The meeting concluded, and Wei Lan quickly walked out of the main hall with her head lowered. The cold wind, carrying snowflakes, hit her face sharply, causing her cheeks to sting. She instinctively pulled up the collar of her cotton robe.

Large snowflakes were falling from the gray sky. She reached out to catch a few flakes, watching them melt into water droplets in her palm, and softly sighed, “Time flies, it’s already been a year.” She shook her hand, wiping off the water, her gaze a bit distant.

Liu Mingyi caught up to her and walked beside her. After a moment of silence, he suddenly spoke, “I won’t take the position of headmaster.”

His words interrupted Wei Lan’s thoughts. She snapped back to reality and replied casually, “Why reject the position that was offered to you?”

“You know I’ve never been interested in empty titles,” Liu Mingyi said, taking off his sheepskin coat, intending to drape it over her.

Wei Lan smiled and stepped back half a step to avoid him, “You make it sound like I crave power.” Then she suddenly laughed, “Alright, I admit it, I do want to leave my name in history.”

Liu Mingyi understood; she was thinking of using this position as a way to achieve another goal. He opened an oil-paper umbrella and shielded them both. “Can women from your hometown really hold official positions?”

“More than you think!” Wei Lan’s eyes brightened. “We have female prime ministers, female generals, female scientists. In our place, the one who earns more in a marriage manages the household. I have a colleague who is a full-time dad…”

“So, is it really one man, one woman?” Liu Mingyi’s ears reddened slightly as he recalled her words when she refused marriage: “I will never share a husband.”

“Of course!” Wei Lan stamped her feet against the cold. “Bigamy will land you in prison.” She reached up and adjusted the umbrella handle, her fingertips brushing Liu Mingyi’s hand, which was cold and blue from the chill. “Hey, tilt the umbrella more toward your side.”

“So, are you willing to be vice headmaster?”

Wei Lan grinned mischievously, “Not willing! But if it’s you, it’s fine.”

Liu Mingyi suddenly shoved the umbrella into her hand. “I’ll go ask Lord Lu for my resignation. If you can’t be headmaster, let the position remain vacant.”

“Stop!” Wei Lan grabbed his sleeve. “What if a corrupt official takes the position after you resign?” She lowered her voice, “I’ve already planned it; we’ll use this position to make penicillin!”

“Pen… what?” Liu Mingyi looked confused.

“The miraculous medicine that can treat festering wounds!” Wei Lan explained. “But it needs a lot of money and manpower, it could take years.” She stomped her boots in the snow, making a crunching sound. “We’ll start collecting moldy fruits at the pharmacy tomorrow.”

Although she wasn’t sure about the outcome, she knew that starting from scratch to develop effective penicillin in the Ming Dynasty was nearly impossible. It would require a lot of time, money, and, more importantly, luck.

But she decided to give it a try, even if there was only a slim chance, she would gamble on that luck.

After collecting the various moldy fruits, Wei Lan, Liu Mingyi, and ten students gathered in a temporary lab to attempt extracting penicillin for the first time.

The lab contained thirty open ceramic jars, filled with moldy oranges, melons, and even dried tangerine peel from the pharmacy. Everyone was wearing coarse cloth soaked in vinegar, with hemp gloves covering their hands up to the wrist.

“Start the charcoal stove,” Wei Lan instructed. Two students immediately placed a copper brazier in the corner, and the crackling of the fire could be heard as the green brick floor heated up. Then, they placed a large iron pot over the brazier.

Wei Lan picked up a piece of cloth soaked in alcohol and carefully wiped the countertop. “The pot’s rim should be wiped three times with alcohol, and the ladle must be boiled in hot water for half an incense stick.”

Liu Mingyi lifted the cotton curtain and entered, carrying some freshly bought beef shank. Wei Lan took the meat and swiftly trimmed off the tendons and cartilage, then chopped the beef into fist-sized chunks. As the pieces hit the water, a cloud of white mist rose. Wei Lan took a long-handled wooden spoon and stirred clockwise. The beef fat gradually melted, and tiny oil bubbles rose to the surface of the broth.

Her focused expression, combined with the swirling mist, made her look strangely like a witch brewing a magical potion.

The strong smell of meat spread through the lab, causing the students to swallow frequently. One of them’s stomach suddenly let out a loud growl, and Wei Lan glanced up to see several young men staring hungrily at the pot.

“We’re feeding these invisible little things. Once they’re full, we can extract the mold that kills poison.”

One of the students looked at Wei Lan’s busy figure with a complicated expression. He knew that Wei Lan had spent quite a bit of money buying the beef to make the culture medium. Perhaps in the future, they could develop a miraculous drug to cure many incurable diseases. But even so, he couldn’t help but feel that it was a bit wasteful.

After boiling the broth for two hours, it was poured into a hundred ceramic dishes. Wei Lan had custom-ordered flat, round ceramic trays with lids, which weren’t perfectly sealed but still better than open containers. Liu Mingyi worked with her to quickly finish: lift the lid, pour the broth, close the lid, and the boiling broth sloshed inside the trays, gradually solidifying into amber-colored gelatin.

