Chapter 298: Carrying It Forward

After much hesitation, Li Xuemei steeled herself and finally took out the pill recipe.

“Young Doctor An, would you mind taking a look? This formula… might be of use?”

Young Doctor An took the paper, and when he saw it clearly, he straightened up in his seat.

“This formula… is remarkably refined. And it’s a pill prescription—once prepared and stored properly, it can last for months. But it’s not cheap to make. This isn’t something an ordinary physician would write. May I ask, who authored this?”

“I copied it from a book,” Li Xuemei replied. “My husband collected some old medical texts years ago. They were too worn to keep, so I transcribed them. This was one of the prescriptions included.”

Young Doctor An grew visibly excited. “Then it must be from a classical medical text. What a pity—such an excellent formula, yet it never made its way into common use.”

He turned the paper over again and again, the more he looked, the more impressed he became.

“This prescription is better than the one I wrote. If it’s prepared into pills and taken for ten consecutive days, Madam Cui should recover without worry,” he said sincerely.

But Li Xuemei hadn’t brought out the formula just for this.

Yes, Madam Cui needed treatment. But even without this recipe, the medicine prescribed by Young Doctor An would have sufficed.

She presented the formula as a test—and because she didn’t want a pearl to gather dust.

Their family knew their limits well. Medicine was a vast and complex field. Could they really treat patients properly with just half a copy of the *Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold*?

It was unrealistic.

Take Madam Cui’s case, for example. Li Xuemei was seventy to eighty percent confident that the prescription matched her condition.

But would she dare use it on someone?

No. She wouldn’t.

Young Doctor An’s two prescriptions only confirmed one thing:

Professional matters should be left to professionals.

Young Doctor An’s medical skill and ethics were beyond reproach. The fact that he was willing to travel from Yongning to Crouching Tiger to treat patients spoke volumes about his character—compassionate and principled.

Crouching Tiger City had recovered so quickly not because of quarantine or protective measures, but because Young Doctor An had stood firm and revised the treatment formula. That was the key to saving the disaster victims.

They didn’t want such a life-saving prescription to sit unused at home. They hoped it could save more lives.

Through her continued study, Li Xuemei had gained something as well. At the very least, she understood one thing: even with the same illness, treatment must be adjusted for each individual. The elderly, children, women, those pregnant or postpartum, the seemingly strong but internally weak—all required careful differentiation by the physician to prescribe the right medicine.

A prescription couldn’t be used as-is just because it matched the symptoms. It had to be tailored to the patient’s specific condition. That required the doctor to fully understand both the illness and the formula, so they could apply it with ease and precision.

“This prescription, Madam, please keep it safe. It truly is an excellent formula. I’ll write down the conditions it applies to and complete the documentation. It’s worth preserving and passing down through generations.”

As he spoke, Young Doctor An immediately picked up his brush. Sometimes he paused to think, sometimes he wrote in a flurry, filling the page with detailed notes.

Li Xuemei didn’t interrupt, instead watching closely from the side.

He was meticulous, recording the symptoms, diagnostic methods, pulse patterns, and which ingredients could be increased or decreased depending on severity—all with exceptional clarity.

Li Xuemei nodded to herself.

She felt reassured.

With someone like this safeguarding the formula, what was there to worry about?

Still, caution was necessary. They couldn’t rush things.

If they handed over the formula too readily, it might raise suspicion. A little patience wouldn’t hurt. Good things were worth waiting for.

…

Since it was a woman’s ailment, even someone as open-minded as Madam Cui felt a bit embarrassed. She stayed in Li Xuemei’s room for quite a while, asking about every single ingredient and dosage in Young Doctor An’s prescription. She memorized it several times over, and only when she could recite it perfectly did she borrow her sister-in-law’s handkerchief and leave.

She claimed she wanted to trace the embroidery pattern, using it as an excuse to cover her tracks.

After seeing her aunt off, Yan Yu bounced back onto the kang bed and rolled around laughing.

“Auntie was hilarious! Mom, that handkerchief pattern? Auntie helped you stitch it last time she was here! She was in such a hurry, she didn’t even recognize it. Ha!”

“Keep your voice down!” Li Xuemei shut the window and shot her a glare. “Your aunt doesn’t want anyone to know. You’d better keep your mouth shut.”

“I know, I know! I’d never tell an outsider. Not a single word will slip from me,” Yan Yu said, lying on her stomach with her little hands propping up her cheeks, striking a cute pose. “Mom, do you think Young Doctor An will remember what you told him? About us copying the formula from a book?”

“Why wouldn’t he remember?” Li Xuemei was holding the notes Young Doctor An had written, comparing them to the original text.

“I told him it came from a book. If we could copy one prescription, there must be a second, a third… Look at all the details he wrote. Only someone truly meticulous could write such thorough instructions.”

She folded the paper and tucked it into the book.

After a moment’s thought, she copied out three more prescriptions.

One for difficult childbirth, one for pediatric convulsions, and one for inducing sweat in cases of cold-induced fever.

Yan Yu thought her mother’s choices were brilliant.

Childbirth was a life-or-death matter for women.

Children getting frightened was all too common.

And in Guanzhou, once the weather cooled, cold-induced fevers were practically everywhere.

“With these three formulas, Young Doctor An will definitely be thinking about our medical book for a long time,” Yan Yu said with admiration.

“That’s exactly what we want,” Li Xuemei said, blowing on the ink to help it dry faster.

“At the right time, we’ll present these to Young Doctor An. We want him to think about it, to want it. The best things are always the ones others come asking for.”

A good prescription is only useful if someone values it.

Yan Yu grinned. “Let Young Doctor An think our family is an endless treasure trove. Heh, every time he runs into a tricky case, he’ll come looking for our remedies… That actually feels kind of nice! I hope he digs up everything we’ve got soon.”

She had high hopes for Young Doctor An. It was Yan Yu herself who suggested giving him the family prescriptions so he could bring them into the spotlight.

Li Xuemei glanced at her. “Honestly, the best way would be to send you to Huimin Hall as an apprentice. Start from the basics—identifying herbs, learning their properties—then gradually study their medical techniques. Bit by bit, you could reveal that our family has a hidden trove of medical texts. Teaching and learning go hand in hand. While they teach you, they’ll unknowingly absorb our knowledge too. No one would suspect a thing.”

Yan Yu stopped cradling her cheeks and jumped to her feet. She scurried behind her mother and placed her small hands on her shoulders, gently kneading.

“Mama, please don’t make me learn! I don’t want to misdiagnose someone and prescribe the wrong medicine. Just thinking about it gives me chills!

Your daughter doesn’t have that kind of talent! I’m the one who waits to be diagnosed. When the doctor sticks needles in me, I won’t even flinch. If I have to drink medicine, I won’t ask for sugar…”

“Mhm.” Li Xuemei closed her eyes, enjoying the massage as she spoke slowly. “I hope you remember what you said today.”

“Mama, the Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up. Are we making mooncakes ourselves or buying them?” Yan Yu switched topics without missing a beat. “I asked Granny Rong—she knows how to make them! Our salted duck eggs are ready too. What if we make mooncakes with duck egg yolks? If we make a bunch, I wonder if we could sell them. Not sure if people around here even like egg yolk mooncakes…”

(End of Chapter)