I have been farming since I crossed over.

The late winter rain was wrapped in cold air. Yang Mingxi stood at the bow of the boat, holding a half-roll of wet rice paper in her fingertips.

The three words "Lu Jintang" on the paper were blurred by water marks, just like the medicinal soup she had splashed on her master's clothes last autumn.

At that time, she had just traveled through time and space. She deliberately poured the cooled medicine on her master's jacket, which had been washed white. Seeing the ink-colored medicine flow like a river along the embroidery thread, she felt relieved.

"Master Lu," she said, her expression a trifle sad as she turned around, her fingertips quietly pinching her palm, leaving a crescent mark. "Before leaving, Master said that if you want to find the miraculous doctor Bai Fu Zi, you must pass through Fengling Ferry."

"Now that Atang is so ill, I must go find a miracle doctor, and that means I must go to Fengling Ferry."

The old helmsman at the bow was wrapping a straw rope around a bamboo pole when he heard this.

The bamboo strips left bluish-white marks on the rough lines of her palms. "Miss, do you know that three years ago, ten boats were wrecked by rocks at that ferry crossing, and the words on the official prohibition sign were worn away by the river water?"

Yang Mingxi did not answer, but lowered her eyes and fiddled with the silver thread on her cuffs. The dark pattern looked cold under the water light.

That was the Shu brocade that Lu Jintang gave her when they got married last year. At that time, he said with a smile, "Axi looks best in moon-white," because he wanted Yang Mingxi to wear couple outfits with him.

"Shuanghe Town's market is big, I..." She suddenly whimpered, her nails scratching her lower lip accurately, "I'm going to buy Atang a good burial suit, just in case..."

Before he could finish his words, the sound of oars hitting the water suddenly came from outside the boat awning.

Three merchant ships with green bamboo curtains hanging on them were sailing upstream. The lanterns on the bows reflected the words "Wang's Pharmacy". The bitter aroma of boiled medicine leaked from the gaps in the bamboo curtains, and mixed with the smell of rain, it was particularly pungent.

The old boatman frowned at the merchant ship. "Whose son is seriously ill again? We just hired a miracle doctor from Jiang Ling last month... I heard that when the doctor took the pulse, the copper censer in the room was burning ambergris."

Yang Mingxi suddenly dug her fingertips into her palm, a tearful expression on her face, a drop of water still condensed on her eyelashes, "Lu Jintang... is he really not going to live for many days?"

"Lu Da nodded and said, 'Madam, please stay with the general more!'" But he sneered in his heart - their general was only temporarily injured, and now that the madam is here, the general will be well soon.

Yang Mingxi recalled the time when Lu Jintang was dancing with a sword in the garden. His back was as straight as a pine tree under his green tights, but his face pretended to be even more sad.

The reefs of Fengling Ferry stood out like jagged teeth in the gray sky of late winter. The jagged tips were still hung with the torn sails of last year's shipwreck, rustling in the wind like ghosts crying.

Yang Mingxi gripped the side of the boat, her fingertips touching the raised wood grain on the wooden board. Suddenly she thought of the baby in her belly, and her movements inadvertently became a little lighter.

"Girl, hide in the cabin quickly!" The old boatman's shout was washed away by the waves.

The boat tilted suddenly, and she took the opportunity to stumble into the corner of the awning, and the porcelain bottle in her arms shattered with a "bang".

It was the tranquilizing powder Yang Mingxi had personally prepared, with strands of her hair still tangled around the bottle.

The powder mixed with rainwater seeped into the cracks in the wooden boards, emitting a strange bluish-white color under the moonlight. It was a special tranquilizer mixed with poppy shells, enough to make the old boatman who sailed all year round fall asleep for twelve hours.

An hour later, light rain began to fall from the sky, and Yang Mingxi appeared in front of Yuelai Inn in Shuanghe Town, soaking wet.

Her steps were a little unsteady, as if she had used up all her strength in every step.

The door of the inn was half-open, and a faint candlelight shone from inside.

