A young boy from the 1970s, separated from his family, fled famine and led his younger brother into

Su Nianci picked up the spatula from the ground, wiped it on her apron a couple of times, and hung it back on the hook next to the stove.

She didn't ask Lu Xingzhou any further questions.

Turning around and walking back to the courtyard gate, Su An was still squatting on the steps, the bowl upside down, having licked the last drop of soup clean.

"An'an".

Su An looked up.

"When can we get that herbal medicine atlas your instructor mentioned?"

Su An paused for a moment, then turned to look at Lu Xingzhou behind him.

Lu Xingzhou leaned against the door frame, his expression calm.

"I didn't tell her the details; she guessed it herself."

Su An swallowed hard and placed the empty bowl on the steps.

"The instructor said the package has arrived at the transit station in Beijing. I just need to go and sign for it tomorrow morning."

"Have you looked through that atlas?"

"I flipped through a few pages, but I couldn't understand them very well. They were all drawings of grass and flowers, with lots of small writing next to them. The handwriting was old, and some parts were even blurred."

Su Nianci nodded and didn't ask any more questions.

The next morning, Su An rode the borrowed bicycle out for a while. When he came back, he was carrying something wrapped in three layers of old newspapers, and then put in a military waterproof bag.

He placed the items on the desk in the study, untied the waterproof bag, and peeled off the newspaper.

A small booklet, about the size of a palm, was revealed.

The book has a kraft paper cover, is hand-bound, and has three rows of hemp thread sewn through the spine; the stitches are rough but sturdy.

There were no words on the cover, only a layer of smoky, yellowish-brown residue, and the edges were worn and frayed.

Su Nianci sat at her desk, not touching it at first.

She washed her hands, dried them with a towel, and then reached out to open the booklet.

The first page.

A hand-drawn illustration of a plant fills the entire page, with delicate ink lines and extremely precise depiction of the veins in the leaves. The roots are rendered with light ink to convey the texture of soil.

On the right side of the picture, there is a line of small characters written vertically. The handwriting is old and the strokes show the pauses and variations of a calligraphy brush.

"Bupleurum is produced on the shady slopes of mountains. Its roots are harvested in spring and its leaves in autumn. Remove the roots and soil, and dry them in the shade."

The prescription is followed immediately by another prescription.

Su Nianci's eyes swept over, her pupils contracting slightly.

She turned to the second page.

Another plant, drawn in the same way, with two prescriptions attached beside it. One of them was circled in red with a vermilion pen, and four words were written next to the circle: "Verified to be effective."

Page 3.

Su Nianci's back left the chair.

She leaned forward, her hands resting on the table, her nose almost touching the paper.

"Sis, what's wrong?"

Su An, standing to the side, was startled by her reaction.

Su Nianci didn't reply to him. Her eyes scanned the page three times, and her lips moved silently, as if she were reciting something.

She reached out and turned to the fourth page, the fifth page, and the sixth page.

He flipped through the pages faster and faster, but when his fingertips touched the paper, he was extremely careful, with a touch as light as if he were touching a butterfly's wing.

She stopped when she turned to page nine.

The image on the page depicts a Pinellia ternata plant—yes, the same herb from which the daughter of the plant got her name.

She recognized the prescription next to it.

It's not just ordinary knowledge; it's the kind of knowledge you gain from flipping through fragments of medical literature in a past life.

Lost prescriptions of Zhou Boming, a folk doctor in the late Qing Dynasty.

The academic community has debated this for decades. Three medical universities jointly held six seminars just to find a complete version of this one prescription. The final conclusion was that "the original prescription has been lost and cannot be verified."

The recipe is now written in its entirety in the tattered booklet in front of her, which has been used as a table leg prop.

Su Nianci pressed her finger on the line of prescriptions and read it down word by word.

Bupleurum, Scutellaria baicalensis, Pinellia ternata, ginger, jujube, licorice, ginseng, and Poria cocos.

The proportions of the ingredients were precise down to the coin and fraction, and the processing method was described in three different variations, each corresponding to a different ailment.

She flipped through four more pages and found a second incomplete prescription that she recognized.

The third.

the fourth.

the seventh.

Seven prescriptions.

This booklet contains seven prescriptions that scholars have debated for half a century without being able to come up with a complete set.

Su Nianci closed the booklet, sat back in her chair, placed her hands flat on the table, and stared at the old, yellowed kraft paper cover for a long time.

Su An's legs were aching from standing there.

"Sis, what do you think of this thing? Is it valuable?"

Su Nianci shook her head.

"This thing cannot be measured in money."

Su An scratched the back of his head.

"Is it a good thing or a bad thing?"

"You traded two cans of luncheon meat for a gold mine."

Su An opened his mouth, but couldn't close it for a long time.

Lu Xingzhou then entered the study, carrying two cups of tea. He placed one cup in front of Su Nianci and handed the other to Su An.

"How did you find this book?"

Su An took the teacup, took a sip, and organized his thoughts.

"There is a village near the camp. At the entrance of the village lives an old hunter who is over seventy years old. He has bad legs and walks with a limp."

"Once, when we were on patrol and passed by his house, I saw something crookedly placed under the legs of his broken table. It was this booklet."

