Chapter 5: It’s Good to Be Home, Time to Test the Medicinal Effects
Shen Jiang had been genuinely worried about how she was going to get home.
After all, she had no phone and no money, just a pile of fresh medicinal herbs clutched in her arms.
With her walking speed and current gear, it was hard to say if she could even make it out of these mountains.
As the saying goes, “looking at the mountains makes the horse run to its death.” Although these few mountains looked close, when she actually started walking, Shen Jiang had been walking for nearly an hour and still hadn’t reached the mountainside.
However, just as the golden sunset lingered briefly at the edge of the sky, with heavy clouds embracing the setting sun and the afterglow dyeing the clouds a vast, magnificent golden-red, that golden door covered in exquisite dark patterns appeared before her, as fresh and clear as water.
The familiar gentle light enveloped her once again. Before Shen Jiang was even mentally prepared, she was spat back into Mingxin Hall.
Even though there was only a sliver of light in the room, she could recognize where she was with her eyes closed. The traditional Chinese medicine cabinets were covered with white labels she had written herself, the familiar outline of the transparent glass counter, inside which were the precious medicinal herbs like ginseng that she and her grandmother had chosen together…
Shen Jiang stood there in a daze, as if she couldn’t believe she had returned just like that.
The screen of the phone on the table lit up. Shen Jiang reached for the phone, only then realizing she was still holding that pile of medicinal herbs.
The phone’s time showed 5:00 AM on May 16, 2135. Shen Jiang remembered that she had returned home on the evening of the 15th. This meant that during her time in the other world, at most only a few hours had passed here.
That’s great. Shen Jiang slowly let out a sigh of relief. Her biggest worry had been a cliché story of returning to find that everything had changed. Thankfully, life here was all normal; she had only been gone for a few hours.
If she couldn’t have returned normally, Shen Jiang couldn’t imagine what would have happened to her grandmother, whose medical bills would have been cut off.
To an outsider, with a traditional Chinese medicine clinic like this, it would be impossible for them to have only a few hundred thousand in savings. It was true that she and her grandmother didn’t spend much on a daily basis, but almost all their money was tied up in medicinal herbs. Nearly every time her grandmother encountered good medicinal herbs, she would buy and hoard them in their clinic without hesitation.
Over time, the money in their bank account dwindled, while the variety of medicinal herbs in the clinic grew richer and richer.
The phone’s screen was filled with missed calls and various messages.
Shen Jiang unlocked the screen and first looked at the missed calls. A long, dense list of them were from unknown numbers, but one, which came in at 22:45, was from Officer Zhang of the police station.
Could it be that the middle-aged man who had caused the medical dispute had been found by the police?
For Officer Zhang to call her so late, something important must have happened. Shen Jiang thought for a moment and sent a message.
At this time of day, it was neither early nor late. Officer Zhang was probably already asleep, but when he saw the message, he would surely call back as soon as possible.
Shen Jiang looked at the clinic before her. She had only cleaned a small part of it yesterday, and the clinic was still a mess.
Her original plan was to clean this place up and hand it over to someone else in a clean state. But with her hands currently swollen like pig’s trotters and stinging at the slightest touch, she wouldn’t be able to finish the cleaning work anytime soon.
Shen Jiang thought of the buyer and felt a headache coming on.
To describe this buyer in the agent’s words, he was a rich fool. Given Mingxin Hall’s location and the market, if she missed this big fish, she would never be able to sell it at such a high price again.
The rich fool, as the agent called him, did not have a good temper and always spoke with an inexplicable sense of superiority.
Shen Jiang could already imagine the scene when he stepped into Mingxin Hall, saw the state of the place, and how he would pinch his nose, frown, and criticize the place where she had lived since she was a child as being worthless.
That was a scene Shen Jiang absolutely did not want to see.
But if she were to postpone signing the contract for a day, given his temper on the phone, he would most likely turn around and find another seller. After all, there were many merchants on this street who wanted to sell their properties.
The structure of their street was actually quite unique. Due to the renovation of old houses left over from the last century, the buildings on the street were all in the old-fashioned Jiangnan courtyard style. Each household was a separate, independent building. In addition to the storefront at the front, there was also a courtyard and a separate house at the back. Some people chose to use the back house to expand their storefront, while they used it for their own living quarters.
In the past, this was a popular location in the old city, a one-stop destination for dining and shopping. Even the street vendors would fight over a stall spot.
But that was before Shen Jiang was ten years old.
Now, the market value of this street was no longer the same. In recent years, as the city developed eastward, this street had gradually been relegated to the edge of the entire city.
Not only had most of the old residents moved away, but many merchants had also followed the pace of the times and decisively moved to the new city with its high foot traffic. Instead, more and more migrant workers chose to rent in this area. Although it was a bit far from the city center, its main advantage was its cheap price.
Many shops were left vacant, and many storefronts not only had “For Rent” signs but also “For Sale” signs.
Now, the storefronts on the street were almost all new faces.
Except for Mingxin Hall. Her grandmother had never considered moving. Relocating the clinic was too much trouble for her.
She would say, “It’s the same wherever you open a shop.” and “So the old patients don’t get lost.”
