The woman holding the cloth bundle spoke first.
"Auntie Sang, if it really is half price, could you set aside a packet for me first? My husband was in so much pain last night he couldn't sleep."
Auntie Sang knew her. After hearing her out, she drew the medicine packet in her hand behind her.
"Wait until it's been checked. Don't give him this packet yet."
Du Huai sighed, told the stallholder to bring over stools, then had someone lift the cloth covering the medicine at the front of the stall. The bundles of roots in the basket were neatly arranged, with a little dried mud still clinging to them. They looked far better than the loose roots in Auntie Sang's hand.
"Check it if you must. We still have a business to run. Why keep people who need urgent help standing around?"
The woman looked toward Chen Xiuyuan. She said nothing, but she had already opened one corner of her cloth bundle, revealing the dried meat she had brought to trade for medicine.
Chen Xiuyuan stepped aside and invited her to sit in the shade. When he turned back to Du Huai, he remembered Ge Ping's hand pressed over his wound behind the bridge. The cloth had been changed several times, yet blood had kept seeping through.
"If the medicine is suitable, we'll buy it as usual. If you want us to stop investigating, first ask whether the people who took those arrows agree."
"I never said I fired the arrows."
"Then keep the two matters separate."
Du Huai looked at him. "Can you make that decision for Blood Stone?"
"How much we buy isn't for me to decide. But I don't need anyone else's permission to ask why I nearly died in the mountains."
At that, the patrol guards sent someone back to the tribe to fetch Shi Qiren. Auntie Sang also sent word to Elder Shi, borrowing a packet of Scarlet Whisker Root with a known provenance for a comparison in person. Du Huai did not stop them, but he withdrew his earlier offer of half price, saying only that individual purchases would be charged at the original rate.
The woman slowly wrapped her dried meat again and sat to one side without another word.
Seeing what she did, Chen Xiuyuan asked Auntie Sang how much medicine the medicine shed could still spare. Auntie Sang said there was enough for today's urgent needs, but if they diverted some here, the people afterward would have to wait. She could examine the man's wound first; whether he needed Scarlet Whisker Root could only be decided after she had seen it.
The woman hurriedly thanked her. Du Huai spread his hands toward Chen Xiuyuan, as though that settled everything.
Chen Xiuyuan walked over to the basket.
"Who sealed this basket?"
The stallholder said it had already been tied up when it arrived, and he had only opened the top few bundles.
"Then take some from inside."
Du Huai nodded. "As you please."
Chen Xiuyuan asked the patrol guards to bear witness, took several bundles from different parts of the basket, and untied them on a clean mat. Auntie Sang did not announce which medicines she thought they were. She simply divided the similar roots in each bundle into two portions, wrapped each into a small packet, and sent them to two separate places for examination.
One portion went to Elder Shi; the other stayed with an old herb gatherer who happened to have come to the small market to trade medicine. Auntie Sang knew him and had exchanged methods of drying herbs with him before; the two did not deal in the same line of business. The old man first confirmed that he was only identifying medicine, not speaking for anyone over accounts, before agreeing to take it.
"Give me somewhere clean, and leave me some water," he said.
Du Huai had the stallholder lead the old man beneath the neighboring shelter. Chen Xiuyuan asked Auntie Sang to go along, while he remained beside the medicine basket to keep the remaining medicine from getting mixed up as people gathered to watch. The returned packet sold earlier remained separately wrapped. It was neither tipped into the new samples, nor was its sour, fishy smell used to explain the adulteration before them.
While they waited, the stallholder could not help muttering, "The medicine travels a long way. Some broken leaves and rootlets are perfectly normal. Are you going to condemn this whole basket over one or two poor roots?"
Chen Xiuyuan picked up two sections of root of similar thickness and placed them at opposite ends of the mat.
"The people examining them will tell us what medicine they are, even with their rootlets broken off. If they're the same kind, we'll pay your price."
"And if they aren't?"
"Then sell them for what they actually are. For anything already traded away at the price of expensive medicine, make up the difference."
The stallholder glanced at Du Huai and fell silent.
By the time Shi Qiren arrived, the old herb gatherer had finished his examination. Without looking at the other portion Auntie Sang had brought, he explained the three small piles he had separated out, one by one: there was genuine Scarlet Whisker Root, an ordinary medicinal root that looked similar, and stock that had been dampened and then dried again, which should no longer be sold as fresh goods.
"This pile won't be restored no matter how much you dry it." The old man crumbled open a section, and the fibers inside broke into powder.
Du Huai crouched, took a look, and said, "Water got in on the road. If you're saying it spoiled in storage, I'll admit that."
The old man pushed another pile in front of him.
"Can soaking in water change the species of medicine too?"
Du Huai picked up the section of root, weighed it in his hand, then put it down again.
"I buy a lot of goods. If the people under me mixed something in, I'll have to ask them too. You can't expect me to identify every root through a medicine pouch."
Chen Xiuyuan looked at the flat pouch at his waist.
"What you're carrying is sample stock to show people, isn't it?"
"There's nothing unusual about carrying some medicine when you go out."
"You just said we could pick any of your goods. Let us pick a bundle from there too. If it's the same as what's in the basket, we'll hear your explanation for both."
Du Huai did not move.
Standing beside the stall with a hand pressed on the wooden goods ledger, Shi Qiren spoke. "If you don't want to open it, say so. Before we impound the goods, you'll have your chance to say everything you should."
"Why wouldn't I open it?"
Du Huai untied his medicine pouch and tipped out several carefully bound bundles of medicinal roots. Fine red rootlets curled beneath the roots, and even the crumbs of soil caught among them were dry. The old herb gatherer picked up a root, snapped it open, then took one of the same kind they had picked out of the stall's basket and placed them together.
