Blooming even in the mud - Chapter 46

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Blossoming Mud: Chapter 46

“Are you saying they failed to track down Cui Shecheng?”
“Tracking him to his hometown wasn’t difficult, but they say he vanished without a trace just three or four months ago. His only son died young, and his wife passed away four years ago, leaving him with no immediate family. They thoroughly investigated his relatives, but no one knows of Cui Shecheng’s whereabouts, and no one seemed suspicious.”
“That is both good and bad news.”
“However, an unidentified corpse was discovered in his hometown.”
“Do you believe Cui Shecheng was eliminated?”
“We cannot rule out the possibility. Tell them to thoroughly investigate the postmortem examination records of the corpse. Also, have them expand the scope of the search beyond his hometown to other regions where a fugitive might hide, to see if Cui Shecheng’s death was recorded anywhere—or, if not, whether there is an unidentified body with a similar appearance.”
“Understood.”
The territory of the Songyang State was vast. Tracking Shecheng while simultaneously verifying his survival would be an incredibly arduous task.
However, death always left a trace.
‘If a murdered body is discovered, they will perform a thorough examination and leave a record. If the corpse is not severely damaged, there might be a chance to find a clue about the culprit.’
For the moment, the task of finding the mastermind had left his hands.
Wang Jeong-mun immediately returned after finishing his report.
Organizing the current reports in his head to submit them to the Emperor, Gyeong Won-ui soon bit his lip irritably.
‘Yoo Seo-hwa…’
No matter what he thought about, Yoo Seo-hwa would not disappear from the fringes of his consciousness.
It had been a very long time since he ran into her during midday after having taken her. The face that burned into his retina was clearer than the hazy sensation he had groped in the darkness illuminated only by moonlight, and thus, somehow seemed remarkably haggard. Even though their eyes had met for only a fleeting moment, the vivid memory felt uncomfortable.
‘I should be focusing on clearing my father’s name, yet what on earth am I doing, Gyeong Won-ui?’
It was deeply unpleasant that something remained inside him, occasionally throwing him into confusion. Something that grew clearer even when he dragged her down to the lowest depths and embraced her ruthlessly.
Something unnecessary.
Yet, something that would not disappear.

