Inside the front hall of the Hundred-Herb Clinic, the air smelled of bitter wormwood, dried orange peel, and cold winter drafts.
Twenty-four-year-old Qin Wan’er knelt on the flagstones in a faded pale-blue cotton skirt, picking up the jagged shards of her late father’s porcelain medicine jars one by one. Her slender fingers were red from the cold, and a fresh cut on her index finger beaded with bright blood where a broken glaze edge had nicked her skin.
Every time she drew a deep breath, a sharp, needle-like ache stabbed through her chest, and a faint dusting of pale blue frost gathered along the tips of her dark eyebrows.
Three winters ago, when her father collapsed from exhaustion during a winter plague in Frost-Pine Town. Twenty-one-year-old Qin Wan’er had tried to force-refine a batch of high-grade Ice-Clearing Pills in a cracked bronze furnace to save him. The furnace had imploded at midnight, driving a cloud of unrefined yin-frost straight into her lung meridians.
Ever since that night, she had carried the dreaded Cold-Furnace Alchemy Backlash in her chest. Whenever winter came—or whenever she used her Rank 1 Peak martial qi to fight off bullies—the frost in her lungs spread another inch toward her heart.
“Father,” Qin Wan’er whispered, pressing her cold palm against the wooden sign lying on the counter. “Those wolves from the Gu Clan Second Branch broke your mortar today, and they swore to block every herb merchant in town from selling to us. How much longer can I protect your clinic?”
Before she could wipe the moisture from the corner of her eyes, a gentle, cultured cough sounded from the open doorway.
“Sister Qin, are you hurt?”
Qin Wan’er stiffened and rose quickly to her feet, hiding her cut finger behind her apron.
Standing on the threshold with the morning sunlight framing his white silk robes was Lin Fan. A clean white linen bandage was wrapped neatly around his forehead, giving him the pitiful, gallant look of a scholar who had suffered for a noble cause.
“Young Master Lin?” Qin Wan’er frowned, taking half a step back behind her walnut counter. Her voice was cool and guarded.
“You are Second Elder Gu Ba’s nephew-in-law.
If you are here to repeat what your uncle’s thugs just shouted, save your breath. The Jade-Dew Pill Recipe is not for sale.”
“Wait, Sister Qin! Please don’t misunderstand me!”
Lin Fan raised both hands in a gesture of helpless grief and stepped into the sunlit front room. He stopped a respectful five paces from the counter and bowed low, his voice trembling with righteous indignation.
“When I heard what Second Elder Gu Ba’s bailiffs did to your clinic this morning, I was so furious I argued with him in the main hall. He threw a heavy inkstone at my head!” Lin Fan pointed sorrowfully at the white bandage covering his bramble scratches from last night’s ditch.
“Look at my brow, Sister Qin!
Even though I married into the Second Branch as a guest scholar, I have always despised how Gu Ba bullies upright, hardworking physicians like you!”
Qin Wan’er blinked in surprise, her sharp gaze flicking to the bandage on his forehead.
Because she had been locked inside her clinic boiling herbs all night, she hadn’t heard the morning gossip about the night-watchmen dragging Lin Fan down from the ancestral graveyard at midnight.
Seeing her hesitation, Lin Fan inwardly sneered while making his expression even softer and more sincere.
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a folded sheet of red-stamped parchment, and slid it across the walnut counter toward her.
“What is this?” Qin Wan’er asked cautiously, without touching the paper.
“It is a promissory discharge for the thirty silver taels of annual shop rent that the Second Branch claims your clinic owes,” Lin Fan said, sighing like a generous bodhisattva. “I used my own private jade pendant as collateral at the town pawnshop this morning to pay it off for you. Take it, Sister Qin.
As long as I, Lin Fan, draw breath in Frost-Pine Town, I will never let those greedy brutes close your father’s clinic!”
In reality, the parchment was an unsealed blank copy he had stolen from Second Elder Gu Ba’s study desk ten minutes ago, worth less than the paper it was written on.
Yet to a young woman who had spent the entire morning fending off debt-collectors alone, the sight of a stamped rent discharge made her tense shoulders loosen by a fraction.
