Chapter 711: Chapter 240 New Year’s Eve

The night was deep and the snow heavy, the crosswind still.

The light from the lantern at her feet seemed like a layer of faint, pale yellow mist, reminiscent of the magnificent evening glow beside Luomei Peak.

Lu Tong spoke softly.

"Lady Yun died by my hand," she said.

After completing this sentence, it was as if she had shed the last of her burdens, and a persistently heavy corner of her heart finally felt at ease.

In hindsight, some events happened too suddenly.

She had stayed at Luomei Peak for seven years, day after day, year after year, initially always thinking of trying to escape, but gradually she grew numb. Like a puppet confined to a stage, she repeated the same play over and over.

One day, she and Lady Yun went down the mountain to buy seeds for medicinal herbs and encountered a poor woman at the entrance of the Su Nan Medical Practice.

The woman was not a local of Su Nan, and with a distinct accent, she pleaded desperately with the shopkeeper.

Lu Tong stood at the entrance for a long time, listening and learning that the woman had traveled a great distance to buy medicinal ingredients for her son’s illness, but was short three copper coins upon arrival. Despite the long journey of dozens of miles, the woman wanted to buy on credit or purchase less, but the shopkeeper would not agree to either.

Lu Tong made up the three copper coins for her.

The woman was tearfully grateful, thanking her profusely before leaving. Lu Tong watched her retreating figure with a faint trance.

The woman’s face bore a resemblance to her mother.

When she turned around, she saw Lady Yun standing at the doorway of the Medical Practice, looking at her with an ambiguous smile that suggested she understood everything.

Back on the mountain, Lady Yun scattered the newly bought seeds beneath the plum tree and suddenly spoke while looking at her seated before the medicine furnace.

"Little Shiqi," she said, "do you want to leave this place?"

Lu Tong was startled.

The plum tree was in bloom, with red hues piercing through the Cold Forest, the woman beneath the tree adorned with a silk robe and jingling ornaments, her stunning makeup surpassing even the Red Plums.

"You’ve been living on the mountain for so long, and you’ve secretly read many of my medical books and notes. You do well in making antidotes on ordinary days, but you have not yet made a poison," said Lady Yun.

After every trial, Lu Tong would use what she had learned from the medical texts to administer her own antidote; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

"Let’s play a game," suggested Lady Yun, propping her chin and looking at her.

"What kind of game?" she asked.

Lady Yun thought for a moment: "You, try making a poison to give to me. If you can poison me to death, you leave the mountain. If the opposite happens..."

The woman’s curving eyebrows and eyes: "Then you can stay on the mountain and become a Medicine Man for me for a lifetime, okay?"

Lu Tong said nothing.

In fact, even if she didn’t agree, Lady Yun could keep her on the mountain to be a Medicine Man forever.

"Still not daring to do it?" Lady Yun sounded somewhat disappointed, patting her head, "Such a pity. I thought you really wanted to go home."

Go home.

She looked into the distance.

The Luomei Peak plum orchard blanketed the path leading down the mountain. She remembered the woman who resembled her mother that she had seen at the entrance of the Medical Practice. She hadn’t been home for a long time; she wondered how her mother was now, whether her hair was also half white like that woman’s.

Entirely seven years, she had left for a whole seven years, and perhaps they would be parted for even longer. As long as Lady Yun lived, she simply had no way to go home.

"Okay," she agreed.

The woman seemed surprised.

Lu Tong looked at her and repeated, "Okay."

She was stunned for a moment, then smiled in surprise: "I’ll wait for you, Little Shiqi."

While on the mountain, she had made many kinds of medicine using the poisonous herbs from Luomei Peak, but those were to save lives. She had read many of Lady Yun’s Poison Scriptures but had never made a harmful poison until now.

Lady Yun watched with amusement as she labored.

Lu Tong divided the finished poison into two portions, one for Lady Yun to consume, the other for Lady Yun to identify. Lu Tong waited for the outcome with an outward calm but an inner turmoil.

Lady Yun took it with a smile.

It took a total of seven days from ingestion to poisoning, perhaps due to Lady Yun’s unique constitution. Otherwise, the poison should have taken effect by the third day.

The woman lay on a chair beneath the plum tree, her gaze growing peculiar: "Little Shiqi, what did you use in this medicine?"

Lady Yun, who claimed to understand all poisons in the world, could not identify the final ingredient of the medicine.

"Can’t you tell?"

"So, what’s the antidote?"

Lu Tong shook her head: "There is no antidote."

Lady Yun was taken aback.

"In the prescription, I added my blood," Lu Tong explained.

Her blood, through seven years of trail medication, merging into hundreds of poisons, had become a poison itself. Those poisons, mingled together, were indistinguishable from one another, even Lady Yun could not discern them.

Lady Yun’s former tool for trial, in the end, became a puzzle she herself could not solve, a worldly karma and cycle just so.

Listened and momentarily stunned, then the woman laughed, looking at her with eyes full of admiration and comfort.

"So that’s it," she sighed, "you really are a promising young seedling."

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay Read