Chapter 1892 — A Hard Question
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Wei Zhao smiled slightly. "If that is all there is to it, then I should think so."
"Good!" Bai Lingtou actually nodded. "Two choices, one hard and one easy. Pass the easy one, and you needn't sit the final examination—I will pass you outright—and you may take leave in term time as well."
"And the hard one?" Not having heard any condition about being excused the class monitor post, Wei Zhao pressed on.
"The hard one: pass it, and you may appoint someone else as class monitor; you may come and go as you please without asking leave—just give me a word when you are about. And if you pass four times running over four years, I will let you graduate outright!" Bai Lingtou laid out his terms.
"All right. I'll take the hard one," Wei Zhao said with a nod.
"Mm. The hard one is very hard. In all these years, no one has passed it. Think it over carefully," Bai Lingtou said.
"I've thought it over." Wei Zhao nodded.
"Very well, then I'll set a question at random. After you've read it, if you'd rather not answer and want to switch to the easy one, there is still time. But once you answer wrongly, the chance is gone." As he spoke, Bai Lingtou pulled open a drawer and began rummaging through it carelessly...
"No need. Set your question, Elder Bai," Wei Zhao said.
"Heh heh, this one, then!" Bai Lingtou plucked a small box from the drawer and set it before Wei Zhao, a sly grin spreading across his face. "This one. Tell me what is in it!"
"Huh?!" Wei Zhao's eyes went wide, and he stared at the little box on the table in disbelief... because it was unmistakably a box of Dr. Guan's trauma medicine!
"Haha, what's the matter, scared?" Bai Lingtou looked at Wei Zhao smugly, thoroughly pleased with the trap he had sprung. Never mind a prepared medicine like this, compounded from a dozen-odd herbs—even a few blended into a finished product are terribly hard to tell apart. Forget Wei Zhao's tender years; the heads of the great medical clans could not manage it either!
"It's not that..." Wei Zhao smiled wryly.
"Heh heh, still talking tough? But I'll allow you one mistake. How's that—fair enough?" Bai Lingtou said with a faint smile.
"Fair. Absolutely fair..." Wei Zhao meant every word, because this question was, to him, simply too easy!
"In that case, we can begin." Seeing that Wei Zhao still would not back down, Bai Lingtou grew a little nettled and spoke.
"In this trauma medicine's formula there is nux vomica, dragon bone, five mace of southern safflower, Sichuan notopterygium, crab bone, angelica root, fangfeng, baizhi..." Wei Zhao slowly began to recite the formula...