Returning to her room, she immediately
entered her dimension to clean and disinfect her tools before putting them into
her sterile medical tool box. She didn’t rush to go back out but headed toward
her ten or so acres of herb field, picked a few common herbs, and started
preparing them according to the method taught by her master.
Preparing herbs was no small feat, it
entails methods such as steaming, boiling, stir-frying, baking, roasting, sauteing,
fei’ing1, etc. Many a times, the herbs needed to be processed in order
to increase its efficacy, decrease its toxicity and/or side effects.
Picture: Chinese Asparagus
Source: zhifure.com
T/N: Could have swore I have seen these
in my neighborhood. =D
As proven by fact, just knowing the
method did not mean one could prepare good medicinal herbs. Gu Ye was not happy
with her first few batches of Chinese asparagus. She has overly keen senses,
she could tell the efficacy of the medicines just from its smell.
She finally prepared a batched of
acceptable Chinese asparagus after five tries. She pinched off a small piece
and chewed it in her mouth carefully before she spit out the dregs and rinsed
her mouth. Alright! This should be good enough to pass her master’s
examination.
“Mei mei, it’s time for dinner!” Since
Gu Ye used studying medicinal herbs as an excuse, Gu Xiao and Gu Ming tried to
disturb her as little as possible. Dinner was a joint effort between the two of
them, Gu Xiao kneaded the dough and formed the biscuits and Gu Ming helped with
starting the fire. Even though the biscuits were of all different thicknesses,
but they were made out of white flour, so their tastes were alright.
Their dinner table and stove table have
yet to be made, so the family just put a piece of plank on top of the stove as
their make-shift dinner table. Biscuit soup with braised hare meat, this was
much better food than what they had back at the Gu’s.
Even Gu Ye, who still has a weak stomach,
was able to eat a large bowl of biscuit soup and had a few pieces of hare meat.
One must know that they type of bowls they used were the ceramic ones that were
bigger than one’s face. Gu Ye inadvertently overate and had to take some syrups
to aid with her digestion.
Zhang Lihu also had dinner at the Gu’s.
As Gu Ye had reassured him repeatedly that there would be no residual effect to
his injury, Zhang Lihu was relieved and had a great appetite. He had two big
bowls of biscuit soup and one bowl of hare meat. Gu Ye was very impressed by
his appetite.
After dinner, Gu Ye went back over to her
master’s room to learn more about preparing medicinal herbs. She started by
showing him the Chinese asparagus that she had prepared.
The sage apothecary took the medicinal
herbs from her, flipped it back and forth and examined it carefully. The more
he looked the more contended he was. This disciple of his had only been
learning from him for two days and had already grasped the essence of preparing
medicinal herbs. Her techniques were still elementary, but he trusted that she
would achieve great things in due time.
“Not bad, you have grasped the steaming
process quite well. Now let’s move onto boiling…” The sage apothecary felt that
his disciple was like a land that had droughts for too long. She could absorb
almost everything he taught her. On the occasions that she couldn’t grasp it
right away, she would first commit them to memory then slowly understand them
through physical exercises.
Other than teaching her medicinal herb
preparation, the sage apothecary also tested her on Gu Ye on her medical knowledge.
The sage apothecary found it odd that even those Gu Ye possessed the technique
of Hua Tuo, her basics in medical knowledge was almost non-existing. This
included the most basics observation, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry, pulse
feeling and palpation2. As odd as he felt, he had no choice but to cram basic
Chinese medical knowledge with this disciple of his. Luckily she was a fast
learner, otherwise he’d be bored to death in no time.
The sage apothecary was very curious who
trained her in the secret techniques of Hua Tuo and how they were able to
trained her to become such a amazing surgeon when she knew nothing about the
basics?
__
Notes:
1.
Grinding up the
herbs with water into fine powder, add more water and stir, then take the
finest dust floating on the surface of the water.
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