Nanfeng was injured and couldn't walk fast. It was more than ten miles from here to the outside of the mountain. Nanfeng was so staggering that he might not be able to walk out until dawn.
In desperation, the two could only find a place to stay along the way. However, there were no abandoned houses or temples in the mountains. They waited until the second watch to find a shack where the hunter and the woodcutter rested. It was not the hunting and woodcutting season, so there was no one living in the shack. Nothing.
The fat man came back from looking for dry firewood and lit a bonfire. The fire was not for heating at this time, but mainly to smoke the wormwood and drive away mosquitoes.
Fearing that the fire would reveal their whereabouts and cause trouble, the two tried their best to suppress the fire with wet mugwort in order to produce more smoke and less light.
There was a stream not far from the shack, and the fat man filled a bamboo tube with water from the stream and came back to quench his thirst with the south wind.
The stream water was cool. After drinking the stream water, the south wind refreshed me a little. I took out the porcelain bottle from my arms, bit off the cork, and handed it to the fat man.
"I really don't want it." The fat man shook his head.
"Don't be nagging, we got this in exchange for it. Even if you eat it, you won't lose your backbone." Nanfeng poured a pill for him.
The fat man knew that Nanfeng was angry with him, so he didn't refute. He laughed twice and took the elixir, holding it between his fingers and looking at it curiously, "Have you ever taken elixirs before?"
"Have eaten." Nanfeng said.
"Is it the same as this?" Fatty asked.
Nan Feng shook his head, "The pill I took was just an ordinary Qi-tonifying pill. It was smaller than this one and had a different color. That one was light yellow."
"Why is this red?" The fat man was confused.
"The Medicine King Cauldron is different from the ordinary elixir cauldron. The elixir color is the color of the complexion, and the three-turn elixir should be of this color." Nanfeng reached for the bamboo tube, drank the elixir in his hand with water, and turned to the bamboo tube. He handed it to the fat man and said, "It's hard to get. Eat it early to avoid losing it."
The fat man took the bamboo tube, put the elixir into his mouth, and drank some water.
"Wait!" Nanfeng shouted urgently.
Nanfeng shouted so urgently that the fat man was startled. The saliva in his mouth almost spat out. He barely stopped, swallowed with difficulty, and stretched out his hand to touch his chest, "What are you doing? You were so surprised."
After saying this, something suddenly occurred to him, "Is this elixir poisonous?"
Nanfeng frowned and lowered his head, but did not answer.
"Let me ask you, why are you looking at your hands?" the fat man asked.
Nanfeng still didn't answer, but stood up and walked to the bonfire, lifted up the wormwood, blew a flame, and looked at his right hand in the light of the bonfire.
"Why are your hands red? Is the elixir poisonous?" The fat man was very frightened.
"No." Nanfeng put his right hand close to his nose, inhaled and smelled, there was a faint smell of sulfur.
The fat man came over, "What's going on? What's going on?"
Nan Feng grabbed the fat man's right hand and looked at his thumb, index and two fingers. A slight red color could also be seen.
"Is it poisonous? What's on your hands?" The fat man was very unsure.
Nan Feng tilted his head and looked at the fat man, "It should be cinnabar. Cinnabar is needed to make elixirs. Cinnabar smells like sulfur, but the elixir has withstood the high temperature of the dark fire and the impurities are gone. There should be no cinnabar residue, and it should not fade."
"It must be a substandard product. This old guy is so stingy that he won't even give us a good one of the third grade." The fat man curled his lips.
Nanfeng didn't answer. He vaguely felt that something was fishy, but he couldn't figure it out for a while.
"Is it really not poisonous? If it was poisonous, I might be able to spit it out now." The fat man looked at Nanfeng nervously. To be precise, Nanfeng's solemn expression made him very nervous.
"Try it and see if you can spit it out." Nanfeng said.
The fat man didn't know why, thinking that Nanfeng was not sure whether the pill was poisonous or not, so he beat his chest and picked at his throat, but he just retched and couldn't spit anything out.
After several attempts, the fat man gave up, "It's over, I can't vomit it out anymore. We haven't eaten anything for a day and our stomach is empty. If we had eaten something before, we might be able to vomit it out."
"The elixir is not poisonous," Nanfeng said.
"Ah?!" The fat man was so angry that he bared his teeth and stared, "It's not poisonous. Why do you want me to vomit?"
"I suspect that the two elixirs Uncle Wang gave us were dipped in cinnabar." Nanfeng said. Uncle Wang had stayed in the east room for a while before. The door was closed, and everyone just thought he was taking the elixirs from his hiding place. , but no one knows what Uncle Wang did inside.
