THE MONKEYS 1

All records of the plants had been written in detail. The plants' names, the other names, the descriptions even including their unique movements or other oddities, as well as any useful information from both his team and the people - Zhu Su had recorded all of them as detailed as possible. He even added lots of plants which was never recorded in ancient medicinal books. The highly accurate painting had also been created. Not only the members of the Team of Wellbeing, even the officials who were observant in assessing the beauty were very impressed with the paintings. They praised nonstop, said that if the pictures were sold, it would definitely be sold out at a phenomenal price. The procession of the raw plants had also been carried out. Zhu Su thought hard before he came up with the best ideas for processing each plant, because the procession was different between one with others. Either by boiling it, soaking it for two days and one night, mixing it with other plants, straining or reboiling it - those plants had now been successfully processed.

Therefore, finally, the hard work of Zhu Su and his team had finished - to be precise, almost finished.

Not yet finished. One step still remained.

And, this was the most important step.

The experiment to test subjects.

A large group of monkeys had been brought into a deserted area of the backyard. Some were fat, some were thin. As we know it very clearly that monkeys are very naughty. Actually, they were ready to jump around and make a mess, but the soldiers had tied their hands and feet and they were forced to sit quietly, but they still kept screaming. It soon became an interesting sight for the palace residents, including two spoiled Zhu Su's daughters. But both of them had changed a lot. They did scream in disgust, but only for a moment, and afterward, they instead moved to the front row since they wanted to get a good position to watch. Meanwhile, on the other side of the backyard, lots of basins full of plants were ready to be tested on the monkeys.

"Good job, Wu Qi. You and your squad did it very well," Zhu Su praised Wu Qi and his squad who were busy wiping their sweat. It was not an easy job to catch the monkeys. Not only they are well in running, but they are also good at jumping and climbing trees, and such that skill cannot be performed by humans. They had to use special tricks and traps to catch the monkeys.

Wu Qi and his squad thanked him respectfully. Zhu Su turned his gaze to Liu Ku, who was raising one of the plants, and after that approached a monkey and fed it with the plant without fear.

"Eeek! Don't you feel disgusted by them, Liu Changshi?!" Shutting her mouth, Qing shrieked as she saw Liu Ku's expression which did not imply any change - cool as usual. Meanwhile, Liu Ku marked that this monkey ate Plant A, before turned to the other monkeys.

"You know, Liu Changshi gets used to this. We're different from him, this is not our levels!" Rui was joking. "Come on, Liu Changshi! Feed all those plants to the monkeys!"

"Ah, how tacky you are. You think that you are watching a circus?" Liu Ku fed another plant to another monkey, his expression remained indifferent.

All of them were applauding like the excited spectators watching the handler played with his circus animal. But no one intended to help him. Liu Ku was actually annoyed because only he himself who fed all plants to the monkeys, even though so many plants must be fed. Since I give the advice, then I have to work all by myself?! But seeing they applauding so cheerfully, his annoyance turned to amusement. He began to enjoy his role as a "monkey handler." He even shouted, "If I manage to feed them with all these plants, you must give me a proper reward!"

The joke immediately invited much more hilarious excitement. Liu Ku just shook his head as he continued his job.

Liu Ku did his job deftly. Since he was not afraid of monkeys, his work could be done quite quickly even if he did it only by himself. "Now! I'm done! Come on, give the reward as you've promised!"

Everyone clapped loudly. The atmosphere was really bustling like a real circus show. Zhu Su, who used to be serious, could not help but burst into laughter now. He laughed out loud, exclaimed, "I will give my great Changshi a proper reward!"

"Thank you very much, Your Highness! However, I prefer to collect promises from them, because we must keep our promise. Right?!" Liu Ku winked naughtily at his colleagues.

"We will reward you like we reward the street artist, Liu Changshi. Here!" The Team of Wellbeing members euphorically threw small coins at him, which immediately fell on the floor.

Liu Ku looked away. "Damn you! This is a much better job than a mere handler, you know!"

In brief, all monkeys had now finished chewing the plants tested to then. They had been waiting for quite a long time. Zhu Su and the others were now observing closely at the monkeys. Zhu Su was anxious. He really hoped this experiment would be successful, and these monkeys could survive without being poisoned...

"The monkey over there, it's vomiting!" One of Zhu Su's daughters was pointing at the monkey in the second row from the right.

"Same with that monkey! It's screaming!" A court lady pointed to another direction.

A tumult soon broke out. The backyard was soon filled with screams from the monkeys. Some were vomiting, some were flailing here, and some even had convulsions. However, there were many more monkeys who kept sitting still, they looked shocked just because of their friends' miserable screams. The Team of Wellbeing was very busy. Not only Liu Ku, but the others were also soon examining the monkeys. Zhu Su also did the same. But Zhu Su had to admit that examining monkeys was not his forte at all - veterinary was the branch of medicine he practiced the least. So, using his knowledge of treating humans, he tried hard to help the moaning monkey. Although, he was not sure whether he would do it or not ...

"They won't survive, Your Highness..." Shao Rong shook his head.