Prologue

A camel race is truly a wonderful thing for both body and soul! Thanks to this event, by my calculations, I basically won’t need to wash dishes for the next hundred years. Ao Chi gave his camel army a thorough scolding one by one, and got a face full of their foul-smelling spit for his trouble.

Though there are no singing birds or blooming flowers, no lush mountains or shimmering waters — a desert, plain and simple, can still be a great deal of fun. I don’t remember who once said it; perhaps it was me: where you go has never mattered. What matters is who goes with you.

The source of all joy and all delight is probably right there in that sentence.

Tonight it was Black Robe Number Three’s turn to tell a story. Of all the black robes, Number Three seemed to have the leanest frame, and he always stooped his back, always looking as though he was about to drop to all fours and walk on his hands and feet. Quite a sorry sight.

He wedged himself into a pile of soft cushions, sprawled there boneless like a half-reclined figurine, and began making a buzzing sound from his mouth.

“What is wrong with you?! What kind of noise is that?!”

Ao Chi grabbed an apple and hurled it at him. Number Three caught it with one hand, grinned, and asked: “What do you think that sound just was?”

“Either a mosquito or a bee,” I answered.

“A bee!” Number Three snapped his fingers. “Excellent, then I shall tell a story about bees! Long live Her Majesty the Queen!”

Part One

Torrential rain came crashing down from the pitch-black clouds in a frenzy, the sharp droplets piercing through layer after layer of bamboo leaves, striking mercilessly against a man sprinting without pause through the forest. A torn raincoat wrapped around a small figure that he clutched tightly against his chest.

The man was young — barely past twenty — his mess of hair drenched and plastered to his forehead. As he ran, he kept speaking to the little one in his arms: “Ning’er don’t be afraid… Daddy’s taking you to see the doctor… you’re going to be fine…”

Running smoothly on a muddy mountain path is no easy feat. The man’s foot slipped; he tumbled down a slope and into a shallow ravine. When the rain cleared from his vision and the spinning world returned to normal, he didn’t spare a glance at the arm gashed bloody by the mountain rocks. The first thing he did was lift the raincoat and call out in desperate urgency: “Ning’er… are you all right? Are you all right?”

The little face beneath the raincoat was pale as paper, the small mouth slightly open, long lashes motionless against tightly shut eyes, and no matter how the man called out, there was not a single response. Her small blue-floral dress was soaked through to the skin.

“Ning’er… don’t… don’t leave Daddy!” The man seemed to go mad. He gathered up his daughter — already with no breath left in her — and pressed his face desperately against her cold forehead, crying out with every shred of his heart: “Ning’er! Wake up! Look at Daddy! Wake up!”

The man’s tears and the rain became one. The sky above his head and the sky inside his heart both collapsed at that moment into ruin.

A tremendous blast of thunder erupted from deep within the clouds. A thread of gold, fine as a hair, dropped straight from the sky, scraping against the air, burning the shape of flames in its path, hurtling at meteoric speed toward the father and daughter huddled on the ground.

The man, submerged in the depths of his grief, did not notice the anomaly in the sky. In just an instant, he had the dazed sense of a giant bubble bursting above his head; an inexplicable force yanked at his heart, pulling it downward — then a blinding golden light plunged through the chest of the small girl in his arms, and a glow pale as the first light of dawn rippled outward from her body, warm and enveloping, wrapping the lifeless little form in its embrace.

The long-sealed tender eyelids slowly opened. The blank, unfocused pupils gradually began to glow. The little girl’s throat moved; a long-held breath escaped at last from between those parted lips.

“Ning’er…” The man stared at his revived daughter in a daze of shock and joy, then pulled her into his embrace, laughing and weeping at once. “You woke up! You’re better! My Ning’er!”

The daughter blinked. Those jet-black eyes had none of yesterday’s brightness; the face not yet restored to its color was blankly bewildered. She raised her hand to his shoulder and pushed — hard — and the man was sent sprawling back several feet, falling to the ground.

“Ning’er… you…” The man could not believe it. His slight little daughter had such strength?

She paid no attention to her father, as though he were nothing but a stranger. She drew a deep breath, looked around with a hint of panic, then stumbled off toward the other end of the ravine.

“Ning’er! Where are you going?” The man pushed through the pain, got up, and ran after her, wrapping his arms around his daughter.

With barely any effort she flung him off; the man fell into the mud, utterly bedraggled. He forced open his eyes, half-blinded by the mud that had splashed into them, and watched that small figure running ahead, shouting after her in despair: “Ning’er! Come back! Daddy’s here!”

“Save your energy. You won’t get away.”

Without warning, an indifferent voice sounded above the man’s head. He looked back — a man had appeared behind him at some unknown point, a deep black fisherman’s hat pulled down perfectly over his eyes. A black windbreaker of clean, crisp lines gleamed with a cool blue light in the rain.

Before the man could react to this uninvited guest, a delicate gold dagger split the curtain of rain and plunged with a flash into the girl’s back.

A sharp cry rang out. The girl collapsed, writhing in pain against the cold, rough ground.

“What are you doing?!” The man was enraged by the sight. He shoved the figure in black and lunged toward his daughter, desperately pulling her into his arms, instinctively reaching to pull the dagger from her back. But the moment his hand touched the blade, a piercing, bone-deep pain flung it back; a long wound opened across his palm. The cut formed so quickly that the blood hesitated for a moment beneath his skin before slowly seeping out.

“Let go of her. Don’t touch that dagger again.” The man in black stepped before him, his voice cold. “She is not your daughter. Your daughter is already dead.”

“Nonsense!” The man’s hands clenched into furious fists, and the arms holding his daughter only tightened. “She’s my Ning’er! My daughter! You madman — why would you hurt her? She’s so small!”

In his rage he reached again for the dagger, earning only more pain, another wound, and a blade that hadn’t moved a fraction.

“That is not an ordinary dagger.” The man in black seized his wrist with a fierce grip. “Touch it once more and that hand of yours will be ruined!”

“You lunatic!” The man’s face was contorted by towering fury; tears came pouring. “Ning’er is all I have left! She is everything to me — the only reason I have to go on living! I thought I had lost her, but heaven gave her back to me! I will not allow anyone to harm her — absolutely no one!”

“She is not your daughter!” The man in black raised his voice, seemingly trying to shock the frantic father back to his senses. “She is a demon creature that slipped into your daughter’s corpse!”

The man shook his head stubbornly and held his daughter tighter. “I won’t listen to your mad ravings! She is my daughter! She is!”

The words were barely out of his mouth before he summoned every ounce of strength and wrenched himself free of the man in black, then dropped unexpectedly to his knees before him — kowtowing, over and over, pleading: “I beg you, spare my daughter! She is my only family — my only one!”

The blood from the wound on his supporting hand flowed out from beneath his palm, mingling with the running rainwater into a murky red. The relentless sound of his head striking the ground went on and on.

Faced with the pleas of a father in despair, the man in black fell silent.

“Wounded… sealed inside the shell, it shouldn’t cause any trouble…”

After a long pause, he murmured this to himself, then crouched down, gripped the dagger he had sent in and pulled it back out. A clear wound appeared on the girl’s thin back. At the sight of it, he began to recite something under his breath — one hand resting over the wound, making a drawing-out gesture; the other raising the sharp blade and dragging it flat against the girl’s back, then swiping it through the air in a swift, practiced motion, quick as lightning.

A piercing wail came from the girl’s lips, and then she was still.

“Ning’er…” The man shook his daughter in helpless confusion, shouting at the man in black: “What did you do to her?”

The man in black said nothing. He stood, reached into his coat, and drew out a small, beautifully crafted brocade pouch. He opened his clenched right hand over it — apparently releasing something inside. As he pulled the pouch shut, a faint flicker of blue light escaped from the opening and dissolved into the rain.

“She’s all right.” The man in black held the brocade pouch out before the father. His thin lips were drawn tight as a blade’s edge. “If you want to live alongside her in peace, keep this safe. Should she display any abnormal behavior in the future, simply squeeze this pouch firmly, and she will settle down.”

The man checked his daughter’s breathing — steadier now, noticeably calmer. He breathed a sigh of relief, then looked up at this strange figure in black with confusion and wariness. “Just who are you?”

“A hunter.” The man in black tossed the pouch into his arms, then produced a white handkerchief. He found a small black stone from the ground, wrote a few characters on the handkerchief with it, folded it, and threw it over as well. “Keep both of these safe. Remember.”

With that, he turned, stepped nimbly across the rocks lining the edge of the ravine, leaped lightly into the air, and vanished into the rain.

Part Two

This child — she should grow up to be a beautiful young woman. Tao Ang gazed at his charming little patient.

It was a face so fine and delicate it seemed you could press water from it with your fingers. Black hair, soft and smooth, cut level with the chin, fell with a natural draping weight, spread across the pillow in a neat curtain. Long, dense lashes, thick as a fan, rested quietly over half-opened eyes, and the irises set within them were blue as the clearest stretch of sea — what a rare color. The longer you looked into those eyes, the more your gaze sank, like a heavy stone dropped into deep water. That uncommon, exquisite blue unexpectedly brought to Tao Ang’s mind a dream he had been having frequently of late —

Gorgeous light flooding from all directions, shifting from molten gold to deep azure, as though the seafloor and the sky had traded places. Within a vast and boundless emptiness, a few soft feathers drifted slowly in spirals, dancing with an elegant grace, freely and happily climbing toward the heights.

Tao Ang’s gaze left her eyes. A slight furrow came to his brow — only because the bloodless pallor of her face, and the way her small lips pressed tightly together from time to time in some unnamed discomfort, had pulled at his heart without his intending it.

“Apparently Flowing Feather has been admitted for a very long time, but the exact date of her admission isn’t in the records, so none of us actually know her precise age.” Nurse A’Ping sorted through the medications on her cart, her voice full of sympathy. “This child’s story is quite sad. When she was first admitted she had CML. Later she had a bone marrow transplant, and we thought she might recover and be discharged — but then her pituitary gland was found to have an abnormal secretion, and her entire body stopped developing. Even now, she doesn’t look a day over eight years old.”

“Why would the exact date of admission and the patient’s true age be missing from the records?” Tao Ang asked, puzzled.

A’Ping shook her head with a helpless look. “Flowing Feather’s original medical file was lost. The replacement file drawn up afterward was missing those two items. I honestly don’t know the specific reason. By the time I took over as the attendant for this child, everything about her was already the way it is now. That’s all I know.”

“Who is her primary physician?” Tao Ang asked.

“The director, of course!” The moment those two words left her mouth, A’Ping’s face lit up as though it were spring. “Apparently after this child’s parents admitted her, they both vanished. They just transfer a considerable sum each month into the hospital’s account and never come to visit their own daughter — not once have I seen them. What kind of parents is that?!” She pursed her lips in contempt, then continued, “Our director genuinely took pity on the child. Not only did he personally take over as her primary physician, he also asks about her well-being all the time. He’s instructed us to pay her extra attention and do our best to give her the feeling that she has a home, a family.”

Tao Ang said nothing, only searched his memory for what he knew of the director. His impression was of a distinguished-looking middle-aged man: lenses spotlessly clean, eyes behind them wise and serene. So far they had only met once — on his first day at Yongfu Hospital, following the custom of the place, he had gone to the director’s office to make himself known. They had exchanged a few courteous pleasantries.

