Chapter 25: It’s a Medicinal Herb, Not Firewood

Translator: 549690339

At present, Tang Yuxin was just a three-year-old child, the age when kids are at their most oblivious. They still crawl and roll about in the dirt, playing with their siblings in the mud, needing someone to feed them or else they’ll get food all over their faces and all over the table.

They can’t even talk well, let alone read or write, so how could they possibly remember so much?

Tang Yuxin ran over and picked up a long-leaved herb. She brought it to her nose and sniffed.

“Grandpa said, the one that looks like Agave is called Qinghuan Grass, and it smells sour. This one smells sour.”

“Um, right,” Chen Zhong finally smiled at this point, but his smile was naturally cold. Some people are like this, their smiles seeming almost nonexistent. Others, though, naturally have good faces, their lips turned up, their eyes warm. But the things they do are even worse than pigs and dogs, kind of like Zhang Yong’an.

Even now, she could still recall the sweet words he once had for her.

“Yuxin, don’t worry. Once I’ve completed my studies, we’ll get married. We’ll live in a big house and have more money than we can spend.”

“Yuxin, I promise I’ll give you a good life. We’ll feast on delicacies from the mountains and the sea, and wear the finest silks and satins.”

“Yuxin, if I ever let you down, I’ll be worse than a dog or a pig. May I be poor and destitute in my next life, never achieving anything.”

People like to swear on their next lives, but who knows who they themselves will be in the next life, or where their next life will take place? Will they recognize each other, remember each other?

“The little miss is not bad,” Chen Zhong, a man true to his word, brought out a package and laid it down. “I’ll let your father take this home. When you’re older, I’ll teach you how to prepare it. This is the Chen Family’s most precious secret.”

Tang Yuxin was a bit puzzled. If it’s such a precious secret, why would he teach her?

As it started to get dark, Tang Zhinian came to pick up his daughter. On his way home, he held his not-so-weighty daughter with one hand and carried a large snakeskin bag in the other, filled with various roots and bark.

That very evening, Tang Yuxin instructed her father to boil water and then steeped it. She took a bowl for herself and gave her father one too.

She picked up the small bowl and, without any repulsion, began to drink.

But Tang Zhinian was breaking out in a cold sweat. Is this really drinkable?

And what about those dried sticks and withered grass? He thought they were for burning. So, they’re meant for drinking?

“Grandpa said, it’s good for the eyes. Can we drink this together, daddy?”

Tang Yuxin blinked her eyes, her face full of anticipation. Her innocent appearance was irresistible, and Tang Zhinian, who adored his obedient daughter, couldn’t resist her serious and deliberate acts of cuteness.

With a grit of his teeth, he also picked up the bowl. His daughter had already drunk hers. As her father, he couldn’t let her down, right? Otherwise, he’d become the laughing stock to his child.

Besides, Uncle Chen had said that it was drinkable. If he said it was, then it was. He couldn’t help but feel curious. He had thought that the herbs were for starting fires, but as it turns out, they were for making tea. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

He took a sip from the bowl, and the taste actually set his fears aside. Although the liquid looked like urine and smelled average, it tasted fairly decent, or at least, it was potable.