The woman beside them finally stood.
"What I asked for this morning was the kind in your pouch."
The stallholder hurriedly said that what he had packed for her was Scarlet Whisker Root too, but the woman had already snatched up the packet reserved for her on the stall and emptied it onto the mat. The two roots on the outside had fine rootlets; the thick roots wrapped inside were tightly compressed, their color close to that of the cheap medicinal roots that had been picked out.
The old herb gatherer examined them for her and sighed. "If you brew this amount, it won't have enough medicinal strength. And with an injured person at home, don't guess at how much extra to add."
The woman seized the edge of her cloth bundle and demanded of the stallholder, "What exactly am I saving at half price?"
The stallholder turned to look for Du Huai, but Du Huai addressed Shi Qiren instead. "I'll accept returns or exchanges. Anyone who lost out buying from me can come to me."
Chen Xiuyuan waited until he had finished before taking out the original returned packet and handing it to a patrol guard to place beside the others.
"This packet was returned from Blood Stone. The supply route and the stall's accounts have already been checked. Everything on the mat today was unwrapped in front of you. With the old goods and the new here together, are you saying they spoiled on the road, or were mixed when they were packed?"
Du Huai said, "We'll have to find whoever packed them and ask."
"Fine. Ask. First tell us which cart it was, and where it was loaded."
For a moment, only the sound of cords being untied remained before the stall. The woman eager to trade for medicine for her family tied her dried meat bundle shut again, stood beside Auntie Sang, and asked whether they could go back together later.
Auntie Sang agreed. She did not accept the good medicine Du Huai offered. Instead, she took a small amount, enough for identification, from the reliable packet she had brought herself and gave it to the woman to hold, telling her to take it to Elder Shi first when she returned and have him examine the wound.
After another wait, the person sent to Elder Shi returned with the other examination results. The old man had separately wrapped everything he could identify and added brief markings, sending back even the short section he could not yet confirm exactly as it was. Comparing the two sets, the genuine medicine, substitute roots, and damp-damaged old stock they had picked out were largely consistent.
Auntie Sang opened the little packet of uncertain medicine. The old herb gatherer shook his head too, saying that the section was too short for him to identify with certainty either.
Chen Xiuyuan moved it aside.
"This section doesn't count. For the rest that can be identified, please both examine them once more."
Du Huai had already been pointing toward that little packet. Hearing this, he withdrew his hand and instead said they could not judge all his goods by a single basket. Shi Qiren agreed and told the patrol guards to hold only the implicated batch, leaving the goods on the other stalls untouched.
"If you have a goods list, bring it out so we can check it item by item. If you say you didn't deliver this basket, we can also bring in whoever received it at the time to verify."
The stallholder hurriedly shook his head. "This basket really is his. It was tied up like this when it arrived, and I put it out just as it was. Shopkeeper Du, after all the shipments I've done with you, you can't leave me to pay for this alone."
Du Huai snapped at him in a low voice to shut up, but the stallholder pushed the wooden goods ledger toward Shi Qiren and brought out the several medicine labels originally tucked behind it as well.
Chen Xiuyuan made out the words "South Entrance." He did not keep circling around the wooden labels, but asked the stallholder, "Did any more goods arrive this morning?"
"Yes. The cart with the patched shaft. Half of it's been unloaded."
"Where are the people?"
"Still outside the ditch."
Shi Qiren immediately sent a patrol guard to relay word to the entrance: the implicated cart and goods were to be held pending investigation, and no one was to transfer them to another cart and send them on without permission. Chen Xiuyuan handed him the records of the earlier identification of the shaft at the workshop, the porter leading the way, and this inspection, adding a separate note at the end about the arrow wounds at Broken Stream.
After reading them, Shi Qiren sent people to find the driver and whoever had loaded the goods separately.
Du Huai no longer mentioned half price. He picked up his medicine pouch from beside the mat and asked whether he needed to stay to answer questions. Shi Qiren told him to remain at the stall for the accounts to be checked later. Just then, two medicine buyers squeezed over with old packets, each clamoring to have their goods examined first. The stallholder also caught Du Huai's sleeve and spoke about compensation, and the front of the stall became so crowded there was no room to turn.
Chen Xiuyuan helped Auntie Sang move the loose medicine aside so it would not be trampled, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Du Huai tilt his head toward the back entrance.
The brown-clad assistant stationed at the rear turned and left at once.
"Shi Yuan," Chen Xiuyuan called. "Tell the patrol guards to check the cart!"
He went around the crowd. By the time he reached the back of the shelter, the assistant had already run onto the path beside the ditch. Chen Xiuyuan did not pursue far on his own, only going up the dirt slope from which he could see the cart resting area. The cart with its shaft patched in pale wood was indeed still there, but the driver had already untied the tether and turned it toward another fork in the road.
Several medicine baskets that had not been fully unloaded were pushed back onto the cart, and a long tube wrapped in cloth was stuffed beneath them. The brown-clad assistant ran to the cart and waved at the driver to hurry.
Chen Xiuyuan drew breath and shouted, "Leave the cart!"
The driver looked over, hunched his shoulders, then raised his whip. The wheels rolled over the loose stones beside the ditch with a rapid clatter.
The patrol guards' footsteps had reached him from behind. Chen Xiuyuan briefly explained what had happened at the stall and pointed to the narrow mouth of the fork.
"Cut it off there. It's faster than chasing the cart."
In the distance, Shi Lei had received the message from the entrance and was hurrying over with his saber at his side.