"I squatted down and took a look. I turned to a page and it was full of drawings of herbs. I remembered the things you usually tinker with, and I thought they might be useful."

"The old hunter said this thing was left to him by his father. He couldn't read, so he used it to prop up table legs for at least twenty years."

"I asked him if he could give it to me, and he said yes, but I had to exchange it for something."

Su An rubbed his nose.

"I didn't have anything else on me, just two cans of luncheon meat. He smelled them and said okay, deal."

Lu Xingzhou glanced at Su Nianci.

Is it worth it?

Su Nianci picked up her teacup, took a sip, and put it down.

"An'an, when you get back, tell the instructor that I understand the origin and acquisition method of this atlas. If any additional procedures are needed later, I will handle the arrangements."

Su An nodded.

"Don't mention the map to anyone else, including Lin Wenjun. Wait until I've finished organizing it before we talk about it."

"Okay, sis."

Su An tactfully took his teacup and left the study.

After the door closed, only Su Nianci and Lu Xingzhou remained in the room.

Su Nianci reopened the booklet and started turning the pages one by one, beginning with the first page.

The entire atlas has about forty pages, but at least ten pages are missing at the beginning, there are several broken pages in the middle, and the last few pages are severely damaged with the ink bleeding through most of them. Several prescriptions are only half of the original text.

She took a blank notebook out of the drawer, opened it to the first page, and began to copy it down.

Lu Xingzhou watched from the side for a while.

"Can you finish copying tonight?"

"We can't finish copying it all; just checking it will take several days."

"Then you should eat dinner first."

I'm not hungry.

"Nian Nian".

"Um?"

"If you don't eat, I'll confiscate the booklet."

Su Nianci paused for a moment, then looked up and glared at him.

Lu Xingzhou looked at her without changing his expression, his posture even more self-righteous than Banxia's.

Su Nianci put down her pen and stood up.

"I'll come back after I finish eating."

"Okay, I'll cook you a bowl of noodles and bring it in."

After finishing her noodles, Su Nianci returned to her study.

She spread out the chart, next to which were the yellowed prescriptions from her father's tin box, and compared the two.

The copying process was very slow. For each herb, she had to go through the pharmacological knowledge she had learned in her previous life in her mind to confirm whether there were any discrepancies between the records in the atlas and the modern pharmacopoeia.

Most of the dosages were consistent, with only one or two instances of slight differences in dosage, which she circled in red and annotated with "to be verified".

When she turned to page twenty-three, her pen stopped.

The prescription on the page is called "Dingjing San".

It is used to treat infantile convulsions, high fever with spasms, upward rolling of the eyes, and trismus.

The main prescription contains six herbs: Uncaria rhynchophylla, Cicadae Periostracum, Bombyx mori, Gastrodia elata, Arisaema cum Bile, and Scorpion.

She stared at the six herbs for a full half minute, then reached for the stack of her father's handwritten prescriptions next to her.

Turn to the third page.

My father's handwriting was messier than the illustrations, but he still drew the plant's shape first, then marked the place of origin and the processing method.

The prescription on that sheet was also for treating infantile convulsions.

The main prescription contains three herbs that completely overlap with those in the diagram.

Uncaria rhynchophylla, Gastrodia elata, and Bombyx mori.

Even the dosage labeling format is the same—first write the amount, then add in small print "grind into powder" or "decoct for oral administration".

Su Nianci placed the two papers side by side on the table, her gaze shifting back and forth between them.

Despite the handwriting being separated by countless generations and the paper being at least fifty years old, the way prescriptions were recorded still revealed the same underlying logic.

Her fingers rubbed the corner of her father's prescription a couple of times, feeling the rough fibers of the paper with her fingertips.

The light shone on her profile, and her expression was serene.

Time flies, and the moon outside the window has moved from the east to the west.

When I was copying the last few pages, the paper was badly damaged, and the latter half of several prescriptions was completely swallowed by water stains, leaving only the remaining strokes.

Su Nianci tried her best to recognize every word she could make out. For those that she couldn't see clearly, she left them blank and marked them with "Original document damaged".

Turn to the last page.

This page is the most badly damaged, with a piece missing from the bottom left corner, as if it had been burned and then extinguished by something.

But the bottom right corner is still there.

There is a stamp on the corner of the paper.

It was dark red, square, about one centimeter square, with the edges worn down to just a blurry outline.

Su Nianci leaned closer to look; the light wasn't bright enough, and the writing was blurred together.

She pulled a magnifying glass from the drawer, held the lens up to the seal, and adjusted the angle twice.

The red ink had faded to a dark brown, but under a magnifying glass, the outlines of the three characters slowly emerged.

The first character has a grass radical on top and the structure of "苏" below.

Su.

The second character has a single person radical on the left and the right side is not very clear, but the overall stroke structure is similar to "氏".

Mr.

The third character is the clearest; you can recognize it at a glance.

堂。

Su Family Hall.

Su Nianci's hand holding the magnifying glass tightened little by little.

His knuckles were stuck on the handle of the mirror, and his knuckles had turned white.

Her gaze shifted from the seal to her father's handwritten prescription, then to the cover of the illustrated book, and finally settled on the tiger-head shoes and the grasshopper on the corner of the table.

Did the Su family ancestors run a pharmacy?