Yang Mingxi pushed open the door and a gust of cold wind blew in her face, making her shiver.

The shopkeeper was lying on the counter, dozing off over the account book, with a thin layer of dust on the abacus beads.

Hearing the sound of the door opening, he slowly raised his head and looked at Yang Mingxi with sleepy eyes.

"Give me a room upstairs." Yang Mingxi took off her hat, revealing her face wet from the rain.

There were a few new strands of gray hair at her temples. They were dyed with walnut bark mixed with lead powder, and they would fade after three washes.

The shopkeeper looked at Yang Mingxi and noticed the brocade bag around her waist, a hint of curiosity flashed in his eyes.

"Prepare some more Shu brocade... to make funeral clothes." Yang Mingxi's voice was low and hoarse, as if she was suppressing some emotion.

The shopkeeper's abacus beads clattered, and his eyes moved twice around the brocade bag on Yang Mingxi's waist. Then he slowly asked, "Miss, what is this...?"

"Hehe, shopkeeper, please keep your voice down. I'm afraid the Thirteenth Young Master won't survive the night." Yang Mingxi said softly with a wry smile on his face.

She took out a few silver coins from her sleeve and placed them on the counter.

Then she brushed her fingers against the edge of the counter, leaving a barely visible trail of powder.

It was goosegrass powder, a drug that blinds homing pigeons.

"I'm a maid in his wife's room, and I was ordered to buy funeral clothes." Yang Mingxi explained, with a barely perceptible sadness in her eyes.

Suddenly, a black shadow passed by the window. She caught a glimpse of a shiny grey pigeon perched on the roof, pecking at the strands of hair she had deliberately dropped this morning. It was the space carrier pigeon raised by Yang Mingxi herself.

The night at Yuelai Inn was exceptionally quiet. The copper bells on the eaves were blown by the wind, making tiny "ding-dong" sounds, much like the scales that Duan Mei used to weigh medicine.

Yang Mingxi sat in front of the bronze mirror and smeared the incense ash mixed with datura flowers on the corners of her eyes.

The reflection in the mirror immediately took on a sickly dark blue hue, and the silver pendant on her earlobe swayed slightly - she had made it herself in the space, and half a grain of crested red was hidden in the hollow pendant.

Suddenly, I heard a low quarrel coming from downstairs.

She lifted a corner of the curtain, and the wind that leaked in through the hole in the window paper lifted up the dressing box, revealing half of a prescription hidden at the bottom. It was the prescription for Lu Jintang's "arrow in the heart", but the handwriting was exactly the same as the copybook in Lu Jintang's tent.

The shopkeeper was whispering with a man in gray. The jade pendant hanging around the man's waist belonged to the steward of the Taifu Mansion.

"Lu Jintang has at most three days..." The words of the man in gray were torn into pieces by the night wind. The three words "Bai Fu Zi" were faintly visible on the corner of the paper that slipped from his sleeve.

Yang Mingxi curled her lips in a cold smile, her fingertips stroking the newly made shroud on the desk - the dark pattern on the cuffs was exactly the same as the one on the secret letter Lu Jintang gave her. That dark pattern was the "longevity pattern" secretly passed down by the Taifu Mansion, and only the master would use this pattern.

She knew that when the news was delivered back to the Grand Tutor's Mansion by carrier pigeon, Eagle's Beak Cliff would probably welcome uninvited guests.

Amid the sound of the night watchman's bell, she suddenly took out half a piece of gold foil and blew it gently towards the candle flame.

The gold foil flew across the window lattice like a butterfly and landed at the base of the wall of the empty room next door - where the aconite roots she had planted this morning were buried.

By this time tomorrow, the entire town of Shuanghe will know that a girl from the Lu family, while buying burial clothes for her seriously ill master, ran into a ghost market drug dealer in the inn. And that those burial clothes, tainted with aconite poison, were drifting on the night wind toward a secret pharmacy with a plaque reading "Jishi Tang"...