Bai Zhi felt disheartened. This little brat! Why was she so friendly to others but acted like a little tiger pup whose teeth hasn’t even all grown out yet when it came to him? That difference between her mannerism was so drastic. He never thought about that if he wasn’t being impolite to her in the first place, Gu Ye, who strongly believed in conflict-avoidance, would never had treated him the way that she did.
Bai Ji, who had been leaning over and rummaging through Gu Ye’s basket of herbs suddenly honed in one a piece of processed huang jing. The most commonly-seen huang jing on the market was processed like this: rid it of all foreign materials and washed clean, steamed for 12 hours, sliced, and sun dried. One only person in the entire world had came up with his new and unique way of treating Huang jing, with his end product have much higher efficacy than others. And that person was – the sage apothecary.
Looking closely at the piece of huang jing in his hand, it was neither the processed with the most common-seen method, nor was it the work of the sage apothecary. It was a process that he has never seen or head before. This piece of processed huang jing was blackish brown and shiny in appearance, the middle of it was a dark brown color. It was soft, sweet, with excellent efficacy!
“Young Master, the piece of huang jing in your hand was boiled in yellow wine1 through a water bath. Using alcohol, it will make it nutritious without being oily. In addition, it has the effect to help smooth the meridians. Using yellow wine would further eliminate the numbing taste in the huang jing and avoid agitating the gastrointestinal track and further it’s efficacy and its nourishment.”
Seeing how the pretty young man in azure was flipping the piece of huang jing back and forth and studying it intently, Gu Ye kindly explained it to him. It’s a shame that she had no resistant toward tender and pretty boys. If it was the young man in blue, forget it, don’t let the door hit you on your way out!
“Ugh… will your family scold you for sharing this unique and private method in public?” reminded Bai Ji as he put down the piece of herb uncomfortably and looked around, anxious. He couldn’t help but looked around them, worried.
Gu Ye’s impression of him immediately went up a whole level. She covered her mouth, smiled and said, “Everybody knew about the sage apothecary’s 9 steam and 9 dried method, but have anyone successfully recreated the 9 dried huang jing? A minor deviation in herbal processing could result in major differences in the product. Well, Young Master, would you like to have some of these huang jing?”
“Did you really prepared these huang jing youself?” Bai Zhi continued to flip the piece of huang jing back and forth. He was just short of takin at bite out of it to see if the numbing taste was really eliminated.
“Of course!” said Gu Ye as she rolled her eyes at him. Then, turning to the pretty boy in azure and said, “Young Master, I have other herbs here as well. Please feel free to look around.”
“Young Miss, you can’t play favoritism!” said Housemaster Zhao as he looked at the interesting young girl with a smile, his voice that of a teasing tone.
“Mister, please feel free to pick whatever you’d like. I’ll give you 20% off.” Gu Ye had more or less learned about the pricing of herbs from the few stalls that were there. She wasn’t aware that processed herbs could fetch a few times or even more than raw herbs, which means the few baskets full of herbs that she had brought with her could fetch quite a bit of money. She’s rich! Thought Gu Ye happily, her money-grubbing nature exposed for all to see.
Bai Ji picked some herbs from the basket. There were five to six different types of processed herbs and the longer he looked the more familiar they seemed. Even though most herbs were processed with the same method, but each master apothecary tend to have their own unique style.
And the most famous and most unique one of all was, of course, the sage apothecary old Mr. Zheng. Even though nobody knew the whereabout of the sage apothecary for the last dozen or so years, but his processed medicinal herbs were still unrivaled; even his favorite disciple that had studied under him didn’t come close to 10% of his skills.
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Note:
1. a type of Chinese alcoholic beverage made from water, cereal grains such as rice, sorghum, millet, or wheat, and a qū starter culture. Unlike white wine, it is not distilled and contains less than 20% alcohol. (Wikipedia)
2. came across this picture of Chinese meridian channels, thought it’s kind of interesting