Chapter 12, Epiphany

Translator: StarReader

 

As evening approached, Su Chen returned to the Medicine King Estate.

 

In the following days, he noticed his fellow disciples, including Zhang Tieniu, were subtly showing more attention and respect towards their master, Li Kui. This behavior struck Su Chen as unusual.

 

One day, while wandering around the estate, Su Chen came across a familiar-looking ham and local specialties hidden away in a storage room. He realized these items were identical to what Zhang Tieniu had. It dawned on him that even someone as simple-minded as Zhang Tieniu knew the importance of presenting gifts to their master. If Zhang Tieniu, with his limited intelligence, could understand this, then Yang Caizhi, who was known for being shrewd and clever, must have been doing the same thing in secret for quite some time.

 

This revelation came as an epiphany to Su Chen.

 

Over the past few months, he had gradually forgotten about the crucial matter that all outer disciples faced every six months: the harsh evaluation process that could potentially lead to their dismissal from the group. However, it was clear now that Yang Caizhi, Zhang Tieniu, and others never forgot this important event.

 

The realization left Su Chen deeply shaken.

 

When six months were up, Pharmacist Li Kui had to eliminate one of his five outer disciples and send them to Errand Hall to work. There was no specific method for deciding who would be eliminated; it was entirely up to Li Kui’s discretion.

 

Coming to his senses, Su Chen carefully evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of all fellow disciples, trying to figure out who might be the first to be sent away.

 

The five outer disciples had spent these months learning basic medicine and martial arts—subjects that were rudimentary at best. Their skills were comparable, so it was impossible to determine who was more talented.

 

Since their abilities were equal, Su Chen suspected that other factors would come into play for deciding the elimination. Among them, Yang Caizhi was known for his sharp mind and sweet tongue. He subtly praised Li Kui at every opportunity, anticipating his needs, and was always one step ahead of him. For this, he had earned Li Kui’s favor and approval—unmatched by the others.

 

On the other hand, Zhang Tieniu, with his sturdy build and great strength, had taken on all the heavy labor around the courtyard—tasks like carrying water, chopping firewood, and moving supplies. These were chores that no one could compete with him in. Li Kui might not have credited him much in terms of learning, but at least there was hard work to consider.

 

Qin Huihui and Kong Xinqiao were two girls with delicate thoughts. Though they couldn’t match their senior brothers in ability, they were well-behaved and often praised by Li Kui. Only Su Chen felt different. He had never thought about pleasing his master…

 

Upon reflection, he realized there was nothing about him that would make his master favor him.

 

Su Chen felt somewhat discouraged. In his home village, the Zhou Village, he used to live carefree, climbing trees, catching birds, and fishing in the river for fun. Now, under Li Kui’s tutelage, he diligently studied both medicine and martial arts, hoping to gain approval. However, Li Kui’s cold glances and lack of praise left him disheartened.

 

Their relationship was distant, and Su Chen knew he had no advantage over others in his master’s eyes. He feared becoming the first disciple to be discarded.

 

Thinking about all this, he grew increasingly anxious and impatient.

 

“No, there are still three months left. I need to make every moment count! If I get weeded out by my master, I’ll no longer be an outer disciple and become a disciple in the lowest-ranking division of the Medicine King Group, the Errand Hall.”

 

Within the Medicine King Group, disciples who trained under pharmacists enjoyed numerous privileges compared to those who were discarded and became errand disciples. For one, disciples received free room and board, along with access to the Medicine King Estate’s library without any charges. But once a disciple was deemed unfit by their master and relegated to the role of an errand disciple, they lost all these benefits.

 

An errand disciple had to support themselves financially from then on—paying for food, clothing, shelter, and even library access.

 

“However, it’s too late to start buttering up my master now. No matter how sweet my words may be, they won’t outweigh the value of several pounds of cured pork. I’m penniless, unlike Yang Caizhi or Zhang Tieniu, whose families are willing to spend resources to please my master.”

 

Su Chen pondered deeply on this.

 

Since there was a very likely chance of being eliminated by his master, he had to make use of these final few months to focus on what was most important.

 

Soon, Su Chen thought of a matter that concerned his very life.

 

His initial reason for entering the Medicine King Estate was to survive, so he wouldn’t end up starving to death in the county city.

 

But there was another purpose: he wanted to master medicine and cure his bluestone tear illness.

 

Now that he had become a disciple of the Medicine King Group, he no longer worried about food or clothing.

 

However, if his condition remained untreated, it would threaten his life at any moment.

