“These sheep’s hairs are very soft. They’ll do for paintbrushes, but they may not have enough spring for toothbrushes. Keep them, and sort out the somewhat stiffer ones.”
“Were these horsehairs washed beforehand? They haven’t dried yet, so I can’t judge how soft they are. Bring them back once they’re dry.”
“Rabbit fur won’t do. It has a rank smell.”
“Wolf-hair brushes? Fox fur? No. They’re dark; if they get dirty, you won’t even be able to tell. I want these hairs for brushing teeth! They’re going into people’s mouths!”
Ying Yang examined the offerings one after another, rubbing some between her fingers, twisting others, lifting them to her nose, and delivering her verdict. Fur and hair were valuable commodities. There was not much of either laid out before her, yet the people who had brought them were low-ranking palace maids and castrated attendants. They must have spent considerable thought—and no small amount of money—obtaining them.
The eunuch Duan Lun recorded the offerings on bamboo slips: “Junior bondservant Liao: one jin of mountain-goat hair, white, soft, containing impurities; estimated value, four hundred qian.” “Junior bondservant Ma: two liang of horsehair, brown, coarse; estimated value, thirty-nine qian.” “Young eunuch Tu: two liang of rabbit fur; estimated value, eighteen qian.” “Senior eunuch An: one liang of wolf hair, dark brown, needle-stiff; estimated value, seventy-five qian; one liang of fox fur, dark brown, of moderate stiffness; estimated value, eighty qian.”
Damn it. Ordinary attendants can’t read or write. Then what the hell was the point of that scheme I wrote out on A-Liao’s palm?
Only now realizing how foolish she had been, Ying Yang suffered a moment of such intense embarrassment that she wanted to curl up and disappear.
“A-Liao has been very thoughtful,” Ying Yang said. “Give Ma a hundred qian. If the horsehair proves usable, there will be another reward. Give Tu fifty qian, and An three hundred.”
[Ding! Ten popularity points acquired.]
[Ding! Five popularity points acquired.]
[Ding! Three popularity points acquired.]
Of all those present, the person who had shown the greatest devotion and spent the most money was the only one to receive no reward. Glances drifted toward A-Liao: some astonished, some mocking. Only a few held envy.
[Ding! Thirty popularity points acquired.]
Where did that many points come from? Ying Yang puzzled over it for a while, but could find no answer.
“Next, let’s look at the medicinal plants…”
It was the fourth month, when trees and grasses were putting forth fresh shoots. Willows, mulberries, and scholar trees grew in abundance within the palace grounds, so these were the plants most frequently brought in for rewards. Some people offered as little as two liang; others brought as much as two jin. Among the remaining herbs were two jin of fresh ginger and three jin of soap pods. The chinaberry trees were flowering, and their bitter blossoms were plentiful—three jin altogether. Lotus leaves were out of season, and there were only two or three liang of those.
What delighted Ying Yang most was that the palace maids A-Juan and Juanzhi had found hanlian, the herb now known as mohanlian. Its medicinal properties had yet to be recognized in the Qin era; it would not enter the herbal pharmacopoeia until the Tang dynasty.
“One jin of mohanlian. Usable! A reward of five hundred qian!”
Ying Yang knew some might object. Mohanlian was an unremarkable little plant, scarcely distinguishable at a glance from the wild grasses and flowers growing everywhere. Before them all, she snapped one of its stems in two.
“This plant has dark stems that yield a black juice. Its flowers are small and white, like tiny lotus seedpods. And because it grows on dry land, it’s called mohanlian—black dry-land lotus.”
[Ding! Ten popularity points acquired.]
The maids A-Juan and Juanzhi beamed. “It is this plant’s good fortune that Gongzhu has bestowed such a fine name upon it. We servants know nothing of writing. We only ever called it black greens.”
Ying Yang could not help asking how the sisters had found it. Her own woodblock illustration had been drawn with an unsteady hand; its crooked lines made it a poor guide, though better than nothing.
The elder sister, A-Juan, calmly told her their story. They were twins. Twins were supposed to be an auspicious omen, but their family had always been poor, and their father had sunk into despair because he had no son. Far from rejoicing when the girls were born, he came to resent them, convinced that they had stolen the fortune and blessings meant for him and the son he had hoped to have.
“Throw these two girls away! Throw them away!” he had shouted.
