body. Both men had reached tendon vibration, and judging by their stances and their eyes, they had genuinely honed their way there.
Chen Chong bowed slightly to Li Zhaoning in greeting, then stepped aside. Only then did he notice Wang Zheng seated there.
Wang Zheng braced both hands on the tabletop, an inscrutable trace of a smile on his honest-looking face. Smoke from the gilded Boshan Censer curled before him, blurring his features.
He looked at Chen Chong, then at Li Zhaoning, his gaze making a circuit between the two.
"To what do I owe the honor of your visit, Miss Li?"
Wang Zheng emphasized "Miss Li." There was not a trace of respect in his tone, only an icy mockery.
Li Zhaoning's expression remained unchanged, her voice steady. "You jest, Uncle Wang. I came because there are a few things I would like you to clarify."
Wang Zheng suddenly laughed. The abrupt burst of laughter echoed through the gaudily furnished room, making the blue smoke above the Boshan Censer tremble.
"Perfect." Wang Zheng stopped laughing and stared straight at Li Zhaoning. "I have a few questions for the Li Family myself."
His tone turned cold. "When my ancestors brought this clinic over and pledged their allegiance, we were promised cultivation arts. Why, then, did you begin restricting and reclaiming them as soon as our last Bone-Forging Stage practitioner died? And how did the core pill formulas in the alchemy book passed down by my ancestors become the Li Family's property?"
Li Zhaoning said nothing.
"What happened to the promise that the Wang Family would always have the final say in this clinic?" Wang Zheng's face gradually twisted, the corners of his eyes twitching. His honest-looking facade tore open, exposing the resentment hidden beneath it for years.
"Uncle Wang," Li Zhaoning said, her tone still calm, "we have no way of knowing what agreements our ancestors made. Even so, you should not have secretly sold True Martial Pills."
"You've reached beyond your bounds."
She paused, then took a pill from her sleeve and held it in her palm. Patterns of light flowed across the dark-gold pill's surface, but at the end of those patterns was a tiny, almost invisible mark, like a wave as fine as a strand of hair.
Wang Zheng abruptly regained his composure. He looked at Chen Chong, his gaze lingering briefly on that young face.
"An alchemy master so young. It seems my eyes have failed me."
He pointed at the pill in Li Zhaoning's palm. "The very first line in the alchemy book handed down through the Wang Family says: an alchemist who can do as he wills is a master. It means being able to control a pill even as you refine it."
He rubbed his fingers, as though recalling something. "Only someone who can refine pills with a style of his own, bearing a unique mark, deserves to be called a master."
As though something had suddenly occurred to him, Wang Zheng sneered.
"It seems the situation has grown so dire that the Li Family no longer bothers to hide its gluttony."
His gaze swept over the two Tendon-Tremor Realm experts, the mockery at the corner of his mouth deepening. "Only Yuan Zhiwu had enough martial talent to reach the Tendon-Tremor Realm. Otherwise—"
He left the sentence unfinished, but his meaning was clear.
"So it's true. Perhaps the necessary means to success is to stop at nothing?" Wang Zheng shook his head, his gaze a little unfocused, as though talking to himself.
Then he raised his head and looked at Li Zhaoning, a vicious gleam flashing in his eyes.
"How I regret it. I should have agreed to those bandits' demands that day and helped them strip this clinic bare."
His voice sank, as though the words were being squeezed through his teeth. "Expecting the Li Family to honor old ties. Laughable. Laughable."
Wang Zheng fell calm once more.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The two Tendon-Tremor Realm experts stepped forward and seized his arms, one on either side.
Wang Zheng did not resist. Eyes still closed, he let them escort him out.
They left the room and made their way through the World-Aiding Hall.
From the rear courtyard to the middle hall, from the middle hall to the front hall, everyone throughout the clinic saw it clearly.
The stewards, the laborers, the attending physicians, the assistants dispensing medicine. Everyone was busy with their work, but every gaze followed them.
Flanked by the two burly men holding his arms, Wang Zheng wore a calm expression, his steps unhurried, as though going to an appointment he should have kept long ago.
No one knew who started it. Perhaps an assistant in the front hall, perhaps a laborer in the rear courtyard.
Everyone knew. Wang Zheng had been taken away for embezzling and illicitly selling the clinic's pills.
The news spread like ripples across water, passing from one person's mouth to another, from one corner to the next.
The herb-cutting knives paused for an instant, the grinding wheel slowed for a beat, the shaking sieves briefly stilled. Then everyone lowered their heads again and returned to their work.
Only a few notes in that regular melody had gone astray.