Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Huo Jilin looked at him, then at his stomach—honestly amazing. The Chen Jue of the past would never have been this greedy for food. Of course, back then, he'd never had to worry about food either.

Huo Jilin smiled at him: "Do we have any salted duck eggs at home?"

Chen Jue's spirits sank. They didn't. They hadn't even managed to save up a few chicken eggs. Ever since Huo Jilin arrived, whatever eggs they had were eaten right away, and sometimes they even bought more from other families.

Huo Jilin tapped a few times on the armrest of his chair: "Uncle Liu's family probably has some, right? I'll go swap for a few. Tonight we'll have duck egg yolk millet porridge, with steamed buns on the side."

"What are you going to trade with?" Chen Jue perked up, starting to think about what they'd picked up today.

They'd bought quite a lot.

But Huo Jilin locked his eyes on the rooster in the yard and said: "Trade this rooster. It doesn't lay eggs anyway."

That rooster had recently taken to perching on the horse's back and dropping droppings there. It really did deserve to be eaten.

Unfortunately, Huo Jilin couldn't catch the rooster either. Before he could even reach the tree, that crafty devil of a rooster flew up to an even higher branch, then stared him down with its beady little eyes. Huo Jilin didn't have any martial arts skills, so all he could do was crane his neck and glare back at it, threatening: "Just wait till you come down to eat, you bastard!"

Yeah, right, like that was gonna happen. Chen Jue looked away, though it made him feel a little better—so he wasn't the only one who couldn't do anything about that big rooster.

In the end, Huo Jilin carried a bag of sugar and a box of pastries to Uncle Liu's house and swapped them for a jar of salted duck eggs, along with a small basket of veggie cakes and a block of tofu.

Uncle Liu even threw in the jar.

Huo Jilin coughed and said: "Uncle Liu said once these are gone, we can reuse the jar to pickle more eggs. From now on, we'll have a steady supply of salted duck eggs. Don't worry, I'll get him a new jar."

Chen Jue nodded. He didn't sweat the small stuff—Huo Jilin could handle it however he wanted. Besides, Huo Jilin wasn't a stingy person.

As smoke curled up from the stove, Huo Jilin whipped up dinner in no time.

Tonight's dinner was right up Chen Jue's alley. Actually, the meals Huo Jilin made before had been delicious too—he could switch things up and cook all kinds of dishes, way better than the bare-bones meals they used to have.

Two plates of stir-fried greens were cooked over high heat, bright green and crisp.

With a whole jar of salted duck eggs at his disposal, Huo Jilin didn't hold back. He tossed two perfectly salted eggs into the millet, simmered over low heat. Once the millet had released its oils, he added the crumbled egg yolks and let it simmer a while longer.

Before the smell even had a chance to hit the air, Huo Jilin used two more eggs to stir-fry a crab-flavored tofu dish—a dish Chen Jue had nearly forgotten what it tasted like.

When the rich smell finally filled the air, Chen Jue felt his stomach start growling immediately. He couldn't help peeking into the kitchen. Huo Jilin had already taken the pan off the heat and was scooping it out onto a plate.

The soft white tofu had soaked up all that rich yellow sauce perfectly, topped with a sprinkle of chopped green onions—it looked and smelled amazing.

There were still two salted duck eggs left over. Chen Jue cut each one into eight pieces and laid them out on a big platter with the veggie cakes. It looked pretty good.

Chen Jue sat at the table, waiting for the food to cool down.

The duck egg millet porridge he'd been craving was a golden yellow, with a thin skin on top—absolutely delicious.

For this meal, Chen Jue single-handedly put away half of everything: two big bowls of thick porridge, two veggie cakes the size of Huo Jilin's palm, and half of both the greens and the tofu. The two of them wiped out every last bite, and that big rooster watched from the tree, eyes full of hope, but there wasn't a scrap left for him.

Huo Jilin watched Chen Jue pack it away almost as much as he did and teased him: "If you keep eating like this, I won't be able to feed you."

Chen Jue set down his bowl. A full belly put him in a better mood, so he could actually say something nice for once. He spat out two words: "Impotent."

Well, slightly nicer, anyway.

Who says something like that to a man?

Huo Jilin gritted his teeth, banging the dishes and chopsticks around as he cleared the table. Good thing they were thick earthenware bowls, or Chen Jue might've worried about him smashing them.

Huo Jilin carried the pots and bowls to the sink, still sulking. He stopped, turned around, and leaned down in front of Chen Jue, who was lounging against the wall.

Chen Jue squinted at him: "What are you doing?"

Huo Jilin thought, what do I want to do? I want to do him. Let him see if I'm impotent or not.

But when he looked at Chen Jue's cold, handsome face, those dirty thoughts just faded away.

Some modern-day expert once said that people can't stare into each other's eyes for more than a minute without tearing up.

That saying would never hold true for the two of them.

