藥引子 The Medicine Needs A Guide
那進女子的道人，受我主誥封，稱為國丈。國丈有海外秘方，甚能延壽。前者去十洲、三島採將藥來，俱已完備。但只是藥引子利害：單用著一千一百一十一個小兒的心肝，煎湯服藥。那进女子的道人，受我主诰封，称为国丈。国丈有海外秘方，甚能延寿。前者去十洲、三岛采将药来，俱已完备。但只是药引子利害：单用着一千一百一十一个小儿的心肝，煎汤服药。
逐句解 Line by line
"The Daoist who presented the girl has received a patent of nobility from our sovereign and is styled the Royal Father-in-Law.
國丈 guó zhàng is a real court title: the father of an imperial consort, and so the emperor's father-in-law by rank. It carries precedence over almost everyone at court, which is why nobody can stop him. 稱 takes 為 as wéi again — styled AS.
"The Royal Father-in-Law has a secret prescription from beyond the seas, most potent for lengthening life.
海外秘方 — a formula from overseas. The pitch is the oldest one there is: the remedy your own doctors do not have, from somewhere they have never been. 甚 is shèn, meaning very, not the shén that asks what.
"Some while ago he went to the Ten Islets and the Three Isles to gather the drugs, and they are all complete.
十洲三島 shí zhōu sān dǎo are the paradise islands of Daoist geography, out in the eastern sea, where the herbs of immortality grow. Claiming to have been there is roughly a Ming physician's version of producing a certificate nobody can check.
"The trouble is only the guide for the medicine, and it is a fearful one: it takes nothing less than the hearts and livers of one thousand one hundred and eleven small boys, boiled into a broth to take the drug with.
The number is spelled out character by character, and the reading of 一 changes across it. Inside 一千, 一百 and 一十 each one is a counted digit and keeps its full yī; only the last, standing directly before the measure word 個, shifts to yí. 藥引子 yào yǐn zi is a real term of Chinese pharmacy: a substance added to carry the other drugs to where they must act, and normally something like ginger or honey. 著 is zhe, the running marker.
The novel has withheld this for nearly a thousand characters and it delivers it in a subordinate clause. The sentence is not about the children; it is about a technical difficulty with a prescription. The word it uses for them is the pharmacy term for the honey you take a pill with.
The number matters and the novel makes you hear every digit of it. One thousand one hundred and eleven is not a round figure and not a symbolic one; it is the kind of number that comes off a schedule. Somebody has counted. Somebody has been going door to door.
It is worth noticing what the courier chief does not say. He does not say the prescription is wicked, or false, or that the Royal Father-in-Law is a fraud. He reports it the way an official reports a policy he has to administer, and the flatness is the most frightening thing in the passage.