“Anyway, Doctor Tao, I have to go give another patient their medication.” A’Ping bid him farewell, then pulled him aside and lowered her voice. “Earlier I forgot to lock the door and let Flowing Feather slip out — please, please don’t let that get out, or my bonus this month is gone. The director specifically instructed us that if no one is in the room, the door must be locked at all times. Flowing Feather is a special child, after all; if she gets out and something happens, there’d be no end of trouble.”

“Ha ha, don’t worry, I won’t say anything.” Tao Ang smiled. “Go on, you’re busy.”

“Thank you, thank you so much!” A’Ping gave him a grateful bow, wheeled her cart out of the room, and was gone.

Once he was certain A’Ping had left, Tao Ang pushed the door to. The smile on his face slowly faded. He reached into his trouser pocket and drew out a set of keys; attached to the keyring was a glass-like orb about the size of a thumb. He held it in his hand. A tide of faint red light spread outward from within the orb, tinting his fingers the same color, and slight, rhythmic tremors pulsed from the orb’s center.

He pressed his left index finger lightly to the top of the orb, silently mouthed a few words — and the light and the trembling stopped at once, the orb returning to the look of an ordinary glass bead ornament.

“Finally found you…” He pocketed the keys, and let out a long, relieved breath.

He moved soundlessly to the bedside and tilted his head, studying Flowing Feather — the child who had been treating him as though he didn’t exist from the very beginning. A’Ping had said that this child almost never spoke, as though she lived in a world of her own.

The two pairs of eyes — Tao Ang’s and Flowing Feather’s — occupied the same space yet made not the slightest contact. The child’s gaze was still and cold, deliberately shutting out anything or anyone that might try to approach it.

Tao Ang flipped aside his white coat and sat down on the floor with complete naturalness. The angle when he straightened up placed him perfectly level with Flowing Feather’s face as she lay curled on her side — perhaps this was the most fitting height for a grown adult to hold a conversation with a child.

“My name is Tao Ang.” He looked at Flowing Feather and introduced himself with a smile. “The Tao of ‘porcelain,’ the Ang of ‘precious.'”

Half of Flowing Feather’s face was buried in the soft, plush pillow. Her blue eyes were fixed on the still air, her gaze seeming to pass straight through Tao Ang and scatter into some unnamed direction beyond.

“How old are you?” He wasn’t bothered by her lack of response. He continued in the same gentle tone.

Flowing Feather remained entirely unresponsive. Only those two long rows of lashes moved — an unconscious flutter, twice.

Tao Ang scratched his head. After a moment’s silence, he asked: “Do you like the cockscomb flowers in the courtyard downstairs?”

He was thinking of an hour earlier — after lunch, he had been napping in the garden beneath the hospital’s grape trellis. A bee flew past from a large, vigorously blooming clump of cockscomb flowers near the trellis, and his lazy gaze followed the departing bee to a window on the third floor of the inpatient building to his left. The traces of sunlight slanted across the bright glass; a small solitary figure appeared in the shadow behind the pane. The blurred outline printed on it seemed, in a fleeting instant, to be tinged with a faint wash of blue — gone in a blink, perhaps only an illusion. But in the moment his gaze met that silhouette, he felt that behind the glass, there was a pair of disappointed eyes.

It was that peculiar feeling that had led him to wander inside the inpatient building, where at the far end of the third-floor corridor, at the very last window, he had found this small patient standing on her tiptoes and peering outside — Flowing Feather.

At his words, a barely perceptible ripple passed through Flowing Feather’s eyes.

“Tomorrow I’ll pick some cockscomb flowers and bring them for you to play with, all right?” Tao Ang, seated on the floor, gestured like an overgrown child full of enthusiasm. “Cockscomb flowers are so much fun. If you pull out the stamens, you can make earrings out of them — lots of little girls love doing that.” He paused, then let his hands drop in a mildly helpless gesture, and smiled. “My little sister loved cockscomb flowers too. Back then, she was about your age…”

Flowing Feather’s lips moved faintly.

That small expression didn’t escape Tao Ang’s notice. He brought it up as though it were nothing, as a tentative suggestion: “How about this — tomorrow I’ll take you down to the garden, and you can pick the cockscomb flowers yourself. While they’re in full bloom, too. What do you think?”

The smile on his face was pure and guileless, without a trace of calculation. In the dim, grey room it seemed to carry a warmth invisible to the naked eye, like sunlight. It was as though he himself were the one longing with all his heart to go outside and play — a genuine happiness, a slight sense of relief, as though some small wish had just been granted, radiating outward from his eyes.

After a long silence, Flowing Feather’s lashes lowered even further. That slender, delicate voice came out like two fragile pieces of glass accidentally touching each other —

“No…”

She turned her face further into the pillow.

Tao Ang blinked — though he had been refused, he was genuinely pleased. His actual goal had never been to get this girl to agree; he only wanted to coax her into breaking through the wall she’d built between herself and the outside world. That she was willing to speak to him at all — even just two words — was cause for real gratification.

“Why not?” Tao Ang was not about to let go of this opportunity to have a deeper conversation with her.

Flowing Feather refused to say another word. Her small hands gripped the edge of the blanket more tightly; her body curled further inward.

Tao Ang studied her for a moment, then slowly reached out and gently laid his palm on her forehead, which held little warmth.

Perhaps it was because she was by nature too quiet; perhaps she was simply too tired to resist. Whatever the reason, Flowing Feather showed no sign of rejecting this small gesture of closeness. She stayed perfectly still, letting the warmth of his palm seep into her body — and even closed her eyes with something approaching comfort.

“This hospital room,” Tao Ang said softly, after a long while, withdrawing his hand, his voice full of quiet compassion, “is not the place you belong.”

The half-closed room door squeaked and was pushed open. The director — whom Tao Ang had not seen in several days — walked in with a steady, unhurried step.

At the sight of him, Tao Ang quickly got up from the floor and greeted the director with some embarrassment.

“You are…” The director adjusted his glasses, thought for a moment, and then remembered: “Ah, the new Doctor Xiao Tao, isn’t it?”

“That’s right — Tao Ang.” Tao Ang stepped to the side. “I happened to be passing by earlier, and ran into A’Ping. She had her hands full with medication and paperwork, so I helped her carry things to this room.”

The director nodded with a smile. “You’re new here — spend more time making your rounds of the wards. It’ll do a great deal for your practical experience.”

With that, he walked over to Flowing Feather’s side, gave her head an affectionate pat, and asked in a low voice whether she was feeling all right. The child replied in a voice so faint only the director could hear it, giving brief answers. Between them was a kind of ease that no one else could quite approach.

“Director…” After some deliberation, Tao Ang walked over and asked, “May I ask you a few questions?”

The director glanced back at him, then turned back to Flowing Feather and said: “Rest for a while. In two hours I’ll give you a thorough examination.” Then he gestured for Tao Ang to come with him and stepped out of the room.

Standing in the corridor, the director pulled the door shut and said: “Go ahead.”

“I heard that Flowing Feather was abandoned?”

The director nodded. “Yes — though not entirely. Her parents transfer a large sum of money into the hospital’s account every month.”

“Only that much?” Tao Ang frowned. “They never come to visit Flowing Feather?”

“That’s right.” The director shook his head helplessly. “Since Flowing Feather was admitted, her parents have never appeared. It does rather defy normal human behavior.”

“Is there any way to contact her parents?” Tao Ang asked this suddenly, then immediately added by way of explanation: “How can they just leave a child here like this, completely unattended? Surely we could try to do something?”

“There’s truly nothing to be done.” The director shook his head. “We have tried to contact them. But the address and phone number they left at the time of admission were all false. I can’t understand their behavior either.”

“I see…” Tao Ang let the matter drop, deflated, but then turned to something else. “And Flowing Feather’s age — apparently it isn’t clearly recorded in her file either.”

“Ah, that was a failure on our part. When the previous director was here, the hospital’s management was rather loose.” The director said with some resignation, then asked, “Flowing Feather is a special case. A’Ping should have already told you about her condition?”

Tao Ang nodded.

“I’ve been doing everything in my power to find the reason her body stopped developing, in the hope that one day she can leave here in good health.” Then, as though he had just remembered something, he said urgently: “As for Flowing Feather’s situation — we’ll talk more another time. I have an appointment, I need to leave immediately.”

“Of course — please don’t let me keep you.” Tao Ang said apologetically. “I’m sorry for taking up your time.”

“Ha ha. Among the young doctors here, few are as attentive and considerate toward patients as you.” The director clapped him on the shoulder.

Tao Ang glanced sideways at the closed door and smiled. “She doesn’t belong in a place like a hospital room.”

The director looked mildly surprised, then said with approval: “If you have any questions about your work in the future, come find me any time. A young person like you — this is the first time I’ve seen anything quite like you.”

The director’s upright figure disappeared quickly down the other end of the corridor. Tao Ang scratched his head. He had grown up without being called “young person” or “child” very often; the sensation, he had to admit, was rather pleasant.

Once he was sure the director had left, Tao Ang returned to Flowing Feather’s room. The child had already closed her eyes — apparently asleep. Tao Ang stepped forward, quietly took a strand of her fallen hair from her pillow, and then left the room.

He checked the time: half past two in the afternoon. The previously somewhat empty corridor now had a fair number of patients and accompanying family members moving about. As Tao Ang walked forward, he found himself instinctively glancing back. Flowing Feather’s private room was at the very end of this floor — no one would have any reason to walk toward that dead-end corner with nowhere to go beyond it.

There was no visible obstruction there, and yet something — some invisible boundary — made a definitive cut, sealing off Room 127, which housed only a single child named Flowing Feather.

He went downstairs and out of the inpatient building. As he passed by the garden, his gaze drifted, without his meaning it to, back to that thriving clump of cockscomb flowers. Two girls of six or seven were standing and laughing before the flower patch. Each had a pair of cockscomb flowers in hand; they were drawing out the long, thread-like stamens from the blooms, then hanging them from their earlobes, shaking their heads prettily to make the small silver balls at the stamen tips bob back and forth without stopping — as though they had put on the most beautiful pair of earrings in the world.

“Big brother, the cockscomb flowers bloomed, come help me pick some!”

“Big brother, look — I made a flower into earrings!”

“Big brother, I’m wearing earrings I made myself! Aren’t they pretty?”

A young, familiar voice drifted in like a tide from somewhere in the void, washing against the usually quiet shores of Tao Ang’s heart.

In childhood, his little sister had always liked to run, at the start of early summer, to the base of the wall behind their house, pick two cockscomb flowers from the clump growing there, and carefully pull from their centers the long-threaded stamen with the adorable small ball at the tip. She would then press it against her earlobe and deliberately shake her small head to set the hanging stamen swaying. Just like these two little girls in front of him now.

If not for that one night, seventeen years ago — his sister’s smile should have grown and matured alongside her, instead of becoming, forever, a fragment of his memory…

A little bee buzzed in a spiral over the flower patch, then flew away. Tao Ang shook his head, reined in his drifting thoughts, and continued toward the hospital’s main building.

