"So, Lord Jie isn’t going to do anything about it?"
Lin Qianqing sighed, "How could this be easily managed? He might be able to address it once, but can he handle it every single time? It involves his son’s personal affairs. All Lord Jie does is stroke his beard and sigh, saying, ’If only Madam were still alive.’"
Lin Qianqing imitated Lord Jie, stroking an imaginary beard as she spoke, and both women couldn’t help but laugh.
Just hearing the story was enough to give one a headache, so Lord Jie must feel troubled himself, unable to do anything about it.
Gu Youyou had strained the prepared medicine through a cloth, then she took a drop of the medicine made from the blue grass and placed it in a small dish, which already contained some black, paste-like liquid. She mixed these medicines together, and then, she actually proceeded to feed the poisoned liquid to the mice she had been carefully experimenting on.
Heavens, what on earth did she want to do?
"Cousin, that’s poison!" Lin Qianqing exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock.
"I know," Gu Youyou replied calmly.
"Then why are you feeding it to the mice? They will be poisoned to death."
"They won’t." Gu Youyou carefully fed each mouse some of the mixture and said, "They will be poisoned, but not to death, I’ve taken just a small amount."
At that moment, Yue Rujing entered with a jade box, and upon seeing the scene before him, he was taken aback, but then seemed to understand something.
He shook his head and sighed, "It’s useless. Had I known you wanted me to find these things just for this, I wouldn’t have helped you. It’s a waste of my time."
Gu Youyou paused in her task, uncharacteristically offering no retort.
She wasn’t sure if this would work. This was a method for extracting serum, a technique no one had used in this era, and the toxin was no ordinary poison but some kind of witchcraft.
Turning to Lin Qianqing, Gu Youyou said, "You go out for a while. I am about to feed the snake, and you are afraid of these creatures. I don’t want to scare you."
Lin Qianqing shrank her neck and glanced at the blackened cage before hurriedly making her exit.
"Alright, I’ll go help outside. Be careful, Cousin. The snake you’re raising is a venomous one from the North; one bite is certain death."
"Mhm, got it. Off you go."
Once Lin Qianqing had left the backyard, Yue Rujing chuckled softly, sauntering along and said, "What is it you want to tell me? You even sent your cousin away."
"She is afraid of snakes," said Gu Youyou.
"Then what do you think I want to tell you?" Gu Youyou replied irritably.
While speaking, she moved to bring over the cage of the venomous snake she was keeping nearby. This snake was strangely shaped, its entire body silver-white. It didn’t hibernate in the winter, and ironically, was seldom seen in the summer. The locals named it the Ice Snake.
"You’re really going to feed the snake?" Yue Rujing asked in surprise.
He shook the jade box in his hand and said, "Aren’t you going to ask what I’ve brought for you?"
Gu Youyou, looking somewhat weary, set the cage on the table and said, "We’ll talk about that later. Help me with something first."
"Me, help you feed it?" Yue Rujing shifted his gaze to the Ice Snake and shuddered.
He was afraid of snakes, too!
Of course, he didn’t voice this fear, not wanting Gu Youyou to make fun of him.
Gu Youyou shook her head, "I’m not asking you to help me feed it."
Yue Rujing breathed a sigh of relief.
"You help me extract the venom from its fangs."
Yue Rujing nearly stumbled over at that.
What in the world was this woman up to? Extracting venom from a viper’s fangs? Was that any different from pulling a tooth from a tiger’s mouth?
"You... you must be joking—this is no laughing matter at all!"
Better let me feed it.