The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 14 - Chapter 19

Chapter 19: The Still-Hidden Treasure (Part One)

Dr. Li gave first aid to Tianyu’s father. He had the wound on his neck and some scratches from when he had tripped on the ground, but otherwise he wasn’t seriously harmed.

In fact, Maomao was in worse shape than he was. Her face was a mess of soot and snot and tears. Her clothes were soaked; the moment she got back to the tent, Suiren quickly gave her a new outfit, which went a long way toward making her feel more human again.

Kada’s Book, huh?

She’d hardly believed it really existed. When Kokuyou had mentioned it in the pleasure district, she’d thought how great it would be if it existed, but she hadn’t really believed it.

“What fine medical treatment you’re giving me for such small injuries. I really can’t thank you enough.” It turned out that Tianyu’s father was his exact opposite not only in appearance, but also in personality. Despite being a grizzled hunter, he was polite and oddly classy.

“Please, don’t mention it,” said Dr. Li.

“Awful lot of work when you could just slap some spit on it and it would be fine,” Tianyu said from beside him, as if they weren’t dealing with his own father; he earned himself a knuckle from Dr. Li.

“Oh! Pardon me. I know he’s your son,” the doctor said quickly to Tianyu’s father.

“Not at all. Knock him on the head until it cracks open.” Tianyu’s father sounded distinctly serious.

“When it does, I’ll be curious to see if there’s anything inside.” With Dr. Li’s jokes, it could be hard to tell whether he was actually, you know, joking.

“Ha ha ha! Gee, it almost sounds like you all don’t like me,” Tianyu said.

Maomao and the others were in one of the tents that Hulan had prepared. It served as a place for the guards to rest, and had medical supplies as well.

Basen, who had apparently been waiting for the conversation to reach a break, stuck his head in. “May we?” he asked.

“Please, go ahead,” Maomao answered for the group.

Basen, Jinshi, and Hulan all entered.

“What do you want me to do?” Dr. Li asked. He’d been brought along for his skills as a physician, but he was an outsider to this group. He took the hint and offered to make himself scarce.

“Please wait outside,” Jinshi instructed him.

“Yes, sir.” Dr. Li left the tent, leaving Maomao, Tianyu, Tianyu’s father, Jinshi, Basen, and Hulan. In Maomao’s opinion, they didn’t really need those last two either.

“Moon Prince, we don’t need Hulan here, do we?” she asked, the clear suggestion being: Get him the hell out of here. Jinshi had described Hulan as Lahan with a different hair color—and Maomao intended to treat him like Lahan.

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Lady Maomao,” Hulan said, still grinning broadly.

Basen didn’t look much happier than Maomao felt—he didn’t seem to get along with the young man either.

“You’ll just have to live with them,” Jinshi said. If that was his decision, Maomao wouldn’t press the point.

Then Jinshi turned to Tianyu’s father and said, “First, you must let me apologize.”

“O-Oh, no, sir. Heavens, no.” Tianyu’s father only bowed his head even deeper. He didn’t stop there: He got out of his chair and prostrated himself directly on the carpet. “I can only thank you for having any regard at all for the descendant of a criminal like myself. In my filthy state, I’m not fit even to appear in your presence.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. For the record, let me ask: Are you in fact Tianyu’s father?” Maomao had had the same question.

“Yes, sir.”

“I take after my mom, see,” Tianyu volunteered.

A crude thought crossed Maomao’s mind—Maybe you take after your dad, but it’s not this guy—but she didn’t let it out of her mouth. Not for Tianyu’s sake, but for his father’s.

“I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask you,” Jinshi said. “You are a descendant of Kada, are you not?”

“Yes, sir. My great-grandmother became intimate with a physician who visited our hunting grounds. When she got pregnant, he gave her this jade tablet, or so they say.”

All eyes settled on the tablet.

“After that, though, the physician earned the wrath of the reigning emperor and was put to death. If anyone had known my great-grandmother was pregnant, the child in her belly—and perhaps the entire family—would have been killed with him. With tears in her eyes, my great-grandmother defaced the tablet so that the design could not be discerned. If you ask me, she should have just gotten rid of it, but I guess she couldn’t. Maybe it just goes to show how much she cared about that physician.”

“How did it come to be broken in two?”

“That’s my older brother’s doing. Our great-grandmother kept the jade, careful not to let anyone know about it but unable to get rid of it. My brother, however—he said something about an Imperial treasure being hidden somewhere, and tried to make off with it. Our father wouldn’t allow it; he said that as his younger brother, I too had a claim on the jade. So finally, my brother broke the tablet in half and disappeared with one piece of it.” Tianyu’s father looked at Jinshi’s half of the jade tablet, mystified. “But what is it doing here?”

Maomao raised her hand. “Allow me to answer that. About thirty years ago, a courtesan in the royal capital gave birth to a child, and she received the tablet from the customer who was its father. She gave birth to a girl and passed the tablet down to her, but for reasons I won’t bore you with, I’ve entrusted it to the Moon Prince.”

