Ning was rinsing the cough tonic bottle when Yan came back from the disposal yard. The paper wrapper from Bai’s pill rested inside his inner pocket. He had checked the number twice on the walk back, afraid the fold had hidden one digit and changed the record.
“Did it do what the label said?” Ning asked.
“The qi gathered. My stomach turned, then settled.”
“And what did you feel afterward?”
Yan paused with one hand still at his pocket. “The qi stayed. The nausea eased, then my stomach settled.”
She set the bottle on the low table. “Was it a cultivation medicine?”
“Yes. The label said spirit-rice pill.”
“Then don’t call it proof that every medicine that upsets your stomach will turn into something useful.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were looking at the tonic bottle.”
Yan looked at her. “I wanted to know whether the change applied to anything unpleasant.”
Ning shook the last drops around the brown glass. “This isn’t a cultivation pill. It’s cough tonic. It soothes the throat. That is what it is for.”
She had coughed through the night, a dry scrape that worsened whenever she breathed the refinery air for too long. The infirmary had given her this bottle with instructions to take a small spoonful when the coughing began. The bitter smell clung to the neck. There was no red reject stamp, no ingredient list of qi herbs, and no reason to treat it like the pill Bai had sold him.
Still, Yan wanted to understand the line. “Would you mind if I tried a sip?”
Ning held the bottle away from him. “It’s your throat that gets sore when you work near the drain.”
“I’ve swallowed worse.”
“That is not a reason.” She turned the bottle and read the label. “One sip. Then we keep the rest for what it was given for.”
“Agreed.”
She poured a little into a clean spoon. Yan tasted it. The tonic was bitter, with a thin sweet note underneath. It coated the back of his throat and eased the scratch from the refinery dust. The bitter taste remained exactly as bitter as before.
He waited for the familiar sign: an inward glint, a silent line of words, any change in his channels. Nothing appeared. No qi gathered beneath his navel. The route through his arms remained clear, neither wider nor warmer. The medicine did the modest thing its label promised. It soothed his throat.
Yan placed two fingers at his wrist and counted against the slow drip from the roof eave. His pulse had been even before the sip, and it remained even after. He sat still for another dozen drops, then tried one small circulation through his arms. The qi followed the route he already knew, with no new warmth or pressure. The tonic had not interrupted the practice, either. He wrote the count beside the time, careful to distinguish a measured pulse from his impression that his throat felt less raw.
Ning was watching him. “Anything?”
“No notice. No change in my circulation.”
“Only a less scratchy throat?”
“Only that.”
She took the spoon and put the prescribed amount in her own mouth. “Good. It was supposed to do something.”
Yan smiled. “The experiment has proved that bad flavor is still bad flavor.”
“Then write that down in your important notebook.”
He opened the small notebook he had begun for his cultivation tests. He kept the cough tonic separate from the reject pills, writing ordinary remedy in the heading. Under it he recorded the bitter taste, the soothing effect, no qi accumulation, and no System notice. He did not mark it as a failed dose. Ning’s cough eased as the tonic coated her throat; the medicine had worked for the person who needed it.
“Show me the pill wrapper,” she said.
He handed her his torn half. She held it beside the scrap where he had written the dose time. The batch number matched.
“You bought it from the courier at the gate?”
“His name is Bai Jiu. He charged one coin for the pill and one for staying while I took it.”
“Did he know what it could do?”
“He knew what the label said. I told him what happened. He asked if he should try the other pill, and I said no.”
Ning folded the wrapper along the crease, careful not to cover the number. “That was right. You don’t know whether the change works for anyone else.”
“Or whether it works the same way every time.”
“Then you need records, not guesses.” She returned the scrap. “Source, ingredients, listed effect, dose. If one is missing, you wait.”
Yan added the source: Ashfall reject stock, delivered by Bai Jiu. He paused at the next line. “Would you put the pill back under effects, or make a separate space for what happened to me?”
“What did it say would happen?”
“Qi gain and nausea.”
“And what happened?”
“Qi gain. Nausea changed into a settled stomach.”
“Then write both.” Ning tapped the notebook’s edge. “Don’t make the record promise more than the pill did.”
He wrote the label’s warning in one column and his observation in another. He could see why she had insisted. If someone later read only “nausea reversed,” they might overlook the qi, or believe the pill was safe for another person. The two statements belonged beside each other.
Ning cleared her throat. The cough came once, rougher than before, then stopped. Yan reached for the tonic, but she held out her hand and measured another spoonful herself.
“Your cough is worse,” he said.
“It catches when I breathe the yard air.” She swallowed the dose. “I’ll ask at the infirmary about changing the work placement.”
“I can take the question.”
“I want to ask myself.”
He looked at the treatment bill beside her medicine cup. Two small fees had been added under the infirmary’s mark. “These are still under review, aren’t they?”
“Yes. One for the extra wash. One for the bottle. I have the old receipt.” She slid it toward him. “I’ll take both papers at my appointment. I don’t want you arguing about my cough while I’m standing there.”
“I can ask what the fees cover.”
“You can carry the papers.”
Yan tucked the receipt and bill into the flat pocket of her medicine pouch, where they would not crease. “You ask. I carry.”
“Exactly.”
He set the tonic on the treatment shelf, not among his experiment notes. The bitter pill record stayed in its own section, with the batch number and the dose time. He added a short line about the tonic: its ordinary soothing effect mattered to Ning even though it did not alter his cultivation.
Before he left for the afternoon shift, he checked the wrapper once more. The thin paper had a crease through the final number but no tear. He slid it into a folded pocket of his notebook. The evidence of one test could be small enough to lose in a sleeve. This one would stay legible.