“Li Yiling, what do you make of it?”
In a chamber delicately scented and adorned with elegant furnishings, Xia Furen and Xia Xianshi leaned forward together, watching the white-haired Taiyi Ling below them with anxious eyes.
Having examined the pulse at Xia Furen’s left wrist, the physician moved to her right. He frowned, considered for a long while, and finally ventured, “Furen’s pulse is weak at one moment and strong the next. May Chen ask how Furen has been eating of late? Has she suffered any tightness in the chest, dizziness, or nausea?”
Xia Furen did not answer. Her Fumu, Shui Shi, replied in her stead.
Shui Shi was a dignified, middle-aged woman dressed in a pale ocher shenyi, her hair ornaments restrained and tasteful. She had a kindly air about her, and she recounted Xia Furen’s recent condition in measured tones.
Little sleep, little appetite, and a body growing thinner by the day. Her monthly courses had arrived late, lasted only briefly, and brought very little blood.
The Taiyi Ling bent his back even lower in deference. “Has Furen taken any medicine recently?”
Shui Shi shook her head slightly. “None.”
“Furen’s anxious thoughts have brought on illness, and her constitution is gradually weakening,” the physician pronounced. “Chen shall prescribe a gentle formula to nourish her and replenish her blood. May Furen take it faithfully.”
Among its ingredients were dried ginger, xiongqiong, danggui, zhu, red dates, huangqi, dihuang, licorice, and chongweizi…
Ying Yang listened intently. Most of the ingredients were familiar to her; only chongweizi was entirely unknown, while she was uncertain about xiongqiong, zhu, and huangqi.
It certainly was a warming, restorative prescription. The trouble was that it was unsuitable for a pregnant woman.
She could not help shaking her head.
The Xia sisters, seated above, saw the movement perfectly clearly. Xia Xianshi could not restrain herself. “This child! Always making trouble!”
She was feeling rather guilty. Her daughter had declared that A-Jie was pregnant, and the two sisters had taken it seriously enough to summon the Taiyi Ling in haste. Yet his diagnosis bore no resemblance whatsoever to pregnancy. Embarrassed and vexed, Xia Xianshi worried that her elder cousin might form a poor opinion of her daughter. If she, as the girl’s mother, scolded her a little first, her cousin would surely feel better and be less inclined to blame Yangzi.
Children were sometimes naughty; that hardly meant they had committed a grave offense. A parent could scarcely be blamed for employing a little tact in front of others.
Ying Yang understood perfectly. She did not take offense at the scolding, but bowed to her mother and her Ayi before wandering over to the water clock in the corner.
A louke, or clepsydra, measured time by means of a bronze vessel that let water escape and a graduated indicator rod. Most were shaped like pots, though some resembled waterfowl. The one before her took the form of a fish, and a tiny carved swallow perched at the very top of its measuring rod.
She turned to look at her mother and Ayi. Her mother wore a green shenyi the shade of fresh cardamom shoots, its sleeve borders patterned with interlocking lozenges against an egg-yellow ground. Xia Furen wore ivory-yellow, with pale jade-colored borders. Both her robe and its edging were embroidered with a design of… grasshoppers.
The grasshopper’s wings, how thickly they throng; may your sons and grandsons flourish in countless multitudes.
At sunset, after the evening meal, Ying Yang kept her mother company and chatted with her.
“A-Mu, tell Ayi not to drink the medicine that Taiyi Ling prescribed,” she said slowly. “It nourishes yin and invigorates the blood. Pregnant women shouldn’t take it.”
Xia Xianshi did not stop stitching the collar in her hands. She shot her daughter a glare. “You’re fortunate you’re still young enough for me to excuse you as a child who knows no better. You mustn’t go about speaking recklessly like that again. You’ll make enemies!” It was meant to frighten her.
But Ying Yang trusted the System that had brought her back from the dead far more than some nameless physician of the Qin era. Who knew how many people a Qin Taiyi Ling might have treated to death? Modern Chinese medicine, tested by contemporary scientific methods and continually refined, shared its origins with ancient medicine but differed from it in many important respects. Of ancient physicians, she trusted only those legendary healers whose names had survived in history. As for the rest…
That Taiyi Ling’s prescription had even included a bit of shamanic dancing alongside the medicine! What a joke!
“When a woman is about a month pregnant, she can sometimes have a little bleeding. It’s usually pale in color—pink, plum-blossom red, or light brown—and stops after a day or two.” Ying Yang described the bleeding that could occur early in pregnancy and asked her mother to find out whether her Ayi’s bleeding had stopped after just one or two days. “If there’s a lot of blood, it could be a th-threatened miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy, a molar pregnancy, or some other dangerous sign…”
Xia Xianshi was utterly bewildered. She put down the little garment and began demanding to know who had taught her daughter these things, how she could possibly know them, what those ominous conditions meant, and how they were treated.
Ying Yang replied with perfect composure. “I learned it in a dream, and I didn’t learn everything. Just listen and take it for what it’s worth. I don’t know how to treat the dangerous kinds of bleeding.”
Xia Xianshi picked up the little wa used in spinning thread and pressed it hard into her daughter’s palm.
“Ow!” Ying Yang cried. “A-Mu, what are you doing?!”
“I—I was afraid some evil spirit had entered you…” Xia Xianshi faltered. She stared into space for a while, then suddenly leaned close and asked in a low voice, “My child, during those three years… did you truly go to the realm of immortals to study?”
“The realm of immortals? No—well, compared with this place, I suppose calling it that wouldn’t be entirely wrong?”
Ying Yang had denied it instinctively. Then she remembered how people lived in the modern world. Compared with life in Qin, the simple fact that everyone could eat their fill was enough to make it seem like the realm of immortals. Her answer accordingly grew evasive.