“I see...” Tianyu’s father gazed at the stone, deeply moved.

“Would you like to meet the woman?” Maomao knew this suggestion wasn’t strictly necessary, but offered it anyway. They didn’t know what had happened to Tianyu’s father’s older brother, but the woman in question would be Tianyu’s father’s niece.

“No, I suppose it’s better if I don’t,” Tianyu’s father said.

“Aw, but I want to! She’s my cousin, isn’t she?” Tianyu whined, but he was roundly ignored—except by his father, who, in the absence of Dr. Li, planted a knuckle on his head.

“Fate works in strange ways,” Jinshi said, his fingers brushing the face of the tablet. Now that the two parts were joined together, the defacement could be seen as a jagged line down the stone. It seemed somehow odd to Maomao, who studied the tablet intently. “We’ll compensate you for your injuries and the loss of your house,” Jinshi went on. “I think some of the money can come from the fools who caused all this trouble to begin with.”

“I wouldn’t feel right putting you to such effort,” Tianyu’s father said. “Instead, maybe I could ask you for just one thing?”

“What would you like?”

Tianyu’s father heaved a sigh before he spoke. “I would ask you to find the hidden treasure my older brother was seeking and destroy it.”

For a second, Maomao couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. The words hidden treasure kept echoing in her mind—and then her body moved of its own volition. “A hidden treasure!” she said, her eyes shining. “Could it be... Could it be that you’re talking about Kada’s Book?!”

“That’s right.”

“Ahhhhh!” She raced up to Tianyu’s father.

“All right, slow down,” Jinshi said, grabbing her by the collar like he was scruffing a cat.

“I thought the book burned in the fire,” Maomao said, managing to ask the question even as she kicked her feet in the air.

“No, we don’t know where this treasure is. My great-grandmother appears to have hidden it, but it was nowhere in the house that we could find. However, in her last will, which she left us along with the jade, she said that if it looked like the book was going to fall into the hands of the uncomprehending, we were to burn it.”

“Which is why Uncle left, right?” Tianyu piped up.

“You be quiet,” his father said. Another knuckle.

Even if they found Kada’s Book, it would be treated as a forbidden text. Yet the medical knowledge within it might be invaluable.

Jinshi cautiously set Maomao down and asked Tianyu’s father, “Do you know any place or object that might serve as a clue?”

“Not to speak of, I’m afraid. Except, I’ve heard that my great-grandmother never traveled very far.”

“She hid it nearby, then?” Jinshi pondered. Basen appeared to be thinking as well. Tianyu’s head whipped from side to side as he observed each of them.

Hulan seemed to have a thought; he stepped out of the tent but was soon back.

“How widely did your great-grandmother range?” he asked. He was carrying a map of the area. It showed rivers and forests and several villages nearby.

“She had passed by the time I have any memories, but I talked about her with my brother a number of times. I don’t think she would have gone farther than this.” Tianyu’s father pointed to a particular part of the forest and the nearby village.

“I assume she went to sell the pelts and meat of the game the family hunted, and to do what shopping she needed?” Maomao asked.

“I think so, yes.”

Judging by the woman’s last words, it seemed unlikely she had wandered very far from where she lived her life.

If she hid the thing close to home, where would it be?

Maomao gazed at the jade tablet. “Hm?”

“What is it?” Jinshi asked.

“If I may?” She placed the two pieces of the tablet on top of the map. Together they made a long rectangle, and the ratio of its length to its width was roughly the same as the ratio of the forest’s north-south and east-west axes.

Maomao looked again at the scratches that ran along the tablet. They cut side to side diagonally—the pattern had bothered her for some time now.

Could it be?

“Do you have a brush?” she asked.

“But of course.” Hulan held a brush out to her, and she snatched it from him.

“There are large trees in this forest, right?” she said. She was thinking of the trees Tianyu had used as guideposts.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tianyu’s father.

“And they’ve all been there for centuries, right?”

“What are you getting at?” Basen asked, confused.

“Show me where those trees are.” Since they used the trees as guideposts through the forest, they ought to have a good idea of their location.

“Very well.” Tianyu’s father started pointing out the locations, and Maomao circled them on the map. “I think that’s all of them,” he said after a while.

Maomao lined the tablet up on top of the map and calculated the ratio of the length to the width, then drew a line between the two corresponding circles.

“The length, ratio, and the angle match,” she said. She drew a diagonal line—one that neatly matched the scratch on the tablet. Once she had drawn in all of the scratches, only one circle remained.

“Who knew...” Jinshi murmured.

No one—as long as the tablet remained broken in two.

The tablet itself had been the key. The surface hadn’t simply been effaced; the scratches had been meant to serve a purpose—this purpose.

“Now we know where we need to go.” Maomao grabbed the map and headed out of the tent.