Gu Youyou nodded and said, "So, Master’s intention is definitely not to make you an attendant, but a doctor, isn’t it?"
"Yes, but Yuancheng is too stupid, always failing to learn well." He hung his head in frustration.
Gu Youyou shook her head, her voice warm and smiling, "It’s not that Yuancheng is too stupid, but rather that Yuancheng learns too quickly."
"Learns too quickly?" Yuancheng jolted, suddenly lifting his head to look at Gu Youyou.
Gu Youyou explained, "Learning anything is like building a house, we need to lay a solid foundation first and then slowly build up from there, so that the house is sturdy. Yuancheng, medical texts are much more difficult than the books normal students read. Even if you can understand the words, it doesn’t mean you can apply them deftly. A house can be dismantled and rebuilt, but Medical Skills are different; there is no second chance, it doesn’t tolerate even a slight mistake. Because one error from you could mean the death of a patient, do you understand?"
Yuancheng looked at Gu Youyou with a dazed half-understanding.
Gu Youyou smiled and said, "This is what we’ll do. I’ll have Qin Changlin enroll you in school. You should start by learning to read and write there. At the very least, you need to be able to recognize every character in the medical texts on your own."
Holding the medical book and pondering for a long while, Yuancheng seemed to grasp what Gu Youyou meant and muttered, "Does Sister Youyou mean to recognize all the characters first before studying the medical texts?"
It wasn’t the whole of it, but the gist was correct, so Gu Youyou smiled and nodded.
Jin Zijin went hunting in the hills behind Lotus Village today.
Having vegetables every day, all three of them couldn’t stand it anymore, nearly sick with it.
Yue Rujing rolled up his pristine white lower garment, bundled it, and rolled up his sleeves to weed the garden in the courtyard.
He saw that the pear tree had already been pruned neatly by him.
To Gu Youyou’s critical eye, the ’tree shape’ was pruned quite well, good enough for eight points at least, though it remained to be seen how it would bear fruit next year.
"Oh, you’re back so early today?"
Gu Youyou lifted the medicine in her hand and replied, "I’m back to prepare the medicine at home!"
"Do you need my help?" Yue Ruqing disdainfully slapped the mud off his hands, how he hoped for Gu Youyou to nod! Preparing medicine was much easier than weeding, and importantly, it was clean.
But Gu Youyou wouldn’t acquiesce to his wish and smilingly said, "Someone’s already helping me with the medicine, so you continue weeding!"
Yuancheng timidly followed inside and, seeing Yue Rujing’s ethereal presence, felt even more awkward and ill at ease.
Gu Youyou whispered, "He’s a relative from my sister’s home; his family used to be wealthy, but unfortunately, they’ve fallen on hard times, now even worse off than us. See, he’s weeding, isn’t he?"
Once wealthy still meant wealth. For someone like Yuancheng, who had lived at the bottom all his life, the sense of self-pity was not easily shaken off.
"What if we let him do the weeding? He does look like someone cut out for weeding."
"You’re the one who looks like someone cut out for weeding, get on with it!" Gu Youyou retorted, unamused.
Only when Yuancheng heard Gu Youyou so naturally giving orders to that person and accepting a scolding, did he feel less nervous and even managed a small laugh.
He straightened his back as he followed behind Gu Youyou.
This infuriated Yue Ruqing.
Yuancheng tended the small furnace to prepare the medicine, while Gu Youyou was in the kitchen making candied lotus root with osmanthus again.
To make it tasty, it required some time.
Outside, Yue Ruqing had already cleared out two patches of the vegetable garden and planted new vegetables.
Another task was to make a bigger bed for Abao, which he found quite disgusting.
Gu Youyou had made it clear to him that if he didn’t work, he would be thrown out. For his senior brother, he endured it.