Rather than the main path, Tao Ang took the shortcut along a gravel lane lined on both sides with Chinese evergreens. He had only gone a few steps when voices carried across from the other side of the lane.

“So what if the blood type matches? So what if it’s compatible?” A thin, sharp-featured middle-aged man in a patient’s gown sat with one leg crossed over the other on a stone bench beyond the lane, speaking irritably into his phone. “Bone marrow isn’t something you can just extract whenever you feel like it! If something goes wrong, who can bear that kind of responsibility? A child of a few years old — is her life worth more than mine? I am not donating any bone marrow. Tell the hospital I refuse, and don’t bother me about it again. And if they dare breathe a word of this to the media, I’ll make their lives very unpleasant going forward.”

He hung up in a huff and tossed the phone to a young man in a suit sitting beside him.

“Director Cao…” the young man said carefully, “before, you made such a high-profile public appearance in the media calling on everyone to go to the hospital for blood tests and help leukemia patients in need of bone marrow donations. Now…”

“What do you know?” The middle-aged man shot him a fierce glare. “The reason I did that in the first place was simply to improve my public image — it’s very good for the future development of our corporation! Who could have known that the bone marrow of some half-dead sick child would actually be compatible with mine!”

“Yes, yes…” The young man, genuinely intimidated by his employer’s tone, nodded rapidly like a woodpecker.

Tao Ang cast a cold look at the two of them and continued on his way without a word.

As a graduate in hematology from one of the country’s top medical colleges, Tao Ang had turned down an invitation from a large city hospital and voluntarily chosen to work at Yongfu Hospital. This was no small piece of news at a Grade-2B institution on the outskirts of the city that had previously been nothing more than a clinic. His colleagues’ curiosity about him had been unrelenting since he first arrived. And since Tao Ang was clean-featured and tall, his white coat worn with a composed, capable air that gave him a distinction few others possessed, the single women on staff found their work enthusiasm roughly doubled whenever he was nearby. The office of Hematology Ward Two became, from that point onward, a considerably livelier place.

Faced with his colleagues’ curiosity and the intense attention of his female coworkers, Tao Ang always smiled and let it pass. Beyond necessary small talk, he rarely idled about chatting the way the veterans did; whenever he had a free moment, he mostly stayed in the office reviewing materials and professional texts. As a doctor only two weeks into the job, Tao Ang followed the department head diligently through the rounds of every ward, laying the groundwork for his formal duties one month later. This level of dedication had, at one point, made quite an impression on all his colleagues.

And yet Tao Ang, who had never been late or left early, had been late seven consecutive times beginning the previous week — and had gone to considerable lengths to find others to cover even his weekend shifts. The department head’s expression toward him grew colder by the day; his colleagues, beyond puzzlement, had begun to mutter. Tao Ang remained utterly unbothered, going about his duties each day with his expression perfectly unchanged. Sharp-eyed and gossip-prone young nurses had even spotted him one afternoon picking a bundle of cockscomb flowers from the garden before walking into the inpatient building with a beaming smile.

In short, everything Tao Ang did was increasingly regarded by everyone as the eccentricities of an unusual person. When asked about any of it, he either smiled and changed the subject or gave no answer at all, leaving people with no recourse.

One day, Tao Ang again carried a bunch of cockscomb flowers into Room 127 on the third floor of the inpatient building.

A’Ping had just had Flowing Feather take her medicine and was about to leave when she ran into Tao Ang. Eyeing the flowers in his hand, she clicked her tongue: “I say, Doctor Tao — anyone who knows would say you’re looking after a little patient you’ve never met before. Anyone who doesn’t might think the child living here is your own daughter! You really are so attentive toward Flowing Feather.”

Tao Ang scratched his head in a slightly embarrassed way. “This child is all alone here — it’s a little pitiful. I’m not too busy lately, so I figured I’d come by and check on her more often.”

“Well, well, far be it from me to interrupt your act of loving kindness.” A’Ping stuck out her tongue at him playfully and walked out of the room.

Flowing Feather, as always, lay on the bed with eyes half open, her body curled up like a small cat that was unwell, staring fixedly ahead.

“Flowing Feather, look at these — today’s cockscomb flowers are especially beautiful!” Tao Ang plopped himself down on the floor again, extending the flowers to the pillow’s edge. A subtle, barely-there fragrance drifted between the two of them.

Flowing Feather’s long lashes trembled faintly. Those beautiful blue eyes moved slowly until her gaze fell on the flowers.

“Oh?” Tao Ang’s eyes suddenly went wide as he looked at something small nestled among the blooms. “How did a bee end up in here?”

A very small bee was sitting comfortably among the flowers as though it owned the place. When Tao Ang had been picking the flowers earlier, he hadn’t noticed there was a bee resting inside, and the bee itself was remarkably bold — even after the flowers had been picked, it refused to fly away.

On closer inspection, it became apparent that one of the bee’s wings was, for some reason, only half there.

“Stay still for a moment!” Tao Ang seemed concerned the bee might sting Flowing Feather; he quickly pulled the flowers back and carried them toward the window.

At that, Flowing Feather, who had been more motionless than a stone statue, propped herself up and called out: “Don’t hurt it!”

Tao Ang looked back in mild surprise, then turned to her with a sunny smile. “Silly child, I’m not going to hurt it. I’m putting it out on the flower pot on the windowsill.”

“No.” Flowing Feather still wouldn’t allow it. “It can’t fly. It will die.”

“Well, what shall we do then?” Tao Ang walked back, looking in some difficulty at the small creature in his hand. “You wouldn’t want me to perform surgery on it and fit it with a prosthetic wing?”

Flowing Feather reached down and pulled an empty medicine box from the drawer, opened it, and said: “Give it to me.”

Tao Ang did as she said, carefully tipping the half-winged bee into the box.

Flowing Feather placed the box on the pillow beside her, not even bothering to put the lid on. She looked at the bee inside, and a rare gentleness passed through those big eyes.

“Are you going to keep it as a pet?” Tao Ang sat back down and teased her lightly. “Flowing Feather really is one of a kind, haha.”

Flowing Feather didn’t say a word in reply; she only watched the bee in the box.

Seeing her like this, Tao Ang didn’t mind at all. He continued chatting with her in a cheerful vein, moving from cockscomb flowers to the weather, from the weather to what he had eaten that day. Throughout the whole time, though, Flowing Feather’s gaze never left the box on the pillow. To her, Tao Ang was more or less the same as air.

“Are you… afraid of me, or is it that you… don’t trust me?” After performing a solo act for quite a while, Tao Ang tucked the cockscomb flower he had been holding into the small vase on the cabinet, and asked this without warning.

There was the faintest flicker in Flowing Feather’s gaze. She said nothing, but her body curled instinctively tighter.

“I won’t let you stay here forever.” Tao Ang smiled and touched her head, though the seriousness beneath the smile was plainly visible. “Trust me — one day you’ll leave this room healthy and whole, coming and going as freely as those little bees.”

“Its wing is broken. How can it fly free?” Flowing Feather lifted her eyes and looked directly at Tao Ang. As she spoke, her gaze drifted to the window again, settling on a small girl in a patient’s gown below in the garden, happily playing with her parents. The corners of Flowing Feather’s lips curved up faintly — a smile like a stream passing over stones. “Out there… it looks so nice.”

“You can be just like them. When you’re better, I’ll take you away immediately.” Tao Ang held her cold little hand, looking out at the people passing back and forth, and at all the real scenery that Flowing Feather could not quite reach. “You’ll go back to the world that truly belongs to you. Trust me!”

“Really?” Flowing Feather looked at him. For the first time, their eyes truly met.

“I swear it!” Tao Ang’s expression was more solemn than it had ever been. “I’ll take you to the most wonderful place — somewhere with no hateful walls and no ceilings, only space as far as the eye can see, with all kinds of birds and flowers and grasses, and wherever you want to run, however high you want to fly — all of it is yours!”

A moment of silent, mutual gaze. The light of hope rose in Flowing Feather’s eyes, brighter than at any other time — though only for a brief, brief instant.

But then, she abruptly pulled her hand back, and instinctively tucked her right hand behind her, as though afraid Tao Ang might touch it.

Tao Ang, who had thought a rare trust was beginning to form between them, was bewildered by her gesture.

“Don’t… touch my hand.” Flowing Feather moved her lips, pushing out the words one by one, displeased but with an undertone of helpless resignation.

“All right. I won’t.” Tao Ang paused in surprise, then smiled without the slightest offense. He looked at her unhappy little face, then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small notebook — a plastic cover printed with a puppy design. He opened it to reveal pages that had yellowed a little with age, and said, looking through it: “This notebook is my little sister’s. She loved to scribble all over it.”

Tao Ang tilted his head, his eyes full of fond tenderness. He turned through the pages slowly. “This one is a little dog she drew… this one is a butterfly… ha ha…” His finger stopped on one page. “And this one — this is the cockscomb flower she drew.”

He held the notebook out to Flowing Feather and pointed to a cockscomb flower rendered in pink crayon — the brushwork childlike and charming. “See, inside here, the flowers never wither.”

Flowing Feather looked intently at this paper flower, her expression soft as the most yielding feather.

“Your little sister…” She looked up at him, beginning a question she didn’t quite finish.

Tao Ang’s expression froze for a moment, then slowly he said: “She left me seventeen years ago. Our father — he chose to leave even when my sister had a fever that wouldn’t break, because of his work. That night there was heavy thunder and rain. I was young; I carried my sister on my back and ran to the hospital…” He made every effort to keep himself steady, as though he were narrating someone else’s story. “But we were too late. I couldn’t save her. The doctors said that even when she was no longer coherent, she kept calling our father’s name, and mine.”

Tao Ang’s face was expressionless. He struck the windowsill with a fist.

Flowing Feather showed no strongly visible reaction to his words or his outburst. She simply took the notebook, pointed to one of the pages, and said: “She’s like the cockscomb flowers — she still lives in here.”

Her pale finger rested on a page. On it was drawn an adorable little girl with her hair in pigtails: one hand held by a tall man with a long beard, the other hand held by a little boy. At the bottom of the drawing, in crooked, uncertain handwriting: “Daddy, big brother, little Xi, together always.”

Tao Ang’s heart was touched, as though by a warm hand laid gently against it. He smiled and rubbed the back of his head. “The reason I took this out in the first place was to make you happy — and now here you are comforting me. You’re quite something, you little thing.”

Flowing Feather handed the notebook back to him and said: “You are a good person.”

Tao Ang was momentarily stunned, then smiled. “We haven’t known each other very long. Are you so sure?”

Flowing Feather didn’t answer directly. She only said: “You’re different from them.”

“Them?” Tao Ang’s heart gave a start. “Who is ‘them’?”

Flowing Feather frowned, and her lips pressed tighter together.

Just then, Flowing Feather suddenly let out a groan of pain. Beads of cold sweat broke out rapidly on her forehead; her arms wrapped tightly around her violently trembling body.

“What’s wrong?” Tao Ang asked urgently.

“It’s… it’s nothing…” Flowing Feather shook her head. Her lips were bitten until they seeped blood. “It’ll… be over in a minute.”

And indeed, about a minute later, the face that had been twisted in pain gradually relaxed. The unnatural shaking of her body ceased.

