Chapter 80 — Treating Wounds and Brewing Medicine (Please Give Recommendation Votes, Please Bookmark for Support)
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
His school uniform had been freshly changed that morning, but Wei Zhao had no wish to tear off a piece of it to bandage this female assassin. He got up and walked to the washroom, where he saw a disposable sterilized bath towel on the rack; beside the towel was a little price tag reading forty yuan.
Bought in bulk, this sort of disposable sterilized bath towel would cost twenty yuan at most, but in a hotel the price doubled. Of course, besides towels of this kind there were also the free ones the hotel provided — only those were not disposable.
Such towels were supplied only for those with a cleanliness fixation who love to keep things spotless, and could hardly be called a forced purchase.
Wei Zhao took one of these sterilized towels; as gauze for bandaging, the thing would just barely do.
He sprinkled the powder he had ground earlier onto the girl's wound, and a moan barely audible came from her mouth, no doubt the medicine's nature stirring the wound. Wei Zhao paid her no mind — what medicine does not hurt when it is applied?
After applying the medicine, Wei Zhao tore the disposable bath towel into several pieces and, with practiced hands, finished bandaging the girl's wound.
"Whew." Wei Zhao let out a breath. It was done at last. As things stood, the girl had merely lost too much blood; if the bleeding was stopped now, her chances of living were still very good.
Of course, assassins generally had tenacious vitality, and Wei Zhao could roughly see that the girl had pulled her life back. When she woke, apart from being a little weak, there would be nothing seriously the matter.
With the female assassin dealt with, Wei Zhao turned to his own affairs. Earlier, when he had compounded medicine for the girl, he had been in a hurry and had prepared only exactly the amount required; his own wound was still unattended.
That had all relied on grinding, which was nothing much, but the medicine for Yang Huaijun had to be slowly decocted, with the order in which each herb was added and the timing held to strict standards, not the slightest error permitted. Otherwise, though the constituents of the Chinese medicine would be much the same, its medicinal power would be greatly reduced, and the expected effect would not be achieved.
This too was why Wei Zhao had not given the prescription to Yang Huaijun but had compounded the medicine for him himself. For one thing, this prescription was not as easy to compound and decoct as the painkiller he had given him before: that painkiller needed only the purchase of all the Chinese herbs on the prescription and the grinding of them together, whereas decocting medicine was another matter.
For another, it was because Wei Zhao did not want this prescription to get out. Though he trusted Yang Huaijun, he feared that Yang Huaijun might inadvertently let it slip; this prescription was enough to stir up a mighty uproar in the world of Chinese medicine.
Wei Zhao set the alcohol burner and the clay pot he had used earlier on a level spot, and began to decoct the medicine for Yang Huaijun. Though the hotel also provided an electric appliance for brewing tea, Chinese medicine was still better decocted over fire.
Decocting medicine was a wearing, patience-draining task, but for Wei Zhao, who often wove straw sandals at home, it was nothing at all.
Watching the time on his phone, Wei Zhao deftly put one herb after another into the clay pot. How long had passed he did not know, when he heard a faint stirring from not far behind him.
Had Wei Zhao's hearing not been abnormally keen, he could never have caught that tiny sound while concentrating on the decoction.
Wei Zhao did not turn around. This was the critical moment in the decocting, and he could not spare the attention; pinching several herbs in his hand, he watched his phone and counted out the time.