 

Su Chen hadn’t been in a hurry, hoping to gradually learn more about medicine by following Li Kui before seeking ways to treat his own illness.

 

But now it seemed that he might be the first to be eliminated by his master, leaving him with little time to learn additional skills.

 

[While still a disciple, I can make use of the remaining three months to freely view medicinal texts in the library and see if there are any prescriptions that could cure my strange illness.]

 

…

 

In the Wu Region, which consists of thirteen counties, the Medicine King Group was one of the five most powerful martial groups. Disciples within the group specialize in pharmacology, and naturally, the library housed an enormous collection of medicinal texts for them to study. The library was located at the heart of the Medicine King Estate.

 

For any prominent martial group, books were the core—great efforts were made to collect and preserve them. Those without a strong foundation of secret manuals were merely small factions and couldn’t achieve greatness. In the past one or two hundred years, each successive leader of the Medicine King Group had been diligent in building up knowledge, carefully accumulating thousands upon thousands of volumes of secret manuals stored within the library for reference by group disciples.

 

With such a formidable accumulation over the centuries, the Medicine King Group had developed into a flourishing martial organization with great momentum.

 

The importance of the library was no less than that of the group’s vaults.

 

Such a crucial place naturally had one of the Medicine King Group’s five main halls, the Swordsmanship Hall, stationed here with one of their disciples.

 

Within the Swordsmanship Hall, only the most disciplined and trusted core disciples had the honor to serve as the keepers.

 

Once a keeper chose to guard the library, they had to close themselves off for ten years in seclusion, without leaving unless absolutely necessary.

 

Of course, these keepers enjoyed many privileges, such as unlimited access to all the books and receiving a generous stipend each month to support their training.

 

After completing their decade-long seclusion, when the keepers emerged, they often became first-rate experts within the Medicine King Group.

 

The library consisted of five levels, filled with countless books categorized mainly into three types: medical texts, martial arts manuals, and miscellaneous writings. Each level required a specific clearance to enter.

 

The uses for medical and martial arts texts needed no explanation.

 

The miscellaneous section included various travel logs, legends, fairy tales, or records of states, geography, and history. These were meant to broaden the disciples’ horizons and help them understand the larger world beyond Gusu County, preventing members of the Medicine King Group from becoming ignorant like birds in a cage.

 

The books were categorized and placed on different floors according to their grade and prices.

 

On the first floor, disciples could enter for free to read ordinary books. However, if they were discarded by their masters and became Errand Hall disciples, they would have to pay for access.

 

The second floor was exclusively for inner disciples, herbalists, and heads of various departments, who could read books for free. Other disciples wishing to borrow books from there would need to spend silver coins.

 

The third floor required one to hold the esteemed title of pharmacist or higher to be allowed entry.

 

The fourth and fifth floors were home to high-grade classics, accessible only by the innermost circle of the group’s leadership.

 

As an outer disciple who was still in the apprentice stage under a pharmacist’s tutelage, Su Chen was permitted to read books for free on the first floor but could not take them away—only allowed to view them within the library.

 

Having been an outer disciple for three months now, Su Chen had already mastered reading and writing, enabling him to understand most medicinal texts.

 

Each morning, he cultivated in front of the wooden posts in the pharmacist’s courtyard, hammering away at martial arts exercises while tempering his Lower Dantian. In the afternoons, he joined other disciples under Li Kui to identify herbs in a pharmacy.

 

By evening, after finishing his meal, he didn’t return to his quarters like the other disciples. Instead, he hurried to the library, seeking out rare medical texts during the quiet hours of night in hopes of finding cases related to the mysterious bluestone tears illness.

 

The first floor of the library was lined with hundreds of bookshelves, each packed tightly with tens of thousands of scrolls and books. Some ancient and tattered volumes were piled in the corners, towering higher than several people, their spines dusted with layers of grime.

 

Su Chen sought out texts on difficult and obscure medical conditions, hoping to uncover any mention of the rare bluestone tears condition. But this proved no easy task. While the library housed thousands upon thousands of medical scrolls, few were dedicated to treating such rare diseases. In fact, only a handful of volumes focused solely on these mysterious and complex cases.

 

This was hardly surprising. Even the ordinary healers of Gusu City relied on curing common ailments to make a living. The illnesses suffered by the average citizen—fevers, colds, minor pains—were what most medical texts documented. Rare and difficult-to-treat conditions were simply beyond the scope of everyday practice.