“Young Master Lin... I didn’t expect anyone associated with the Second Branch to speak up for my father’s clinic,” Qin Wan’er said slowly, though her medical training kept a sliver of caution in her voice. “Even so, thirty silver is a large sum.
I cannot accept your money for nothing—”
“Between fellow travelers on the path of medicine, kindness requires no repayment,” Lin Fan interrupted smoothly. Stepping up to the side of the counter where a small clay stove was keeping a kettle of chamomile water warm.
He picked up the clay teapot with his right hand and poured a cup of steaming pale-gold tea into a white porcelain cup on the counter.
“Look at your eyebrows, Sister Qin—the morning chill has already stirred up your old lung injury,” Lin Fan said with warm concern, setting the teapot down. “Drink a cup of hot tea to warm your chest first, and fetch your pulse-pillow from the back shelf. My master taught me an ancient meridian-warming massage technique that can ease your cough in three minutes.”
Qin Wan’er’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of easing her lung frost.
“You know a technique for Cold-Furnace frost?” she asked, glancing toward the wooden cabinet behind the partition curtain where she kept her diagnostic tools. “Wait a moment.
My clean pulse-pillow is on the top shelf in the back.”
“Take your time, Sister Qin,” Lin Fan said with a gentle, saintly smile.
Outside the front doorway, standing in the shadow of the steamed-bun stall’s canvas awning, Gu Changsheng watched Lin Fan’s fingers twitch toward his left cuff.
Beside him, Grandpa Fu stroked his gray beard and shook his head in quiet disgust.
“Young Master, look at that boy’s eyes,” Grandpa Fu whispered, his newly straightened spine standing tall as he kept one hand on his black-iron abacus. “When Miss Wan’er was looking at him, he bowed like a scholar at a temple. The second she turned her back, his face turned uglier than a graveyard weasel’s.”
“A weasel only steals chickens, Grandpa Fu,” Gu Changsheng murmured, cracking a roasted melon seed between his teeth and tucking the shell neatly into his palm. “This nephew-in-law of ours wants the girl’s clinic, her late father’s pill recipe, and her life all for the price of one packet of rat powder.”
Down at Gu Changsheng’s knee, eight-year-old Gu Nian shifted his weight from one yellow bunny slipper to the other.
“Dad, he’s reaching into his sleeve now,” Gu Nian whispered, his black-gold eyes locked on the gap between the open clinic doors. “Can I go yell at him?”
“Give him two more seconds so the packet is right over the cup,” Gu Changsheng said calmly. “When you shout, project from your diaphragm the way Dad showed you after breakfast. Make sure Blacksmith Zhao and Widow Zhang hear every word.”
Inside the shop, the exact instant Qin Wan’er turned her back and took two steps toward the rear shelf. The warm smile vanished from Lin Fan’s face as if wiped away by a wet rag.
His eyes turned cold, greedy, and venomous.
Foolish woman, Lin Fan mocked silently. Give you a free massage? Once this powder hits your stomach, you’ll be crawling across the floor begging to sign your clinic and your recipe over to me!
Moving with the practiced speed of a Rank 1 Mid martial artist, Lin Fan flicked his left wrist.
A flat, gray oil-paper packet slid out of his white silk cuff into his palm. With a pinch of his thumb and index finger, he tore the corner of the packet open and held it directly over the steaming porcelain teacup on the counter.
Inside the black ring on his thumb, Master Yao Chen turned his ghostly face away in disgust.
Using Seven-Step Heart-Rot Powder on a girl who just thanked you, Yao Chen muttered darkly. When the heavens strike you with lightning one day, boy, don’t ask me to block it.
The heavens love winners, old man! Lin Fan shot back in his mind. Tipping his wrist so a stream of fine, colorless gray powder began pouring out of the paper packet into the hot chamomile tea.
Across the threshold, outside the open front doorway of the clinic, Gu Changsheng tapped eight-year-old Gu Nian lightly on the back of his yellow wool scarf.
Gu Nian didn’t hesitate for half a heartbeat.