“Juanzhi?” Ying Yang asked, perplexed.
A-Liao explained softly, “It means ‘cast away.’”
Their mother had refused. Moreover, people of the time were deeply superstitious. The neighbors and elders believed that for the two girls to have been born safely, and to have survived and grown despite the family’s want of food and clothing, was a great blessing: surely the gods protected them. So those around them had offered what help they could.
From childhood the sisters had gathered wild greens to fill their stomachs. Thus, the moment Gongzhu described the herb she sought, they knew precisely where to look for their chance at a little wealth.
Ying Yang fell silent. She was about to award them another five hundred qian when the younger sister, Juanzhi, dropped to her knees.
“This servant dares to beg Gongzhu to bestow a name!”
“A-Di!” A-Juan cried in alarm. Yet she could not dissuade her sister, nor could she resist the temptation of receiving a name from someone so exalted. Blushing furiously, she bent low and murmured the same request.
[Ding! Ten popularity points acquired.]
Ying Yang looked thoughtful. To anyone watching, she seemed to have fallen into a daze; in truth, she had opened the System interface. There she discovered that the sisters’ follower rankings had risen from nominal followers to core followers, just behind Duan Lun.
“Very well. Then let mohanlian give the two of you your names. From now on, A-Juan shall be called Wei Mo, and Juanzhi shall be called Wei Lian.”
“A surname? I have a surname now?! Thank you, Gongzhu, for granting us a surname and names! A-Jie, we have a surname! From now on we’re Wei! Ha ha! Wei Lian—my name is Wei Lian!”
“Wei Mo! I—I don’t have to be called ‘Thrown Away’ anymore…”
Their names changed at once on the System interface. Their former names appeared in parentheses beside them.
[Ding! Forty-two popularity points acquired!]
Holy shit! Changing someone’s name earns that many popularity points?
Ying Yang was shamefully tempted. But when she noticed the astonished looks around her, she coughed awkwardly twice, suppressing the impulse rising within her.
“Enough! Back to work! We still have a mountain of things to do!”
The Wei sisters had wanted new names. That did not mean everyone else would. For better or worse, a name bestowed by one’s parents was a different matter altogether.
The newly christened Wei sisters answered with particular vigor: “Wei!”
Once work began, Ying Yang threw herself into it wholeheartedly. She supervised the grinding of unrefined sea salt and the chopping of bamboo leaves. The two were mixed together and packed into fresh green bamboo tubes cut from three-year-old stalks. The openings were sealed with moist yellow clay, and the tubes placed inside a furnace fragrant with burning pinewood.
Ordinary salt was acidic, she understood, while salt fired inside bamboo became alkaline bamboo salt, with anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. It could be eaten, used medicinally, or employed to clean the teeth.
Ying Yang had no idea how hot a Qin-era furnace could become. She could only instruct Duan Lun to wait until the bamboo had burned away entirely, leaving nothing but rods of white or pale-gray salt, before taking them out with tongs.
She was preparing to burn bamboo joints and tubes into charcoal when A-Liao stopped her. Some of the palace’s noble residents liked to roast meat over bamboo charcoal, she explained; there was already a supply in the kitchens.
Making bamboo salt took time. While she waited, Ying Yang turned to preparing an insect repellent.
She had been unable to obtain arborvitae seeds or shichangpu, so she took dried chinaberry blossoms, mugwort leaves, and ordinary sweet flag, crushed them to fibers, and ground them into powder. Adding water, she kneaded the mixture into a black ‘dough,’ rolled it into slender threads, and left them to dry in the shade. Once dry, they would become coils of incense to drive away mosquitoes and other insects.
Two days later, all the ingredients were ready. Ying Yang was about to begin making tooth powder and toothpaste when Ying Zheng heard the news and came in person to watch.
She scratched the little tuft of hair tied atop her head, bewildered. “What’s so interesting about this? A-Fu, if you’re bored, go watch some singing and dancing instead~”
Had she not abandoned all dignity, sat on the floor, kicked her legs, and protested to the ‘death,’ the remaining ten consorts of Huicao Hall and their personal attendants would probably have come along to watch her make toothpaste too.
Just how bored are you people…?
