At this hour, there were no ox-carts in the village. Xie Yushu hurried to a household that kept a donkey cart and paid fifty wen to hire it for a speedy ride to town.
All she could do now was pray that Sun Wuyou was obediently staying at the inn and hadn’t wandered off somewhere.
Watching Xie Yushu’s figure disappear in a flash, Su Chi couldn’t leave his father alone. He rushed back to Wang Wen’s room to tend to him.
Wang Wen had fallen unconscious. Su Chi was frantic but helpless. All he could do was wipe away his father’s sweat, clean up the mess from his vomiting, then clasp his father’s hand tightly against his forehead and pray silently.
He was terrified—terrified that his father would leave him just like his mother had.
Please, don’t take my father away.
Xie Yushu found the mistress and servant just as they were heading out for a meal. At her urgent urging, Sun Wuyou didn’t hesitate—she hopped onto the donkey cart with Xie Yushu, while Guizhi grabbed the medicine box and followed them to Qingluo Village.
On the cart, the three were silent. Sun Wuyou and Guizhi exchanged glances, unsure whether it was appropriate to speak—Xie Yushu’s expression was unusually grim. They’d never seen Miss Xie look so troubled.
Sensing the awkward atmosphere, Xie Yushu asked, “What’s wrong with you two?”
Sun Wuyou chose her words carefully. “Who’s sick? You look really worried.”
“A neighbor of mine,” Xie Yushu explained.
Sun Wuyou relaxed a little. Just a neighbor. She teased, “Xie Da, you’re still so warm-hearted—even a neighbor gets you this worked up.”
But even as she said it, something felt off.
Was it really just a neighbor? Would a neighbor’s illness cause this kind of expression? She’d never heard of such a thing. Sun Wuyou looked at Xie Yushu with a mix of suspicion, curiosity, and deep thought.
Because Xie Yushu had paid a generous fifty wen without hesitation, the donkey-cart driver—knowing it was urgent—drove as fast as she could back to the village.
At the village entrance, Xie Yushu decided the cart was still too slow. She had them all get off and walk.
She knew Su Chi must be beside himself with worry. She couldn’t wait another moment. Seeing Sun Wuyou was too slow, she grabbed the physically lethargic healer and ran all the way to the Su house.
Sun Wuyou usually rode in carriages and spent her time at home sitting still, reading medical texts and writing prescriptions. She hated exercise and got tired after a few steps. Being dragged into a run today had used up her leg-strength for a long time—she was exhausted.
All three arrived at Su Chi’s gate. Sun Wuyou panted and complained, “I’m dying here! Xie Da, you run way too fast—were you a horse in a past life?”
Xie Da’s physique was incredible—she wasn’t even out of breath after that run, and her grip was so strong that it had left red marks on Sun Wuyou’s wrist. Sun Wuyou shot her a jealous, admiring look.
Secretly, she complained: why didn’t she have such a strong build? They were both women—how come she was the frail doctor?
Xie Yushu urged her inside. “Stop joking—come see the patient.” Seeing Sun Wuyou was exhausted, she prepared to grab her collar and haul her in.
Their commotion was loud enough that Su Chi had heard them from inside. He came out and saw the two strangers Xie Yushu had brought.
“This is…” he asked.
“A Doctor Sun from the county—she’s very skilled,” Xie Yushu explained.
Flattered by the praise, Sun Wuyou coughed modestly, smoothed down her rumpled robe, and said seriously to Su Chi, “Where’s the patient? Take me to him.”
Su Chi immediately responded, “This way, Doctor. Please follow me.”
Inside, Wang Wen lay in bed. He’d just broken out in a sweat and was now lying weakly with his eyes closed—the picture of a long-term invalid.
Sun Wuyou dropped her playful demeanor instantly. She placed one hand on Wang Wen’s pulse, carefully feeling it, then used her thumb and forefinger to gently open his eyes and check his pupils and the whites.
As with any standard consultation, she asked the family member about the patient’s usual symptoms. Su Chi answered in detail and clearly, which made Sun Wuyou glance at him with appreciation.
She hadn’t seen as many patients as her older sisters at home—she only got the chance during her travels to treat poor households. When she asked about a patient’s condition, many family members, flustered with worry, would give vague, unclear answers. Some simply knew nothing, only begging her to save their loved one—and such unclear responses made diagnosis difficult.
