Iron Snow Clouds

Chapter 431: Mortar

In the autumn when Zuo Youqun was 24 years old, it was raining heavily. Her elder sister Zuo Youtang, a doctor, was taken away from the Tiecang tribe by a woman named Qiao Guangchong. Before she left, she knew that this departure would be a farewell to Zuo Youqun forever, because the doctors taken away by Qiao Guangchong never returned. Before she got on the carriage, she saw Zuo Youqun's tearful eyes and smiled and said to him, "I'm just going to study medicine. What's there to be sad about? You're an adult now, don't be like a child! I'm leaving, take care of yourself! Put on more clothes when the weather gets cold." After that, she turned around and got on Qiao Guangchong's carriage.

The drizzle suddenly turned into heavy rain that hit the ground violently.

Zuo Youqun shouted in the rain: "Sister, if you leave, home will be gone! I don't know where you are going, but I will definitely find you in the future. I will go home sooner or later!"

Zuo Youtang heard Zuo Youqun's shout, but he didn't even look back at Zuo Youqun. He just shed silent tears in the carriage.

The carriage moved away in the heavy rain.

Zuo Youqun wiped his eyes with his hands, and suddenly remembered that he had not given her the birthday present he prepared in advance, so he chased after her desperately, shouting as he chased after her: "Wait a minute! Sister, I haven't given you the birthday present yet!"

Unless he stopped the carriage and asked the people on it to wait for him to get the gift, it would be useless even if he caught up with the man, because he didn't have the gift. However, he obviously couldn't catch up with the carriage, and soon, the carriage disappeared from his sight.

Zuo Youqun returned to the place that he felt was no longer home in the rain, staring blankly at the birthday present he had prepared for Zuo Youtang in advance.

The gift was a small stone medicine mortar. Zuo Youtang's birthday was coming up in a few days, and he had planned to give it to her on her birthday, but Zuo Youtang passed away before her birthday.

Zuo Youtang is fourteen years older than Zuo Youqun. As early as when Zuo Youqun was one year old, their parents were framed while practicing medicine and were wrongly convicted of intentional homicide and executed. Fifteen-year-old Zuo Youtang took Zuo Youqun to a place where no one knew about their parents' situation and practiced medicine for a living. Zuo Youqun was raised by Zuo Youtang. Zuo Youtang followed her parents in practicing medicine since she was a child. She particularly liked a stone medicine mortar and was never willing to use it. She always put the stone medicine mortar in a separate place from other medicine mortars. Later, the medicine mortar was lost by the young Zuo Youqun. After Zuo Youqun grew up, he gave her medicine mortars several times, but after all, they were not the original ones.

Many years passed, and Zuo Youqun unexpectedly saw the mortar that he had lost when he was a child at the market. He was surprised and bought it, intending to give it to Zuo Youtang on her birthday. However, before she saw the mortar, she had already boarded Qiao Guangchong's carriage.

Qiao Guangchong was a martial arts expert who dominated a place, but she had been poisoned. The poison would not kill people, but it would cause them to suffer for a long time. When the poison took effect, she might kill people at will. Over the years, she would bring a doctor back every once in a while to help her research the antidote. No outsiders knew where those people were taken by her, and the doctors she took away never returned.

The person who helped her find a doctor was Qiao Anbo, Qiao Guangchong's brother.

At that time, after Qiao Anbo learned that Zuo Youqun had given Tie Wandao the wrong medicine, he went to find Zuo Youtang and said that if she did not leave with Qiao Guangchong, he would tell everyone that her brother Zuo Youqun had made a mistake in dispensing medicine for Tie Wandao, and in this way, her brother would die without a burial place.

(End of this chapter)