The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 9 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Kada’s Book (Part 1)

The next day, Maomao was awoken by a shout from the woman who ran the dormitory. “You’ve got a visitor!” she called.

Maomao got changed, rubbing her eyes all the while, then went to the front door to see who it was. She found a gentle but perpetually worried-looking old man—her adoptive father.

“Wh—” She was about to ask what was wrong, but then she remembered. She’d spoken to Jinshi about contacting Luomen the night before.

He works fast!

Judging by Luomen’s expression, Jinshi’s letter had explained exactly what Maomao wanted to know.

“Um, so, Pops...” She wasn’t quite sure how to explain, but her father narrowed his eyes and let out a small sigh.

“Perhaps we should have this conversation somewhere else.” He plopped a hand on Maomao’s head.

A carriage stood ready outside. With his bad knee, even walking around town was almost more than Luomen could manage. But where did he intend for them to go?

As they bounced along in the carriage, Maomao talked, but she felt ill at ease the whole time, having to keep secrets. “Are you on vacation too, Pops?”

“For today, yes. I have to work tomorrow. There are no extended breaks for medical staff.”

True, nor for pretty much anyone at the court. A minimum number of medical personnel had to be present at all times. Certainly there would be trouble if there wasn’t at least one qualified doctor to attend all the high muckety-mucks.

Wish I could have been part of that, Maomao thought, even though she knew there were limits to what court ladies like her would be allowed to do. Never mind the fact that she was pretty sure she was working harder than some of the less committed young physicians.

After a bit more being rattled and bumped by the carriage, they reached a mansion that inspired a nameless but unpleasant feeling in Maomao. They were on the eastern edge of the capital, not quite where the nicest houses were, but still, this one was quite large. It must have been a striking building in its time, but it was old now.

The first thing she noticed was a strange monument near the gate. It looked like a giant Go board, and there were big, round, black and white stones nearby. You could have used them to play an ordinary game, except for their massive size.

In addition to the black and white stones, she saw what looked like Shogi pieces. These were made of wood rather than stone, and the color of the ink used to inscribe their names was faded. If the characters hadn’t been carved into the wood, it might have been impossible to know which piece was which.

The board had carefully wrought lines, and appeared to be intended for both Go and Shogi. Its size suggested it was a single hunk of rock. She couldn’t imagine what it had cost to get it there. A waste of money if there ever was one.

Had the owner of the house commissioned it himself, or had someone given it to him? Whatever the case, the way it stuck out into the road made it an obstacle and nothing but.

At this point, surely we need not explain further whose house they had come to.

Maomao and her father passed through the ruined gate, whereupon he emerged with a vile grin on his face.

“Granduncle! Maomao! Welcome home!” It was Lahan, his already narrow eyes narrowing further with his unctuous smile.

Yes: they were at the house of the freak strategist.

“This is a stranger’s house,” Maomao said.

“And I was chased out,” Luomen said, each of them rebuffing Lahan’s welcome in their own way.

When Luomen had suggested a change of location, Maomao had never imagined he would bring them here. Worse, it so happened that two other people were there at this moment as well.

“Good morning, Master Luomen. Maomao, how nice of you to join us,” said En’en, approaching from behind Lahan. She gave Luomen a respectful bow, while to Maomao she offered a brisk nod of the head and a reproving look.

“It was never my intention, believe me,” Maomao said.

“Well, it certainly should have been. You belong here.” En’en kept glancing back. Maomao followed her gaze to see Yao hiding behind a post. En’en’s eyes said: One does feel sorry for the young mistress. But she’s so cute!

Lahan, perhaps aware of En’en’s proclivities, looked at her with something critical in his glance, then turned to Luomen. “How many years has it been since you lived here, Granduncle? You left before I can even remember—and I don’t think you’ve been back since, no?”

“Let’s see, now... It must be at least eighteen years. I returned once to collect my things, but no more than that.” Maomao’s father was looking fondly into the distance. His banishment from this house would have corresponded roughly with when he began raising Maomao.

“Your room is still here, Granduncle, although one could wish you’d informed me a little sooner that you would be coming.” He scratched his cheek. “I just lent your annex to these two. The library’s still here—but if you’re going to be staying, I can prepare a room in the main house. How would you like that?”

“No, thank you, you needn’t go out of your way. I won’t be staying over. I only came to give Maomao a bit of homework. I must say, though, the place has rather gone to seed since I saw it last.”

