In the back courtyard of the Hundred Herbs Hall, two matrons force Su Qi to kneel on the flagstones. Madam Rong demands that she admit she prepared the medicine: the bookkeeper Liu coughed at the hour of the monkey, drank the medicine she had prepared at the start of the hour of the rooster, and collapsed at the end of the hour. Su Qi admits she prepared the medicine, but says Chen Wu was the one who carried the medicine pot over. Madam Rong says that without a registered herbalist's license, even her words don't count. The medicine examiner, Wei Wujiao, enters the courtyard to inspect the body and smell the bowl. Under the Jing Dynasty's herbalist regulations, preparing medicine without a license constitutes illicit dispensing, and if illicit medicine causes a death, the penalty is execution. Su Qi begs to taste a little of the medicine left in the bowl. The matrons let go, and she crawls over on her knees to pick up the second chipped bowl from the stove. She takes a small sip. The flavors of Su Zi, Jie Geng, and Qian Hu are exactly as she mixed them, but beyond those there is another ingredient that isn't in her prescription. It's pungent and warm, travels through the liver meridian, and its qi rises instead of going toward the throat. The tip of her tongue is numb, and she feels it in both sides of her ribs. She recognizes it: there's an extra ingredient in the medicine. Wei Wujiao narrows his eyes and asks her what it's called. But Chen Wu, who carried the pot, claimed he had gone out to buy charcoal, and no one has seen him return.
