Chapter 1893 — Beyond Expectation
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
As Bai Lingtou listened to Wei Zhao, the teasing glint in his eyes slowly hardened into something grave. He had tossed out that question on a whim, purely to make things difficult for Wei Zhao and keep him obediently tucked away at school. The boy had a knack for medicine, true, but there was still plenty he did not know. Yet Wei Zhao had rattled off the formula for the trauma salve as though reading from a page, and Bai Lingtou's eyes went wide with astonishment.
Wei Zhao had guessed right: Bai Lingtou had no designs on stealing any formula. He had no idea Wei Zhao was the one who had compounded the salve—otherwise he would never have set such a question. He had, in the past, tried to work out the formula himself, and with his abilities that was no difficult feat.
He had done it out of sheer curiosity, nothing more. Someone had managed to produce a trauma salve at so absurdly low a price! He had in his possession an ancient formula for wound medicine, and the salve Kang Shenyi Pharmaceutical had produced earlier had come from exactly that formula—but its ingredients were frightfully expensive. So Bai Lingtou was baffled: for Guan the physician's trauma salve to be so cheap, either the formula had been changed or the man was losing money for the sake of reputation. He had therefore studied and puzzled it out for himself, and the more he did, the more he marveled at whoever had devised the formula. What sort of person was so formidable, possessed of such solid pharmacological knowledge, as to wring the utmost effect from the most ordinary of herbs for bruises and sprains?
And yet even Bai Lingtou had needed many days of pondering before arriving at a complete formula. For him to recite it as swiftly as Wei Zhao had was simply beyond possibility.
So Bai Lingtou's expression shifted, and the way he looked at Wei Zhao took on a different shade.
"Well, Elder Bai—did I get it right?" Wei Zhao asked with a grin.
"You did..." Bai Lingtou shook his head as if dazed, then sighed. "You're missing one ingredient, but everything else is accurate—no, wait. You didn't even open the box. How did you judge?"
His shock had made him overlook an important detail: from first to last, Wei Zhao had merely recited the formula on his own, never once opening the box of salve. How, then, had he judged? Could it be that he already possessed this formula?
A flicker of surprise crossed Wei Zhao's eyes as well. Bai Lingtou actually knew he had left out an ingredient? Did that mean he already knew the formula for the trauma salve? Wei Zhao had that ability, but he was confident that even Old Man Wei was no match for him.
For Old Man Wei to distinguish things so finely, he too needed days of pondering and inference and analysis of each herb's properties before he could manage it. But Wei Zhao had grown up among piles of medicinal herbs and had a gift for it besides, which was why he could analyze a formula so swiftly—the products of Kang Shenyi Pharmaceutical, for instance...
Yet Bai Lingtou could do it too?
"Correct—it's missing a measure of chuanxiong. But how did you know?" Wei Zhao asked, a little uncertain.
"You know? You actually know?" Bai Lingtou's eyes went wide. "You had this formula before?"
"Naturally!" Wei Zhao nodded. But inwardly he was beginning to admire Bai Lingtou. Wei Zhao seldom admired anyone; even Guan Xuewen was merely a friend across the generations, with nothing about him to inspire Wei Zhao's respect. But for Bai Lingtou, Wei Zhao genuinely felt a measure of admiration.
"How do you come to have this formula?" Bai Lingtou asked, studying him strangely.
"If I told you I compounded this formula myself, would you believe me?" A thought stirred in Wei Zhao, and he asked.
Having revealed this much already, he might as well reveal a little more. Then when he skipped class at will in the future, Bai Lingtou would probably not interfere.