MaoMao and Jinshi Set - The Apothecary Diaries: The Great Imperial Inch-vestigation - Part 2 (Patreon)

Picture 4

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At dawn, MaoMao prowled the palace gardens, her mind half-filled with regret.

“Cynomorium,” she muttered, yanking a crimson parasitic plant from a shrub. “Fitting. It leeches off others, just like this brilliant plan.” She paused, eyeing a patch of suspiciously phallic mushrooms. “Not. Helping.”

Digging up ginseng root, she grimaced. “The ‘Dragon’s Ambition’ recipe requires how much of this? He’ll vibrate out of his robes!”

“Risk versus reward,” she mumbled, weighing a spiky lotus seedpod. “Nobel Prize in absurdity… or a one-way trip to the imperial dungeons.”

Her notes flapped in the breeze, a sketched diagram of Jinshi with a comically giant… accessory staring back. She hastily crumpled it.

“Just a trial dose,” she reassured herself, pocketing a withered mandrake. “What’s the worst that could happen? …Don’t answer that.”

By midday, her basket overflowed—with herbs, guilt, and the grim realization that curiosity might actually kill the cat this time.

Picture 5

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Under a cloak of midnight, MaoMao crouched in a forest clearing, her cauldron bubbling over a crackling fire as shadows danced like amused spectators.

“Rare Ophiocordyceps? Check. Fermented silkworm pupae? Check,” she chirped, tossing in ingredients with the glee of a child building a bomb.

The brew hissed neon green, emitting a smell somewhere between rotten lychee and misplaced ambition.

“A once-in-a-lifetime experiment!” she cackled, stirring vigorously as an owl hooted reproachfully overhead.

“Jinshi better appreciate this,” she muttered, bottling the glowing concoction, already pitying the poor soul (and his pants).

Picture 6

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Jinshi sat rigidly in a dimly lit tea room, drumming his fingers on a cushion like a nervous woodpecker, when MaoMao slid the door open with a clack.

“Ta-daa!” she sang, thrusting a lacquered box under his nose, its contents glittering with crystalline cubes that looked stolen from a dragon’s candy hoard.

He leaned back, wary. “Are those… rocks?” “Medicine,” she corrected, plopping beside him. “Distilled into convenient, sugary lies. Take three. For science.”

Jinshi poked a cube, which emitted a suspicious ping. “Did you test these on anything alive first?”

“A cockroach,” she said brightly. “It’s now the size of a rice bowl and leading a rebellion in the pantry.”

He choked, but MaoMao’s grin—equal parts mischief and please don’t die—disarmed him. Resigned, he popped a cube into his mouth.

“Crunchy,” he mumbled, immediately regretting it as the taste hit: a mix of burnt honey and existential dread.

After grudgingly downing two more, Jinshi glugged a entire pot of tea to scour his tongue. “If I explode, I’m haunting you first.”

“Noted,” MaoMo said, snapping the box shut. “Now, rest! Tomorrow, we conduct a thorough inspection.”

“Inspection?!” he spluttered. “Calm down—I’ll use a ruler,” she said, already halfway out the door. “Metric, not imperial.*”

Jinshi stared at the ceiling, questioning every life choice that led to this moment. Meanwhile, MaoMao hummed in the hallway, mentally drafting her Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “Yes, I revolutionized idiocy…”