“May Shangdi protect us! May the great Wu Xian protect us!” Xia Xianshi breathed in relief, murmuring, “My child is not a cripple—she’s an immortal!”
“Shangdi?” Ying Yang started. She tried cautiously, “Hello? Jesus?”
“Is that the language of immortals?” Xia Xianshi asked suspiciously.
Only after questioning her mother did Ying Yang discover that the Shangdi of Qin meant something quite different from the God of modern usage. In the Qin period, the term referred to sacred sovereigns of remote antiquity. The Qin people worshipped five Shangdi of the five directions: Huangdi, Yandi, Taihao, the White Emperor Shaohao, and Zhuanxu.
“Ohhh. That Shangdi.” Ying Yang immediately lost interest and returned to pestering her mother for permission—and money—to purchase medicinal ingredients.
At last Xia Xianshi could bear the wheedling no longer. She was also curious to see what miraculous product her daughter intended to concoct, so she gave her consent. “Only one thing: fuling is expensive. Use it carefully.”
The following morning, Ying Yang woke to discover that her body felt lighter. Not lighter in the sense of having lost weight, but in the sense that her limbs obeyed her mind more readily, moving with a new ease and agility.
She opened the System to inspect her rewards. Three words had appeared beside Cell Therapy: Already Used.
And what was this Advanced Filming Equipment? A drone? She tapped it.
[This item may only be used after all persons appearing within the camera’s field of view have been fully informed of their rights.]
Round that off, and it meant the thing was unusable in Qin. = =
Never mind, never mind. Ying Yang had grown practiced at comforting herself. That was simply the sort of System she had been saddled with. She swiped past it and headed straight for the lottery. What treasures lay in the prize pool? Given the System’s half-baked competence, this so-called lottery was bound to be nothing special…
A riot of sounds arose, accompanied by images flashing past too quickly to follow: a general riding magnificently on horseback, a scholar gazing upward to read the stars, a beauty smiling with exquisite grace, a revolving compass, drifting fibers in a pool of water, a great ship under sail…
At last the images and sounds gathered into enormous characters brushed in ink:
[Here is the place where popularity converges, where the myriad wonders of the world come rushing together!]
[Are you ready?]
Ying Yang grew excited. Rubbing her hands together, she opened the prize pool.
There was only one pool, with two broad categories of prizes: Character Cards and Equipment Cards. The items also came in two grades, Ordinary and Advanced. Unfortunately, anything she had yet to draw appeared only as a black silhouette, with its name displayed underneath as “???”.
She agonized for a while over whether to “pull one right now” or “save up for a ten-pull.” Unable to decide, she asked the System, with a little flicker of hope, whether it offered a guaranteed beginner’s prize. Most card-drawing games handed you an SR character at the start!
It did!
Well, what was she waiting for? Draw!
At a thought, a confirmation screen appeared over the pool, asking whether she wished to spend one Popularity Lottery chance.
Yes!
Ying Yang watched the popularity points she had worked so hard to raise to 125 plummet to 25. At the same moment came a resounding whinny—neigh, neigh, neigh!—and a chestnut horse materialized out of thin air and charged straight toward her.
Just as she thought she was about to be trampled, the horse executed a magnificent drifting turn, presenting its flank to her while tossing its head and forelegs high into the air.
Ying Yang stared, speechless.
The horse turned its head, bared its teeth, and squeezed one eye nearly shut. It looked remarkably like one of those smug, wickedly flirtatious horse reaction images from later generations. When she failed to respond, it snorted impatiently, flicked its head, and hurled whatever it held in its mouth directly at her face. Then it galloped off and vanished.
Looking down, Ying Yang discovered that the horse had thrown her a golden envelope. Written on its front were the words:
People’s Education Press, Chinese Language, Grade Three, Second Semester, Lesson Ten.
Inside was The Invention of Paper—a painfully simple explanatory summary, less detailed even than the videos on reconstructing ancient papermaking techniques that she remembered watching in her former life.
In conclusion: a thoroughly useless guaranteed beginner’s SR.
Even if she played Good Fortune Comes, the System still refused to activate Emperor-of-Luck mode? You rotten little System, you…
She pressed a hand to her forehead, smiled bitterly, and leaned against a doorframe to gaze sorrowfully at the sky. Then, under the furtive glances of the people around her, she slunk away in defeat.
She was circling the small bamboo grove in the courtyard for exercise when A-Liao, who had gone that morning to register the requested supplies, came hurrying over. The hair and medicinal ingredients had already been sorted out. Would Gongzhu like to come and inspect them?
“So quickly?”
Ying Yang was astonished. It had been only one night, and they had already found most of what she needed? Did people in the Qin dynasty work a 996 schedule too?
Author’s Note
A dark joke: Qin people didn’t have 996. In Qin, your entire life was bought outright. (Looks away.)
Chongweizi is motherwort.
My family unexpectedly celebrated my birthday today! I was completely bewildered, but very happy all the same—so you get two updates today~!
Translator’s Notes
Shangdi: Here the term refers to the ancient divine sovereigns worshipped in Qin ritual, not the Christian God. Ying Yang’s “Hello? Jesus?” is a deliberate modern misunderstanding.
Clepsydra (louke): A water clock that marks the passage of time through the movement of water and a graduated indicator.
996:Modern Chinese shorthand for working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.
SR and ten-pull: Terms from collectible-card games; SR commonly means “Super Rare,” while a ten-pull is ten lottery draws at once. Good Fortune Comes is a popular Chinese song associated with wishing for luck.
The grasshopper verse: An allusion to the Shijing (Book of Songs), traditionally associated with flourishing descendants. The embroidery hints at Xia Furen’s hopes for a child.