The daylight was gloomy, the leaden clouds hanging low. Wrapping their clothes tightly around themselves, the party continued hurrying along without drawing attention.
The weather grew colder still. Yang Xingjian shivered so badly that he had even dug out the silk-lined cloak from the bottom of his chest. Thirteenth Son urged him to get off the cart and walk a little, to stretch his limbs and get his blood flowing. But Yang Xingjian complained that his healed leg ached and refused to set foot on the dusty ground.
Thirteenth Son laughed. "Don't let Fourth Senior Brother hear that. If he hears you disparaging his handiwork, he'll break your other leg for revenge."
For some reason, Baozhu felt inexplicably restless today. She said to Wei Xun, "Take out that Elixir Recipe and let me look at it again."
"You've already looked at it a hundred times." Wei Xun sighed helplessly.
"And what's wrong with looking at it a hundred and one times?" Baozhu countered. "You ate two meals yesterday. Don't you still have to eat today?"
Wei Xun could only rummage through his saddlebag and hand her the sheet of yellow paper.
In fact, to guard against its being lost by accident, Baozhu had long since memorized its contents backward and forward, down to the exact quantity of every ingredient. Only the words "phoenix embryo" had no annotation.
In one corner on the back of the yellow paper, the words "happy land" stood alone, their meaning unclear. She had asked Wei Xun about them, but he had only shrugged and said he did not know. After all, Zhou Qingyang had been penniless; writing a prescription on a used scrap of paper was perfectly normal.
This thin sheet of paper was Wei Xun's life.
*Whatever else it means, happy land is a