6: Chapter 6: Sewing Up the Bloodstained Pork

They had been walking for half a month.

The final stretch of the journey was the hardest to endure.

Cheng Ying's feet swelled and subsided, time and again, and she had gone through two pairs of shoes—the first pair had worn through the soles, and the second pair was something Yang Yuan had traded for in a roadside village with half a tael of silver; they were two sizes too big, and it was only by stuffing them with dried grass that they could barely stay on her feet.

The city of Jiaxing appeared when the sun was past its zenith.

The dusty, grey city walls were taller than Yang Yuan had imagined.

At the city gate, there was a long queue; people carrying shoulder poles, pushing carts, and driving donkeys were all crowded together in a chaotic mess.

The sounds of hawking spilled over the walls, mixed with the smell of cooking oil and livestock, which could be smelled from half a mile away.

Yang Yuan came to a stop.

In this life—in both his lives—he had never seen so many people.

In the original owner's memories, there was only that dilapidated village, with a few dozen households where one could hear the chickens and dogs of the neighbors.

In his past life, he had indeed squeezed onto subways, but those were shells of steel and concrete; this was different.

This was the living, breathing Qi of humanity—messy, noisy, and loud enough to make one's head ache.

But it felt real.

Cheng Ying stood beside him, also stunned.

She stared at the flow of people entering and leaving the city gate, her lips moving slightly, but she did not speak.

She had grown up on Peach Blossom Island and had seen the world, but it was a different kind of world—clean, quiet, and orderly.

She had never experienced this kind of mundane, bustling worldly life.

"Let's go," Yang Yuan said in a low voice.

The two of them joined the back of the queue and slowly shuffled forward.

When it was their turn, the soldier glanced at Cheng Ying's belly, then looked at Yang Yuan, asked no further questions, and let them pass.

The city was even noisier.

The main street stretched from south to north, packed with shops on both sides.

Banners from restaurants fluttered in the breeze, the voice of a storyteller drifted from a teahouse, a row of medicinal herbs was drying in front of an apothecary, and the scent of a soy sauce workshop drifted down half the street.

Yang Yuan walked and looked around, his eyes unable to take it all in.

The skills he had learned in his past life—trauma suturing, simple prescriptions, and identifying medicinal herbs—should be able to be exchanged for silver in this world.

But to know how to exchange them, he first had to get a sense of the market.

He took Cheng Ying around the street, specifically looking for apothecaries.

There were three apothecaries in the city.

The largest was called "Jishitang," with a grand storefront; the shopkeeper sat behind the counter clicking an abacus, and the assistants wore uniform green cloth shirts—this was not a place he could enter.

The second was called "Huichuntang," smaller in scale, but still quite decent.

The third was at the corner of an alley, the sign old, the four characters "Sun's Apothecary" faded to a greyish-white.

A piece of red paper was pasted at the entrance, the ink long dried—

"Seeking one resident physician; those proficient in trauma care preferred."

Yang Yuan stopped in his tracks.

He told Cheng Ying to wait at the shop entrance and walked in himself.

The shop was not big, with medicine cabinets against the wall.

Behind the counter stood a lean, middle-aged man in his forties with deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, and ink-stained fingers, who was looking down at his accounts.

"Shopkeeper," Yang Yuan said.

The man looked up and sized him up from head to toe.

He was covered in dirt, his clothes were torn in several places, and there were unwashed traces of wind and sand on his face.

"Buying medicine?" The tone was indifferent.

"No. I saw the notice at the entrance, seeking a resident physician."

The shopkeeper looked at him again, his gaze lingering on his face for an extra second—he was too young.

"How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

The shopkeeper scoffed and went back to his accounts: "I'm not hiring apprentices. Try somewhere else."

Yang Yuan did not leave.

"I understand trauma care. Knife wounds, suturing, stopping bleeding, disinfection."

The shopkeeper's abacus beads paused, and he looked up at him: "What did you say?"

"Disinfection. It means... using strong liquor to wash wounds to prevent suppuration and ulceration."

Yang Yuan knew the term was too modern, so he changed his wording: "Using distilled spirits to flush the wound, then applying medicine and bandaging it, saves more lives than just applying medicine directly."