Tao Ang pulled out a tissue and carefully dabbed the beads of sweat from her brow. “Does this happen to you often?”

“Yes…” Flowing Feather nodded, then quickly shook her head. “You… go, please. Don’t ask me any more questions. I’m very tired.”

“All right. Rest first. I’m going.” With that, he glanced toward the half-open door and caught the flash of a shadow passing through the gap.

Tao Ang walked quickly over and pulled the door open. Down the corridor, aside from a few nurses and patients moving about, there was no one suspicious.

That night, Tao Ang proactively asked to trade shifts with Xiao Jiang, who had been fretting about being stuck on the night shift and unable to slip away to see his girlfriend. Xiao Jiang was overjoyed and disappeared with profuse thanks.

The hospital at night was unusually quiet. Tao Ang’s fellow night-shift colleague used the pretext of doing rounds to wander over to the emergency ward and go about cultivating friendships with two newly arrived nurse assistants, leaving Tao Ang alone in the office reviewing files.

When Tao Ang came back from his own rounds, he found his colleague still hadn’t returned. The bluish-white fluorescent light of the office fell across a set of basic surgical instruments stacked along one wall, throwing strange, sharp shadows onto the walls beyond — the kind of sight that set the nerves on edge for no particular reason.

Tao Ang closed the office door, crossed the mostly deserted corridor — the occasional nurse passing through — and walked quickly toward the elevator. Compared to the large city hospitals, Yongfu Hospital, with its modest patient load, was as quiet as another world entirely.

His reason for staying behind for the night shift had nothing to do with professional dedication. He wanted to use this opportunity to verify something the Elusive Bird had told him.

He had asked around: the hospital did indeed have a storage room that had been sitting abandoned for years, on the top floor of the main building where his office was located.

Inside the elevator, Tao Ang noticed that the button for the top floor was visibly newer than those for all the other floors — clearly few people ever went up there.

Stepping out of the elevator, the dim overhead light stretched his shadow long and indistinct across the floor. This floor housed a fairly large multi-function conference room and an exhibition space showcasing the hospital’s achievements, along with various rooms along the lines of an employees’ recreation room and a reading room — but from the day Tao Ang had joined the hospital, he had hardly seen any colleagues come up here at all.

He passed by these locked rooms and walked straight to the storage room at the very end of the corridor, right next to the restroom.

The room was locked, but Tao Ang was well prepared; his master key opened it efficiently. He stepped inside, and in the darkness, a faint smell of mildew drifted to meet him.

He drew out a pocket flashlight, carefully avoided an overturned plastic bucket and a mop lying across the floor, and made his way toward the iron shelving along the wall that the Elusive Bird had described.

A few old cardboard boxes about two feet square were scattered beneath a rust-spotted iron shelf. A stack of handwritten pages stuck out from beneath a half-slid-open box lid, their curled edges visible, a faint rise of dust catching the beam of the flashlight.

Tao Ang lifted the box lid and took out the stack of papers, which were tied together with a thin cord, and looked through them one by one. The first several pages were nothing more than meeting minutes; by the date, they were things from over ten years ago. After flipping through more than ten pages, what appeared before Tao Ang’s eyes suddenly came alive —

A standard one-inch photograph was neatly affixed to the top of a form. The person in the photograph was unmistakably Flowing Feather. Tao Ang’s gaze slid downward along this form — labeled “Medical Record” at the top — and the more he read, the graver his expression became.

Name: Flowing Feather. Sex: Female. Age: 8 years old. Date of Admission: October 23, 1998.

Could this be Flowing Feather’s lost original medical file? Working backward from the data here, Flowing Feather’s actual age was already eighteen — Tao Ang calculated quietly.

Continuing downward, what followed was Flowing Feather’s condition record, which appeared to contain nothing unusual. Who had mistakenly filed Flowing Feather’s medical records into the storage room? Tao Ang turned that question over in his mind as he continued through the rest of the pages. Just as the Elusive Bird had described, he soon found form after form bearing photographs of various famous and wealthy figures — among them merchants rich enough to rival nations, artists renowned the world over, and even a foreign dignitary of some note. The renowned He Wanning, who had died suddenly half a year ago, was among them. These forms were not medical records; what they contained was simply the names of these individuals, their dates of admission and diagnoses, and their dates of discharge. From the documents, every single one of these people had been admitted with a life-threatening illness — some with conditions that were by any standard completely incurable. And yet, after one to three months of treatment at Yongfu Hospital, each and every one had made a full recovery and been discharged.

Attached to the back of each form were one or several newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, reporting on these recovered celebrities — all of whom, within six months to a year of their discharge, had died in accidents. Some had died in car crashes from sudden respiratory failure while driving. Others had drowned from heart attacks. The most unfortunate was the foreign dignitary, who had reportedly suffered a heart attack while bathing and drowned in his own bathtub. Turning to the very last page, Tao Ang gave a start — the person in this final form was none other than Cao Minghui, who had only recently been discharged. The one difference was that no “death report” clipping had yet been attached to his form.

All of this was deeply strange. Who had concealed these things here?

Tao Ang was absorbed in thought — and did not notice that the iron shelving behind him had quietly begun to change.

The rust-covered black surface suddenly began to dissolve, like wax held over a flame — silently, rapidly liquefying, pooling at the base into a spiral of black mist. In under three seconds, the entire shelf had completed its transformation from melting to reconstituting as a snake-shaped thing roughly twenty centimeters in diameter. It was like a python lurking in the darkness, watching for prey — its body writhing in an eerie fashion, gliding soundlessly toward the oblivious Tao Ang ahead.

Tao Ang, fully focused on the documents in his hands, suddenly felt an icy cold seep straight through to his blood vessels along the back of his neck. In that fraction of a second, a fatal danger signal blared along every nerve.

Tao Ang threw the documents aside, rolled sideways in one fluid motion, and pressed himself against the nearby wall. A current of air — both cold and burning at once — grazed his left ear as it shot past. In the darkness, Tao Ang clearly made out a beam of dark orange light, like an infrared ray, flash by and thud into the pile of broken washbasins and plastic dustpans stacked half a person’s height against the opposite wall — which promptly shrank down, dissolved into an indeterminate-colored puddle of sticky liquid, and solidified motionless on the floor.

Tao Ang sucked in a sharp breath. By the faint light of the flashlight on the floor, he looked back to see that where the iron shelf had been, there now reared a coiled python with its head raised. On closer inspection, the thing was not a true serpent at all — it was some kind of creature wrapped in scraps of rusted iron and encircled by a dark haze. At the position of its “head,” a jagged-edged “mouth” had split open, and a single almond-shaped eye sat directly above it, casting a chilling ferocity toward Tao Ang. Inside that wide-open mouth, a faint point of dark orange light pulsed — now visible, now not — like a living cannon, ready to fire at the enemy at any moment. The beam that had just annihilated those objects must have come from that very mouth.

Sure enough, before Tao Ang had finished exhaling, the creature had swiveled its head. Its mouth snapped open to an angle wide enough to dislocate a jaw, and a sharp beam of light shot directly toward Tao Ang’s head.

Seeing the danger, Tao Ang dropped flat to the ground at once, tucked his head down, and rolled to the open space beside him.

What a concentration of demonic energy. Tao Ang’s brow snapped together. In one swift motion he unclipped from his keyring a delicate spring-release knife wrought in the shape of a cross, pressed the silver button at its center — a slender blade sprang out — and the blade in an instant became a thread-thin streak of silver-white light. With unyielding, linear force it drove itself into the air, like a rapier wielded by a practiced hand, drawing a flourish in the darkness.

The killing beam locked onto Tao Ang’s heart again, determined to drive through his body. This time Tao Ang did not dodge. He lifted his weapon, fixed his eyes sharply, and at the precise moment the beam was almost upon him — he swung the blade. A sharp clang — silver and dark orange, the two beams of light met head-on in mid-air, sending sparks flying in all directions, tracing wild, fierce lines across empty space. The faces of man and creature alike flashed into and out of view in the stuttering light — it was, to say the least, a scene of its own particular breathtaking intensity.

The beam from the snake-creature was cut clean in two by Tao Ang’s blade, splitting apart with a whoosh, accompanied by an ugly hissing sound, and dissipating into the air.

Seeing that its weapon had no immediate effect on Tao Ang, the creature snapped its mouth shut and twisted its body. Its thick iron tail swung hard at Tao Ang’s head — that tail, a full meter in length, created a wind in its passage strong enough to fling the boxes and clutter in its path into the air, whereupon they all crashed back to the floor.

Seeing this, Tao Ang launched himself into a leap, cleared the deadly tail, and in mid-air placed a foot against the wall. He pushed off and twisted back, blade raised with swift precision, driving it straight down into the creature’s head with thunderbolt speed — then let out a sharp shout, channeled every ounce of strength into his hands and his weapon, and drew a sweeping cut from the point of entry all the way back through the creature’s length. Silver light surging from the blade and jet-black liquid shooting from the creature’s body formed a stark contrast; within the fierce clash of the two colors, Tao Ang split the snake-creature cleanly in two, from head to tail.

Tao Ang had barely half-released a breath of relief at the sight of the creature lying on the floor in two pieces, oozing turbid liquid from its severed ends — when the black liquid seeping out of it seemed to take on a life of its own. It divided into two streams, flowed rapidly over the bisected corpse, and at tremendous speed covered every exposed cross-section — like filling cracks in a damaged wall. In a startlingly short time, the two halves of the useless carcass had been restored as two complete snake-creatures, both of which simultaneously began to writhe upward from the floor. The single eye on each head glared with hatred at Tao Ang, who had nearly sent them to oblivion moments before. Both mouths opened simultaneously; two beams of dark orange light crossed into an X shape and came surging at Tao Ang with double the destructive force.

A puppet demon. Tao Ang’s heart sank. He raised his blade, slash-slash, cutting down the incoming beams. The two creatures — now one become two — were naturally not about to give up. While projecting their beams, they moved as one, tails swinging simultaneously at Tao Ang, determined to make him unable to guard front and back at once.

By now Tao Ang understood clearly that if he continued slashing these creatures, they would only keep multiplying.

Dodging and striking back, he cast about desperately for a solution. His gaze swept almost by chance across the wall behind the two creatures.

On the white wall, his blade’s light and the flashlight on the floor combined to project the shadows of himself and the creatures in their ongoing struggle — and in that otherwise chaotic picture, there was one shadow that should not have been there.

Tao Ang, still locked in combat with the creatures, seized a free moment to look at the wall again. He confirmed it: there was a human silhouette on it. Though it was too indistinct to make out a face — just a dark shape — a moment’s attention was enough to see that the shadow’s arms were moving in some strange, rhythmic gesture. Given that what he was facing was a puppet demon — one that could be controlled by a person and possessed regenerative powers proportional to the strength of the operator’s command — Tao Ang was certain that the shadow on the wall was the one truly responsible.

Carrying on this endless fight was getting him nowhere. His gaze fell urgently on a white plastic bucket in the corner labeled “Banana Oil.” An idea struck him. After dodging another round from the creatures, he vaulted to the corner, seized the bucket of banana oil, dashed to the suspect wall, and pried the lid off, splashing the entire bucket of banana oil across the wall’s surface. The acrid smell immediately filled the entire room.