When he and Chen Jue had locked eyes before, they'd definitely gone past a minute. Back then, he'd felt nothing—they were both just pissed at how stubborn the other was.

But now, looking at Chen Jue's face gave him this weird, soft, shy feeling he couldn't put into words. He couldn't look him in the eye anymore. To cover it up, he reached out and picked a grain of rice off the corner of Chen Jue's mouth: "Don't waste food. I'm impotent now, so we might not even have enough to eat later."

Chen Jue's face went dark. This Huo Jilin was getting weirder and weirder. He was always finding excuses to touch him now.

That night, the two lit some candles and started hashing out the details. Although they'd settled on the general approach for making the medicine, turning it into actual finished medicine required a lot of steps.

"We can brew the herbs and make the medicine, but how do we package it and make sure it stays good?"

"Pressing them into tablets would make them last longer, but if they're not sealed well, they'll go bad fast."

These days there are tons of chemical materials for preserving medicine and granules, but back in ancient times, there were hardly any.

The candle wick was too long, so it burned like crazy, and wax was dripping down nonstop.

Huo Jilin pointed at the bamboo tubes, wooden plugs, cotton, and other stuff, then said to Chen Jue: "My first idea is to use sun-dried bamboo tubes to hold the medicine, sealed with wooden plugs and coated with candle wax on the outside, to keep air out as much as possible. The wooden plug works like a wine cork. If you don't use it all, you can just push it back in—it'll keep for a year or two, no problem."

He held up a bamboo tube about as thick as his wrist and shook it: "Once dried, this bamboo seals up like a gourd—keeps out moisture and bugs—but it takes up less space than a gourd, the material's easier to find, and it's cheaper."

He paused, then added: "But making the bamboo tubes and wooden plugs takes time. In a time without machines, labor costs money. And they're not uniform—the bamboo joints are all different thicknesses, so it's hard to standardize or stamp our logo on them."

He wanted things to be professional, mass-produced, even with their own trademark. Chen Jue glanced at the tung oil paper next to him and said: "Tung oil paper can keep out air and water too. You can use it for the granules, seal it with candle wax or tree sap, and it's single-use. If you want a logo, you can have a tung oil paper shop make custom ones."

The pastries he'd bought from Xu Ji last time were wrapped in tung oil paper with patterns on it, so you could tell them apart from other stalls. They hadn't bothered decorating the tung oil paper itself because there was a printed label on top that said "Xu Ji."

But their medicine packaging could go the same route.

Huo Jilin gave him a thumbs up: "Same page as me. Let's start with three kinds of granules: cold, cough, and fever. We'll test the market this winter and get our name out there. On top of that, we'll make some tablets in bamboo tubes—these are for when you can't easily mix a drink, like in an emergency."

Chen Jue frowned: "Heart attack patients. Winter's also peak season for heart problems."

Huo Jilin nodded: "Heart attacks happen in an instant. If you wait to get herbs and brew them, it's too late. You need fast-acting pills."

"Alright, let's do these two first." Chen Jue agreed without hesitation.

Finally, they had something real to sink their teeth into. Though it was still just an idea, Chen Jue knew it would work.

If they did it right, it could change the history of medicine and get more patients their meds in time.

And then they'd make money. Sure, that was a bit selfish, but without money, how could they do anything else? Even making surgical knives cost a ton of silver.

Seeing Chen Jue's eyes light up with no sign of sleepiness, Huo Jilin said: "It's late. Go to bed. We'll figure out the details tomorrow."

Chen Jue said: "Tomorrow I'll start brewing the herbs."

Huo Jilin looked at his own protruding belly and felt that this wasn't the right time to bring up the idea, but he had to propose the cooperation plan, or Chen Jue would beat him to it and leave.

Huo Jilin could only say, "Then take your time experimenting. I still need some time to prepare the materials on my end. It's all done by hand, so you've got to give me time. As for the herbs, we've got some at home right now, but it might only be enough for you to run three to five trials."

Chen Jue finally nodded, "Alright, I'll take it slow. I'll make an initial sample first and run it by Doctor Tang. If he gives it the green light, we'll keep going."

"Even if it doesn't pass, we'll keep going. I'll take it somewhere else, so don't worry," Huo Jilin said to him, dead serious.

That was just Huo Jilin.

Chen Jue glanced at him and finally yawned. He was worn out from the day.

He wasn't worried about the market—not just because Huo Jilin was good at negotiating, but because he knew this kind of ready-made medicine wouldn't lack demand. Once it spread, it would benefit humanity. The pharmaceutical industry was bound to reach this point eventually.

Wasn't that how it was in their later generations?

He'd come to this world, and it shouldn't be just to have this kid, right? Chen Jue thought as he touched his belly. If it were only about having the child, then life would seem to end on the day of the birth. He had even imagined dying in childbirth.

Before this, that was how he had thought about this world.

He had no expectations of this world, no hope for his own life.

Now that he had something to do, he started hoping to leave some mark on this world.