Chapter 114: Chapter 116 Over Five Years
As for those stools, she might only use them for one more semester. By next year, she would switch schools, from primary school to the old middle school campus. Even though it’s still dilapidated, and absolutely perfect in its way, at the very least, all the desks’ legs were intact.
“Eat a little more,” Tang Zhinian gently pushed more food towards his daughter. He also picked up his bowl to eat. If there was one thing that had vastly improved about Zhinian over the past few years, it was his ability to garden and, of course, his cooking.
Tang Zhinian certainly had no intention of remarrying. The lady next door had introduced him to several possible matches, but he had no interest in meeting any of them.
“What about Uncle Chen?” Tang Yuxin asked her father. Her uncle Chen had not come home for dinner these past few days.
“Don’t worry about him. I don’t know what he’s been up to recently. He’s not a kid, if he’s hungry, he’ll come home to eat,” Zhinian replied.
“Alright,” Tang Zhinian pat his daughter’s little head and put down his bowl with one hand, “You still have to go to your grandpa Zhong’s place. Get going, your dad can handle things here.”
“Okay,” Tang Yuxin did not argue with her father about chores. She was still too short to reach the stove and had to stand on a small stool to wash the dishes. Let alone washing a large pan. If she had to wash that, it would probably hit her and she would be buried underneath.
When she got to Chen Zhong’s place, she knocked on the door but no one answered.
He was probably up in the mountains gathering medicinal herbs.
Tang Yuxin pulled out a key and opened the door. She placed the sun-dried herbs in the yard and walked into the inner room. On a small bed inside, there were lumps that looked like a human.
She walked over and lifted the quilt to reveal a human-shaped wooden dummy.
The dummy was very lifelike, with facial features and movable joints. The wood was also polished very smoothly. She took out a small bag and in it a small cloth bag, then placed it on her lap. This life-sized wooden man that her father had spent months making for her was now her practice model.
The surface was polished silky smooth as well, and it even had acupoints and meridians drawn on it by Chen Zhong. Her hand strength was now significantly improved, so she practiced on this life-sized wooden dummy. Once her skills improved, she was allowed to practice on real people.
She took out a needle, closed her eyes, steadied her thoughts before piercing the needle in. In the beginning, she often mistakingly placed the needles, even though she had memorized all the acupoints on the human body. Theory and practice are vastly different. If it had been a person, they probably would have been killed by her incorrect placements.
When Chen Zhong returned, it was almost three o’clock. He had indeed gone into the mountains to gather medicinal herbs. He used these herbs to treat patients in the village. Since he was running out of some herbs, he had gone out to gather them. When he opened the door, he found all the herbs he had placed in his house now in the yard. The young girl must have come over.
His affection for the little girl grew stronger each day. Studying medicine was a monotonous affair; there were hundreds of acupoints on the human body. Understanding these herbs as well as the conflicting effects of different medicines was particularly challenging .
It was remarkable that at such a young age, she could persist.
It had been over five years now.