The shopkeeper narrowed his eyes.

He had run an apothecary in Jiaxing for twenty years and had seen many physicians, but he had never heard of "using spirits to wash wounds."

However, during the plague two years ago, there were indeed some folk remedies that could save lives that weren't written in official medical texts.

"Who did you learn this from?"

"It's a family tradition." Yang Yuan did not explain further.

The shopkeeper stared at him for a few seconds, then suddenly stood up, walked behind the medicine cabinets, rummaged around for a while, and took out a cloth bundle.

He opened it—inside was a piece of bloody pork with three gashes cut into it, the skin and flesh curled back.

"This is left over from this morning's slaughter." The shopkeeper placed the bundle on the counter: "Sew it up for me and let me see."

Yang Yuan looked at the piece of meat.

Then he looked at the shopkeeper.

"Do you have a needle and thread?"

The shopkeeper raised an eyebrow, rummaged through a drawer to find a sewing needle and a spool of cotton thread, and threw them on the counter.

Yang Yuan picked up the needle and thread.

He soaked his hands in spirits—there happened to be a jar of low-quality sorghum liquor in the shop, and the shopkeeper nodded for him to use it.

Then, he held the needle over a flame for a moment before threading it.

He did not hesitate.

The needle tip pierced the pork skin, passed from one side to the other, pulled tight, and knotted.

Then he sewed the second stitch. The third. The fourth.

His movements were not fast, but steady.

The stitches were evenly spaced, the knots were buried within the skin and flesh, and it looked clean on the outside.

After finishing, he put the needle down.

The shopkeeper looked down for a long time.

He reached out to prod the sutured wound; the thread was not loose, and the skin was aligned neatly—it looked better than most of the stitches done by the physicians in the city.

"I've never seen this stitching technique before." The shopkeeper looked up, his expression changed: "Where did you learn it?"

"It's a family tradition," Yang Yuan said again.

The shopkeeper stared at him for quite a while.

"Try it for three days," he said: "I'll provide lunch, and pay you thirty wen a day. If you do well, we'll talk further."

Yang Yuan nodded: "Fine."

That evening, Yang Yuan took Cheng Ying to find a small courtyard in the south of the city.

The courtyard was not big; it had one entrance, two main rooms, one side room, a well in the yard, and a crooked jujube tree growing in the corner.

The landlady was a widow who lived next door and asked for a monthly rent of three hundred wen.

Yang Yuan bargained it down to two hundred and fifty and paid half a tael of silver for the first month.

Cheng Ying entered the room and stood at the doorway, looking around.

Most of the wall plaster had peeled off, the window paper was newly pasted, the floor was swept reasonably clean, and there was an old wooden table and two benches in the corner.

"Better than the dilapidated temple," she said.

Yang Yuan placed their bundle on the table and began to tidy up.

He folded Cheng Ying's few old clothes and placed them at the head of the bed, tucked the single-edged blade under the pillow, and hung the short sword at his waist.

Cheng Ying sat on the edge of the bed, watching him bustle about.

"What is the surname of that shopkeeper today?"

"Sun," Yang Yuan wiped away some sweat: "A shrewd man, but he knows his stuff."

Cheng Ying gave an "Mn," and did not ask further.

The night deepened.

Yang Yuan rummaged through the chests and cabinets in the side room, looking for something to boil water with.

At the bottom of a cabinet was a broken wooden box; when he moved it, the bottom panel fell off, and a yellowed scrap of paper slid out.

He picked it up.

It was a map fragment.

Only a palm-sized piece remained, depicting the lie of the mountains and rivers with rough ink lines.

There were a few small characters marked on the side, but they were all blurred, and he could only barely make out an "East" character and an "Island" character.

On the back of the paper was a line of text, written in charcoal, the handwriting sloppy—

"Beware of Peach Blossom Island."

Yang Yuan stared at those characters for a long time.

Peach Blossom Island. Cheng Ying came from Peach Blossom Island.

Her Master, Huang Yaoshi, was on Peach Blossom Island.

Did this place have something to do with her?

"Beware"—was it a reminder, or a warning?