At that moment, both creatures’ tails came crashing toward him again. Tao Ang moved sharply aside, jumped to a position roughly three meters from the wall, raised his blade, aimed at the human shadow on the wall, and drove his right hand hard against the hilt. The blade blazed with a dazzling silver light that sent sparks flying in the very air around it — and whoosh, it plunged into the wall. The banana oil on the wall’s surface caught instantly on the sparks, and roaring flames erupted, locking the entire wall inside a sea of fire.

A muffled, agonized sound rose from inside the wall. The black shadow that had no business being there vanished — and the two ferocious snake-creatures, in the very act of launching a new attack on Tao Ang, disappeared without warning, without any preamble, leaving behind only a small heap of black iron filings that fell quietly to the floor.

The firelight illuminated Tao Ang’s expressionless face. He pointed a finger at the burning wall and issued a single command: “Return.” A streak of silver light flew out from within the flames and landed accurately back in his hand. As the silver faded, the extraordinary blade reverted to its original unassuming little spring-release knife.

Before Tao Ang could put the knife away, voices erupted outside the door, accompanied by urgent knocking: “Hey! Hey! Open up! Who’s in there! Open up!”

Tao Ang looked at the documents on the floor — now dissolved into heaps of filth by the creature’s black liquid and stray sparks — and frowned. He stepped briskly to the side wall window, grabbed an old flower pot from below, and used it to smash the glass. He pushed the window open, then ran to the door he had locked from inside, and opened it.

Five security guards — apparently the full strength of the night shift — had gathered outside the door upon hearing the sounds from the storage room. Each held a truncheon and stood poised for crisis. Behind them trailed a few doctors and young nurses.

“A thief!” Tao Ang spoke before the guards could, pointing into the room with a breathless gasp. “I was coming back from my rounds and found someone in my office stealing things. I chased him all the way here. The thief hid in the storage room and tried to pour banana oil on me and burn me alive — but I still got the better of him. He took advantage of the chaos and escaped out the window. Go after him, quickly!”

At this, the guards immediately split into two groups: one rushed to check the outside below the storage room window, the other came inside with the doctors and nurses, fire extinguishers in hand, to put out the blaze. A perfectly quiet night was thrown into complete chaos.

Afterward, the guards who had gone to track the thief reported back: since the storage room was at the very end of the corridor, with nothing beyond the window but a protruding ledge, the intruder must have escaped down a drainpipe. As the sole eyewitness and victim, Tao Ang naturally became the primary person to be looked after; virtually every female doctor and nurse on the night shift arrived at his office under some pretext or another — one bringing him hot coffee to steady his nerves, another bringing a snack to recover from the shock — leaving him not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Word that there had been a thief in the hospital sent patients who were well enough to walk spilling out of their rooms, a crowd of them gathering in the corridor to whisper and speculate, a constant low buzz that never subsided. The doctors and nurses had no choice but to fan out collectively and busy themselves reassuring patients and coaxing them back to their rooms. Yongfu Hospital had not been this lively in a long time.

The commotion dragged on until the early hours before the police arrived to survey the scene. Once it was confirmed that no one had been harmed and nothing had been stolen from the hospital, they took Tao Ang and the two guards who had arrived first on the scene to the station to give detailed statements. By the time Tao Ang dragged his weary body back to the hospital, it was already past ten in the morning of the next day.

As the hero who had bravely fought off the intruder, Tao Ang returned to find twice as many colleagues as the previous night coming to his office to express their concern. The incessant chatter gave him a pounding headache, though he had to keep a pleasant expression and receive everyone’s goodwill. Everyone believed the exhaustion on his face was from the physical strain of struggling with an intruder; who would have guessed that the adversary he had fought last night was not any human thief, but a genuine and certifiable puppet demon?

Still — while dealing with his uninformed colleagues, Tao Ang noticed that Xiao Jiang, the person he was closest to at work, had not appeared. That fellow, after swapping shifts with him the previous night, still hadn’t shown up, and today’s schedule clearly showed it was not his rest day.

Tao Ang courteously sent off the visitors one by one — especially the female ones — then remarked with studied casualness to the colleague at the opposite desk: “Xiao Jiang has probably been superglued to his girlfriend, considering he’s actually playing hooky today while I, the one who was supposed to be resting, am still on the job.”

“His girlfriend transferred to another province three months ago — impossible for her to superglue him to anything,” the colleague said with a shrug. “Knows who knows where that guy has gone off to play.”

“Left for another province?” Tao Ang’s heart gave a jolt. Last night Xiao Jiang had told him he was switching shifts specifically to go spend time with his girlfriend.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, Xiao Jiang walked into the office looking exhausted, his right palm wrapped in bandages.

“Ha ha, speak of the devil, here you are.” Tao Ang greeted him with an air of perfect unconcern.

Xiao Jiang walked straight up to him, his expression surprised. “I literally just heard from everyone the minute I got back that you fought an intruder last night?! Are you all right? Not hurt?”

“I’m fine. Let the little thief get away.” Tao Ang smiled, shaking his head. His gaze settled on Xiao Jiang’s right hand. “But speaking of injuries — it looks like you’re in worse shape than I am. What happened to your hand?”

“Ugh, accident last night. Don’t even ask — worst luck imaginable.” Xiao Jiang looked at his own hand and said sourly.

Tao Ang nodded and asked nothing more. But from the visible redness and slight swelling of Xiao Jiang’s exposed fingers, he was fairly sure that the injury was a burn.

Xiao Jiang… Tao Ang turned the name over in his mind, the veiled suspicion in his gaze flitting now and then toward the young man sitting across from him — someone who, on an ordinary day, looked utterly ordinary, gave no hint of anything unusual, and was easy to overlook entirely.

Outside the window, the cicada songs grew louder and louder; the bright, clear sunlight dispersed the dark cloud that the previous night’s minor upheaval had left behind. Tao Ang went about his work with his usual composure, but the fog inside his mind was thickening, layer upon layer.

After work, Tao Ang trudged out of the hospital feeling weary all through. The moment he stepped outside the gate, his phone rang. The call appeared to be from one of the hospital’s office lines.

“Hello?” He picked up.

“How… are you?” A young, timid voice asked carefully.

Tao Ang was momentarily taken aback. That voice — who else could it be but Flowing Feather?

“I’m perfectly fine! All parts intact!” Tao Ang responded with his usual easy lightness.

“Last night… you encountered a thief?” Flowing Feather’s voice was tangled with anxiety and confusion. “Was there really a thief?”

Tao Ang paused for half a second, then laughed. “There was indeed a thief — quite a formidable one, actually! But don’t worry, no thief no matter how formidable is a match for me. I scared him off. He’s probably even hurt.”

Cars rushed past on both sides of the street; the people hurrying home moved with purpose. The city’s particular brand of noise was, in this moment, completely absorbed into the longer silence on the other end of the phone.

“Can you… not let anything happen to you?” Flowing Feather’s voice had grown quieter and quieter.

Tao Ang’s heart gave an inexplicable, painful tug.

“Silly child, nothing is going to happen to me.” He looked up at the fiery evening sky and made every effort to keep his voice as bright as its colors. “And if something did happen to me, who would take you out to the most wonderful place in the world? Ha ha.”

Flowing Feather didn’t respond. After a long silence, she hung up.

Tao Ang gripped the phone in his palm and drew a deep breath. “The cycle of mistakes must stop here…” he murmured.

Part Three

A week had passed since the night battle against the intruder. The hospital had returned to its usual orderly calm. During this time Tao Ang had paid particularly close attention to his colleague Xiao Jiang’s every move — and yet had found no hint of the clue he was looking for.

The true reason for his coming to work at this hospital was something Tao Ang had concealed very well, and he was resolved to carry it as a secret to his grave. In truth, even if he said it aloud, no one would believe him.

He let out a wry smile and lifted his coffee for a sip.

The one thing that made him genuinely glad was the child — Flowing Feather, though perhaps she ought not to be called a child anymore. Under his company, that girl had slowly begun to smile.

And yet, every time he faced those beautiful eyes — blue as the deep sea — Tao Ang could not suppress the tenderness in his heart… or the guilt.

If not for that accident, Flowing Feather would have had a free sky to live under, instead of being confined as a pitiful patient in a sealed-off room day after day.

He leaned back in his soft chair, glancing out at the lush green leaves of the phoenix trees, and at the clusters of cockscomb flowers not far below. Gradually, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier…

On a desolate mountaintop, a gleaming cross-shaped knife had been thrown to the ground, glinting alone in the black earth.

“Pick it up!” A severe voice exploded in the thin air.

“I won’t!” A child refused in a firm, young voice. “I don’t want to be like you! I hate you! Hate you! Hate you!”

“You must pick it up. Otherwise you will be a born coward.”

“I would rather be a coward than be like you!”

In the wavering light and shadows, a child’s face rocked back and forth through tears of furious grief.

A long, long sigh — as though releasing every regret and helplessness of an entire lifetime into the air. The air coiling around the mountaintop grew darker in color, darker still — dense as ink, like the lethal depths of a bottomless abyss, cutting the whole world into countless fragments, swallowing them one by one…

Tao Ang opened his eyes in a cold sweat.

He wiped the perspiration from his brow, downed the long-since-cold coffee in one swallow, and exhaled slowly, returning by degrees to normal.

At that moment, Xiao Jiang pushed open the door and walked in, saying immediately upon seeing Tao Ang: “I just ran into someone from the administrative office who asked me to let you know — two o’clock this afternoon, report to the director’s office. The director wants to see you.”

“The director wants to see me?” Tao Ang scratched his head and asked: “Do you know what it’s about?”

“How would I know!” Xiao Jiang thought for a moment, then said, “Isn’t there a province-wide medical conference next week where our hospital needs to send a representative? I’d guess the director is probably planning to send you.”

“Me?” Tao Ang laughed weakly. Back in his student days, not only could he not give a speech in front of a crowd — he never even raised his hand to answer questions in class. Sending him to give a speech would be a colossal joke.

That afternoon, sitting in the director’s spacious and comfortable office, Tao Ang looked at the thick sheaf of speech notes in his hand with a pained expression. “Director, the hospital is full of talented people. Does it really have to be me?”

His discomfort made the director laugh aloud. “The theme of this conference is innovation — which is precisely why I’ve decided to send you, a fresh face, as Yongfu Hospital’s representative. It’s also a rare opportunity for training.”

“But…” Tao Ang pointed at the notes. “Speaking in front of so many people — I’m genuinely afraid I won’t manage.”

“That’s perfectly all right.” The director said reassuringly. “I’ve already revised the speech for you. All you need to do is read through it beforehand. When you’re on stage, be natural — don’t be nervous. Speak as though you’re having a conversation. This speech will have some effect on improving our hospital’s image. I’m entrusting this task to you because I trust my own judgment.”

Tao Ang pinched the notes and read through the dense contents: the speech covered things like “the new technologies our hospital has adopted in recent years” and “as angels in white, we must not only have an angelic heart toward our patients, but arm our wings with new knowledge and new techniques, so that on the long road to defeating illness, we can fly higher and farther.”

Looking at these formulaic sentences, Tao Ang’s head ached.