Despite the worry etched on his face as he looked at the patient, this young man—Xie Da’s neighbor—answered everything clearly and in detail, covering all aspects from eating and drinking to sleeping. It was obvious he’d been taking meticulous care of the patient.
It didn’t take long for Sun Wuyou to arrive at a diagnosis.
She asked the young man, “Has the patient been taking any medicine?”
Su Chi nodded. “Yes, he has—for quite some time now.”
He’d been taking medicine, yet showed no improvement? That was odd.
“How long?” she asked.
“Over a year,” Su Chi answered.
“A whole year?”
Even Sun Wuyou was taken aback.
This wasn’t a particularly difficult or mysterious illness. There was no reason for him to need medicine for over a year. And if he’d been taking it that long without any effect, something was definitely wrong.
Soon, a suspicion formed in Sun Wuyou’s mind. The patient’s illness itself wasn’t serious—it shouldn’t have caused such a severe reaction. That narrowed down the possibilities considerably.
She asked Su Chi, “Let me see the prescription.”
Su Chi hesitated.
He didn’t have the prescription. Doctor Li would keep it after filling the medicine—the apprentices always took it. “I… I don’t have the prescription with me.”
That was fine. She tried another approach: “Do you still have the herb dregs? Let me see them.”
That he had. Su Chi immediately went out to the kitchen and brought back the medicine pot. “Here, Doctor Sun.”
Sun Wuyou pushed aside the dregs at the bottom of the pot, picked out some, rubbed them between her fingers, and brought them to her nose to smell carefully.
The moment she smelled the herbs, she knew something was wrong. Her expression turned serious. She said with certainty, “There’s something wrong with this medicine.”
The medicine was the problem—that’s why it hadn’t worked for so long. Everything finally made sense.
The news shocked not only Xie Yushu but Su Chi as well. His face drained of all color. He stammered, unable to believe it: “How could the medicine… how could there be something wrong with it?”
He’d spent a fortune on this medicine, carefully prepared on Doctor Li’s tailored prescription. His father had taken it every single day without fail. The news hit him like a thunderbolt.
Xie Yushu turned and comforted him, telling him to stay calm, then asked Sun Wuyou, “What’s wrong with it?”
Sun Wuyou frowned, a strange look in her eyes as she turned to Xie Yushu. “There are several herbs in here that shouldn’t be in this prescription.”
“If my diagnosis is correct, the patient’s condition is liver qi stagnation that has turned to fire over time. But this prescription is for expelling wind-cold dampness and nourishing blood.”
“A few of the herbs are appropriate, but ingredients like prepared rehmannia and monkshood are for dispelling wind and cold—they don’t match the condition at all.”
Sun Wuyou paused, then continued, “What’s worse is that it even contains notopterygium—a hot, drying herb that can damage the liver in severe cases. It’s a powerful, dangerous drug. Any proper doctor would be extremely cautious before adding it to a prescription.”
She laid out the implications clearly for everyone present.
Su Chi listened, his eyes wide, as if drenched in cold sweat despite the heat. He felt a chill run through him.
He’d trusted Doctor Li so completely. But now, hearing Doctor Sun’s clear explanation, he began to understand—that man was a quack.
Somehow, he trusted this Doctor Sun more than Doctor Li, perhaps because Xie Yushu had brought her. Though young, she had earned his unconditional trust.
So all this time, he’d been giving his father the wrong medicine? That’s why the treatment had been delayed for so long?
His heart clenched painfully, his mind buzzing and blank. His throat turned bitter. After a long moment, he finally managed to ask, “Doctor Sun… can my father still be cured?”
Sun Wuyou gave him a reassuring nod. “This illness isn’t serious to begin with. It’s just that the patient has been taking the wrong prescription for a long time, which has caused some damage to his body. But you don’t need to worry—I can definitely cure him. He’ll just need to recover slowly afterward and not take the wrong medicine again.”
Su Chi’s eyes reddened, his voice trembling at the end, carrying a faint sob as he bowed to Sun Wuyou: “Thank you, Doctor Sun.”
Knowing his father’s condition wasn’t serious and could be cured, a flood of emotions washed over him—grief and long-suppressed pressure suddenly lifted at once.
He lowered his head to wipe away the tears threatening to fall, catching a glimpse of Xie Yushu standing silently beside him, her gaze steady. Her figure was like a solid, towering mountain, standing quietly by his side, giving him a sense of security he couldn’t put into words.