“Don’t worry, we clean it regularly.”

Homework? Maomao thought. It seemed Luomen was going to do what he could to maintain face in the teeth of Jinshi’s request. If this homework had to do with surgery, then Maomao would gladly play along. But she had a sense it wasn’t going to be as straightforward as that.

Quite apart from Maomao’s ruminations, Lahan continued to speak with Luomen. “In any case, I’m sure my honored father would be overjoyed if you were to come live with us.”

“I’m afraid not. My bad leg makes the dormitory much more convenient—closer to court. This house would be a bit far for me.”

“Simple enough—just use a carriage.”

Maomao suspected that Lahan’s true motivation was to rope Luomen into helping him look after the old fart, which had to be a lot of work all on his own.

Luomen kept smiling, but gently refused. Lahan, for his part, wasn’t going to push the matter too hastily—but he seemed likely to continue mulling it over.

“Yao. En’en. I’d like to go to the annex; is that all right?” Luomen said.

“I don’t mind,” En’en said, “but...” She looked at Yao, who, to answer a question from Luomen, was willing to come out from behind her post.

“It’s...all right with me too...”

It sounded like there was something behind her words; she glanced at Maomao, but Maomao limited her response to a polite bow. She was more interested in whatever this homework was that Luomen had mentioned.

Yao said, “What’s this homework thing? Is Maomao going to get special instruction that we don’t?” Her face was a little bit scary. En’en was gesticulating from outside of Yao’s line of sight, trying to communicate something to Maomao.

Sorry... I don’t understand.

Luomen looked troubled by Yao’s critical tone, but he replied, “A fair question. In fact, I thought it was perfect timing, when Lahan told me you were here. It wouldn’t be good to teach certain things only to Maomao.”

“Then you’ll teach us about medicine, sir?” she asked, the clouds she was under parting ever so slightly.

“Not immediately. One must prove oneself worthy to learn the secrets of medicine. I want to make sure the two of you—really, the three of you, for I include Maomao—are prepared to do what it takes. If that’s all right?”

Prove oneself worthy?

That sort of talk wasn’t like her old man, Maomao thought. He loved sharing his knowledge and gave freely of the store of his wisdom to anyone who asked. He resisted privileging anyone over anyone else, or considering one person more deserving than another.

“I’ll explain once we get to the room. I know Maomao is ready. What about the two of you?”

“I’m all set,” Yao said.

“If Lady Yao is prepared, then so am I,” said En’en.

They followed Maomao’s father, as, needless to say, did Maomao.

So they’re coming with us? Maomao felt a surge of anxiety. She knew what “medicine” her father was to teach them about—but the other women had no idea. Yao was a young lady of respectable upbringing, and En’en was her servant.

I know we’re not going to teach them to make bold, new concoctions or anything, but still... En’en might be flexible, but Yao could be stubborn. Maomao continued to feel uneasy as she followed Luomen. There was scant conversation, so she busied herself looking around the grounds. There’s nothing as weird as the giant Go board outside, she thought.

She saw a garden, but it was rather bare of ornamental plants. There were a few large rocks around, arranged in a way that had a certain elegant simplicity. It looked like Lahan’s work to her.

She couldn’t help noticing an unsettling collection of scorches and cut marks on the house’s posts and railings. She wondered if there had been a melee in here.

I guess he did chase his family out, and make plenty of political enemies. Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised if he’d found himself having one or two running battles on the grounds of his own home.

As a matter of fact, this was the first time she had ever been to the freak’s house. He’d tried to carry her off several times when she was little, but each time the old madam had beaten him with her broom and freed Maomao. Not to mention the various times Lahan had had to come cart off the hog-tied old fart.

“Do you get a lot of bandits around here?” Maomao grumbled, running her fingers along one of the scorched posts. The vermilion lacquer had been stripped off, and it was obvious no one had seen any benefit in trying to repair it.

“Oh, you make it sound like such a pit,” Lahan said. “Use your eyes! My honored father made those scorch marks, and can’t you tell how old the sword gouges are? There haven’t been nearly as many break-ins over the last decade.”

That caused Yao and En’en to take a step back.

So they still get a few, I guess?

Maybe the scorches had been caused with fire powder or the like. Talk about being a neighborhood nuisance.

