xymnovel Chapter 85 Concept of Ecological Aquaculture
Chapter 85 Concept of Ecological Aquaculture
The midday sun shines through the leaves of the jujube tree, casting dappled patterns on the ground.
On the stone table lay a plane, a saw, and half a pot of unused medicinal paste.
On the newly built small square table were two bowls of cold tea. Two people sat around the table, not saying much, just sipping their tea intermittently.
Zhou Xia finished the last sip of tea, then stood up to get the broom from the corner.
He was always so diligent, which is probably the approach most people take when entering or leaving a new environment.
He first swept the sawdust off the stone table, then swept the corner where wood shavings were piled up.
Wang Zhihuan sat by the jujube tree, holding a teacup, watching the back of the newly arrived boy as he worked, and suddenly spoke.
"Banxia, was your acupuncture technique for treating bone injuries taught to you by your master?"
Zhou Xia stopped and nodded.
"It should be a school of thought from the southern foothills of the Taihang Mountains."
Wang Zhi also put the bowl on the table. "The prescription is also more gentle and nourishing, unlike the more aggressive approach of the northern school."
That's how it works in the Taihang Mountains: in surgery, needles are used more often than scalpels; in internal medicine, the focus is on supporting the body's resistance and eliminating toxins, without harming the stomach's energy.
Zhou Xia turned to look at him, a hint of surprise in her eyes.
Wang Zhihuan continued calmly, "The pulse reading you gave yesterday was very accurate. It was deep, thin, weak, rapid, and slightly hesitant, especially weak in the cun position—this is a pulse sign that the body's vital energy has been damaged and the pathogenic factors have penetrated deeper."
Judging this isn't difficult; the difficulty lies in knowing how to follow the route of the medicine. Are there similar cases in the notes your master left you?
"Yes." Zhou Xia put down the broom, took out the worn-out notebook from her bosom, flipped through it, found a page and handed it to Wang Zhihuan. "It was passed down from my master's master. It says that if there is pus in a bone injury, you can't seal it directly. You have to run the medicine from bottom to top so that the pus has a way out. But I've only practiced this on rabbit legs before."
Wang Zhihuan took the note and flipped through a few pages.
The paper is yellowed, and the handwriting is neat but looks old, indicating that it is a very old handwritten copy.
He turned to the page Zhou Xia had mentioned, looked at it for a moment, and then returned the notebook.
"Who taught you acupuncture? Was he also your master?"
"Yes," Zhou Xia said. "My master said I have steady hands and am suitable for learning acupuncture."
However, his master only taught him acupuncture techniques up to the meridian and muscle layer. He said he hadn't mastered the deeper techniques himself and was afraid of teaching them incorrectly.
Wang Zhi hadn't spoken yet. He picked up his teacup, took a sip, and stared silently at the swaying shadows of the jujube tree for a while.
"Your master taught you the right thing."
Wang Zhihuan put down his teacup. "A needle piercing the bone marrow is the last resort."
Without sufficient skill, a single needle prick won't save a life, it will destroy it. Your master would rather not teach you than teach haphazardly—that's what a truly good master is.
Zhou Xia lowered his head, his fingers pinching the edge of the notebook, the paper gently curling up between his fingertips.
He remembered his master's dying words: "Don't feel like you haven't learned enough. You've learned everything you need to. As for what you haven't learned yet, someone will teach you sooner or later."
The master didn't say who it was. Perhaps the master knew that there would always be another person in this world.
"You've got the hang of it."
Wang Zhihuan stood up and gathered the plane and saw in the corner. "The meridians and bones, how deep to go in each layer, how much force to use—these things can't be explained just by talking. You have to practice."
Zhou Xia stared at him blankly. Wang Zhihai was already walking towards the kitchen: "Come help me feed the geese after you're done cleaning up."
The afternoon passed in the blink of an eye.
When the sun was moving from its zenith to the west, Wang Zhi took Zhou Xia to the back mountain to cut a basket of wild mugwort.
