The low-key prince summons trainees from the Imperial Household Department at the start of the game.

In the twenty-sixth year of Yonghe, there was a Grain Rain.

The light rain of late spring fell on Qipan Street, wetting the bluestone pavement until it shimmered with a thin layer of oil.

The shop signs along the street swayed gently in the breeze, and the air was filled with the sweet aroma of freshly steamed cakes and the faint scent of herbs wafting from the pharmacy.

The people of Beijing had long been accustomed to the medical clinics and pharmacies with signs such as "Yuanhuatang", "Bian's Medical Clinic", "Zhongjingtang", and "Qianjin Pharmacy" hanging on the streets and alleys.

These shops may not be large, but the doctors there are all highly skilled and charge reasonable fees. Neighbors are willing to go there for treatment when they have a headache or fever.

No one knew that these seemingly ordinary folk pharmacies had quietly expanded to all the prefectures and cities of the Great Zhou Dynasty in just over a year.

At this moment, in the backyard of Yuanhua Hall in Xicheng, Hua Tuo was squatting by the medicine garden, carefully adding soil to a newly transplanted Panax notoginseng plant with a small shovel.

He is over forty years old this year, with slightly graying temples, but he is still tall and strong.

His bare arm was bulging with muscles, making him look less like a doctor and more like a dockworker foreman.

For more than a year, he has gotten up at dawn every day, first practicing a set of Five Animal Frolics, and then teaching the disciples in the hall the essentials of surgical procedures.

He sees patients in the afternoon, and then closes the door in the evening to research new medicinal diet recipes.

The Five Animal Frolics is a unique martial art that combines medicine and martial arts. In my previous life, it was limited by the constraints of nature and could only be used to strengthen the body.

In this life, however, he is able to continuously temper his bones and cleanse his marrow under the blessing of righteousness and the spiritual energy of heaven and earth.

The tiger form emphasizes muscles and bones, the deer form emphasizes flexibility, the bear form emphasizes strength, the ape form emphasizes agility, and the bird form emphasizes balance.

He had already mastered the thirty movements to the bone, and could practice them while sitting, lying down, or walking.

Over the past year, his cultivation has progressed by leaps and bounds, and he has steadily stepped into the peak of the sixth rank, just one step away from the seventh rank.

Just as he was preparing to put in extra effort and combine it with the newly developed "Nourishing Essence and Strengthening Bone Soup" to break through the bottleneck, he suddenly heard a very light and faint footstep sound coming from outside the herb garden.

A man dressed in a gray cloth short coat with a hemp rope tied around his waist climbed over the courtyard wall and landed almost without making a sound.

This person was Lu Changfeng, who was now a peak fifth-grade martial artist, and his physique was much stronger than it had been a year ago.

He came to the capital specifically to deliver intelligence, and stopped by Yuanhuatang to ask for a bowl of medicine.

Hua Tuo didn't even look up, continuing to add soil to the Panax notoginseng plant, but said with a smile, "Chief Lu, you've come at the right time. Help me try this newly prepared 'Nourishing Essence and Strengthening Bone Soup.' It has an extra ingredient, tiger bone glue, compared to the last Lesser Yang Nourishing Essence Soup, making it even more potent."

"You practice the Yellow-rank martial art 'Capturing Dragon and Subduing Tiger Skill,' which is just right to suppress the effects of this medicine."

Lu Changfeng grinned and took the large bowl of dark, murky medicinal soup that was brought out of the kitchen.

He tilted his head back and gulped it down, then wiped his mouth before lowering his voice to report to his superior.

The Beggars' Sect now has over 500 core disciples, all of whom practice the "Dragon-Capturing and Tiger-Taming Skill" and the Five Animal Frolics. Half of them are at least at the third rank, over 100 are at the fourth rank or above, and several are at the fifth rank or above.

The ordinary disciples are scattered throughout various prefectures and cities, numbering over three thousand, spread across the nine gates and thirty-six wards of the capital and the surrounding major prefectures and counties.

Liaison stations were established in Runzhou and Yangzhou in the south of the Yangtze River, and Yunzhou and Yanmen Pass in the north.

As the two were talking, another person climbed over the courtyard wall.

Sun Simiao was wearing a faded gray cloth Taoist robe and had an old satchel slung over his shoulder.

Although he was over sixty years old, he climbed over the wall with even more agility than Lu Changfeng. After landing, he patted the mud off his clothes and slowly walked over.

Hua Tuo knew from his attire that he had gone to the North Mountain to collect herbs again, and upon asking, he found out that was indeed the case.

Sun Simiao sat down at the stone table and took out a herb with tender green leaves from his satchel, saying it was a newly discovered hemostatic herb.