Wei Lan looked at the neatly arranged culture dishes and sighed with relief, smiling as she said, “Step one is complete. Next, we need to inoculate with Staphylococcus.”

Liu Mingyi asked, “What do you need me to do?”

Wei Lan pointed to her mouth. “I need to scrape the mucous membrane from inside my mouth. I can’t do it well myself, Mingyi, can you help me?”

Without hesitation, Liu Mingyi moved in front of her. “Alright.”

He removed his right glove and, with his left hand, gently held her jaw, his grip firm yet not painful, keeping her from escaping.

Wei Lan looked up into his eyes, feeling his presence all around her. As the tweezers entered her mouth, she let out a muffled whimper, her tongue instinctively resisting the cold foreign object, but it was pressed down firmly by the back of the tweezers. “Don’t lick,” he said, swallowing the saliva in his throat.

The tweezers moved like an extension of his fingers, expertly prying open her trembling mouth, the tips grazing her sensitive palate, sending tiny electric shocks through her body. Wei Lan instinctively recoiled, but the back of her head met his waiting palm.

The soft scraping sound grew louder in her ears. Wei Lan obediently let him do his work but couldn’t help watching him. She found herself lost in thought; this man seemed no longer separated by 300 years of history from her.

A slight sting brought her back to reality, and she looked directly into his eyes. A barely perceptible smile passed through his gaze as he lifted his head slightly, “Done.”

“Are we supposed to spread this skin on the gelatin?”

“Yes.” Wei Lan instinctively avoided his gaze. She turned to look at the ten students in the lab, noticing that all their eyes were fixed on her and Liu Mingyi, with a strange curiosity in their expressions.

“Everyone, scrape a few more culture dishes. In a few days, a thin white membrane will grow on them. Then, we’ll inoculate these cultures into one hundred dishes.”

Logically, they could scrape all one hundred dishes at once, but since everyone’s oral flora was different, they needed to wait for the bacteria to grow sufficiently to ensure the experiment’s accuracy before proceeding to the next step.

Wei Lan instructed the students to place the unused meat jelly in wooden boxes and store them in the cellar. The prepared culture dishes were placed on an iron rack, surrounded by cowhide bags filled with hot water. Liu Mingyi and the others wrapped the iron rack tightly with three layers of cotton blankets.

“Will this keep the temperature?” one of the students asked.

Wei Lan explained, “Human body temperature is the best for bacterial growth. We need to simulate that environment as closely as possible. If the water bags cool down, we’ll replace them immediately. The charcoal stove also needs to be kept burning nonstop.”

“Does that mean someone has to watch it the whole time?” another student asked with a frown.

“Yes, it’s a hard job. Someone will need to take shifts.” Wei Lan nodded, “Temperature control is even more critical than distilling alcohol. If it’s too low or too high, the bacteria will die.”

Four male students volunteered for the shifts. On the fourth morning, their eye sockets were dark, their jaws covered in stubble, but they were still energetically lifting the cotton blankets. Wei Lan uncovered the ceramic dishes, and the group leaned in. They saw that the white membrane, which should have been snow-white, was covered with gray-green spots, and several clusters of yellow mold were visible.

“What happened?” one student asked, looking at Wei Lan in confusion.

Wei Lan’s expression grew serious as she examined the dishes closely and gently shook her head. “This was contaminated by other bacteria. If it were only one type, the colonies should all look the same.”

The group was disappointed, but they didn’t give up. Liu Mingyi continued to uncover the second, third, fourth, and even fifth culture dishes, but all of them were contaminated. Several students could no longer bear to watch, and Wei Lan felt deeply discouraged. She had initially thought that taking the first step would be half the battle, but it seemed like the first step was the hardest.

A young man mumbled with a tone of frustration, “What a waste of so much beef…”

But as the group’s pillar, Wei Lan couldn’t show her dismay. She smiled calmly and patted the boy on the shoulder. “It’s a normal occurrence. We still have dozens of dishes left. If necessary, we can start over.” She said it lightly, but her back was tense, like a bowstring stretched tight.

Finally, when the tenth dish was uncovered, Liu Mingyi suddenly exclaimed, “Huh?”

The semi-transparent bacterial membrane was covered with tiny white dots, with a few yellow spots on the edges, but the main bacterial colonies were uniform.

“It worked!” Wei Lan’s heart, which had been raised high, finally relaxed, and her voice trembled slightly. “This is Staphylococcus.”

The heavy atmosphere lifted instantly, and the mood became joyous. Wei Lan and Liu Mingyi exchanged a smile, and Wei Lan immediately gave orders: “Bring out all the remaining meat jelly, and start inoculating!”

This time, they inoculated all the remaining 90 culture dishes with Staphylococcus, placed them on the iron rack, and wrapped them with cotton blankets, putting charcoal stoves underneath to maintain the temperature. Although they didn’t have a thermometer, they relied on their bodies to judge and kept the temperature close to their own body temperature.

Meanwhile, they continued to collect moldy fruits. The mold in the ceramic jars was thriving.

---