Taking two quick steps up the stone porch in his [Rank 1 Iron-Defense Yellow Bunny Slippers]. The eight-year-old boy planted his hands on both sides of the open doorframe, drew a massive breath of fresh winter air into his newly awakened Rank 1 lungs. Pointed a chubby index finger straight at Lin Fan’s left hand!
“DAD! GRANDPA FU! EVERYBODY LOOK!”
Gu Nian’s clear, ringing child’s voice—amplified by five hundred pounds of vibrant Chaos-Bone vitality—boomed across the Hundred-Herb Clinic and echoed down the entire length of Willow-West Street like a bronze temple bell:.
“THE UNCLE WHO POOPED HIS PANTS ON THE MOUNTAIN LAST NIGHT IS POURING GRAY RAT-POISON OUT OF HIS SLEEVE INTO BIG SISTER QIN’S TEACUP!”
Silence dropped over Willow-West Street like a falling boulder.
Outside the clinic, Blacksmith Zhao froze with his iron tongs hovering two inches above his coal brazier.
Widow Zhang stopped mid-haggle with a winter cabbage held over her head.
Three steamed-bun vendors, four mule-cart drivers, two patrolling town bailiffs, and nearly fifty morning shoppers paused in their tracks all at once. Fifty heads whipped around in unison, and fifty pairs of wide, curious eyes craned through the wide-open front doorway and unlatched street window of the Hundred-Herb Clinic!
Inside the shop, Lin Fan froze as if struck by a bolt of winter lightning.
His left hand was still hovering three inches above the steaming porcelain teacup. Between his thumb and forefinger, the torn gray oil-paper packet was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. With a thin trail of gray powder still clinging to the rim of the cup and a telltale pinch of residue dusting the dark walnut counter!
Every trace of blood drained from Lin Fan’s face in a single heartbeat.
“Y-you—!” Lin Fan’s neck snapped around so fast it cracked, his eyes bulging in horror. He stared at the eight-year-old boy standing on the doorstep in fluffy yellow bunny slippers and a bright red cloth flower pinned to his chest.
Sitting safely in the woven bamboo basket in Gu Nian’s left hand, the thermos of [Fused Honey-Ginger Detox Soup] let out a soft, fragrant puff of steam.
“I saw it with both eyes!” Gu Nian announced loudly to the fifty townsfolk crowding the window, holding his chin high and pointing squarely at Lin Fan’s sleeve. “Big Sister Qin turned around to get a pillow, and that white-coat uncle pulled a gray paper packet out of his cuff and dumped it right into her tea!
Look, the paper is still in his fingers!”
“Wait—did the third branch’s little boy just say the uncle who pooped his pants on the mountain last night?!”
Out by the window sill, Widow Zhang squinted hard at Lin Fan’s pale face and the heavy cloud of cheap lilac perfume drifting off his collar. Then she clapped both hands to her thighs with a shrill gasp!
“Heavens above! My nephew on the night-watch told me at dawn that they dragged Second Elder Gu Ba’s nephew-in-law out. Of a bramble ditch below the ancestral tombs at midnight covered head to toe in his own filth!
So that really was Young Master Lin Fan?!”
“And look at his left hand!” Blacksmith Zhao craned his burly neck through the open window frame, pointing a soot-stained finger straight at the counter. “He really is holding a torn gray medicine packet right over Doctor Qin’s teacup!”
[ DING! CHOSEN ONE PUBLICLY CAUGHT RED-HANDED! ]
* Action : Child #1 (Gu Nian) exposed Lin Fan’s [Seven-Step.
Heart-Rot Powder] plot in front of 50 witnesses!
* Gu Nian Stats : Warmth Index 96/100 -> 97/100.
Darkening Meter 18% -> 17% (-1% DROP!)
* Immediate DP : +50 DP Milestone Bonus (Balance: 460 DP)
* Daily Income : +450 DP/day -> +500 DP/day!
Behind the partition curtain, Qin Wan’er spun around on her heel, her dark eyes locking straight onto the gray paper packet trembling in Lin Fan’s fingers!