Transmigrated Farmgirl's Scheme to Get Rich - Chapter 15
Injury
The next day was a market day, so Mo Ling was ordered to go town to buy meat and vegetables. Mo Yan didn’t go with her and went to the pond to dig for medicinal herbs.
The pond was only so big, and the distance from the shores to the water was only that wide. Very quickly, Mo Yan had gathered all of the medicinal herbs that could be found there.
When her second grandmother came to fetch water, she saw Mo Yan sitting under a willow tree staring into space and asked, “Yan’er, why aren’t you digging for medicinal herbs anymore?”
“I’ve gathered all the herbs in this pond. There aren’t any more here.”
“I know where there are more herbs. I’ll take you there.”
When she heard that there were more medicinal herbs somewhere else, Mo Yan immediately perked up, ran to the well where her second grandma was standing, and asked, “Where is it? Is it far away?”
“It’s a bit far. It’s at the west side of the village, on the outskirts.”
“Please take me there as soon as you can.”
Mo Yan grabbed her second grandma’s hand and kept shaking it. Not wanting to disappoint her granddaughter, second grandma put down her clay jar and led Mo Yan to the place.
After walking across a short stretch of field and walking along a long stretch of road, she raised her hand and pointed into the distance, “Look, there it is.”
Mo Yan looked at the direction she was pointing at and saw a large patch of unclaimed land, overgrown with chrysanthemums and weeds.
“Can medicinal herbs even grow there?” Mo Yan asked.
Her second grandma smiled and said, “Let’s see when we get there.”
Since we’ve come all the way over here already, why not take a look?
The two of them stepped off the long stretch of road, and after getting past the drainage ditches on the side of the road, entered the field. The chrysanthemums were clustered together densely and were almost as tall as Mo Yan. As they found spaces where the chrysanthemums didn’t grow to traverse, the amount of chrysanthemums gradually decreased. And when she raised her head again, Mo Yan couldn’t help but exclaim, “Oh my! This place is so beautiful!”
While the chrysanthemums in front of them had all but vanished, the land in front of them was filled with wildflowers of all colours. The sea of flowers was simply stunning.
There were dandelions and sow thistles with yellow flowers, purple wisterias, and bellflowers in various pastel colours scattered everywhere. Mo Yan dropped her basket and darted towards the sea of flowers, running around the field in excitement.
Second grandma picked up Mo Yan’s basket and asked, “Do you still want to dig for medicinal herbs?”
“Yes, of course! I can’t believe there is such a good place in a village. Second grandma, why didn’t you bring me to this place earlier?”
“What kind of good place can this be considered to be, it’s just a piece of abandoned land no one wanted. Some years ago, when there was a famine, all the wild vegetables nearby had been dug up, so I often gathered them here instead.”
“I’ll come here often. From now on, this place will be the ‘Garden of Hundred Flowers’!”
“Call it whatever you like, it’s just an ownerless piece of abandoned land anyway.”
Aside from looking good, there were a lot of medicinal herbs here such as chinese foxgloves and dandelions. Mo Yan took her sickle out of her basket and started harvesting them.
Her second grandma didn’t have a sickle, so she plucked dandelions by hand. Mo Yan’s basket quickly became so full that it couldn’t fit anything more, but she didn’t want to leave yet.
“One last plant,” she mumbled, grabbing the stem of a chinese foxglove with her left hand and harvesting it with her sickle.
But in her haste, it missed her target and struck her hand. When Mo Yan lifted her hand, there was a big cut and blood was pouring out. She screamed out in pain.
When Second grandma heard her scream, she guessed her granddaughter had cut her hand and went to check on her. When she came over to take a look, “The wound’s that big?!”
Second grandma cleaned her dirty hands on her clothes before ripping her sleeve with her teeth and making a makeshift bandage.
“We need to stop the bleeding quickly, how many meals would it take to replenish that much blood?” She wrapped the makeshift bandage around Mo Yan’s wound, but blood still seeped out slowly.
“I can’t staunch the wound. We need to take you to Mr. Cao’s.” After saying this, she dragged Mo Yan with one hand, grabbed the basket with the other, and they ran to the village.