I plan to go back, dry the medicine, grind it into powder, add a few auxiliary ingredients, and make it into a topical wound medicine. The hemostatic effect will be several times better than that of medicines on the market.

His cultivation level was the highest among the four, having already reached the peak of the seventh rank, just one step away from touching the threshold of the eighth rank.

In his previous life, he was a wise old immortal who was well-versed in the art of health preservation and had the most acute sensitivity to the cosmic energy.

This world has the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. He can sense the flow of energy through the properties of medicine, and integrate pharmacology with martial arts, making his cultivation twice as effective with half the effort.

Nowadays, besides seeing patients, he also researches new prescriptions in the backyard. In the past year or so, he has improved dozens of ancient prescriptions, among which the prescription to improve qi and blood has become an essential item for the daily cultivation of the core disciples of the Beggars' Sect.

As they were talking, Bian Que and Zhang Zhongjing arrived one after another.

Bian Que's cultivation had reached the sixth rank. He was skilled in using acupuncture to unblock meridians and developed a set of "acupuncture point crossing method" that could use silver needles to guide qi and blood to break through bottlenecks.

Zhang Zhongjing was a fifth-rank official who specialized in the prevention and treatment of epidemics and the analysis of medicinal properties, combining the essence of the Treatise on Febrile Diseases with the characteristics of medicinal materials in this world.

He wrote a new medical book, which recorded several conditioning prescriptions for martial artists with different constitutions.

They had just returned from their free clinic. Bian Que had gone to the east of the city to see several patients suffering from colds, while Zhang Zhongjing rushed over from the south of the city dock.

It is said that Zhongjingtang recently admitted a group of patients with diarrhea, suspected to be due to a problem with the water source at the dock. The disciples have been instructed to prepare a decoction to prevent the epidemic and distribute it free of charge to the dockworkers.

The four sat around the stone table and talked about the plans they had made over the past year.

Yuanhuatang, Bianshi Medical Hall, Zhongjingtang, and Qianjin Pharmacy were based on the four main branches in Beijing.

Branch offices have spread throughout various prefectures and cities, with each branch staffed by their personally trained disciples, providing medical treatment and medicine to the local people.

It also provides medical care and intelligence relay for Lu Changfeng's Beggars' Sect disciples.

It is also worth mentioning the strong support from Shengyuan.

All the funding for the expansion of the branches was provided by Heshengyuan. The location of each branch was chosen to be close to Heshengyuan's local bank branches, forming a linkage network of "medical treatment at the pharmacy, settlement at the bank, and errands run by the beggar gang".

Sun Simiao took out the herbs from his satchel one by one and laid them out on the stone table. Suddenly, he looked up and said thoughtfully.

He has recently been observing the relationship between the dragon vein seal and the earth vein's fortune, and has found that the loosening of the heaven and earth's fortune is becoming more and more obvious, with the frequency and intensity of the outflow of yin energy being much higher than a year ago.

This means that the demand for medicine in various states will only increase, not decrease, especially as more and more people need long-term treatment after being affected by yin energy.

He instructed Lu Changfeng to remind the liaison stations in various locations to pay close attention to any unusual situations, and to immediately notify the nearest branch office to stockpile medicinal materials if any unusual activity of yin energy is detected.

Lu Changfeng nodded in agreement.

Hua Tuo planted the small shovel used for mulching the soil beside the herb garden, wiped his hands with a cloth, and said that he also had something to ask Lu Changfeng to do.

A few days ago, Ah Jiu in the cycle of reincarnation suffered internal injuries while on a mission. Zhuan Zhu asked him to find some medicines, one of which, pangolin scales, was quite rare.

The medicine market in the capital is temporarily out of stock. Let's see if Lu Changfeng can send someone to look for it in the southern prefectures.

Lu Changfeng took the prescription and examined it for a moment. He then told him to give it to him. He said there were liaison stations in several major prefectures in the south, and that the brothers should take the prescription to the local pharmacies to inquire.

As he spoke, Sun Simiao stood up and turned over the medicinal herbs that were drying in the courtyard.

He also instructed Lu Changfeng to have someone collect more Panax notoginseng and send it to Qianjin Pharmacy in the North City after he returned. He said that they were currently researching a new prescription that required a large amount of Panax notoginseng.

Lu Changfeng agreed to all of them, checked some intelligence with the others, and then hurriedly left.

Sun Simiao continued to fiddle with the newly picked herbs, muttering to himself that these herbs could save more lives.

The old locust tree in the courtyard swayed gently in the breeze, and the leaves of the newly planted Panax notoginseng in the herb garden still had morning dew on them, shimmering in the sunlight.