“You just leave it to your big brother. I’ve hired twice as many guards as usual!”

“Meaning you normally hire half as many as you need, I’m sure. There are to be no burglars around here,” En’en muttered. She hadn’t gone to all this effort to get Yao away from her awful uncle just to be attacked by brigands.

Lahan smirked in response. They passed the main house, making their way toward the annex. It was less expansive than the main building, but still better appointed than the average commoner’s dwelling.

“Here it is,” Lahan announced.

Maomao looked inside. It was hardly ostentatious, but it wasn’t plain either. If En’en had decided it was an acceptable place for her young mistress to stay, it couldn’t be that bad.

“Did you both sleep well last night? If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to let me know,” Lahan said to his guests, rather more obsequiously than he had spoken to Maomao. Maybe they need a place where there aren’t any break-ins! Maomao thought.

“Thank you. Yes, we slept quite well. It was an unremarkable night, and so long as no burglars show up, I think we should be fine,” En’en said, not neglecting to slam the point home even as she offered Lahan a respectful nod.

“And you have enough servants?”

“Yes. As long as she has me around, the young mistress doesn’t need anyone else to take care of her.” En’en puffed out her chest; Yao looked away awkwardly.

“Well, if there’s nothing else, then I’ll go back to the main house,” Lahan said.

Maomao took another look at the garden. There were very few servants here, relative to the size of the estate. The only people she saw were a man doing some repairs on the house, and three little girls somewhere around ten years of age. Wait, maybe one of them was a boy.

“You hire children?” Maomao asked, stopping Lahan before he could make his exit.

“I think of it less as hiring and more as making an investment,” replied Lahan.

“Oh, for...” Maomao said. Yao and En’en now also listened with interest.

“My honored father sometimes takes in children with nowhere to go. He claims to think they’ll be useful.”

“Ah. I see.”

The freak strategist was a write-off as a human being, but he was an excellent judge of character.

“We were only trying to take in the one child,” Lahan added. “But the other two came along themselves, and we ended up with all three of them.” He didn’t appear to feel it was a bad deal—raising three children to get one excellent functionary later. It might mean three mouths to feed now, but the investment would pay off years in the future.

“Um,” Yao said, hesitantly raising her hand. “When will the owner, Master Lakan, be home?”

Maomao had very much wanted to know exactly that.

“He’s away for at least three days. Probably longer. He said something about a best-of-three competition with the Go Sage, and they can’t finish a single game in a day.” Lahan looked directly at Maomao as he spoke, as if to reassure her that the freak really wasn’t here. “It might not be an official engagement, but there are sure to be spectators. They’ll probably rent a building where everyone can stay.”

“He didn’t do that just for us, did he?” Yao asked, surprised.

“No, this is something they do annually. Surely I can be allowed to get out from under my father’s thumb for a few days a year? Your letter just happened to arrive at the perfect moment.”

“You’re sure about us, then?” Yao asked.

“It’s all right. As long as you don’t mean any harm, my father won’t care. Even if he gets back while you’re still here, you’re welcome to stay. Notwithstanding his tendency to pick up stray children, he doesn’t have a very good memory for who he’s brought into this house.”

There was something within the freak that enabled him to distinguish friend and foe almost immediately. So long as Yao and En’en showed no hostility toward him, there wouldn’t be a problem.

“Now, as I think my continued presence can only hinder you, I’m going to make myself scarce. Good to see you again, Granduncle. Let me know when you want to go home and I’ll have a carriage made ready.”

“Certainly, thank you.”

Lahan was about to head back to the main house when he stopped and said, “Ah, that’s right. Maomao.”

Maomao didn’t say anything.

“If you ever decide you want to live here, you’re welcome anytime.”

“Let’s not waste our time talking about things that will never happen,” she said, giving him a glare as if the bespectacled buffoon might as well have been talking in his sleep.

“Never? I think you might find yourself wanting to stay for a good, long time. We have something you want, and anyway, this place is full of fun surprises.”

And with that moderately sinister comment, Lahan was gone.

“Like hell,” Maomao grumbled, and looked around the annex. It was an antique. As they proceeded down the hallway, she found a kitchen and a living area to the left, while the bedroom was to the right. The one thing that struck her as strange was the walls. They used two kinds of wood to create a two-tone color.

She opened the door at the far end of the hallway and stopped. She smelled paper.

