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The herbal medicine shop has two sets of measuring cups. The old measuring cup has very fine graduations, can hold a tiny amount of dew, and can also hold a large jar of thick decoction, but it is very heavy; the new small cup is light and quick, an apprentice can hold two in one hand, but it often overflows when faced with large doses of medicinal liquid.

The proprietor wanted to make dispensing faster, so he first replaced all the counter cups with small ones. On the first day, speed did indeed go up. On the second day, they encountered a large qi-tonifying formula, and the amounts of several medicinal liquids were too large for the small cups to hold, so the apprentice had to convert on the spot, and the more they calculated, the more confused it became.

The old master did not have everyone go back to the old cup. He brought out a third kind of cup: light body, less fine gradations than the old cup, but retaining the old cup's large capacity. It was not good at distinguishing the finest difference, but it was not likely to lose large numbers.

The apprentice worried the prescriptions would become inaccurate as a result. The master took him through them one by one: most tonic soups care about the ratio of medicinal flavors and approximate heat—they don't need every trace to be precise; a few highly toxic, narrow-dose medicines were still left to the old measuring cup.

After a month with the new cup, the counter queue shrank and errors did not increase. The most troublesome case in the past was not a missing grain of powder; when the liquid was too much, the whole prescription would collapse, with heavier consequences. The third cup blocked this kind of collapse.

Later the pharmacy took a large order from the military camp, and several hundred doses of decoction had to be ready before dawn. The apprentice finally saw the use of the third kind of cup: it let the counter move fewer heavy vessels and avoided panic in front of the big pot; only when adjusting the last strong medicine did the old master still personally take out the old cup.

At first, some people remembered only the benefit of "lightness" and wanted to replace all measuring tools. The master craftsman immediately had him prepare an anesthetic, requiring not a half-drop to be off. Only when the apprentice's hand trembled did he realize that coarse graduations were not suitable for every step. What the pharmacy needed was to be fast and stable in most heavy steps, and to preserve the old methods in a few narrow, delicate places. This rule was later posted beside the medicine cabinet, and every time the apprentice took a cup, he first had to check the width of the prescription and the pot volume.

Later the pharmacy set rules: use the light cup for regular formulas, and the old cup for extremely sensitive steps; every cup change must state the reason. The shopkeeper understood that saving effort does not mean casually going coarser — the key is knowing which precision can be given up and which range must never be lost.