"It's really too much to bully someone. You gave him a fake one. You really shouldn't have saved him, let him suffocate to death." The fat man cursed angrily.
"What are you thinking about?" Nanfeng covered the bonfire with wormwood again. "We may have wrongly blamed him. I suspect that the two pills we took earlier were not just three-turn pills, but better pills."
"Counterfeiting is all about passing off the good stuff as good stuff. This is the first time I've heard of it." The fat man suddenly thought of something when he said this. "Is he afraid that those people will be jealous and snatch our elixirs, so he used cinnabar?" Dye the elixir red?"
Nanfeng nodded, "It's very possible. Yuan Anning once said something. In the early years, a Liang Guo warrior used a chariot shaft to exchange for a seven-turn elixir from Uncle Wang. This man was killed that night. He was disembowelled and his death was extremely miserable."
The fat man suddenly realized, "Everyone is innocent, but He's jade brings disaster."
Nanfeng didn't bother to correct the fat man's misunderstanding and said, "Worrying about causing disaster for us may be one of the reasons. Another reason is that if Uncle Wang gives us a high-quality elixir, he must also give the same elixir to those warriors, otherwise They will become dissatisfied."
"If you're not afraid of nothing, you're afraid of inequality." The fat man nodded.
"It's not about scarcity but about inequality," Nanfeng couldn't help but correct him, "You're not good at writing. Don't imitate the mandarin of that scholar-bureaucrat. If you don't speak well, it'll sound awkward."
The fat man was not angry even after being criticized, and said again, "Do you think we have really wronged a good person?"
Nanfeng nodded, "There is a 90% chance that Uncle Wang deliberately put the elixir into a porcelain bottle from the main hall, just to let everyone see the color of the elixir."
The fat man didn't ask any more questions, but the look on his face was still dubious.
Seeing the fat man's expression, Nanfeng added, "If you are careful, you can tell from Uncle Wang's words that he does not want revenge, otherwise he would not have told those warriors that his opponents were Li Chaozong and Wang Zhong. He would not have told these people. Whoever did it should have two intentions. One is to calm the matter and not make the matter bigger. The other is that he doesn't want to embarrass those warriors. If they know that Li Chaozong did it, they will be in a dilemma and help Uncle Wang. Take revenge, they can't defeat Li Chaozong. Don't go, it won't be easy to explain to Uncle Wang."
"What do you think this has to do with us?" The fat man threw wormwood into the bonfire.
"What I mean is that Uncle Wang is very calm and thoughtful. In order not to cause trouble for us, he most likely dyed the two pills he gave us." Nanfeng said.
"If he is really that smart, he should be able to see that we went here for the elixir from the beginning. Our motives are not pure. He can't like us." Fatty said.
"You're right, he may really not like us," Nanfeng said, pointing north, "Do you still remember the couplet on the archway?"
"What couplet?" The fat man didn't take a close look at the archway at all.
"There is a couplet engraved on the archway at the foot of Fengming Mountain: Yi changes to the way of heaven, gains and losses correspond to yin and yang. This should be Uncle Wang's motto and also his code of conduct. From this couplet, it is not difficult to see that he has a profound understanding of human temperament. Understanding does not require a pure human heart." Nanfeng said.
"You mean he doesn't care what others think, but only depends on what others do?" The fat man seemed to understand.
"Yes," Nanfeng nodded sternly, "He doesn't care why the other person did it, he only cares whether he did it or not. Although we were selfish, we saved his life. He should reward us heavily, so I doubt the money he gave us. The two pills have been dyed."
"If that's the case, how many grades of elixir do you think he gave us?" the fat man asked.
Nanfeng shook his head again, "It's hard to say. It should be more than four or five. Six is more likely, and seventh is also possible."
"Oh, I made the mistake of blaming him. Why don't we leave in a hurry? After those warriors leave, we will go back and keep company with him. By the way, we can ask him what kind of elixir he gave us." The fat man is really good-natured. , correct it if you know it’s wrong.
Nanfeng leaned back, closed his eyes and prepared to rest. "There's no need. We got the elixir in exchange for it, and we've already cleared it up. Besides, we've already taken the elixir. We'll know how many times it will take."
The fat man didn't insist on going back. He threw the remaining firewood into the bonfire and covered it with some wormwood.
"By the way," Fatty suddenly remembered something, "The King of Medicine will check your pulse, do you think he will find out..."
"No." Nanfeng interrupted the fat man. The meridians are the paths for spiritual energy to circulate. If the meridians are damaged, no one can detect the situation inside the Dantian.
It was almost three o'clock at this time, and the fat man was also very tired. He yawned, took off his belt and went out to relieve himself. But as soon as he walked out of the shack, he came back eagerly, "Get up, someone is coming..."