“Mother, how is Wang Lin?” Cheng Yi asked the moment Ye Manshu walked out.
“He’s not dead for now, but I can’t guarantee anything yet. He still needs medicine. If he can survive the next three days, then the danger should mostly pass.”
Ye Manshu took out several pills. “If he develops a fever, give him this. If one pill isn’t enough, give two. And if the fever rises, use a warm damp cloth on his forehead and keep changing it repeatedly.”
“Mother, I remember.”
Ye Manshu sighed when she saw Cheng Yi’s utterly lost expression. “Forget it. I’ll stay here for now. If anything happens, I can still use acupuncture on him.”
Today the village school had been on break. Tomorrow was supposed to be her official first day teaching.
She still had to go teach the children tomorrow too. What a miserable life.
Ye Manshu didn’t dare relax her guard. She originally planned to ask the village chief—her uncle—for more liquor to distill, since this alcohol was the result of over a month’s work and more than half a month spent mastering the right temperature and timing.
But then she thought she couldn’t keep fleecing the same sheep forever, so she changed direction and went to Uncle Ye Wu’s house instead.
As the head of the clan family, Ye Wu lived relatively well.
The moment he heard Ye Manshu asking for alcohol, his beard practically shot upward in anger.
“No!”
“Little Uncle, I really need it. Really! It’s not for drinking!”
After a brief thought, Ye Manshu immediately understood why he reacted that way. The original owner of this body had been quite the drunkard.
Whenever she had spare money, she’d buy alcohol. When she had no money, she’d sometimes mooch drinks from Li Daoshun or Ye Wu. Later, after she caused too much trouble, nobody let her drink anymore.
Clearly, Ye Wu thought she wanted alcohol to drink again.
“Little Uncle, I’m distilling alcohol for disinfecting wounds. Wang Lin’s injuries need sterilization.”
Ye Wu frowned. “What kind of strange nonsense is this? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Please trust me. You know I’ve been studying medicine with Cousin Uncle Physician Li. I’ve read many medical books. High-proof alcohol really can disinfect wounds.”
Looking at Ye Manshu’s serious expression, Ye Wu finally took out a bucket of cheap liquor.
“If you’re lying to me, I’ll beat you.”
Ye Manshu immediately brightened. “I definitely won’t lie to you!”
She grabbed the bucket and ran.
“Slow down! If you spill it, there’ll be none left!” Ye Wu shouted after her.
Ye Manshu hurried off to distill the alcohol. She could only estimate the concentration roughly, but it should have been over seventy percent.
Late that night, Wang Lin indeed developed a fever.
His entire body burned like glowing charcoal. Cheng Yi followed Ye Manshu’s instructions, but still couldn’t bring the fever down, so she had no choice but to wake Ye Manshu.
Ye Manshu was sleeping in another room together with little Wang Xiaoxiao, who fortunately slept quietly and didn’t fuss.
After checking Wang Lin, Ye Manshu instructed Cheng Yi to wipe him down with alcohol to reduce the fever while she herself took out acupuncture needles borrowed from Physician Li and began performing acupuncture on him.
She also examined the wound.
Thankfully, there were no signs of infection or pus yet.
She disinfected the wound again with alcohol.
After struggling for nearly two hours, the fever finally subsided.
Yawning, Ye Manshu returned to bed to continue sleeping.
Nothing could interfere with her beauty sleep. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about the patient—it was because she had already done everything she possibly could. She couldn’t let herself collapse from exhaustion too.
Wang Jia and Wang Nian urged Cheng Yi to rest for a while while the two of them watched over Wang Lin.
Fortunately, the fever didn’t return during the rest of the night.
Looking at the little pills she had painstakingly made, now reduced by more than half, Ye Manshu’s heart ached. Besides fever medicine, those pills also included tonics for strengthening the body and preserving life—and she had used quite a lot on Wang Lin.
Some expensive medicinal herbs had gone into them.
No wonder she could never save money. Aside from food expenses, she had secretly been preparing these medicines the whole time.
Sure enough, life came in endless twists and turns—with extra twists added on top for cheap.
Today was her first day teaching children.
There were five paying students, all around five or six years old.
But many others also came to audit the class for free. Since it was after the autumn harvest, the villagers were relatively free, and little children couldn’t do much farm work anyway.
All at once, more than twenty children arrived.
Ye Manshu arranged them into seats on long wooden benches. Only the five paying students had desks, and even those had been donated by the village chief.
She first checked the five children’s studies, wanting to know what they had learned after more than a month under Cheng Qian.
She discovered they had learned to write their own names and memorized a little of the Three Character Classic.
Each student could write maybe a dozen characters.
For five- or six-year-olds, that wasn’t too bad.
But Ye Manshu wanted them to recognize characters more quickly. Village children couldn’t afford to waste time.
“When you study with me, things may become stricter,” she announced. “Every day you must learn ten new characters, repeatedly read and write them. I’ll test you the next day. If you fail to learn them, you’ll be criticized. Understood?”
Children naturally feared teachers.
Even though it was Ye Manshu, they still feared her.
Besides, Ye Manshu’s reputation wasn’t exactly positive. To these children, “Auntie Ye,” “Grandma Ye,” and “Old Lady Ye” were practically synonyms for “terrifying.”
Even adults in the village didn’t dare provoke Ye Manshu, let alone children.
The adults watching from outside began whispering among themselves after hearing her words.
“Ten characters a day? Can they even learn that?”
“Who cares? The lessons are free. Whatever they learn is a bonus. As long as they’re not illiterate.”
“But my child is paying tuition…”
“That’s even better. If the child can’t learn, ask her to refund the tuition.”
“As if I’d dare ask her for a refund. Forget it. Cheng Qian will be back in a month anyway.”
Ye Manshu occasionally caught fragments of the discussion and frowned.
“No talking outside. You’re disrupting my class. Either stay quiet or leave.”
Instant silence.
“Today’s ten characters are…”
Ye Manshu took out a blackboard and several sticks of chalk. She had asked the village chief to make them. She had wanted Cheng Qian to use them before, but he had scoffed.
“How can anyone practice proper calligraphy using such things?”
But Ye Manshu felt that for simple character recognition, nothing worked better.
She had already written ten characters onto the board.
“I’ll teach you the stroke order and where each brushstroke needs proper force.”
One by one, she read each character aloud, breaking down the stroke order and explaining where the brush should turn or press. She also taught them the radicals and components of the characters, explaining how the characters were formed and their basic meanings.
Afterward, she repeatedly taught them how to pronounce everything.
The ten characters took an entire hour to explain.
Only then did she stop.
Because her explanations were detailed and story-like, the children found the lesson interesting.
The ten characters hadn’t been chosen randomly—they were connected in meaning. She had selected them according to the Five Elements, choosing two characters for each element.
She also introduced related characters, though she didn’t require the children to memorize those yet. For now, they only needed to master the main ten.
Along the way, the children also gained a rough understanding of the Five Elements theory.
Afterward, she let the children take a short break. The classroom instantly erupted into noisy chatter. After the time it took to burn one stick of incense, they returned.
Then Ye Manshu had the five paying students come up one by one to act as “teacher,” reading the characters aloud and explaining the radicals and meanings based on her earlier lesson.
The first child who came up was excited, frightened, and shy all at once.
He only managed to explain three characters before getting stuck. The rest he stumbled through awkwardly, meaning he had truly mastered only three.
Ye Manshu praised him warmly, and the little boy happily returned to his seat.
“Student Li Xue’en did very well. Next student—Ye Quan, your turn!”