The sun over the Chang'an West Market had just crawled past the glazed tiles of the Sogdian merchants when a three-deep crowd gathered in front of Zhang Yifan's Cyan Ox woodcarving stall. It wasn't that his "Cyan Ox Seven" herbs were particularly precious; rather, the woodcarvings standing at the four corners of the stall were too peculiar: an old ox biting a string of abacus beads in its mouth, its hooves trampling dried herb residue. Anyone who saw them couldn't help laughing and asking, "Young brother, are you selling medicine or running a sideshow?"
"Cyan Ox Seven, three qian an ounce, most efficacious for treating wind-cold-damp impediments." The youth squatted on an elm stool clicking his abacus, his fingertips tapping crisp echoes from the abacus beads while his eyes remained fixed on the medicine shop diagonally across from him. From there came the scolding voice of a young woman. A figure in a moon-white ru skirt holding a horsewhip was pointing right at the medicine merchant's nose: "Notopterygium Root shipped from Bashu costs no more than twenty wen, yet you dare sell it for two hundred? Do you take the illnesses and pains of the common people for beads on your abacus!"
Zhang Yifan recognized this woman; she was Su Wanyue, the young proprietress of the medical clinic on Vermilion Bird Street, renowned as a "living bodhisattva with the face of a Yanluo king." Just last month, she had hauled a medicine merchant who peddled shoddy goods to the Jingzhao Prefecture of…
Chapter 47