Falling Dreams Of Fang Hua

Chapter 28: Meeting an Old Friend

Three days later.

"Use this formula to simmer these medicines, the imperial physician's waiting impatiently," a 13 to 14 year old eunuch hailed me with his hand.

"Yes."

I pinched the paper between my fingers and gave it a glance. The written words resembled flying dragons and dancing phoenixes. Tian Shan Mountain Snow Lotus, Thousand-Year Ginseng...though the ingredients for the pill were incomparably rare, their effects were rather ordinary.

"Hey...where are you going?" the young eunuch stopped me with an arm.

I raised my eyes and lazily replied, "Didn't you tell me to boil some medicine?"

"Wrong, wrong!" he stomped his foot, rapping me with one finger. "The imperial physicians each take turns serving in the palace. Understand?"

I was clueless.

"Let me put it this way," he looked around, then drew close to speak in a soft voice. "Today's physician is really hard to please. He doesn't want any of his prescriptions to be made in the pill room furnace because he has to personally dictate the times and temperatures for the fire. So for this pill, we have to go to his place and have him watch us make it. Only then can we give it to the master."How ludicrous.

This wasn't something for the emperor, so was there a need to go to such lengths?

"Why aren't you hurrying up...what are you spacing out for?" he gave me a disdainful glance. "Aish, forget it...a newbie girl like you definitely doesn't understand palace rules. Come on, I'll show you the way so you can learn a little something. Gong gong's[1] got lots of things to take care of, so I'll only teach you once."

"Thank you, gong gong." I lowered my head, gathered my ingredients, and straightened. The whole way I followed him left and right, he swished his robes with a haughty air.

Can someone explain to me what this eunuch was acting so arrogantly about to my face....?

Did he think that if I got annoyed enough to poison him, he'd get a new life after being dead and turn into a man?

Ah. Pah!

He suddenly came to a stop and turned around to look at me. "What about you chattering about behind my back?"

I had a sudden moment of panic.

"To answer gong gong's question, I was saying..." My thoughts were in a knot before I calmed myself down. Suddenly, a fresh scent floated over on the air, and I assumed a posture of sniffing for something. "It's smells very nice inside this courtyard."

"You haven't experienced much," he backed up a few steps, scooping up his sleeves to point somewhere to my left. "Do you see over there? There's a pond full of blooming red lotuses, of course it'll smell nice."

"Is this the season for red lotuses to bloom?" I was unconvinced. I counted off with my fingers, wondering if I'd remember the time wrong...

"It's not," his reply was concise and to the point. A glance swept my way, before he added, "Two days after the crown prince brought back some beautiful stranger, all the flowers bloomed in this pond."

Tsk. Tsk, tsk.

No wonder, then. Looks like our Fang Hua had some skills. Beautiful, it really was beautiful... Every flower a flower, each petal a petal.

I placed the ingredients for the medicine aside, and leaned against the railings to look down below. A mist hung over the entire pond, and all the lotuses were half-opened, as if shy.