A master of both medicine and martial arts, he picked up a beautiful CEO as his wife.

Those three words were translated by Shen Yu. The night he came up from the bottom of the well, he went alone into the side hall where the scriptures were stored.

The travel logs for Nirvana Mountain date back to the Ming Dynasty, one book per year, stacked up to cover three walls. They record trivial matters: who went up the mountain in which year, what they brought, how many days they stayed, and what they took when they left.

Shen Yu spent six days flipping through the pages.

He didn't start from the beginning. He did some calculations first: Zhao Guanlan is fifty-eight years old this year. If he had gone up the mountain, it was most likely when he was around twenty years old—that is, thirty-eight to forty-two years ago.

He started from those ten years. One book a year, two books a day.

These notebooks are filled with trivial records. On a certain day of a certain month, Zhang's rice shop at the foot of the mountain delivered three bushels of rice. On a certain day of a certain month, disciple [name omitted] went down the mountain to buy supplies, and was gone for seven days. On a certain day of a certain month, a branch of the old apricot tree on the back mountain was broken off by the wind.

He didn't leave that room for six days. Ji Qingyao brought him three meals a day, and when she brought them down, it was often still three meals.

On the fourth night, he went to the wrong place again—he found a man surnamed Zhao, who was a medicinal herb seller in his forties. He had come three times and sold mountain products each time.

On the sixth night, he emerged from the side hall, carrying a notebook in his hands. He had run across the front yard.

"Found it!"

That shout woke up everyone lying in the disciplinary hall.

"Brother Feng! We found it! It really is there!"

"Brother Feng."

Ye Feng was changing someone's bandages in the Discipline Hall. "Found it."

The book was laid out on the jade platform in the Zangmai Hall.

The booklet, from forty-two years ago, was already brittle, with its corners curled up. Shen Yu turned to a page towards the back of the middle and pointed out that line to everyone.

The characters are written vertically, and the ink is very light. "March 17th. A man seeking medicine came. His surname was Zhao, his given name was Guanlan, and he was sixteen years old."

There was also a line of smaller print at the bottom, which was added by the person who received the receptionist:

"He reported that a family member was ill and sought a remedy. Upon examining the patient's pulse, it was determined that medicine could not cure him. He then declined the offer. He was received by Hanya."

No one spoke in the hall. Hanya was the master's Taoist name.

The master sat in the rattan chair, staring at that line of words for a very long time.

"master."

The old man remained silent. "Master."

"……I remember."

He spoke those two words very softly. "You remember?"

"I remember that child."

The old man raised his head. "I was twenty-three that year, a complete beginner in my apprenticeship, knowing nothing, yet I thought I knew everything."

"They said someone was asking for medicine at the mountain gate, and my master told me to go and receive them."

"When I went down, the child was sitting on the stone steps outside the mountain gate."

"Sixteen years old. Very tall and thin. His clothes didn't fit properly; the sleeves were too short, exposing his wrists."

"How long did he sit there?"

"Three days."

The air in the hall suddenly became heavy. "He sat outside the mountain gate for three days," the master said. "The disciples guarding the gate wouldn't let him in, but he didn't make a fuss; he just sat on the stone steps."

"He brought dry rations, wrapped in a piece of cloth. I saw him eat twice in three days, each time breaking off a small piece."

It rained the next day, and it rained for most of the night.

He didn't dodge.

"There's a gatehouse at the mountain gate where you can take shelter from the rain. The gatekeeper told him that, but he shook his head, saying he wasn't clean enough to go into someone's house."

"On the third day, the gatekeeper couldn't stand it anymore and came to report it."

The old man's hand rested on the armrest of the wicker chair. "I'll go down and ask him what medicine he needs."

He said there was a sick person in his family.

I asked what illness it was.

"He said he couldn't explain it either. He said his family has been like this for generations."

He said he was sick when he was eight years old and hadn't gotten better since.

Ye Feng stood motionless beside the jade platform. "You've taken his pulse."

"I've seen it."

"What did you touch?"

The old man closed his eyes. "Feng'er, do you remember when my leg became useless?"

"Twenty years ago."

"No," the master said. "I injured my leg forty years ago, and it wasn't until twenty years ago that I was completely unable to walk."

"You never told me how you got hurt."

"I can't say."

The old man opened his eyes. "I'll tell you something today."

"Forty-two years ago, I took that child's pulse. What I felt was something I had never seen in any book."

"That thing isn't a disease."

"It's growing on him—growing out of his bones, into his flesh, and under his skin."

"I didn't know what it was at the time."

"I only know one thing: I can't touch it."

The old man's hands trembled. "I was twenty-three years old then. I refused to accept it."

"I told him to wait while I went in to get some medicine."

"I took out the medicine and tried it on his wrist."

"After trying it, I couldn't feel this hand for three days."

"The year after that, my leg started acting up."

Everyone in the hall froze. "Your leg—"

"It was that one time," the master said. "Not at Luoyankou twenty years ago, nor anything else."

"It was forty-two years ago when I tested a medicine on the wrist of a sixteen-year-old boy."

Ye Feng pressed his hand on the jade platform. "And then what happened?"

"I fired him later."

The old man's voice was calm. "I went in and asked my master. After I described the pulse, his face changed."

He told me four words: "Don't get involved."

He said that people of this lineage cannot enter the mountain gate, cannot be given medicine, and cannot stay.

He said it's a two-thousand-year-old rule.

"I went out and told the child what I had said."

The hall remained silent for a long time. "Master," Shen Yu suddenly spoke.

"Um."

You were twenty-three then.

"right."

"What if you hadn't listened to your master back then?"

The old man didn't answer. "If you had led him into the mountain gate that day, and brewed him some medicine—"

"Shen Yu," Cen Heming said from the side, "Stop talking."

"I just want to ask one question," Shen Yu's voice trembled, "What if he had come in that day?"

No one in the hall responded to his statement. It was his master who spoke up later.

"I've asked myself this question for forty-two years."

He placed his hands on his knees. "I don't know."

"What did you say?" Ye Feng asked.

The master didn't answer immediately. He placed his hands on his knees and moved his body forward an inch.

"I talked a lot that day."

"I told him about the rules on the mountain, what my master said, and that I really had no other choice."

He didn't interrupt at all. He just sat there and listened.

After listening, he stood up and bowed to me.

"He asked me one last question."

"What did he ask?"

He asked: "Then does that mean our family members can't be cured?"

The old man's throat moved. "I said something."

"I have said a lot of things and done a lot of wrong things in my life."

"That sentence is the one I regret the most."

No one in the hall spoke. "I said—"

The old man raised his head. His single eye was bloodshot.

"This is not an illness."

"It's your family's fate."

"It's incurable."