Chapter 694: Chapter 235 Fragrance
The snow on the mountain had stopped.
Frost clung to the branches of the plum tree, sharp and biting, and Lu Tong suddenly shivered.
Pei Yunmeng lowered his gaze to look at her.
She stood before him, her frail body wrapped in a grey-green cotton robe, making her appear even paler and weaker. Everyone who had seen Lu Tong thought she was delicate and beautiful, and those who knew her better were aware of her calm madness, but no one knew that she had once been a solitary Medicine Man on the desolate mountains, sealed by heavy snow, for many years.
Medicine Man.
Pei Yunmeng’s eyelashes trembled.
The inscriptions on that rough-hewn tombstone were sloppy yet familiar, but the name "Mo Ruyun" was even more so. He had heard it once from Miao Liangfang’s mouth during the celebration at Benevolent Heart Medical Hall.
"At the time, the government officers dug up many children’s bones from the backyard of Miss Mo’s house, and it was later discovered that Miss Mo had been secretly trafficking children to use as Medicine Men."
"At first, it was just the maidservants from her own residence, but a high frequency of servant turnover within a month inevitably raised suspicions. Later, she started buying children of poor origins from traffickers, and because she paid a lot of Silver Coins, she gradually gathered a group of people who specifically looked for beggars and farmer’s children in the capital to purchase."
"She hid these children in secret chambers, provided them with food and drink, and fed them various poisons, then found antidotes, repeating this process over and over. The children’s bodies were inherently fragile; how could they withstand such torment? At most they would last a few months before expiring."
According to Miao Liangfang, the Medical Officer who raised Medicine Men eventually perished in a fire, but the tombstone on Luomei Peak proved that Mo Ruyun did not die.
He didn’t know how Mo Ruyun had escaped from Shengjing, but he was very clear that Lu Tong, who carved the words "Honored Teacher," was far from just a "good student" of that cruel Medical Officer.
Behind the tombstone, there was a row of nameless graves, sixteen in total, and when he first saw her, she claimed to be "Sixteen."
Sixteen, the seventeenth Medicine Man, seventeen people about to be buried in the tombs.
Pei Yunmeng’s heart shook violently.
Many things that he had not understood before suddenly became clear at this moment.
The first time he met Lu Tong, she was picking up dead bodies at the Su Nan Execution Ground. Li Wenhu had also mentioned that he encountered her again at the execution site, where she had picked up corpses more than once.
The secret reports from Changwu County described the third young lady, Lu San, as capricious, lively, and clever, but the Lu Tong who later appeared at the Benevolent Heart Medical Hall in Shengjing was indifferent, completely different from the descriptions in the secret reports.
A little girl who left home when she was young, what had she gone through to kill and bury dead bodies without changing her expression, her revenge was more desperate and mad than a final stand.
Why did she always remain silent about her past in Su Nan, why was she able to move freely on the desolate mountains that others shunned, the oddly long and short ropes in the thatched cottage, the deep finger marks on the walls... That day at the celebration, her absent-mindedness was out of character.
In the small courtyard of the Mangming Township Tea Garden, she held a teacup in her hand and said to him with a flat tone, ironically, "I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, great sir, I am immune to all poisons."
She was very good at enduring.
He hadn’t noticed at all.
Those deliberate distances, the so-called "utter impossibility," the madness and weakness that she showed at times, suddenly coalesced into a picture at this moment, forming a complete answer.
"Lu Tong," Pei Yunmeng looked at her and softly began, "were you once, Mo Ruyun’s Medicine Man?"
Lu Tong stiffly raised her head.
When she first met him, he was always haughty, holding all the winning cards, jesting, probing, interrogating, like an annoying shadow she couldn’t shake off. She desperately wanted to pull him down, to strip away his mask of perpetual ease.
Later, as they got to know each other, became familiar, and clashed, he knew the secrets she hid, and she knew he was not as simple as he appeared.
The distance they deliberately maintained had unknowingly been crossed by each other, his gaze towards her grew softer and softer, his smile no longer carried the frivolity of the past, like at this moment, his gaze was so complex that it made her eyes sting and her heart churn.
She couldn’t face it.
Her instinct was to run away.
She wanted to escape this ending that was moving towards sadness, to a mournful close. She wished for her story to end lighter, even if abruptly better than this heavy, slow descent into the mire, making the onlookers by the shore grieve for her.
The familiar dull pain in her chest gradually spread, like a surging wave of bitterness, threatening to overwhelm her. Lu Tong pushed him away and turned to walk back.
After a few steps, she couldn’t help but cover her chest, support herself against the wall, and slowly squat down.
Seeing this, Pei Yunmeng rushed forward to support her falling body, anxiously asking, "What’s wrong with you?"