“Oh, right — there’s a time limit at this conference. Each speaker only has five minutes.” The director seemed to have just remembered. “How about this: I have a little time now. Read the speech through once for me; I’ll time you and help you gauge whether your intonation has enough variation.”

“What?!” Tao Ang stared at the enthusiastic director with undisguised mortification. “You actually want me to read it out loud?”

“Better to have problems now than problems on stage.” The director nodded.

Tao Ang had no choice. He cleared his throat, steeled himself, and forced his way through the speech one word at a time.

After nearly an hour of this ordeal, Tao Ang was finally released from the director’s office. He looked at the pages now covered in red pen markings where the director had indicated points requiring extra emphasis, and felt the urge to weep.

Three days later, on the heels of the theft incident, another scene of chaos erupted in Tao Ang’s office.

For reasons unknown, Xiao Jiang’s girlfriend — who was working in another province — suddenly flew back overnight with her luggage and turned up at the hospital. She found Xiao Jiang and proceeded to yell and cry. After listening for a while, everyone gradually pieced together the situation: Xiao Jiang, while his girlfriend was away, had secretly gone to meet someone he’d been talking to online. While preparing a loving late-night snack for this beautiful female contact, he had burned his hand by accident. The girlfriend had received word of it from somewhere, and returned immediately to call him to account. The two of them made such a mess of the office that security eventually escorted them both to the administrative room, and only then did Hematology Ward Two return to calm.

“Hah, so that’s why Xiao Jiang switched shifts with you that night — he was off sneaking around.” A few colleagues murmured among themselves with undisguised glee. “Serves him right. His girlfriend is notorious for being fierce. He’s really in for it now.”

Tao Ang smiled, and said nothing as he tidied the desk that had been disturbed in the commotion. He had no interest in other people’s romantic entanglements. The only thing he took note of was this: Xiao Jiang, whom he had been quietly keeping an eye on, no longer held any value as a suspect. Another lead, gone cold.

That afternoon, with a mind full of preoccupations, Tao Ang made his usual rounds of the inpatient building. He had barely stepped out of the elevator into the main building lobby when a thunderous voice came barreling toward him.

“What? You said Old Niu is on which floor? Can’t hear you! This hospital has two buildings — I don’t know which one!” A middle-aged man in somewhat old-fashioned clothes, holding a clunky-looking mobile phone and lugging a grimy travel bag, was turning his head left and right in the lobby.

The receptionist at the welcome desk rushed over to remind him to lower his voice and asked what he needed help with.

“I’m looking for someone! Gu Sanniu! They said he was brought in yesterday with pneumonia!” The middle-aged man hastily ended his call and explained in a flustered rush to the receptionist.

Tao Ang shook his head and moved to walk past. At that moment, the elevator behind him chimed open. Before Tao Ang had taken two steps, the same booming voice rang out behind him: “What?! Isn’t this Zheng Zhi? Doctor Zheng!!”

Tao Ang stopped and looked back with curiosity. The person being called “Doctor Zheng” over and over was the director, who had just stepped out of the elevator. Everyone knew the director’s surname was Wang; this man had very likely mistaken him for someone else.

The director looked at this middle-aged man who was staring at him with visible agitation, adjusted his glasses, and shifted from expressionless to openly puzzled. “I’m sorry, my surname is not Zheng. You’ve likely mistaken me for someone else.”

“Mistaken?” The middle-aged man widened his eyes and looked the director up and down with great thoroughness. “Impossible! Old Lao’s eyes are famous for their sharpness! You’re clearly Doctor Zheng Zhi! Twenty years ago you worked as a doctor in the village clinic in Wuxian County’s Xiaohe Village. My son was almost dead when you saved his life. How could I get that wrong?!”

The director looked resignedly at this man. “I’m truly sorry — you really have the wrong person. My surname is not Zheng, and I have never been to Wuxian County. I have urgent business; I’ll take my leave now.”

With that, the director stepped around the man and walked quickly toward the exit. Noticing Tao Ang standing ahead, he gave him a courteous nod and didn’t forget to add: “The conference is this weekend — put in the extra effort to prepare!”

“Got it!” Tao Ang called after him.

The middle-aged man watched the director’s receding figure in considerable frustration, rubbing his eyes and muttering: “Strange — can I really have the wrong person? Impossible. Except for being a bit older, he looks no different from twenty years ago. Just as handsome…”

As he spoke, he was led off toward the inpatient building by the receptionist, still insisting at every step that he hadn’t made a mistake.

Every one of those words landed clearly in Tao Ang’s ears. Looking at the man’s expression — pure aggrieved sincerity, still arguing his case to the receptionist as he walked away —

Wuxian County. Xiaohe Village. Tao Ang murmured those two names. His expression suddenly changed.

Tao Ang requested two days of personal leave, saying he had received a call from a relative and needed to go into the city to handle some urgent matter.

The following evening, Tao Ang was not standing on any busy city street — he was standing on a dusty country lane. Oil-stained tractors belched black smoke as they chugged past. Farmers coming and going balanced baskets of vegetables and fruits on their shoulder poles, laughing loudly at each other’s jokes. The occasional yellow or white mongrel would bark and trot past. A wholly pure portrait of rural life.

Tao Ang had not gone to the city at all. Early that morning he had boarded a long-distance coach for the seven-hour journey to Wuxian County.

Following a local’s directions, Tao Ang walked along a road until he reached two sturdy ginkgo trees, then turned left and walked roughly a few hundred meters, climbed a slope, and came face-to-face with a stone marker leaning crookedly in the mud at the foot of a utility pole — carved with the three characters: “Xiaohe Village.”

He exhaled, took out his phone, and called a number.

“You’re certain there was a doctor called Zheng Zhi in Xiaohe Village, Wuxian County, twenty years ago?”

“Old classmate — I’m a gold-standard household registration officer. Do you think I’d be sloppy about something you asked me to look into? Also, according to the records, twenty years ago this Zheng Zhi came to the Xiaohe Village clinic with his wife and daughter to work as a doctor. But two years in, Zheng Zhi and his wife divorced. My third aunt, who used to live in the neighboring village, said his wife had gotten tired of a doctor’s meager income and run off with a wealthy businessman. His daughter stayed with him. Then, fifteen years ago, Zheng Zhi and his daughter left Xiaohe Village. Nobody knows where they went.”

“Did you manage to find the location of Zheng Zhi’s old house?”

“Of course. But that land has already been designated for forestry use. The old buildings are about to be demolished; all the residents have moved elsewhere. Go now if you’re going.”

Tao Ang quickly ended the call, followed the address he’d been given into Xiaohe Village, and headed west.

Just as his old classmate had described, the crumbling walls of Xiaohe Village were covered in large whitewashed demolition notices. Nearly identical brick-and-tile houses sprawled in disorderly rows; some had doors and windows standing wide open, clearly uninhabited for a long time.

A woman with a large bamboo basket on her back rummaging for recyclable materials walked past the neatly-dressed Tao Ang and gave him several curious looks, whispering with another woman nearby. One of them kept her gaze fixed for a long time on the mineral water bottle in his hand, nearly half full.

Seeing this, Tao Ang offered the bottle to her. “Here, take it.” Then he glanced ahead and asked: “Is there a bamboo grove somewhere in Xiaohe Village?”

The woman happily added the bottle to her basket, then pointed to the right ahead of them. “Just there — keep going straight!” She said, then gave Tao Ang another peculiar look. “You’re going there?”

“Yes — is there something wrong?” Tao Ang noted her odd expression and asked quickly. His classmate had told him that the place where Zheng Zhi had lived was at the innermost part of Xiaohe Village’s residential area, right beside a wooded area.

“That bamboo grove isn’t clean!” The woman said with feeling. “Rumor has it a snake demon lives there. Fifteen, twenty years ago — livestock people in the village kept would die, and the bodies would disappear without explanation. But a few days later, everyone would see those same dead animals alive again in the bamboo grove. Terrifying!”

“Is that so?” Tao Ang felt not the slightest apprehension; he even smiled. “Dead and brought back to life — isn’t that good news for you? Why terrifying?”

“You don’t understand — those animals that came back to life, not one of them lasted more than seven days before dying again. And the way they died was horrifying. Every single one had its eyes staring wide open, body hard as stone.” The woman spat on the ground several times. “Bad omen. Terrible.” Still walking, she looked back over her shoulder to warn him: “Anyway, if you’re going — be careful. The village elders all say those animals had their souls sucked out by the snake demon and were sent back to harm people!”

Tao Ang smiled, nodded, and said nothing.

With the woman’s directions, Tao Ang found his way without difficulty to a small courtyard enclosed by white walls and grey roof tiles. Outside the courtyard, clumps of bamboo swayed back and forth in the evening breeze, a constant rustling chorus. Several tens of meters away, a bamboo grove so thick and dense it blocked all light stood clearly in view.

Tao Ang pushed at the courtyard gate with moderate force; the iron lock fell off along with the broken door handle. He walked into the courtyard. A flock of sparrows that had been pecking about on the open ground immediately scattered with a flurry of wings. Once the flutter of their departure had faded, there was nothing in the courtyard but the sound of the wind and the rustling bamboo beyond the wall.

Tao Ang stood in the center of the courtyard, looking at the two tile-roofed rooms standing side by side ahead of him. After a moment’s thought, he pushed open the larger of the two.

The scene before him was more or less what he had expected: old furniture blanketed in dust and cobwebs. A mirror on the cabinet had been dimmed to opacity by the grime. White teacups and a teapot arranged neatly on the table had turned grey. The walls were mottled all over with the marks left by damp and mildew.

Apparently no one had bothered to help themselves to anything here — perhaps because of its proximity to the bamboo grove with its tales of a snake demon, which kept potential thieves at a cautious distance. Tao Ang surveyed the room and made a quick preliminary assessment.

He went through each cabinet in turn, carefully searched every corner of the room, and found nothing of value beyond some old clothing and useless odds and ends. He closed the wardrobe doors and walked over to the wooden bed, which still had a quilt on it. On the pair of cloth pillows sitting on top, the red-thread embroidery of a pair of mandarin ducks was still distinct. He lifted the quilt — waving away the rising dust with one hand — and pressed the other palm flat against the mattress, moving it inch by inch. Very soon, he felt his hand stop at the end of the bed near the wall: his palm had found an unmistakable raised shape beneath the surface.

Tao Ang quickly lifted the bedsheet and the straw packing underneath. From the musty smell of damp and mildew that was released, he drew out a five-inch glass picture frame.

He carried it to the light. Inside the frame was a black-and-white photograph of what appeared to be a happy family of three. On the left, a young and beautiful woman smiled and held a girl of six or seven. A handsome young man with a pleasant face had his arm gently around his wife’s shoulder. The small girl between them wore her hair in two little horns; beneath neat, level bangs, a pair of round almond-shaped eyes glowed with remarkable liveliness.

Tao Ang’s gaze, with an expression of some surprise, fell on the lower right corner of the photograph, where a row of small characters had been written in pen: “Beloved wife Xiaoyu, beloved daughter Ning’er — may you be safe and well always. May our home be at peace, for ten thousand years.” The signature was a single character: “Zheng.”

The woman in the photograph Tao Ang did not recognize. But the man was plainly the director as a young man — eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, not one detail differing. And the small girl between them — aside from a different hairstyle — was cut from the exact same mold as Flowing Feather.

