My dao to eternity

The shipment had already arrived by the time Li Fan reached Hundred Herbs Hall, three woven baskets stacked against the back wall, roots still crusted with dirt from wherever they'd been dug. Old Sun sat behind the counter with a bowl of tea cooling untouched at his elbow, already sorting through the first basket by hand, setting aside the ones with soft spots or split skin before Li Fan had even hung his outer robe on the peg by the door.

"These went bad in the cart," the old man said, not looking up, nodding at a small pile of discarded roots. "Wet straw packed too tight against dry root. Rot spreads before anyone notices." He didn't explain further. He never explained further than once.

Li Fan took the second basket without being told and began working through it the same way — checking each root by feel first, the give of the skin under his thumb telling him more than a glance ever could, setting the sound ones into a tray by size and the rest into the pile for the pigs down the lane. His hands moved through the sorting quickly now, the motions worn smooth by weeks of the same task, and it was well past midmorning before he realized Old Sun had stopped watching him work.

A farmer's wife came in near noon with a cough that rattled wet in her chest, and Old Sun sent Li Fan to weigh out the dried herb himself while he wrote the dosage down in his careful hand. Li Fan's measure came out close enough on the first try that the old man only grunted and adjusted it by a pinch rather than starting him over. Small enough a thing, but it hadn't happened before.

By the time the light through the front window had swung past noon and started sliding toward evening, the baskets sat empty against the wall, sorted, weighed, and shelved. Old Sun waved him toward the door without much ceremony once the last customer had gone. "Same again tomorrow," he said. "Fewer mistakes than today, if you can manage it." Li Fan didn't point out that he hadn't made any mistakes today worth naming. The old man's version of praise came sideways or not at all, and by now Li Fan had learned to hear it either way.

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