The room beyond was full of shelves lined with old medical treatises, and against the opposite wall was a chest of drawers of the kind used to store medicine. The walls in the room had the same two-tone pattern as the others, while the floor was covered with a faded carpet, and the ceiling contained a mandala-like image divided into nine segments.

She didn’t have enough attention, however, to take all that in.

Now I get it. She looked at Luomen, whose hand brushed the shelves nostalgically.

“This is amazing. I can’t believe something like this here. It has to be at least as good as the medical archives,” Yao said, but it went in one ear and out the other for Maomao. She was pulling out the drawers of the medical chest, her eyes shining. There was nothing in the drawers, as she’d expected, but the odors of old medicines that had permeated the wood tickled her nose.

Next she took down one of the books, an old thing nibbled by silverfish. Her old man had moved to the pleasure district to raise her; the elderly eunuch, late of the rear palace, must have left with hardly more than the clothes on his back.

Maomao spotted plenty of books she’d gotten in trouble for trying to peek at in her younger days. She could feel the drool dribbling from her mouth.

En’en sidled up to her. “I could hardly believe it when I saw this yesterday. All notable books on medicine.”

“Huh!” Maomao wiped her mouth and tried her best to look cool and collected, but the grin quickly overtook her face again.

“There’s no way you could ever read all of these in one night,” said Yao. “You probably couldn’t even get through them if we spent the whole break on it.”

“That’s so true. It’s such a shame. If you were to stay here with us, Maomao, you could read them.” En’en gave Maomao a pointed nudge.

Now Maomao understood what Lahan had meant. He was hoping to appeal to Maomao’s personal interests to hook her.

Maomao gave herself a hearty slap on both cheeks and looked at Luomen. “So, uh, Pops. How exactly do we prove ourselves worthy?” Despite Yao and En’en’s presence, she lapsed into a familiar tone.

Luomen, his brow still furrowed, touched one of the bookshelves. “It’s quite simple. You must be able to take up a certain medical treatise that is somewhere in this room.”

“Take up?”

What an odd way to put it. Did he mean, not pick it up physically, but accept its contents? Was he saying they needed the knowledge to show they could understand this book?

“What’s this about a certain treatise?” Yao asked, focused on the issue at hand.

“It’s called Kada’s Book,” Luomen said. Kada—that was the name of a legendary physician. He was said to have had inestimable medical knowledge and the ability to heal any affliction. Many of the stories made him sound less like a real man and more like a mythical immortal.

“I don’t understand, sir,” Yao said. Her forthrightness was one of her strengths.

“Then I suppose this task will be very hard for you,” Luomen said. It was strange for him to be so cold; normally he would never be so unkind.

All this stuff about being worthy... I think he doesn’t want to teach us, Maomao thought. She was starting to think it had been a mistake to have Yao and En’en here. Luomen might have made the challenge even more difficult than he’d originally planned in order to save them from whatever was going on. For the sake of their futures, he didn’t want Maomao or either of her companions to continue down the path of medicine.

So out of all the many books in this room, they were to find Kada’s Book, whatever that was, and grasp its contents.

That’s a fiendish job. A kind of problem quite different from the ones Jinshi usually caused for her.

Luomen was about to leave the room, as if to signal that he was done here, when En’en raised her hand and said, “Pardon me, sir. There’s something I’d like to be certain about.”

“And what is that?”

“This book... It is in this room, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. Or at least it was when I left this house. Assuming no one has been mucking about in here, it should be here yet.”

“And the book is named after Kada?” En’en said, writing out the characters with motions of her finger, just to be clear.

Luomen’s face drooped slightly.

I knew En’en was a sharp one, Maomao thought. That slight shift of the features was Luomen’s tell when he felt his back was against the wall. It was as good as announcing that En’en had put her finger on the heart of the problem.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said. “Although I make no guarantees that the book carries that exact title. But yes, Kada it is.”

Maomao searched her mind for anything else she might ask her father, but En’en had more or less covered the bases.

“I have a question too,” Yao said, raising her hand.

“Go ahead.”

“Is this a task Maomao could complete by herself?”

After a beat, Luomen replied, “I doubt it. To be quite frank, the two of you being here was something of a miscalculation on my part.” He said no more, but limped out of the room, leaning on his cane.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Maomao grumbled, even as she picked up a book. It was thoroughly insect-eaten, having sat for nearly twenty years. Between the humidity, the sun, and the bugs, some of the books were starting to fade, while others were nearly in tatters. Most of them were made of paper, rather than being written on rolls of wood strips, which would probably have been too bulky to store many of in one room.

