The Little Apothecary’s Tale: A Hundred Herbs Illuminate the World

The setting sun was red as blood, and the scorched earth of Luoyang City reeked of burnt medicine.

Five-year-old Lin Xiaoyao huddled beneath the medicine shop counter. Through a crack, he saw his father cut down by a flurry of blades, tossing out a packet of fangfeng powder just before he fell. The golden medicinal dust blinded the pursuers, but it could not obscure the wide-eyed stare beyond the crack. His father’s blood splashed onto the drawer labeled “Angelica,” staining the character for “return” a deep red.

“Angelica, angelica, when will Father and Mother return?”

Xiaoyao bit down hard on his faded red hair ribbon. His mother had used it to tie his hair on her final night. Only when a pair of calloused hands dragged him from beneath the counter and a lame old man carried him off at a run, his medicine chest pounding against his back, did Xiaoyao finally burst into tears.

The old physician, Zhang the Lame, cursed, “What are you crying for? The King of Hell won’t take a medicine man!”

Xiaoyao didn’t understand what a “medicine man” was. He only remembered his master’s sleeve brushing across his face, smelling of mugwort and rusty blood.

Only later did he learn that on that day, the rebel army had massacred the city, and faint golden lines, the mark of angelica’s power to stop bleeding, had spread from his wound to his shoulder blade, like a mark of fate he could never escape.

And the medicine chest had never contained only medicine.