 

Cases of rare and complicated diseases were often years apart, sometimes passing even a decade without seeing even one. If someone were to specialize in such cases, no matter how skilled they might be, they would likely end up starving.

 

It was precisely for this reason that Father Su and Mother Su traveled with Su Chen all throughout Gusu County City, seeking herbs for treatment. However, not a single healer or pharmacist at any of the dozens of herb shops they visited could provide a clear diagnosis of Su Chen’s condition.

 

Their journey eventually led them to Han Mountain Daoist Temple, where Daoist Han Shan examined Su Chen and revealed the true nature of his illness. Believing that he had been cursed by heaven’s hatred, Daoist Han Shan provided him with a diagnosis.

 

Determined to find a cure, Su Chen spent several evenings in the library, searching through all the rare disease texts stored on the first floor—approximately forty to fifty volumes. He carefully reviewed each one, but not once did he come across any mention of his baffling illness.

 

[Why isn’t there any record of it?” Su Chen pondered. “Is it possible that I’m the only one who’s ever suffered from this strange illness? But if even the city’s healers hadn’t encountered this condition before, how could Daoist Han Shan have diagnosed it as heaven’s hate?]

 

These thoughts left him deeply troubled.

 

After much contemplation, Su Chen suddenly realized something. Daoist Han Shan was a master Daoist, not a healer, and his studies were in mystical arts—specifically the ways of the Dao—rather than herbology.

 

Maybe something could be found in Daoist texts. The thought had him excited, immediately searching through the stacks of miscellaneous books in the library for various Daoist texts.

 

Finally, among several dozen old and dusty Daoist scripts, Su Chen astonishingly found some descriptions that mirrored his symptoms.

 

“Everyone has a spirit, which resides in the Muddy Grain Palace, or Upper Dantian for practitioners. Daoists refer to Muddy Grain Palace as Violet Palace, or Spirit Mountain.

 

“Spirit Mountain is the heart.

 

“Eyes are the mirror to one’s spirit.

 

“When Spirit Mountain cracks, the essence leaks out. When the essence leaks, it flows out from the eyes.”

 

These vague and brief descriptions caused Su Chen’s eyes to widen in surprise and excitement.

 

Master Li Kui had never taught him about the spirit or Spirit Mountain, only mentioning Upper Dantian in passing as a place for refining one’s spirit.

 

Su Chen did not understand what refining the spirit meant. However, the last phrases, ‘when essence leaks out, it flows from the eyes’—he understood those completely.

 

These descriptions were strikingly similar to his own condition.

 

“The child likely suffers from heaven’s hate, with a leakage of essence within him. When he cries, the essence flows out through his eyes, leaving him weak and sick. Treating it with ginseng to replenish essence and prolong life might work, but it would only be a temporary fix—it wouldn’t address the root cause. It’s an early-life illness with no cure.”

 

Su Chen recalled that his parents had mentioned this during their visits with Daoist Han Shan, who had spoken these very words when diagnosing his condition. Comparing those remarks to what he now read in these Daoist texts seemed to confirm the connection.

 

All signs pointed to a mysterious leakage of essence within him. The essence escaped with his tears, leaving his body incredibly weakened.

 

As for why this leaking essence condensed into small blue pebbles after falling from his eyes—this was an even stranger phenomenon. Su Chen combed through dozens of Daoist texts but found no answers whatsoever.

 

Even a wise Daoist like Han Shan didn’t know, only vaguely saying that it might be heaven’s hate stone, which was the jealousy of heaven.

 

[Let’s ignore these for now and solve the problem step by step.]

 

Su Chen was very excited when he thought of this.

 

“The Spirit Mountain is cracked, and essence is leaking!”

 

This sentence alone was a very important clue, pointing directly to the Spirit Mountain. This might very well be the root of his illness.

 

He must find a way to find the so-called Spirit Mountain so that he could see it with his own eyes and confirm that it was cracked. Then, find a way to treat it.

 

“Everyone has a spirit, which is placed in the Muddy Grain Palace, commonly known as Upper Dantian by practitioners. Daoists call Muddy Grain Palace ‘the Violet Palace’ or ‘Spirit Mountain.'”

 

This sentence indicated that Spirit Mountain was located in the Muddy Grain Palace in Upper Dantian.

 

But how could one even enter the Muddy Grain Palace to see their Spiritual Mountain? Su Chen eagerly flipped through various Daoist texts, continuing to search for clues. The current leads were far from enough, and he lacked specific methods to locate the Spirit Mountain.