Beloved daughter Ning’er… the sick child Flowing Feather… Two people who ought to exist in different times and different identities were, in this moment, slowly overlapping.

The village doctor of twenty years ago, Zheng Zhi. The director of Yongfu Hospital twenty years later. This man had concealed himself so thoroughly, leading Tao Ang on so many unnecessary detours.

Tao Ang removed the photograph from the frame, tucked it into his wallet, and turned immediately to leave. With this evidence, he knew clearly what he needed to do next.

Out of the first room, his gaze settled on the smaller room beside it. He walked over for a look and found that every window of this room had been sealed shut with waterproof, airtight oil cloth — nothing could be seen inside from the outside. The door handles had all been reinforced with wrapped iron wire, and a particularly large brass padlock was fastened to the door.

It took Tao Ang several minutes to get the padlock open with his master key. When he pushed the door, a wave of stomach-turning rot and mildew gusted into his face.

He covered his nose and went inside. This room contained only a small wooden bed, along with two rows of handmade bookshelves leaning against opposite walls. But the shelves held no books — only a row of old flower pots, the soil inside dried and cracked into chunks, the plants that had once grown there reduced to a few exposed withered roots. Beneath the other shelf, tucked one after the next, were three old camphorwood storage chests, all padlocked.

Tao Ang crouched before the three chests. The smell that hit him was even worse than before. He was certain that the source of this entire room’s stench was these chests.

He endured the suffocating stench, used his master key to carefully open the lock on one of them, and lifted the lid.

A heap of neatly arranged white bones appeared before Tao Ang.

He pressed hard against his nose, using his key to carefully turn the bones over one by one. He quickly determined that these were not human bones — they belonged to felines. He then opened the remaining chests one by one; without exception, every one of them was filled with animal remains — bird bones, dog bones.

Though nothing but the bones of animals, the air of death they gave off was even harder to bear than the smell of their physical decay.

The woman scavenger’s words came suddenly to his ears again — animals dead and revived, only to die soon after in horrifying fashion. And the wealthy and famous people who had been cured of their terminal illnesses at Yongfu Hospital, only to die in accident after accident — and those yellowed death-report clippings. All of it crowded into Tao Ang’s mind at once. He worked to arrange the scattered threads, and gradually — suddenly — something became clear.

Tao Ang backed out of the room and out of that courtyard full of unresolved questions.

Part Five

The sun had sunk below the horizon; only a last smear of red remained at the sky’s edge. The scorching heat of the day had dissipated almost entirely, and the evening breeze carried a faint crispness that made the hairs on one’s arms stand up.

Tao Ang stood on the muddy ground outside the courtyard, checked the time — ten minutes past seven in the evening — and calculated whether, if he picked up his pace, he could make it out of Xiaohe Village before dark and catch the last coach back to the city from the county seat.

He had just moved to take a step when the bamboo grove at his side rustled quickly — as though someone inside was moving fast and brushing against the bamboo. At the same moment, a white shape appeared at the edge of his vision.

Tao Ang spun sharply toward the bamboo grove and caught a glimpse of a white figure flashing past, disappearing in an instant into the dense growth.

“Who’s there?!” Tao Ang called out by instinct and broke into a run toward the bamboo grove.

The densely interlaced bamboo turned the world before him into a maze. He pushed aside the trailing bamboo leaves blocking his view and ran in the direction his instincts told him to follow. His urgent footsteps fell on a path carpeted with gravel and fallen leaves, making a sharp crunch-crunch-crunch that sounded particularly piercing in this silent village.

The bamboo grove was far wider than Tao Ang had imagined. He ran all the way to a mountain path wider than the lane he’d come by, looked ahead — the white shape seemed to flash once more in the distance. He pressed forward down the mountain path at a full run, all the way to a ravine littered with jagged boulders, where he came to a sudden stop.

On a large rock no more than a few meters away, the director was sitting in a thoroughly relaxed manner, reading a newspaper.

Hearing Tao Ang’s heavy breathing, he lowered the newspaper, adjusted his glasses out of habit, and turned his head toward Tao Ang with a smile. “Xiao Tao, the air here is much fresher than in the city, isn’t it.”

“Ha ha. You’ve gone to the trouble of following me in person — I really am sorry for the bother.” Tao Ang gave a light laugh, and held his ground.

The director took off his glasses and looked out at the scenery ahead. “Fifteen years since I came back here — and not a single thing has changed.”

“The scenery hasn’t changed. The people have.” Tao Ang walked to his side without any sign of fear, the smile dropping from his face. “Even if you hadn’t come to find me, I would have come to find you. Zheng Zhi.”

The director looked at him, without the slightest surprise in his eyes — still with that expression of the most loving and wise of elders, smiling.

“Hand over the bee ghost’s wings!” Tao Ang came straight to the point, extending his hand before the director. “Those are not yours to keep.”

“Hand them to you?” The director asked in return.

“Yes!” Tao Ang said with conviction.

“Why are you so certain the wings are with me? Seventeen years have already passed.” The director’s smile gradually faded. He stood up and looked at Tao Ang with equally cold eyes. “What is your connection to the hunter from seventeen years ago?”

“I’m not as foolish as you seem to think. Do you imagine I don’t know the truth of what happened seventeen years ago?” Tao Ang gave a cold laugh. “That evening seventeen years ago — thunder and rain, you were carrying your seriously ill daughter and trying to reach the county hospital for emergency treatment. You slipped on the muddy mountain path and fell into the ravine. When you came to, you discovered your daughter… Ning’er… was no longer breathing.”

The director’s lips pressed suddenly and tightly together. The fingers holding the newspaper clenched; fingernails poked holes through the paper.

“At that moment, a demon creature being hunted by a hunter — a bee ghost — fell from the sky and hid inside your daughter’s corpse for shelter. You mistakenly believed your daughter had come back to life. When the hunter came to kill the bee ghost, you did everything you could to stop him. The hunter saw how deeply you were protecting your daughter, and his heart was moved; he could not bring himself to shatter your hope. But he feared the bee ghost — said to be dangerous to humans — might harm you. So he used his Gold-Pure Dagger to sever the bee ghost’s wings and gave them to you. With those wings in your possession, it was as though you held a pair of reins: simply squeeze the wings inside the pouch hard enough, and the bee ghost’s body would suffer unbearable pain. Furthermore, the bee ghost’s power is stored in its wings — without them, it loses its ability to fly freely, and, terrified of that immense agony, it does not dare defy whoever holds its wings. It becomes their puppet, subject to complete manipulation.” Tao Ang said this calmly, his gaze fixed on the director whose face had gone white. “I imagine you didn’t initially understand the true purpose of the pouch the hunter gave you. But later, you not only discovered it — you used your own means to take this thing that came to you by chance, and developed its potential to its absolute limit.” He furrowed his brows sharply and pointed at the director’s face. “Over the past ten years, the wealthy and famous people who came in secret to Yongfu Hospital for treatment all died not long after their recovery. This — was all the doing of you… and the bee ghost you manipulated, wasn’t it?”

The director’s hands went slack. The newspaper was caught by the wind and floated down gently into the ravine below. He raised eyes now shot through with blood, and with forced composure looked at Tao Ang — forcing a strained smile. “Ha ha. Everything you’ve just described sounds as though you experienced it yourself.” Then he shifted register; a contempt and a sick satisfaction rarely seen in him crossed his eyes. “As for those so-called wealthy and famous people — they deserved to die. I gave them an extra half-year of life; that was already a tremendous mercy. Ha ha. They thought money could buy everything. In front of me, their money couldn’t buy back their conscience or their lives.”

At these words, Tao Ang took another step closer. This man who had once carried himself with such elegant distinction — a hospital director — now suddenly had a desolate, cornered-animal quality to him. Tao Ang seized him by the collar and demanded: “Tell me. How did you learn the secret of what the bee ghost could do, and exploit it?”

The director desperately pried Tao Ang’s fingers loose, nervously smoothing the collar Tao Ang had crumpled, and looked down at the ravine below — speaking of his own accord. “That day when I brought Ning’er home, all of her symptoms had vanished, and I was truly happy. But after some time had passed, I noticed Ning’er had changed from what she’d been. She wouldn’t speak all day, wouldn’t even call me Father anymore. The most frightening thing was that for ten or more consecutive days she didn’t drink water or eat food — and there was not the slightest effect on her. And one night, she slipped quietly into my room and tried to steal the pouch I’d tossed in the cabinet. But the moment she picked it up, she was flung backward — her fingers burned bright red. Shaken, I recalled that the man in black had given me not only the pouch, but a handkerchief with writing on it. In my agitation at the time, I had never thought to open and read it.”

“What was written on the handkerchief?” Tao Ang pressed.

“Your daughter is dead. A bee ghost has entered the body. Hold its two wings, and all shall be well.” The director gave a bitter smile. “Only then did I realize the man in black had not been trying to frighten me. I truly had encountered a demon creature. I discovered that in the world, there was a kind of creature called a bee ghost.” He paused, his voice carrying the weight of something he hadn’t wanted to confront. “In truth, I was deeply conflicted. As a doctor, my knowledge gave me no way to explain what I was witnessing: my own daughter, dead and then alive. It was a long time before I could accept that my daughter was only a shell. The Ning’er before me was a demon creature using the body of a borrowed corpse.”

“You weren’t frightened into running away?” Tao Ang’s eyes were cold.

The director pressed both hands to his head, shaking it in pain. “I thought about running. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave her. Even if she was only a demon creature, her body was that of my most beloved daughter. I stayed — I treated it as though Ning’er were still alive. I fed her, gave her water, taught her to read. But for all my efforts, she gave no response to the feelings I invested in her. The way she looked at me always held fear — even hostility. A year went by like this. She spent all day in her room; she never went anywhere.” His eyes flashed with a different kind of light at this point. “Then one day, I came home from seeing a patient outside and found that a gardenia plant outside Ning’er’s window — which had been withered and dead for a long time — had suddenly come back to life, blooming with flowers all the way up its branches, sweetly fragrant. What astonished me even more was that when I walked into Ning’er’s room, I found her playing with a live small cat. This stray cat had appeared at my house the night before, foaming at the mouth and barely able to stand — it had very likely eaten rat poison, and there was no way to save it. When I left the house that morning, the cat was slumped against the wall in its last breaths. There was no way it was going to last until midday.”

“But when you came back, you found the cat was perfectly fine. As though it had never been poisoned at all.” Tao Ang said this without surprise — only gravity.

“Yes.” The director nodded. “I am a doctor. The knowledge I possessed gave me no way to explain what I was seeing. I pressed her, demanded she tell me the truth. At first she refused to say anything. With no other recourse, I took out the pouch and squeezed it with moderate force, the way the man in black had instructed. She collapsed immediately, convulsing all over in agony, begging me to stop. Afterward, she told me everything. She said she was a member of the bee ghost clan, and her name was Flowing Feather. The bee ghost, like a bee, has a stinger that grows from the right index finger. It can be pierced into a living creature and inject a toxin. When injected into a living creature, the toxin kills instantly. But when injected into a corpse or a dying organism, it has the power to restore life. However…” He bit his jaw, and went no further.