She walked hurriedly, like someone being pursued. Only after Gyeong Won-ui’s quarters were completely out of sight did Yoo Seo-hwa catch her breath.
Her startled heart was fluttering anxiously and erratically. Was it because it had been so long since she faced him in the broad daylight?
‘I must be more careful from now on.’
As she walked while calming her racing heart, she heard a commotion from somewhere. There was no reason for the servants, who were busy with grueling work, to make a fuss over something trivial.
‘How strange. I wonder what happened.’
The source of the commotion was Banbitgan. Among the people who were making a frantic fuss in their fluster, she also saw the faces of Kkot-bun and Deok-sun.
“Dal-rae! Get a hold of yourself!”
“W-what should we do?”
“Did she eat something wrong?”
She poked her head through the stamping servants. Discovering Dal-rae, who had collapsed on the floor in front of the furnace with her eyes rolled back to reveal the whites, Yoo Seo-hwa was greatly shocked and rushed forward.
“Dal-rae, Dal-rae!”
Deok-sun tried her best to bring her to her senses while holding onto Dal-rae’s subtly convulsing limbs, but the condition did not improve at all. It was the same for the anxious people around them, who had no way to help.
Even to a layman, it was a perilous sight that looked as if she would breathe her last at any moment, but no one looked for a Doctor. They knew it all too well, to the bone.
There was no Doctor who would rush over to save a single Slave. Even if they carried the patient on their back and knocked on the door of Zhang’s Pharmacy, they would be fortunate not to be splashed with cold water.
They splashed water on her face, put fingers into her mouth to make her throw up, and even slapped her cheeks, but Dal-rae showed no sign of regaining consciousness. Biting her lip hard, Deok-sun straightened her waist.
“Move Dal-rae behind Banbitgan.”
Sighs rippled through the crowd. This did not mean they would let the patient rest behind the quiet, secluded Banbitgan.
When a person dies, they release bodily waste such as urine and feces. It meant that since they could not defile Banbitgan where food was prepared, they should move her to a place where cleaning up the corpse would be easy.
The faces of the servants who were close to Dal-rae flushed red as if they wanted to protest, but their expressions soon turned into familiar resignation.
It was then that Yoo Seo-hwa stepped forward after hesitating.
“Please wait a moment.”
Stepping in front of the servants who were trying to lift Dal-rae by her continuously trembling limbs, Yoo Seo-hwa bent down and examined Dal-rae closely.
“Did she originally have epilepsy?”
“I do not know that well. Most of us met in this estate… Is there anyone who knows?”
Deok-sun looked around, but everyone shook their heads.
Deok-sun watched anxiously as Yoo Seo-hwa peeled back Dal-rae’s eyelids and sniffed the inside of her frothing mouth. It was not as if she herself enjoyed leaving someone to die.
‘I thought it might be epilepsy, but it isn’t.’
The symptoms were a bit different. Moreover, it was a set of symptoms that gave her a strange sense of déjà vu.
Knitting her brows, Yoo Seo-hwa retraced Dal-rae’s symptoms. Her body was cold. The tips of her fingernails were not discolored, and there was no rash on her skin. Her eyelids were pale, and the foam was a very faint yellow color. A faint, sweet scent drifted from her mouth.
‘Could Dal-rae perhaps…’
Though the symptoms came together clumsily in her head, she could not bring herself to speak easily.
She had merely taken an interest in medicine and learned it for a short while; Yoo Seo-hwa was not a Doctor. Just like the saying that an unskilled quack kills a person, her mistaken diagnosis could instead become a path that drove Dal-rae to her death.
But if left like this, she would surely be abandoned to die anyway.
‘If you die, you may blame me.’
Reciting words of apology to Dal-rae in her heart, Yoo Seo-hwa looked at the maids working in Banbitgan.
“Did Dal-rae pick and eat any grass or leaves from the garden within the last hour?”
“Ah! I saw her secretly making and eating a bit of wild herb porridge, saying she was hungry when she had some free time. It looked like she plucked the leaves she put in it near the inner house. She said, well, it wasn’t like the master of the inner house was around anyway, so what was wrong with plucking a little.”
Whatever the reason, it was true that she had damaged the garden, so Kkot-bun answered while watching Deok-sun’s reaction. Although Deok-sun scowled, she did not scold her immediately.
If her guess was correct, there was a chance Dal-rae could live. Yoo Seo-hwa stood up and requested.
“It seems Dal-rae ate a poisonous herb. Please feed her water and help her throw up what is inside.”
Urging those around her in a hurry, she ran past the people who grew busy fetching water from the well and laying Dal-rae on her side.
Running to the inner house in a single breath, she scanned the garden. It was not difficult to find the spot Dal-rae had touched. From the corner of the flowerbed, which was dyed in various colors to welcome spring, she plucked a few bright red flowers by their roots and returned to Banbitgan without even having time to catch her breath.
“Did she throw it all up?”
“It looks like she emptied most of her stomach.”
Yoo Seo-hwa quickly washed and crushed the roots of the flowers she brought. Scraping together the crushed roots and juice to make them easy to pass down the throat, she forced Dal-rae to swallow them.
How much anxious time passed?
The shivering convulsions gradually stopped, and Dal-rae’s eyes closed. Although she had not regained consciousness, it seemed certain that she had at least passed the immediate crisis of death. Sighs of relief erupted from here and there.
Yoo Seo-hwa, who had been desperately hiding her anxiety that she might have misdiagnosed her, almost collapsed onto the floor.
“Young lady, what did this girl eat?”
“It is this flower. It is called Pyunseonghwa.”
The people’s gaze gathered on the flower Yoo Seo-hwa held. A look of frustration appeared on Deok-sun’s face.
“I ordered all the flowers and trees in the garden, not to mention the inner house, to be brought in based on what is currently trendy among noble families, yet a poisonous herb was mixed in?”
Because the mistress of the estate was absent, managing the plants to be planted in the inner house had also been Deok-sun’s job. Yoo Seo-hwa reassured Deok-sun, who was anxious with worry that the responsibility might fall on her if things went wrong.
“It is indeed a trendy flower because it is beautiful and has a lovely fragrance. It is just that it becomes a poison if you eat the leaves. The flower petals act as its antidote.”
There were noblewomen who cultivated it on purpose precisely because it was a poisonous herb that bloomed beautiful flowers, but she did not bother to explain.
The Pyunseonghwa was a flower she had not only encountered in medical books but had also planted in the Princess’s Palace.
‘There was a time when a big commotion broke out in the middle of the night because two young Saenggaksi, who had been scolded by a court lady and starved of their dinner, secretly plucked and ate it out of hunger. The poisoning symptoms of the Saenggaksi I witnessed back then were identical to Dal-rae’s.’
Anxious that another child might make the same mistake, she had all the Pyunseonghwa uprooted from the Princess’s Palace the very next day.
If it had been something she only read about in medical books, she would not have recalled it so easily.
“Is that so. I must be careful from now on.”
Deok-sun, who learned the name and appearance of the flower, turned around and shouted at the surroundings.
“Did everyone hear that? You must not damage the garden just because you are hungry! If you understand, return to your work now.”
“It seems we should move Dal-rae to a place where she can rest.”
“Has she fully recovered?”
“It is too early to jump to conclusions. Although the poison has been neutralized to some extent, since we cannot brew and feed her other medicine…”
Dal-rae’s irregularly continuing breaths were perilous. Deok-sun pressed her forehead with a troubled expression.
“It would be a relief if she recovers, but an accident might happen during the night, so we can’t just lay her down in the servants’ quarters, what to do.”
Although she worried for Dal-rae, Deok-sun was in a position to manage all the various servants, not just Dal-rae alone. As Deok-sun pondered whether she should clear out a storehouse to lay Dal-rae down, Yoo Seo-hwa carefully spoke up.
“How about my room?”
“What about you?”
“I can just catch some sleep here and there. She will run a high fever while recovering, so if I am beside her, I can nurse her as well.”
“You are truly big-hearted.”
There was no way Deok-sun did not know that Dal-rae had taken the lead in tormenting Yoo Seo-hwa all this time. She quietly avoided Deok-sun’s gaze, which seemed part filled with admiration for her character and part filled with astonishment.
Her desire to nurse Dal-rae was sincere, but that was merely the second reason.
What Yoo Seo-hwa truly desired lay elsewhere.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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