Married Thrice to Salted Fish

Chapter 41

On the third day of the new year, Lin Qingyu took Huan Tong and a few guards and sailed south with Lu Baishuo. From the capital to Lin’an by water, it would take a month at best. He would probably have to spend the Lantern Festival on the road.

Even though this trip was to deliver the coffin, Lin Qingyu wasn’t about to treat himself badly. He rented two large two-story boats, one of which was specially used to carry Lu Wancheng’s coffin.

It was the Chinese New Year, the time for visiting relatives and friends. There were numerous boats coming and going at the capital’s ferry port. They were surrounded by the din of people’s voices. Lin Qingyu helped Huan Tong onto the boat. Huan Tong looked at the place where the river met the sky and said with emotion, “A few years ago, Young Master left the capital to travel for his studies. You also traveled by water for a long time. Now, it’s riding boats that I’m most afraid of.”

They were in the same ferry, with the same people; it was only the mood that had changed. Only then did Lin Qingyu remember that Huan Tong was prone to getting seasick. “How about you go back to the Lin Residence?”

“How could that be?” Huan Tong said firmly, “Wherever the Young Master goes, I will follow.”

The men carried the coffin onto the boat. Before his death, Lu Wancheng would never stand if he could sit; would never sit if he could lie down. He only went out a handful of times a year, feeling exhausted whenever he traveled far by boat or carriage. Lu Wancheng once said he would go looking for punishment only after he’s gone mad. Who knew that even after death, he would still need go on such a bumpy journey with him?

After everything was ready, the boatman raised the anchor and the boat started off.

The tide receded and the river surface was calm and still. Fog covered the surface and the sun shone down on the water, half the river rustled and half the river turned rosy.

“Isn’t the river scenery quite nice?” Lin Qingyu wiped Lu Wancheng’s memorial tablet and set it down. “If you manage to come back, don’t be so lazy in the future and go out for a walk once in a while.”

Lin Qingyu wanted to say something else, but when he saw the words “Lu Wancheng’s Tomb” on the tablet, he kept feeling out of sorts. Ever since he saw that strangely dressed boy in his dream, he kept having this sense of discordance towards Lu Wancheng’s coffin.

Lu Wancheng was already dead, but that person might not be.

Going all the way south by boat, the surrounding scenery was constantly changing — from the plains of the north to the mountains of the south. A few days later, they made a brief stop at Xunyang Ferry.

The epidemic was raging in Hongzhou and their boats would not be able to make their appointed stop there. And so, they had to replenish supplies in Xunyang, which was a day’s journey by boat from Hongzhou.

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Lu Baishuo asked Lin Qingyu if he wanted to go ashore. “I heard that Xunyang’s tea cakes are a must. Would Lin Shaojun want to try some?”

Lin Qingyu was not very interested and said, “No, I’ll be waiting for you on the boat.”

“Then I’ll buy and bring some back for you.” Lu Baishuo said, “Just treat it as a return gift for the ‘Hun Yang Mo Hu’…” Lin Qingyu and Lu Wancheng had invited him to eat this dish when he went to the capital before to visit his relatives. “Hiss, look at this mouth of mine.”

Lu Baishuo was aware that he had made a slip of the tongue. He shouldn’t have brought this up in front of Lin Qingyu. The deceased was already gone and reminiscing about the past will only add to the sadness, especially in the presence of the deceased’s wife.

Fortunately, Lin Qingyu didn’t have any special reaction. “Then I’ll trouble the Sixth Young Master to buy an extra order so that Wancheng can also have a taste.”

Huan Tong was so seasick that he wanted to go down to take it easy for a bit. Lin Qingyu said, “That’s perfect. Go into the city and look for a Xiong Si. Have the store make a memorial tablet. It doesn’t need to be anything exquisite. Something useable will suffice.”

Huan Tong thought that the Young Master was going to set up an extra memorial tablet for Young Master Hou. He asked, “Should I have them engrave the same words on the tablet?”

“No, just engrave…” Lin Qingyu pondered, pondered and pondered again, “Engrave ‘Jiang Dazhuang’s tomb’ on it.”