Two years ago, when Wang Wen’s symptoms first appeared, it had been around the time of Su Chi’s mother Su Hui’s passing. He’d been consumed by grief and worry, and at first, it had only been occasional melancholy and restless sleep, sometimes with rib pain and weakness—symptoms that looked like simple exhaustion.
In any other village household, they’d have just drunk some herbal tea to cool down. But Su Chi, filial and already having lost his mother, couldn’t bear the thought of losing Wang Wen too. So he’d taken him to Doctor Li’s clinic in town.
Doctor Li had given a cursory consultation and prescribed medicine. When Su Chi found it wasn’t working well, the doctor modified the prescription—but each revision came with a higher price. She claimed the medicine was slow-acting but would cure the condition completely, even strengthening the body against all illness.
Naively, Su Chi believed her. He’d been boiling the wrong medicine for his father for over a year, dutifully making him drink it.
He’d spent a fortune, yet Wang Wen’s health had only deteriorated.
After hearing the full story of Su Chi’s ordeal at Doctor Li’s clinic, the room fell into a heavy silence. Everyone’s expressions darkened.
Guizhi, raised in the well-mannered Sun household and still young, had never encountered such a wicked doctor. She felt deeply for the young man and scrunched up her small face in anger. “How could there be such a cruel doctor?”
Xie Yushu, already worried about Su Chi, was even more furious after hearing how he’d been cheated. Worry and anger made her face taut, her brows carrying a sharp edge.
Of the three, Sun Wuyou was the angriest. Even someone as warm and open as she was couldn’t hold back her outrage.
“That quack is despicable! Cheating her patients!” Sun Wuyou gripped the medicine pot tightly. She’d been raised to be polite and proper—she barely knew any curse words. “Quack” was about the harshest term in her vocabulary.
As a healer herself, she couldn’t fathom how someone could be so money-driven, forsaking humanity just to line her pockets with a few extra coins—prescribing expensive, wrong medicines to poor families.
And lying to ignorant family members with nonsense! She should be struck from the ranks of healers. Sun Wuyou was ashamed to share a profession with such a person!
After fuming for a moment, Sun Wuyou remembered to write Su Chi a prescription. This time, instead of having Guizhi write it, she quickly penned a generous, detailed prescription herself and handed it to Su Chi.
“Danggui (Angelica) one qian, Shaoyao (White Peony) one qian, Fuling (Poria) one qian, Baizhu (Atractylodes) one qian, Chaihu (Bupleurum) one qian, Mudanpi (Tree Peony Bark) five fen, Shanzhi (Gardenia) five fen, Gancao (Licorice, stir-fried) five fen. Decoct in water, take twice daily, one dose per day.”
Every herb was perfectly tailored to his father’s condition—gentle, not harsh, and effective. Since the patient had been ill for so long, she’d made slight adjustments to certain herbs. She checked the prescription twice and was satisfied it was the best possible formula.
Su Chi thanked her profusely and was about to rush to town to buy the medicine when Xie Yushu stopped him.
“Wait!” she called out.
“What… what is it?” Su Chi, caught off guard, worried something else was wrong.
Xie Yushu stepped closer. “It’s best not to buy the medicine from the clinic in Songwan Town. Go to the neighboring town instead.”
Su Chi immediately understood—he’d been foolish. There was only one clinic in Songwan Town, Doctor Li’s. The apprentices there knew him well. If he walked in with another doctor’s prescription, they’d know immediately. And if the doctor made trouble for him, what would he do?
He nodded solemnly. “Alright. I’ll go to the neighboring town’s clinic.”
Wang Wen had fallen asleep by then, so Su Chi could safely leave to get the medicine.
The four of them decided to keep the donkey cart and ride together to town.
Su Chi took the cart to Bailian Town, while Xie Yushu and the Sun mistress and servant stayed in Songwan Town.
After Su Chi left, Xie Yushu and Sun Wuyou exchanged a knowing glance—they both knew what the other was thinking.
Sun Wuyou broke into a grin, pleased with herself.
No wonder she and Xie Da were such good friends—they thought alike.
Yes, they were about to go cause trouble for that so-called Doctor Li!
This disgrace of a healer couldn’t be allowed to get away with it. Her true face had to be exposed!
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