If it weren’t for a centuries-old famous person’s former residence in this area, the property prices of the shops on this street would probably have dropped even further.
Although it was called a famous person’s former residence, there were usually not many tourists who came here.
Shen Jiang hadn’t worried about money for many years. She didn’t have many hobbies, and collecting ancient medical books was the most expensive among them, but it didn’t cost that much. Compared to the money her classmates spent on chasing celebrities, buying clothes, and buying jewelry, her expenses were incredibly simple.
During her years studying in another city, Shen Jiang couldn’t even spend all the living expenses her grandmother gave her. Coupled with the scholarships from the school, she had actually saved up a sum of money in her bank account.
Not like now. Shen Jiang smiled bitterly. She only had a little over thirty thousand yuan left.
It wasn’t that Shen Jiang hadn’t thought about selling the medicinal herbs in the clinic to get some emergency cash.
The troublemaker had ruined more than half of the expensive medicinal herbs in the clinic. Those herbs were mixed with broken glass shards and could no longer be used, wasting a lot of good medicine.
It was precisely for this reason that her grandmother had been in such a hurry to stop the troublemaker… Thinking of this, Shen Jiang’s eyes darkened.
*
According to the original agreement, the agent would bring the buyer to sign the contract today.
Shen Jiang had only two choices at the moment: either clean this place up before the buyer arrived, or prepare herself mentally for the buyer’s picky criticisms.
She was willing but unable to clean right now, but she didn’t want to miss this generous buyer either.
Her gaze fell on the medicinal herbs she had brought back from outside the dragon’s lair. They were lying quietly on the simple, large wooden table in the consultation room, showing no signs of being special.
But she knew that these treasures were the spoils of her bizarre encounter.
But even without that encounter, they were special enough in themselves. It had been a long time since Shen Jiang had seen medicinal herbs of such quality. Even when compared to the standard authentic medicinal herbs, they were not inferior in the slightest. In fact, it could be said that these were the most outstanding medicinal herbs Shen Jiang had ever seen in all her years of dealing with traditional Chinese medicine.
A thought stirred in Shen Jiang’s mind. How effective are these medicinal herbs?
Coincidentally, her hands were currently swollen like pig’s trotters and needed to be treated, and there were medicinal herbs among them that could be used.
I’ll treat my hands first, then clean up.
No sooner said than done. Shen Jiang picked out a whole Panax notoginseng from the pile of medicinal herbs.
Panax notoginseng could be taken orally or used externally. Panax notoginseng powder could be applied directly to wounds to stop bleeding, disperse blood stasis, reduce swelling, and relieve pain. The Panax notoginseng she had on hand had not been dried yet and couldn’t be ground into powder directly, but Shen Jiang didn’t care.
In fact, people generally believed that traditional Chinese medicinal herbs needed to be processed before they could be used. But Shen Jiang had read many ancient medical books and knew that the original purpose of processing was for easier storage. It was only later, after long-term use and evolution, that ancient Chinese medicine practitioners discovered that different processing methods could make the pharmacological effects of the herbs play different roles.
Fresh Panax notoginseng, within a short period after being picked, produced certain components that were not present in dried Panax notoginseng.
The entire Panax notoginseng plant was a treasure. Besides the rhizome, which had the strongest medicinal effect, its flowers and leaves also had medicinal value. Nowadays, the cost of medicinal herbs was high, and Shen Jiang had learned from her grandmother to make the best use of everything. So she had brought back the entire plant.
Wincing, Shen Jiang first did a simple disinfection and cleaning of her two hands. She put on gloves, washed the Panax notoginseng rhizome, and ground it directly in a grinder. The Panax notoginseng had a lot of moisture, so the resulting dregs didn’t even need to be mixed with water and could be applied directly to the wounds.
As the medicinal herbs were applied to her palms, a cool sensation spread, and Shen Jiang let out a long sigh of comfort.
Drowsiness washed over her, and Shen Jiang couldn’t help but close her eyes. She hadn’t slept at all yesterday and had worked for most of the day outside the dragon’s lair. Only now did she completely relax, and she immediately felt exhausted.
Shen Jiang called out to Siri and set an alarm for seven in the morning. She fell asleep on the bed without even taking off her clothes, her two hands, with a thick layer of paste on the palms, placed facing up on her stomach. She slept like that until dawn.
The alarm went off, pulling Shen Jiang from her dream back to reality.
Shen Jiang opened her eyes in a daze, not yet fully recovered from the dream. She had just had a very bizarre dream, and the key part was that the ending for her and her grandmother in the dream was so tragic that her emotions were currently completely immersed in a state bordering on extreme sadness and anger.
It was probably a case of “what you think about during the day, you dream about at night.” She had dreamed about the future after her grandmother fell into a coma.
In the dream, their ending couldn’t be described as just bad. To be precise, it could be called tragic.
Shen Jiang wanted to rub her eyes to pull herself out of that messy nightmare.
Dreams and reality are opposites, Shen Jiang comforted herself. Maybe her grandmother would be transferred from the ICU to a regular ward tomorrow and then recover smoothly.
As she raised her hand, a dry lump fell onto her chest with a soft thud.