“They’ve never aired these things out. Look at the state of them,” Yao said.

“Yeah. I wish I could copy them out—I’d hate to lose all these books,” Maomao replied. She imagined getting the quack doctor to procure some top-quality paper from his hometown so she could make nice, clean copies. Most of the books contained useful information, and if it hadn’t been for Luomen’s “homework,” she would gladly have perused them all at length.

Ooh, here’s a concoction I’ve never tried!

She shook her head, trying to convince herself not to get lost in the tome she was holding. She didn’t have time for this. By evening, she would have to go back to Jinshi. She wanted to do this and be done with it.

“So, uh, you two. You said you’ve been reading these books since yesterday? What do you make of them?”

“I mean... They all seem profitable,” Yao said.

“I agree. All very helpful. But we didn’t see anything that I would characterize as Kada’s Book,” said En’en.

The first problem was understanding what “Kada’s Book” even was.

One thing I’m sure of: my old man wouldn’t give us a problem with no solution. He said there was a book that met his description—and he had told them to “take it up.”

Maomao looked at the shelves with a Hrm. Luomen was a genius—give him one and he would deduce ten. He would know perfectly well what was likely to have happened to these books over the previous twenty years. Even if, as Luomen suggested, no one had touched them, they would still be bug-eaten and coming apart at the seams. Some of them might not even be readable anymore.

“Yao, En’en. Do you think we could go over our facts, just for starters?”

Luomen had said Maomao couldn’t figure this out by herself. She’d assumed that was because there were so many books that one person could never search through them all alone, but three people together didn’t seem to have much more hope. Which meant there was some hurdle besides sheer quantity.

“What do you mean? Like, talk about what books there are?” Yao said.

“The shelves are organized by subject. Would you like me to sketch it out?” En’en said.

“If you’d be so kind.”

En’en began to write on a piece of paper in neat letters, giving the location of each shelf and the subject of the books housed there. “That reminds me—there are numbers on the spine of each book, to help catalog them,” she said.

Maomao looked at the book she was holding. The cover was made of a good, sturdy material, so it had resisted the bugs. She could still clearly read an inscription on the spine: 二—1—I.

“I don’t, uh, exactly get it, but you said these are numbers, right?” Yao said. No wonder she was confused; she couldn’t read any foreign languages. Maomao and En’en were both familiar with the basics, so they could follow the numbering system.

“Yes, those are western numbers,” En’en said, adding the numbering on the spines to her diagram.

Maomao looked closely at the book, and then she noticed something. “I’m sorry, but did one of you take the book that belongs here?” She pointed in between two books on the shelves.

“No. I put back everything I took out,” En’en said.

“Me too,” added Yao. “The one I have right now, I got from another shelf. Why? What’s the matter?”

“One of the numbers seems to be missing.”

The books were lined up according to numbers on their spines, but one of them wasn’t there.

“Which number is it?” En’en asked.

“一-2-II,” Maomao replied. “I’m going to check the other shelves.” She proceeded to do just that. Yao moved to help, but since she couldn’t read many of the numbers, she was mostly left to watch Maomao work. Finally Maomao said, “Nothing is missing over here.”

“Anywhere else?”

“I’d have to look... But I doubt it.”

One single, missing book.

Did my old man take it? Maomao hrmed again. She didn’t remember any books in their shack in the pleasure district.

“Do you think we should check with Master Lahan?” En’en asked, adding the number 一-2-II to her notes. Then she set down her brush. En’en was very good at finding things out, and Maomao had high hopes for this. “He’ll probably be by around noon,” En’en said, looking out the window to check where the sun was in the sky.

“So he comes to tell you when lunch is ready?”

“No, he comes to eat. Speaking of which, I should start cooking.”

“You do the cooking?” Maomao asked, incredulous.

“He said he would provide meals for us, but En’en insisted on doing it herself. Master Lahan provides ingredients and a kitchen to work in, but he seems quite taken with En’en’s cooking. He was here for dinner last night and breakfast this morning,” Yao said. What useful exposition.

I get it...