[Also, Dad, you’re dressed awfully flamboyantly today…]
Ying Zheng sat in the place of honor, wearing a robe of the freshest, most delicate pink. A pink azalea was tucked beside his ear. Paired with his towering height of one meter ninety-six and the short beard on his chin, the effect was rather…
[It actually looks surprisingly natural on him…]
Perhaps it was because he carried himself with such unselfconscious assurance. In pink robes and with a flower in his hair, he did not look remotely effeminate. Instead, he exuded the effortless elegance of a man entirely at ease with himself.
The former social-media creator inside Ying Yang was shrieking at the System to film him, film him, quick!
The final boss seemed relaxed, and Ying Yang’s own nervousness eased considerably. In her previous life, she had not specialized in recreating ancient techniques. Now she was relying on remembered videos and medicinal formulas to work out the proportions, and she was far from certain of the results.
[Task: As a professional content creator, complete one journey and prepare one culinary dish within thirty solar days, and obtain ten genuine positive reviews!]
[Task rewards: +100 popularity points; one ancient-style soy sauce recipe; unlock the ‘Skill Management’ function.]
The new task announcement sounded just as Ying Yang was weighing out the medicinal powders. She spared it a quick glance and went on mixing her tooth powders and pastes.
The simplest was bamboo-salt tooth powder. Next came bamboo salt mixed with bamboo charcoal. A more elaborate preparation incorporated chopped mint and powdered residue from willow sap dried in the shade. A more costly one included pearl powder, pine resin, and fuling.
She portioned the powders into earthenware, lacquer, and jade jars. Around their mouths she tied little lengths of silk—white, black, pale yellow, or light red—each inscribed with identifying characters.
Then she prepared several more batches in the same proportions, this time blending the powders with filtered water made from plant ash, or with cooked honey that was less prone to fermentation, until they formed a paste.
Finally came two medicinal toothpastes. The first, taken from the Puji Fang, combined two liang of roasted soap pods with ginger, shengma, prepared dihuang, mohanlian, scholar-tree pods, xixin, lotus leaves, and powdered unrefined salt. The second, from the Taiping Shenghui Fang, used boiled and strained concentrates of scholar-tree, willow, and mulberry sap as its base, to which she added unrefined salt, chopped *chuanxiong*, and xixin. Both formulas were intended to clean and strengthen the teeth, relieve internal heat, and ease pain.
“Can it truly relieve toothache?” Ying Zheng studied the dark, herb-scented paste inside the jade jar with great care.
It should… probably?
Ying Yang was troubled. Experience and instinct alike told her that this was precisely the moment to give the man in power a firm, reassuring answer.
Then an idea struck her.
“System, dear~ If I remember correctly, aren’t you responsible for supervising food safety?”
[Beep. Under Article 1,156 of the Civilization Act, should food prepared by the host fail to meet food-safety standards, the System has the right to withhold task points.]
“Good. Then test these tooth powders and toothpastes for me.”
[Beep. This project does not fall within the categories of travel or cuisine…]
“How doesn’t it? Qin people are bound to swallow at least a little of the tooth powder and toothpaste! And don’t start telling me that if you don’t actually swallow something, it doesn’t count as food. Have you ever heard of stir-fried pebbles? A famous dish! If stir-fried pebbles count as a dish, why can’t this? It’s got ginger, lotus leaves, and salt. I’ve boiled things and roasted things. What more do you want?”
[Beep…]
“Stop beeping. This is something Qin Shi Huang himself is going to put in his mouth! If it kills him, who’s going to take responsibility? System, you wouldn’t want to become the criminal System that destroyed a precious ancient civilization, would you?”
[Beep. Safety inspection passed. Please refrain from consuming large quantities.]
Who on earth would eat toothpaste by the mouthful?!
Er… Surely no one would. Right…?
Author’s Note
Not necessarily—according to the System’s calculations.
Translator’s Notes
– Weights and money: Jin and liang are historical units of weight; qian denotes cash coins.
– Wei (唯): The sisters’ enthusiastic reply is an affirmative used in the historical setting, distinct from their newly bestowed surname, Wei (韦).
– Historical prescriptions: Puji Fang (普济方) and Taiping Shenghui Fang (太平圣惠方) are later Chinese medical compilations unavailable during the Qin dynasty.
– Stir-fried pebbles: A joke about a dish in which seasoned pebbles are sucked for flavor rather than swallowed; Ying Yang invokes it to stretch the System’s definition of ‘cuisine.’