"What did you say? This flying squirrel droppings medicine is actually rat shit!"
Bibi Dong stared in astonishment at Long Qianming, who was explaining, then looked down at the few pellets of flying squirrel droppings she had yet to finish. Right now, she urgently needed a reasonable explanation.
Long Qianming said nothing, but a smile curled his lips. Seeing this, Bibi Dong recalled how she had just been savoring the flying squirrel droppings, and nausea welled up in her stomach.
"Urgh-"
She could no longer bear it. She immediately found a wooden box and vomited into it.
Since she had only had a bowl of thick porridge and a few pieces of highly absorbent dry flatbread that morning, nothing came up no matter how hard she retched.
"Come on! It's just flying squirrel droppings, isn't it? I ate some too. Besides, this medicinal ingredient was in this morning's flatbread."
"What?"
At his words, the retching Bibi Dong raised her head and stared murderously at the utterly guiltless Long Qianming. At that moment, she dearly wanted to strangle this man.
"I funded you, and you repay kindness with vengeance by feeding me that stuff."
Just as Bibi Dong was about to continue, she once again recalled wolfing down the flatbread while praising how delicious it was. She immediately lowered her head and resumed retching.
"Hahaha-"
Watching Bibi Dong's sorry state, Long Qianming burst into uncontrollable laughter.
"Didn't you eat it yourself? I didn't force you. While you were eating, you even said-"
"Enough. Don't say another word."
Bibi Dong did not want to revisit the past now. But on second thought, she was not the only one who had fallen victim. Everyone in Gengxin City who had eaten the medicinal cuisine had fallen victim too.
After accepting the clean water Long Qianming handed her and rinsing her mouth several times, Bibi Dong finally stopped dry heaving.
Once Bibi Dong recovered, Long Qianming continued introducing the remaining dried medicinal ingredients. With that warning from the past, he also had to keep a constant eye on those beautiful eyes brimming with "killing intent."
He therefore stopped telling her what the dried medicinal ingredients originally were. Once he had finished introducing over three hundred ingredients in succession, Long Qianming turned and said,
"You just need to be able to identify these ingredients clearly. Once the medical hall opens at noon, all you need to do is fill prescriptions according to the formulas I write."
"Wait. I can't accept using these ingredients with lovely names but disgusting origins in medicinal cuisine."
Ever since learning the truth about flying squirrel droppings, Bibi Dong had been very displeased with Long Qianming's teasing, but she had come up with a new idea.
With a solemn air, Bibi Dong took all the dozen or so comprehensive herb books out of her Storage Soul Tool.
"Long Qianming, these books of mine contain extensive, specialized knowledge of medicinal arts. I can let you read all of them, on one condition."
Bibi Dong clenched her back teeth and said with utter disdain,
"The condition is that when you develop new medicinal dishes in the future, you mustn't add those disgusting things as ingredients just because they're cheap. I don't like them."
"I don't know much about medicinal ingredients, but I do know that as long as their medicinal properties are similar, they can be substituted for one another."
"All right, all right. I'll definitely be careful next time. I absolutely won't pass inferior goods off as superior ones."
Long Qianming swiftly accepted the medicinal texts and opened one of the herb books. In an instant, he seemed to enter an entirely new world, with countless new medicinal ingredients laid out before him.
At that moment, whatever Bibi Dong said was the truth. He, Long Qianming, would absolutely not disagree.
"Not bad. To think this spirit tail grass can even neutralize medicinal potency."
"And this ten thousand gold vine is yang in nature. It could replace chicken droppings and raise the fragrance of the golden steamed egg custard by several levels."
After a cursory read, Long Qianming repeatedly voiced his approval. The herb books Bibi Dong had provided far surpassed those he had read in his sect, and these ingredients were indeed more effective than chicken droppings, flying squirrel droppings, and the like.
But he would not put these more precious ingredients into medicinal cuisine.
Medicinal cuisine was food. When the medicinal effects were roughly the same, price naturally came first. Bibi Dong could not accept flying squirrel droppings in medicinal cuisine because she had not eaten enough of it to develop the habit.
"Long Qianming, you promised me. Those disgusting things absolutely cannot appear in your medicinal cuisine from now on. You can't sneak them in either. I'll be watching you all the time."
Faced with yet another reminder from Bibi Dong, Long Qianming, who was immersed in medicinal knowledge, nodded repeatedly.
"All right, I won't add them. How could those disgusting things compare to the herbs in these books?"
Then, while it was still early, Long Qianming gave Bibi Dong a brief demonstration of removing needles and showed her some miscellaneous tasks around the medical hall.
Once all the preparations were complete, Long Qianming reclined on a chair in the courtyard, holding the most important and most interesting to him of the dozen or so medicinal texts: Immortal Herb Tales.
"Lovesick Heartbreak Red, aromatic silk beauty, aromatic silk beauty..."
Long Qianming was particularly excited. The illustrated Immortal Herb book in his hands recorded no fewer than thirty-odd Immortal Herbs, with very detailed harvesting methods.
With these, once Bibi Dong returned to Spirit City, he could make a trip to the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well in Sunset Forest to harvest Immortal Herbs.
Then Long Qianming took out a thin booklet and handed it to Bibi Dong.
"This Heart-Clearing Art is a mind-cultivation technique my master left me. Although it can't help you increase your Soul Power like a meditation method, it can calm your restless heart."
This Heart-Clearing Art could be called the foundation of Long Qianming's study of traditional Chinese medicine. Without this book to nurture his mind, the path of traditional Chinese medicine would have had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Bibi Dong had already helped him more than enough, and he, Long Qianming, did not want to owe too many favors. Coupled with that future event, this technique also happened to suit her.
Without the slightest hesitation, Bibi Dong immediately accepted the gift.
"Thank you-"
Soon, noon arrived. After the two had eaten lunch, the medical hall's doors slowly opened from within, and nearly twenty or thirty patients flooded inside to line up for consultations.
"Oh! Since when did Longxing Medical Hall have such a beautiful woman?"
"Beautiful miss, may I invite you to dinner?"
"Divine Physician Long, is this beauty your newly hired assistant, or is she the wife you've never met?"
Bibi Dong paid no heed to their teasing and continued greeting every patient with a smile. But when they mistook her for his wife, she immediately lost her composure.
"It's not what you think. I, I'm only here to help. He and I are just, just friends."
She defended herself shyly, her words tumbling over one another.
However, it did little good. In the eyes of the many patients, Bibi Dong seemed to be Long Qianming's wife.
"We've been there before. We understand you young people's affairs better than anyone."
As time passed, four months went by.
Bibi Dong, who had been stuck at rank 39, finally broke through to rank 40 Soul Power. She ran happily out of her room and knocked repeatedly on another room's door.
"Brother Long, Brother Long, are you awake? I have good news for you."
"I'm not awake yet. Whatever it is, tell me tomorrow."