Huan Tong was puzzled. “Who is Jiang Dazhuang?”

Lin Qingyu said indifferently, “A bastard.”

The Lu Family’s boat stopped in Xunyang for half a day. They passed through Hongzhou and continued south. When they were just a few days away from Lin’an, Lu Baishuo and Huan Tong fell ill one after another.

The symptoms of the two are exactly the same. First, a persistent high fever; followed by vomiting and abdominal pain. Then blisters began to appear on the body soon after. One of their boatmen was a refugee from Hongzhou. With a single glance, he could tell that the two were infected with the epidemic.

“Xunyang is only a day or two away from Hongzhou. Many in the city are those who’ve fled from Hongzhou. Although the government checks each one before they’re allowed into the city, it is inevitable that some of those infected will still make it through. I’m afraid that these two masters caught the disease in Xunyang.” The boatman covered his nose with his hands and kept a distance from the two of them. “Please do not take offense, My Lord, but if you have this kind of disease, you can only resign yourself to fate. If you are unlucky even the Emperor cannot help you.”

In the cabin, Lu Baishuo and Huan Tong were delirious from the fever. After only a day of the disease, they could no longer think clearly, the blisters had spread from their bodies up to their necks.

Lin Qingyu wanted to examine the two but the boatman quickly stopped him. “My Lord, you mustn’t. This disease is contagious!”

Lin Qingyu opened the medical box that Lu Wancheng gave him and said, “All of you just need to keep away.”

Hu Ji had reminded Lin Qingyu about the epidemic and Lin Qingyu had already made preparations for it. However, he just hadn’t thought that the epidemic would come so quickly and so urgently. He covered his mouth and nose with cotton gauze and told the rest of the crew to do the same. At the next ferry stop, he had the others disembark to buy medicinal materials for him, while he stayed on the boat to take care of the sick.

Huan Tong had just finished a round of vomiting and was in a rare state of wakefulness. Seeing that Lin Qingyu was going to give him an injection, he hurriedly said, “Young Master, don’t come in here!”

Lin Qingyu held his shoulders to prevent him from moving, and asked, “Do you trust me?”

Huan Tong nodded, eyes red. “Young Master is the best doctor in the world.”

“Except for Father and Master.” Lin Qingyu said, “I will try some medicines on you. Don’t be afraid, they are all mild medicines. Even if they are ineffective, they will not hurt your body.”

“Young Master can use whatever you want. I believe in Young Master…”

Lin Qingyu applied medicinal powder on the two of them. he personally dispensed and decocted them their medicines. He didn’t have a hundred percent certainty. He could only take things one step at a time, increasing or decreasing medication based on their situation.

When the epidemic broke out last year, he wrote a letter to his teacher. In his return letter, Lin Qingyu’s master wrote down a lot of his views regarding the epidemic. From them, Lin Qingyu got a lot of inspiration and it was quite useful in formulating the medicine.

Under his careful care, within a few days, Huan Tong and Lu Baishuo’s fever subsided. The blisters on their bodies burst and scabbed over one after another and there was no sign of the blisters recurring. The two of them stayed in bed for a couple more days, after which they seemed to have made a complete recovery. They gained a lot of scars on their bodies but fortunately it didn’t wound their faces.

Lu Baishuo was filled with gratitude towards Lin Qingyu and he immediately called him his second parent. Lin Qingyu said, “Forget about claiming me as a second parent. If possible, may I ask Sixth Young Master to find someone to send a letter back to the capital for me? Give it to Imperial Physician Hu, Hu Ji.”

He had written down in the letter all the prescriptions he had used on the two of them, hoping to help the Imperial Physician’s Office.

With such a delay, they could only celebrate this year’s Lantern Festival on board the boat. The boatman parked the boat at the ferry crossing by the city gate and Lin Qingyu climbed up the second floor. Atop the river’s waves, they could vaguely see the fiery trees and silver flowers of the city. It was dazzling, reminding him of the smile in the eyes of that person whenever he looked at him.

“Young Master, hurry! Look!”

Lin Qingyu looked in the direction Huan Tong was pointing and saw lotus lanterns flowing downstream from the city; floating on the river, like stars. Lin Qingyu watched for a while and said, “Do we still have wine?”