Lahan loved beautiful things, lovely things—and that extended to flavor. If he could enjoy sumptuous tastes in the company of two beautiful women, he must be on cloud nine.

What a scumbag.

Maomao thought En’en was giving too much ground here. She should know that the tousle-haired spectacle-wearer couldn’t get enough of beautiful women.

“I’ll be going, then. I’m making your favorite, young mistress—duck! Kindly take care of things here, Maomao,” En’en said, and then she showed herself out of the room.

Guess En’en’s a lot more interested in her young mistress’s nutrition than in being worthy or whatever. Maomao was starting to regret trusting that En’en would help her learn what she wanted to know.

“She didn’t have to ask you. I can look through bookshelves perfectly well,” said a sullen Yao. En’en’s Young Mistress Sense must have been tingling, for despite having just left, Maomao noticed her peeking through a crack in the door. She decided to do her a favor and not say anything. En’en was studying Yao intently, as if engraving her expression into her memory.

“We’re going to ask Master Lahan about the missing book, so maybe we should look at the ones that are left?” Yao said.

“Well, about that...” Maomao had been considering a great many possibilities. She knew far more about her father, Luomen, than either Yao or En’en—so she had a better chance of guessing what he was up to. She took a book off the shelf and flipped through it. Pieces of some of the age-worn pages were missing, while others were stuck together from the humidity. Trying to force them apart would probably render them unreadable. “I have a suspicion that Kada’s Book isn’t a book book, like this.”

“What do you mean?” Yao asked.

“My old man—er, I mean, Luomen said to take up Kada’s Book. I don’t know exactly what he meant by ‘take up,’ but if we can’t even read what’s in it, we won’t get anywhere, right?” She pointedly spoke not of Luomen the physician, but Luomen her father, a member of her family.

“Well, yes...”

“If Luomen doesn’t want to do something, he might give us a very difficult task. But he wouldn’t give us a problem with no solution. That’s why I don’t believe the answer is in a book that’s been sitting around for twenty years with no one to look after it. At the very least, not one written on such fragile paper.”

Yao looked at her. “Maybe he just didn’t think the books would be in such bad shape. Aren’t you overthinking things?”

“I doubt it. My father is a genius—that much, I can say with certainty,” Maomao replied.

Yao looked a bit exasperated at that, but she said, “Okay, suppose it’s not a normal book, then. What kind of book is it?”

“That’s a good question.” Maomao picked up one of the scrolls of wooden strips from the lowest shelf. To save space, there were far fewer of them than there were paper books. Whether such a scroll was made of wood or bamboo made some difference, but both were longer-lasting than low-quality paper. “I think this would be more durable.”

“Yeah, so?”

Something still felt off. Maomao undid the tie on the scroll and opened it with a gentle clatter. Yes, it would last a long time, but paper was easier to write on, and this scroll contained nothing of special interest.

There were few enough of them that by each tackling a pile, they were able to quickly go through everything that was there.

“Looks like that’s not it,” Yao said.

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

They both sighed and put the scrolls back.

“Kada’s Book! What does that even mean?!”

“I agree. What’s so Kada about it?” Maomao would have liked to press the subject of En’en’s question to Luomen a little bit. “Why not Genka?”

“That’s another name for Kada, isn’t it? In fact, that’s the one you hear more often,” Yao said. She had enough acquaintance with medicine to be familiar with the name. She also knew that the legendary Kada was more often referred to as Genka. As to why...

“Names with Ka, the character for flower, aren’t smiled upon. Even if he did live long before Li’s founding,” Maomao said. By and large, in Li, only the Imperial family was allowed to use that character in their names. Sometimes an illiterate farmer might inadvertently give the name to his child, or someone might deliberately use it as a provocation...

Like my sister Joka.

She’d taken that name, which meant “flower woman,” when she became a courtesan. There she was, doomed to live a life inimical to someone who hated men—no doubt she resented those who lived in a world that was granted “flowers.” The name was her little strike back.

“A court physician serves the government. In principle, he shouldn’t even speak the name Kada,” Yao said, and she was right. It was a fact that would certainly not have been lost on Luomen.

In which case... Maomao felt herself getting closer and closer to unraveling Luomen’s riddle. She still didn’t know where this book might be—but she was starting to get an idea of what it might be.

If it’s what I’m thinking, then it won’t be anywhere obvious. They could rule out everything on the shelves, including the scrolls.

So where was it?