When they reached the pond, Mo Yan was so tired she couldn’t run anymore. Looking at her injury, the blood had already soaked through the makeshift bandage.
Her second grandmother was incredibly anxious, “What should I do? It’s my fault, why did I bring you to that abandoned piece of land!”
“It’s not your fault, I injured myself.”
Mo Yan was bending over to catch her breath when Lu Junming came running over, “What happened?”
As Lu Junming was from the same village as them, Mo Yan’s second grandma pleaded him for help, “Yan’er has cut her hand, please help her.” She sat down panting heavily, having exhausted herself a long time ago.
When Lu Junming saw that there was blood all over her hands, he also became worried and tried to help her walk, but Mo Yan was too exhausted to walk. He bent down and offered her a piggyback ride, “Get on.”
Mo Yan felt that it was inappropriate to let a boy carry her, but she really couldn’t walk anymore. After looking around and seeing no one around them, she accepted his offer.
Lu Junming carried her on his back and started running swiftly along the pond towards his home, but Mo Yan stopped him anxiously, “Go to Mr. Cao’s instead.”
“Why should we go to his place? We have golden injury medicine at home, which is really good for healing cuts.”
“But…” Mo Yan couldn’t do anything to stop him, so she just decided to go along with it.
Soon they arrived at the Lu family’s courtyard, where Sir Lu was sitting under the tree in their courtyard drinking tea. Lu Junming yelled, “Grandpa, bring the golden injury medicine! Mo Yan’s injured.”
Sir Lu swiftly went to fetch the medicine, and Lu Junming put Mo Yan down on a small stool. He brought clean water over and wiped her hands gently with a handkerchief.
After wiping away the dirt, Lu Junming carefully unravelled the makeshift bandage. Sir Lu had retrieved the medicine and bandages, and uncorked the small porcelain bottle containing the medicine, putting the paste on Mo Yan’s wound.
“This was a deep cut. I could see the bone underneath.”
After applying the medicine, and changing her bandages, Mo Yan’s second grandma arrived, out of breath.
“Don’t delay any further, let’s go to Mr. Cao!”
Sir Lu finished changing the bandages as he replied calmly, “Don’t worry, we’ve already applied medicine to her wound. Mr. Cao might not even have my family’s golden injury=y medicine.”
“I forgot that the Lu family is a military family. Of course you have good medicine for treating cut wounds.”
Lu Junming gently wiped Mo Yan’s forehead with a handkerchief and poured her a cup of tea, “I haven’t seen you at the pond all morning, what have you been doing, and why are you in such a state?”
“Second grandma led me to a beautiful place with lots of medicinal herbs. I’ll take you there one day.” There was no sign of pain on her face, and she even looked happy, which eased Lu Junming’s heart.
“Does it hurt?” Lu Junming asked concernedly.
“No.”
“The wound is so big. How can it not hurt? Stay here and rest for a while!”
“I can’t, I have to earn more money so my sister doesn’t have to work so hard.”
Although Lu Junming was born to a mistress, he had never worried about money in his life. He couldn’t imagine what it’d be like for a family to not have three square meals every day.
“At least let me walk you home!”
“There’s no need. It’s my hand, not my foot that’s injured. Remember to come to my house for dinner tonight.”
When he heard that the Mo family was inviting Lu Junming to dinner, Sir Lu asked, “Why are you inviting my grandson over for dinner?”
“Because my brother offended him two days ago and my mother wanted to invite him to dinner to make amends.”
“It’s just a squabble amongst kids! Why do you need to invite him over to dinner just to make amends? Don’t bother.”
“Sir Lu, how about you join us! My mum’s already prepared everything.”
“I won’t go, the daughter-in-law of the Zhang family is going to come and cook.”
As he spoke, Mrs. Liu entered and asked Lu Junming what he wanted to eat with a smile on her face. Lu Junming said, “You can decide. I need to take Yan’er back home first.”
PS: Edited Oct 24th, 2023, to try and get the rest of the story up to the current standards. This includes using the current terms and polishing up the translation. This was definitely one of the worse translations I did, and there have been a few key changes within the dialogue and such to make it flow more naturally. In addition, I added in a few details I missed the first time through, so if you’re re-reading this or reading this for the first time you might enjoy this chapter significantly more than before.