"What? I can't be concerned about the medicinal ingredients?" Gu Yitong saw Lu Yu approaching, her expression suggesting she knew something, and a suppressed smile played on her lips. Gu Yitong's heart was instantly filled with a bad premonition.
Suppressing her inner unease, she glared back at Lu Yu with feigned annoyance.
Seeing Gu Yitong's stubbornness, Lu Yu didn't intend to mock her at that moment, especially with Afu present. She felt she needed to consider the man's dignity. As for Gu Yitong's dignity, well, she likely had none.
"Alright, as long as no one is hurt, your medicinal ingredients... tsk tsk tsk..." Lu Yu cast a meaningful glance at the composed Gu Yitong. "You should put them back quickly."
"Apologies, I forgot to push this back after I finished dispensing the medicine earlier." Wu Shao, hearing the voices, also hurried over behind Lu Yu. However, he hadn't noticed the hidden nuances and stood there foolishly scratching his head.
"Just be careful next time." Lu Yu led Wu Shao away before Gu Yitong could speak, feeling a bit out of place between the two of them.
"I... I need to put this back."
Gu Yitong saw Afu still standing by the counter and nervously swallowed, gesturing with the medicine box in her hand, signaling Afu to leave.
Afu looked at her, said nothing, pouted, and walked to the side.
"That..." Gu Yitong hesitated for a long time, still feeling that her previous words were hurtful. She added an explanation, "It's not that I only care about the herbs, you, you don't mind, okay?"
After explaining, she wished she hadn't. Gu Yitong felt like slapping herself. What was she even saying? If it wasn't just the herbs, then it meant she cared about him too? But she clearly didn't care about him. What was there to care about? He wasn't hit by the medicine box.
"Uh... I didn't mean it like that. Anyway, you're not hurt, and my medicine didn't spill, so that's fine."
After saying this, she gave a guilty smile in Afu's direction, not noticing the slightly wronged expression on Afu's face.
Afu didn't know what he was feeling. Why should the medicine box be more important than him in her heart?
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. He decided to leave and not face Gu Yitong.
"You clean this up properly." Afu said, tossing the rag in his hand to Gu Yitong, and turned to leave.
Strange.
When Shen Xuan found Afu, Afu was sitting alone in the courtyard behind the medical hall, counting pebbles.
"You're so annoying, so annoying!" Afu sat on the steps, muttering incessantly, his little face puffed up with anger.
"Who upset our Afu?"
"Young Master?" Afu was very surprised, stammering, "It's nothing."
This made Shen Xuan curious. If Afu had been angrily accusing someone of upsetting him, Shen Xuan wouldn't have been surprised. Afu's nature was such that he couldn't tolerate being wronged and couldn't keep things to himself.
When they were at the mansion, whether he disliked someone or liked someone, Afu would tell him directly, followed by a long list of reasons to prove his dislike was justified.
But Afu today was too abnormal. It was clear someone had angered him, yet he neither complained to Shen Xuan nor hid it from him.
And his expression, no matter how he looked at it, seemed like...
"Young Master, where is Young Master Gu?" Fortunately, Afu interrupted Shen Xuan's thoughts in time. If it had been a second later, Shen Xuan might have guessed.
"An uncle is looking for him outside, and he's gone out with the uncle."
...
"Uncle, why have you come? Are you feeling unwell?" Gu Yi saw the uncle he had met at Zheng Yu's mansion that day come to the medical hall and thought the uncle was feeling unwell.
"No, I'm feeling perfectly fine." The uncle smiled and took Gu Yi's hand. "I just wanted to see you. I heard you were at the medical hall, so I came."
"Then you know, I was originally..." Gu Yi hadn't expected that even his uncle knew about this.
The uncle looked at the hand that Gu Yi was tightly clutching his clothes with on the other side and said softly, "I know. But what does it matter? Where you are isn't something you can decide. Now that you've found your sister, you've come back, haven't you?"
"If I hadn't come back, would you... still say that?"
For some reason, Gu Yi just wanted to ask this.
"Of course, child. Listen to me. People are indeed influenced by their surroundings, but that's not absolute. A person's true nature doesn't change."
"If a kind person is placed among a group of villains, even if they are wounded all over, they might be forced to become like them to protect themselves, but their true nature will never change. There will always be a piece of kind soil left in their heart."
"That's just their protective coloring, something they need to survive. But the kind place in their heart will never be polluted."
"Do you understand what I mean?"
"I understand, but this is different."
"Why is it different? Is it because it happened to you that you feel it's different?" The uncle shook his head.
"Don't be so harsh on yourself. Relax your mindset and look at yourself from the perspective of looking at others. You'll feel much lighter."
"The environment you are in is not something you can decide. Then let me ask you again, if you had a choice, would you still go to the brothel?"
"Of course not!" Shen Xuan answered quickly without hesitation.
"That's right. When you have a choice, you won't go back again. This is enough to show that you are different from the kind of person you think you are."
"But... but many other people in the brothel also didn't want to be there." Shen Xuan's voice trembled slightly. How he wished he was truly like what the uncle said, but he dared not believe it.
"That's it. Because you have the opportunity to choose again, you can leave. But most of them don't. Some people have no family, and if they go out, they can't survive, so they can only continue to stay in the brothel. Some people have even gotten used to this life and think it's quite good."
"In this environment, everyone's thoughts are different. You don't need to be bound by your past identity. Even if we go back a thousand steps, it's just a brothel, not a place for prostitution. You were selling your skills, earning money with your talent. What is there to be ashamed of?"
"To put it more plainly, those young masters from noble families, do you think they are all noble?" The uncle sneered. "Wrong. Some of them are indeed like that, but some are like monkeys with the appearance of pigs."
"On the surface, they look like pigs, foolish and ignorant, as if they don't understand anything. In reality, they are more cunning than monkeys, and everything is for profit. How many shameless things have they done behind the scenes? Some are even worse than the men in the brothel, disgusting."
"There are all kinds of people in this world, and all kinds of environments. Not all good people are in good environments, and not all bad people are in bad environments."
"What kind of person someone truly is depends on their own heart. You, do you understand?"
The two of them unknowingly walked to the tea house, and the uncle had been talking non-stop all the way.
"Uncle, I understand. Thank you." Gu Yi quickly picked up the teapot and poured tea for the uncle, handing it to him with both hands respectfully.