The most dissolute couple in the capital

The next morning, the courtyard outside the free clinic suddenly became lively.

Li Chengjing was squatting on the threshold, listlessly pounding a bowl of Poria cocos with a brass pestle, when he saw a middle-aged man wearing a silk robe and sporting a goatee, waving a tattered folding fan, stride arrogantly through the courtyard gate with two servants.

"Oh my, I heard that a living Buddha has come from the capital. I am Zhang Huichun, a doctor with a little reputation in this area. I have come to pay my respects to Senior Qi!" The man drawled out his words, while his eyes darted around the courtyard.

Old Master Qi was taking the pulse of an old man when he heard this, and merely raised his eyelids slightly: "It's certainly fine for fellow practitioners to exchange ideas. Please make yourself at home, Doctor Zhang."

Zhang Huichun, having been rebuffed, turned his gaze to Li Chengjing, who was impatiently pounding medicine on the threshold.

He stepped forward, tapped the doorframe with his folding fan, and let out a sneer: "I say, Elder Qi, this medicine apprentice you brought from the capital is far too pampered. Look at the way he grinds medicine, so weak and feeble, like he's doing embroidery. He's just crushed all the medicinal properties of the herbs!"

Li Chengjing paused in his copper pestle, slowly raised his head, and his peach blossom eyes were full of the look of someone looking at a fool.

Zhang Huichun felt a jolt of fear under the man's intensely intimidating gaze, but determined to maintain his authority in front of the villagers, he forced a smile and continued his taunts: "Young man, let me give you a piece of advice: studying medicine isn't like choosing a courtesan. Being handsome is useless. With your clumsy hands and feet, you won't even be able to become a medicine dispenser. You should go back to the city and farm!"

Li Chengjing took a deep breath, about to curse his ancestors for eighteen generations, when Old Qi coughed heavily inside.

"My apprentice may be dull-witted, but he is honest and kind," said Old Qi. "If Doctor Zhang has come today only to teach my apprentice a lesson, then please leave."

Seeing this, Zhang Huichun immediately seized the opportunity, turned to face the surrounding villagers, and shouted loudly, "Fellow villagers! I've come today because I heard that many of you have recently fallen ill. The moldy medicine you took didn't help; in fact, it made your condition worse! I'm extremely worried!"

As he spoke, he instructed the servant to open a black lacquered wooden box, inside which were neatly stacked more than a dozen jars of dark ointment.

"This is my family's secret 'Cleansing Marrow and Detoxifying Ointment'! Didn't you eat damp medicinal herbs and have internal heat and toxins? This ointment is all about 'fighting poison with poison'! Just apply a fingernail-sized amount to your Baihui and Yongquan acupoints, and I guarantee your fever will subside and your pain will disappear within half an hour, leaving you full of energy!"

Several villagers whose children still had fevers and hadn't been able to get an appointment the night before suddenly brightened up, as if grasping at a lifeline, and crowded forward, asking, "Dr. Zhang, is this ointment really that effective?"

"Of course it's real!" Zhang Huichun smugly opened a jar, then grabbed a man next to him who was complaining of a headache and rubbed it hard on his temples. "Try it!"

The man was stunned for a moment, then exclaimed in delight, "Wow! Amazing! I really felt a cool sensation on my forehead, and my headache isn't so bad anymore!"

The scene immediately descended into chaos as villagers pulled out crumpled copper coins, eager to buy the dark ointment.

Old Qi frowned, then abruptly stood up: "Wait! The *Suwen* says, 'Treat cold with heat, and heat with cold.' When external wind-cold transforms into heat, one should use pungent and cooling herbs to expel the exterior, supplemented with proper medicinal herbs for conditioning. Your ointment has a pungent odor and its ingredients are unknown. How can you recklessly claim to be using poison to fight poison? If it damages the root cause, this is no trivial matter!"

Zhang Huichun curled his lip in disdain: "Senior, that's just the air of a bookworm from the capital! You may know the books by heart, but we country folk are fragile and resilient, so we need strong medicine! Yours is like a slow-acting doctor treating a fatal disease, while mine is a folk remedy for a serious illness. Everyone has seen the results!"

"That's right, Doctor Qi. The pain is gone after applying Zhang Langzhong's ointment, but your bitter medicine takes half a day to boil." Several ignorant villagers began to chime in, their eyes filled with more suspicion as they looked at Old Qi.

Old Qi was so angry his beard trembled: "Absurd! This only treats the symptoms, not the root cause. The pain may be relieved, but the pathogenic factors have been forced into the internal organs, which will surely become a serious problem in the future!"

The two engaged in a heated debate about medical principles in the courtyard. The villagers couldn't understand the fancy words, but they thought Zhang Huichun's ointment was a good thing because it could relieve pain immediately.

Meanwhile, Li Chengjing, who had been called "clumsy," had already quietly moved to the side of the black lacquered wooden box.

Taking advantage of everyone's attention being focused on Old Qi and Zhang Huichun, he stretched out his long, slender, fair fingers and, with lightning speed, secretly scooped out a small amount of ointment from the edge of an open jar and hid it under his fingernail.

Li Chengjing retreated to a corner, brought the dark ointment to his nose, and took a gentle breath.

"Ugh—" he mentally groaned, "What kind of filthy swill smells like? Even a dog would move away overnight if it smelled this!"

He recalled that when he was making cosmetics for Cui Qingyi, he had used a similarly strong-smelling blend of mint and cloves to mask the fishy smell of a certain spice. But the pungent smell of this ointment was clearly meant to mask an even worse ingredient.

Li Chengjing leaned closer again to smell the faint scent of herbal juice hidden beneath the pungent mint aroma, and a strange, poisonous herb he had seen in medical books with Old Qi suddenly flashed through his mind.

"The sap of datura, or some kind of poisonous mushroom with a mild numbing effect?" Li Chengjing sneered.

No wonder it stopped hurting after applying it. This isn't treating an illness; it's numbing the nerves!

They may look energetic in the short term, but if the villagers use this paralyzing toxin for a long time, something bad will happen to them sooner or later!

To dare to use such despicable ointment-making skills in front of me is simply a provocation!

Li Chengjing patted the residue off his hands, rolled up his coarse cloth sleeves, and strode out, ready to skin this quack doctor alive.

The words were barely out of his throat when Li Chengjing glanced out of the corner of his eye at the corner outside the courtyard wall.

The village chief, who had been standing by the crowd watching coldly, had quietly slipped away. And Zhang the doctor, who had just been arguing with Old Qi, also made an excuse to get some goods and disappeared to a corner.

The village chief looked around and, seeing that no one was around, smiled broadly and took out a heavy gray cloth money bag from his pocket, respectfully stuffing it into Zhang Langzhong's sleeve.

The two exchanged a knowing smile, a smile that betrayed their unspoken greed and cunning.

"Good heavens..." Li Chengjing gasped inwardly. "No wonder all the medicinal herbs in this village were moldy and damp, substandard. It turns out the village chief was lining his own pocket, distributing rotten medicine; the villagers got sick from taking it, and then this doctor just happened to show up, selling this poisonous 'miracle ointment' to make money. These two are in cahoots!"

If you don't kill the snake, you'll only bring harm upon yourself.

Since the water is deeper than we imagined, we can't just peel off the surface; we have to pull it all out by the roots for it to be fun.