Shen Qing took the bottle, the tip of her nose lingering on the sweet fragrance of roses and the faint, bitter scent of blue flowers. She suddenly recalled a passage in the medical canon regarding "aromatic clearing of turbidity." She retrieved a distiller and mixed the rose essential oil with Blue Flower Dew in a seven-to-three ratio. As the two liquids blended, dense foam emerged, releasing a peculiar, enchanting aroma.
"Try this," she said, handing the mixture to Ali. "If you encounter an acute case of gold dust in the lungs, use this oil to rub the Dazhui point first, then administer the Blue Flower Dew."
Three days later, Ali returned with a caravan guard who had been tormented by gold dust poisoning for five years. The guard was coughing violently, and the blood-flecked phlegm he spat out still contained tiny particles of gold dust. Shen Qing rubbed his back thoroughly with the rose and blue flower oil, while Lin An lit an moxa stick mixed with fire-wool herb to fumigate his Feishu acupoints. When the guard swallowed the golden sand pill washed down with Blue Flower Dew, he began to retch violently, coughing up dark brown phlegm containing toxic crystals the size of a fingernail.
Chapter 145