The old woman, leaning on a bare jujube wood cane, shifted her weight step by step toward the high platform.
Her coarse cotton clothes were washed so much they had faded to white, and the cuffs and knees were patched with several layers.
Her full head of silver hair was casually tied back with a bramble branch. Her frail, withered body was hunched over, and she tottered unsteadily as she walked.
Scholar Zhou snapped his folding fan shut and pointed at the old woman's back, shouting loudly.
"Absurd! This is utterly absurd!" Scholar Zhou turned to his classmates behind him, his tone full of sarcasm.
"If you commoners really can't find anyone, you should just admit defeat early."
"Bringing up an old hag who's half in the grave to make up the numbers, what do you take the arena set up by the Imperial Envoy for? A theater?"
The scholar in the gray long gown chimed in to jeer.
"Exactly! This old woman can't even walk straight. I doubt she can even tell herbs from weeds. Hurry up and get down, don't make a fool of yourself on stage!"
The old woman didn't even turn her head, completely ignoring the noisy clamor.
She walked to the steps, leaned her jujube wood cane aside, gripped the edge of the wooden boards with both hands, and struggled to climb onto the high platform.
The old woman stood firm and bowed to Xu Qinghuan, performing a rather unorthodox greeting.
"This commoner woman, Liu Meixiu, lives at the foot of Yin Mountain," the old woman's voice carried the vicissitudes of years of hard labor.
"Ever since I can remember, I've been digging herbs in those barren mountains to exchange for food. All told, I've been scraping in this dirt for forty years."
The old woman raised her head, looking straight at Xu Qinghuan.
"When I was young, I met a wandering doctor and learned a little bit about identifying herbs. Your Excellency, may I try?"
Xu Qinghuan examined the old woman's rough hands.
These hands were the proof of someone who had truly struggled in the dirt.
"I have said, regardless of background, regardless of age," Xu Qinghuan nodded in agreement. "Li Sheng, prepare the incense."
Li Sheng walked forward holding the black blindfold.
The old woman waved her hand, refusing the cloth.
She turned around and walked straight to the right side of the platform.
There lay the pile of safe, non-toxic herbs that the young man had just sorted out.
The old woman reached out her skeletal hand, rummaged through the pile of herbs a couple of times, pinched a withered yellow root, and held it high.
"Young man, you just picked out fourteen poisonous herbs, that's true,"
The old woman looked at the young man standing nearby, her tone even.
"But you missed one."
As soon as she said this, the crowd below immediately exploded in an uproar.
Scholar Zhou jumped up and down in agitation, pointing at the old woman and cursing.
"You old woman, stop your nonsense! The herbs this young master picked out, how can a village woman like you question them! If you can't afford to lose, then hurry up and roll down, don't cause trouble here!"
Young Master Wu also joined in from the crowd: "That's clearly a common herb, what do you know, you old hag!"
The young man turned around, looking at the root in the old woman's hand, his brow slightly furrowed.
He took two steps forward, cupped his hands in a fist, his attitude quite polite: "Old lady, the herb I picked out is Scutellaria, cold in nature and bitter in taste, used to clear heat and dry dampness. It is a common good medicine. Where does this talk of toxicity come from?"
The old woman didn't waste her breath.
She pressed her two thumbs against the middle of the Scutellaria and snapped it with both hands.
With a crisp sound, the dried root broke in the middle.
The old woman turned the broken end over, held it up to the young man, and then turned around to show the crowd below.
"Scutellaria itself is non-toxic, that's true," the old woman pointed at a clump of dark brown powder at the broken end. "But look at the inside."
The young man leaned in to look, and his face changed.
The outside of the Scutellaria looked intact, but the inside had been hollowed out by bugs, covered in a fine layer of mold spots, emitting a pungent smell of rotten wood.
The old woman threw the broken Scutellaria on the table and clapped the debris off her hands.
"After this herb was harvested, it wasn't dried thoroughly before being put into the storehouse, so it caught moisture."
"The inside was hollowed out by bugs long ago and grew mold. If this kind of moldy Scutellaria is boiled into a decoction and poured into a patient's stomach, it will cause vomiting and diarrhea at best, and take a person's life at worst."
The old woman stared at the young man, enunciating each word carefully: "You only recognized that this is Scutellaria, but you didn't recognize that it is a deadly poison."
An old military doctor squeezed in the crowd below slapped his thigh and shouted loudly.
"This old sister makes sense!" The old military doctor pointed at the herbs on the stage, explaining loudly to the surrounding commoners, "The herbs collected by our military medical department every year, what we fear most is this kind of rotten goods that look fine on the outside but are moldy on the inside."
"This young fellow has only memorized the pharmacopeia, but doesn't understand the variables of herb storage. This is just armchair strategy!"
With the old military doctor's shout, Scholar Zhou and that group of scholars all fell silent.
Young Master Wu even shrank his head into his collar, not daring to even glance at the stage.
The commoners burst into a roar of laughter, pointing at the scholars.
Old Man Wang, who sold flatbreads, spat: "I thought he had such great skills, turns out he's just a bookworm who only knows dead books! He almost fed poison to people as a tonic!"
The young man looked at the moldy Scutellaria on the table, stayed silent for a moment, and then bowed deeply to the old woman.
"I have been taught."
The old woman ignored his politeness, turned and took the black cloth from Li Sheng, tied it over her own eyes, and made a dead knot at the back of her head.
Li Sheng lit the third stick of incense and stuck it in the copper censer.
The old woman walked to the two baskets of mixed herbs.
She didn't reach out to feel the texture of the herbs, nor did she lean in to smell them.
She simply grabbed a handful of herbs, pinched a small piece from it, and put it in her mouth.
The whole place was dead silent, everyone staring wide-eyed at the old woman's actions.
The old woman's cheeks moved a couple of times, using the tip of her tongue against the piece of herb, carefully savoring the taste of the juice.
Two breaths later, she turned her head and spat the herb residue onto the empty ground beside her with a 'ptui'.
Li Sheng, with great foresight, brought over a bowl of clear water.
The old woman took a mouthful of water, rinsed her mouth, and spat it out.
"Arisaema, raw product is toxic, numbs the tongue," the old woman threw the remaining herb in her hand to the left.
She reached out again, pinched a grass root, and put it in her mouth.
Chewed, spat, rinsed.
"Strychnos nux-vomica, extremely bitter, highly toxic."
The old woman tasted them one by one.
The old military doctor below the stage watched, gasping continuously, whispering to his colleague next to him with a suppressed voice.
"This is the poison-tasting method! The most primitive and most dangerous way of identifying herbs, following the path of Shennong!"
"This old sister gathers herbs in the mountains, when she encounters unrecognized roots and bark, she relies entirely on this mouth to test. This is real skill bought with her life!"
Before half a stick of incense had burned.
The old woman not only found the fourteen poisonous herbs the young man had picked out again, but also picked out three spoiled and moldy qualified herbs from the remaining pile.
She pulled off the black blindfold and pointed at the three spoiled herbs.
"This Angelica has lost its oil, this Atractylodes has red spots, and this Saposhnikovia has been gnawed by mice."
"They are all waste materials that cannot be consumed."
The old woman turned around, faced Xu Qinghuan, and cupped her hands in a bow.
"Your Excellency, this commoner woman has finished picking."