On the other side, Lu Baishuo woke up after a nap. Seeing neither servant nor master of the Lin Family, he went on deck to look for them. Amidst the frosty moonlight, a man in white was seated facing the wind, his long hair, tied with silk, fluttering like ink; his clothes as pristine as snow. His image, as he raised his face to drink the wine, was far more beautiful than the moon.

For a while, Lu Baishuo thought he had seen an immortal. It was only when the boatman, seeing him in a daze, called out aloud, “My Lord” that he came back to his senses.

“Doctor Lin.”

Lin Qingyu’s hand holding the wine cup paused. He suddenly got up and looked back. The moment he saw Lu Baishuo, the light in his eyes quickly dimmed.

Lu Baishuo was a little embarrassed and at a loss. “Doctor Lin?”

Ever since he had learned of Lin Qingyu’s medical skills, Lu Baishuo felt that the title “Doctor” was more suitable for him than “Shaojun”. They had truly wasted talent the day Lin Qingyu married into the Hou Mansion as part of the Chong Xi.

Lin Qingyu calmed down and said lightly, “It’s nothing.”

On the night of this year’s Lantern Festival, the moon and the lanterns were the same as before.

A third of his 100-day promise to that man had passed.

When they arrived in Lin’an, Lu Baishuo took care of the many matters of the burial so Lin Qingyu needn’t concern himself about it. Once the Lu Family’s branch family learned that their family’s male wife had arrived, they all wanted to come see, creating quite the fuss. It was a pity that Lin Qingyu didn’t give them the chance. He didn’t even enter the Lu Family’s ancestral home, staying instead at an inn outside. He didn’t make an appearance until the day of Lu Wancheng’s burial.

He looked on expressionlessly as Lu Wancheng’s coffin was buried in the Lu Family’s ancestral tomb. The members of the branch family were crying so hard — some of them had never even seen Lu Wancheng’s face. Seeing him so calm, it led to a lot of people gossiping behind his back, as though him not showing the littlest bit of sadness, confirmed the rumors that he was a jinx upon his husband’s family.

However, the one being buried was Lu Wancheng. What did it have to do with that one surnamed Jiang? The person surnamed Jiang simply borrowed this body for a year. Lin Qingyu personally working so hard to look after his funeral arrangements for so long, could already be regarded as him repaying the debt for this person surnamed Jiang.

During the second month, Lin Qingyu finally returned to the capital. Lu Wancheng’s funeral had come to an end. It was time for him to return to the Nan’an Hou’s Mansion to prepare for the division of the property and the separation from the family.

As soon as Lin Qingyu arrived at the Nan’an Hou’s Mansion, Hu Ji immediately came looking for him, excitedly telling him two pieces of good news.

First, his prescription for the epidemic was indeed miraculously effective. After a little improvement by the Imperial Medical Office, it was distributed to all nineteen states of the Dayu.

Second, in the northwest border, General Gu — Gu Fuzhou — suddenly returned from the verge of death, persisting for two more days. During these two days, Lin Pan Yuan finally found a way to dispel this strange poison from Xixia. Now, the residual poison has been cleared from Gu Fuzhou’s body. All he needed now was to rest in order to completely recover.

“I heard that after General Gu woke up, he saw the Pan Yuan and claimed him as a second parent, insisting that he be his adoptive father. The Pan Yuan refused many times but it was no use. He could only toughen his scalp and accept him as an adopted son.” Hu Ji said with a smile, “In this way, isn’t Shaojun now General Gu’s adoptive brother?”

Adoptive brother?

For some reason, Lin Qingyu felt a subtle sense of familiarity in his heart. In any case, both these thing truly were things to be celebrated. After a long time, he now finally breathed a sigh of relief. He said “Since General Gu is safe and sound, shouldn’t it be time for my father to return to the capital?”

“It should be.” Hu Ji said, beaming. “Lin Shaojun, did you know? When the Emperor heard that the one who came up with the cure for the epidemic is the son of Lin Pan Yuan and the wife of Young Master Hou, he made it be known that he wished to invite you to the palace to meet with him.”