Wild mugwort grows at the foot of the mountain by the stream, reaching half a person's height, with a layer of fine white down on the back of its leaves.
Wang Zhi also said that this was for Zhou Bo's son to change his dressing; the mugwort decoction was used to wash the wound, which was cheaper than using alcohol alone.
The two returned with a full bamboo basket. Wang Zhi went to get the medicine pot to prepare the mugwort decoction, while Zhou Xia wiped the sickle used for cutting mugwort clean and put it into the pile of farm tools in the corner.
He saw Ah Huang snatch away Wang Zhihuan's half of a straw sandal again, chased after him and snatched it back. Ah Huang sneezed at him in dissatisfaction, wagged its tail, and angrily lay back down under the jujube tree.
That evening, Zhou Xia prepared a decoction of mugwort and changed the dressing for Uncle Zhou's son.
After removing yesterday's dressing, the edges of the wound were no longer so red, and fresh granulation tissue was revealed where the necrotic tissue had fallen off, with a healthy pink color.
Zhou Xia rinsed the wound with mugwort water, applied the new ointment given by Wang Zhihuan, and re-bandaged it.
Uncle Zhou stood by watching him change his dressing, and only dared to speak after he finished, bringing him a bowl of water: "Xia, will you be able to learn any skills from the Master?"
Zhou Xia tied the cloth strips up and looked up at the big jujube tree in the front yard.
The leaves rustled in the night wind, obscuring the dim oil lamp at the other end of the courtyard.
A man sat under the oil lamp, writing on an open sheet of paper, with Ah Huang kneeling at his feet.
"Yes." Zhou Xia wiped his hands dry. "I feel that the Master of the Manor is even stronger than my master; he is a true great physician."
On the other side, Wang Zhi was still writing when the notification sound from the Merit System quietly began to ring.
[System Notification: The host has taken in a medical apprentice and generously imparted all his knowledge, passing on his benevolent teachings to future generations. Merit Points +300.]
Wang Zhi added two annotations to the medical lecture notes on the paper, blew the ink dry, and put down his pen.
The system notification had barely finished when my gaze involuntarily drifted towards the goose pen outside the window.
The dozen or so gray geese had quieted down and huddled in the corner of the fence, looking like a pile of gray-white clouds.
He suddenly remembered what Old Zhang had said when he delivered the geese—"The pond is empty anyway."
Thoughts drifted off. His farm now had a few living creatures:
Earthworms, chickens, pigs, and now this flock of geese has arrived at the pond.
In the Tang Dynasty, most farming families raised whatever they could find to supplement their income.
But he came from the future and had seen what the word "cycle" meant.
Once a thought arises, it is like ink dripping into water, naturally dissolving.
Earthworms can process kitchen waste and rotten leaves, and their excrement is an excellent fertilizer that can be used to grow vegetables or mixed into chicken feed.
Chicken manure is a good source of fertilizer; it can fertilize vegetable gardens and, when fermented with pig manure, nourish the aquatic plants along the pond.
Geese are waterfowl that love to eat duckweed and algae, which helps to clean ponds and weirs. Their droppings can also fatten snails and small fish in the ponds.
The pond mud can be regularly dredged up to make excellent base fertilizer, which can then be used to nourish the mulberry grove and vegetable plots.
In this way, the front and back yards, the water and the soil seem to form a small circle, where each thing gets what it needs and finds its place.
The idea of a good deal flashed through his mind but didn't cause much of a stir. It was all too early to tell, as he had been very busy lately and his energy was limited.
But you can keep an eye on it in your mind and plan the farm as a whole once this busy period is over.
All I do is experiment, and the success of those experiments depends on fission and replication.
He withdrew his gaze, looked again at the unfinished medical lecture notes on the table, added two annotations, blew the ink dry, and then finally put down his pen.
He turned his head to look towards the backyard—the light shining from Zhou Xia's room flickered a few times on the window paper before going out.