“However, organisms revived this way by the bee ghost’s toxin cannot maintain life for long. After a certain period of time, they will die spontaneously from organ failure, and the manner of death is horrifying.” Tao Ang finished the sentence for him. “After you discovered this secret, you also stole the bodies of dead livestock from villagers’ homes and had Flowing Feather demonstrate it for you, again and again, until you were certain of this extraordinary fact. Then you took Flowing Feather away, and using her special ability to coerce her, threatened her into killing those wealthy people who would stop at nothing for the sake of their lives — to satisfy your twisted psychology!”

“That’s not how it was! You don’t understand anything!” The director suddenly erupted in fury, striking a fist down on the great stone. Blood oozed out through his fingers. “Those people all deserved to die. The rich preying on the poor, doing filthy things behind closed doors — that property developer surnamed Wu, for the sake of profit, cut corners on the construction of a school for children in the county seat. No steel rebar in the structure. In that earthquake seven years ago, the school building collapsed. How many innocent children died? And then there was He Wanning — a lecherous man who couldn’t even leave fifteen-year-old girls alone. Ha ha — didn’t those people deserve to die? I saw through the psychology of those human scum who feared death above all else, and decided to use Flowing Feather’s special ability to do some good in the world.” A satisfied expression rose on the director’s face. “Fifteen years ago, I knew we couldn’t stay in Xiaohe Village anymore — Flowing Feather’s appearance hadn’t changed at all, and her eyes were gradually turning blue. Rumors about the snake demon were circulating more and more widely. So I took her away from Xiaohe Village, changed both our names, and moved to another province. After two years of moving about, I came back to Wangchuan City, just as Yongfu Hospital was being newly built. I applied and became a doctor there. Three years later — ten years ago — after I had risen to deputy director, I hired a couple to act as Flowing Feather’s parents, and arranged for her to move into the hospital. I took over as her primary physician myself, and fabricated her medical file and all her personal information. Using her special ability, Flowing Feather generated the appearance of a leukemia sufferer in her own body. To keep up the cover, I personally performed a bone marrow transplant on her. No one in the hospital has ever suspected Flowing Feather’s true identity.” A cold smile. “And my plan could then proceed safely.”

Night had fully swallowed Xiaohe Village. In the silent ravine, the sound of wind rose and fell. Tao Ang’s face was lost in shadow; all that was audible was his voice, deliberately tamping down its fury: “Yongfu is just a small hospital. How did you draw those important clients there?”

“Very simply. People have an instinct for self-preservation. There’s no shortage of those who grasp at any possible cure when illness strikes. I needed only to write an anonymous letter. Wealthy people with serious illnesses will come on their own. They won’t let go of a single thread of hope — not if it means survival.” The director gave two sardonic laughs. “Unfortunately, in ten years, I have only ‘treated’ six such patients. Watching them leave full of gratitude, treating me as a god, donating vast sums of money as payment — I was truly delighted. I found that when a person is injected with the toxin, the time before it takes effect ranges from half a year to two years. Those people all died in rather unpleasant ways. Either respiratory failure while driving, resulting in a car crash, or a heart attack and drowning. All quite satisfying — and difficult to connect to anything suspicious. In practice, what I did to them was simply to have Flowing Feather, after they had been administered an anesthetic, lightly prick the carotid artery with her fingertip. As for their ill-gotten wealth — I donated every bit of it to those in need. I would say I helped them accumulate some merit.”

“Ha ha. I suppose you’d like every wealthy person in the world to develop a terminal illness and come to you, wouldn’t you?” Tao Ang’s piercing gaze cut through the darkness, as though it would reach through to the other man’s blood. “You think of yourself as a great doctor — punishing evil, promoting good, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. You’re wrong. You’re none of that. You are only a demon who used threats against a powerless creature to carry out a series of atrocities, playing with lives. The real reason you did all of this is that you have never stopped brooding over your wife abandoning you and your daughter to run off with a rich man. You harbored a deep, abnormal hatred toward her — a hatred that never faded over decades. You also despised the man who took her away; you despised yourself for not having been wealthy enough back then. All these hatreds buried your kindness and your reason. The wealthy people you went after with their terminal illnesses — you were merely treating them as stand-ins for the man who stole your wife all those years ago.”

The director’s hands, previously relaxed at his sides, suddenly clenched into fists. At some unknown point a crescent moon had risen; in its silver-white light appeared a pale face with eyes flooded blood-red.

“No!” The director let out a hysterical shout, seizing Tao Ang by the front of his shirt. “I am a good person! If I were a bad person, Flowing Feather has had countless opportunities over all these years to kill me! She knows that everything I have done is right!”

“For someone who uses severe pain to threaten her on a regular basis, restricts her freedom, and uses her to kill people — you think she would consider you a good person?” Tao Ang laughed. “That day when I asked Flowing Feather what she meant by ‘you’re different from them,’ she suddenly fell into agonizing pain. I would guess you happened to be passing by and overheard our conversation, and then asked her to be quiet. It was from that point that you began to suspect my true motive. That night, when I went to the storage room looking for evidence, you used the power of the bee ghost’s wings to summon a puppet demon and try to kill me. Unfortunately your skill in controlling demons wasn’t equal to the task — two little puppet demons were no match for me.” Tao Ang paused, then said with a show of dawning realization: “Oh, right — I forgot to tell you something. The bee ghost’s toxin has no effect on the person holding her wings. If it did, you would have died by Flowing Feather’s hand long ago. Do you truly believe she’s spared you because she thinks you’re a good person? Ridiculous, ha ha.”

“You…” Cold sweat poured down the director’s face. His hands moved instinctively to press against his chest.

Whoosh — a beam of light traced a beautiful, lethal arc through the air. Tao Ang’s slender blade leapt from its sheath in an instant, hovering no more than half an inch from the director’s throat.

“Hand over the wings!” Tao Ang commanded coldly. “I am not a bee ghost. You have nothing with which to threaten me. If you want to die out in this wilderness, hand them over this instant.”

The director stared at the blade tip for a moment, then suddenly burst into loud laughter. “Ha ha ha! Tao Ang! For all your fine talk, your purpose is nothing more than to take the bee ghost’s wings away from me. Knowing that the bee ghost’s toxin can restore life, knowing that the bee ghost’s wings carry power that transcends human ability — you want them for yourself. Even now you won’t admit it, still playing the righteous hero?” He gave that last sentence a very particular weight.

“I will say it one more time: hand them over.” The blade tip advanced another centimeter. “I won’t be saying it a third time.”

“Fine, I’ll give them to you!” The director deliberated for a moment, then reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and drew out a brocade pouch embroidered with colorful silk thread, holding it out to Tao Ang.

Tao Ang was just reaching to take the pouch when a hesitant voice sounded behind him —

“Are you going to take away my wings?”

The always composed Tao Ang felt his heart give a jolt of surprise. He looked back. Flowing Feather, in her white hospital gown, was stepping slowly out from behind a large diamond-shaped boulder — the mist over her blue eyes as thick as ever, a faint sadness on her delicate face.

“Flowing Feather… you’re here too?” Tao Ang was startled, and immediately recalled the white shape that had led him into the bamboo grove.

“I am very frightened.” Flowing Feather walked to his side. Her fine brows drew tighter and tighter together; her small lips kept moving in a murmur. “I am truly… afraid.”

Before Tao Ang could say a word, Flowing Feather unexpectedly wrapped her arms around him, small hands clasped firmly at his chest.

In that instant, Tao Ang clearly felt the shaking and the terror coming from Flowing Feather’s body. And despair.

“Flowing Feather… you…”

Before he could finish, those usually sharp and bright eyes suddenly froze. To be precise — his entire body was frozen in place by some inexplicable force.

Flowing Feather released him, and moved in silence to stand facing him. She tilted her head back to look at this man who had brought her cockscomb flowers every day, the depth in her blue eyes unfathomable.

Tao Ang slowly lowered his head. One hand pulled aside his shirt collar; he stared blankly at the tiny red dot that had appeared on his chest. A thread of blue traced itself from the dot and flowed downward.

An irresistible weakness surged from his feet to the top of his head. Tao Ang’s knees buckled. With a thud, one knee hit the ground; the slender blade that had been leveled at the director drooped and fell.

“Flowing Feather…” He turned his face toward her. Without anger, without surprise — only incomprehension. “Did you accidentally sting me?”

Flowing Feather shook her head expressionlessly. She pulled an MP3 player from her coat pocket, pressed a button, and a clear recording played back:

“I don’t understand what you’re saying!” — the director’s voice.

“Give me the wings. I’ve come all this way just for them.”

“No. I am the one who keeps the wings. Tao Ang, I don’t care what methods you used to find this place — this cannot be given to you. What do you intend to use it for?”

“I want to use her to deal with someone. Give it to me.”

“No.”

“Then don’t blame me for not being polite, Director. We’ll see.”

Click. Flowing Feather closed the MP3. Her small face had frosted over. She only said one sentence: “I trusted you so much…”

“This… this recording — where did it come from?” Tao Ang was furious. He turned to look at the director, who had stepped to one side; the smile of a final victor played at his mouth.

The voice in the recording was undeniably his own. But when had he ever said such damning things to the director?

A confused Tao Ang suddenly remembered the speech rehearsal in the director’s office that day — the dense content of that long speech… and in a flash, a bold guess took shape in his mind.

“Zheng Zhi — you secretly recorded my voice when I was rehearsing that speech, then took my words out of context and assembled them into the content you wanted, to deceive Flowing Feather! You cunning old fox!” Tao Ang gritted out, enduring the increasingly fierce pain spreading through his body.

Flowing Feather’s lashes trembled.

“Ha ha, you didn’t expect someone my age to be unusually skilled with audio editing software, did you?” The director recovered his former composure and serenity, smiling at Tao Ang like an elder. “Young people will always be young people. This is one move you could never have anticipated. By the time you realize what’s happened, it’s already too late. Flowing Feather’s toxin will soon take your life.” He continued, his expression darkening: “That day, after I overheard you and her talking in the room, I knew that letting you continue to stay here would be a catastrophic liability. I recognized I was not capable of killing you directly, so I borrowed Flowing Feather’s hand. As long as I hold the bee ghost’s wings, she must obey my commands. No one can take them away from me. No one can stop my great mission of ridding the world of its scourge! Tao Ang — whatever your origins, anyone who stands in my way must die. All of you are the same at the core — as corrupt as that wretched woman, as corrupt as those rich bastards. No different. The more of your kind that die, the cleaner the world becomes.”

As he spoke, two lines of tears actually fell from his eyes. He said through clenched teeth: “If that wretched woman hadn’t been blinded by money and abandoned us, Ning’er would never have died! She would have grown up healthy under our care…”

“You monster…” Tao Ang, his face going pale, suddenly clenched his jaw. He pressed his left hand hard over the wound on his chest and turned his head to look at Flowing Feather for a moment, then shook his head. “I… have never deceived you!”

With those words, he pitched forward with a thud and lay motionless on the ground, without breath.

Flowing Feather stood in place, rigid as a stone. After a long time, she slowly turned her head, looked at the director, and asked with the blank incomprehension of someone not yet in their right mind: “Did you hear? He said he never deceived me.”

The director gave a cold snort.

Coming to her senses, Flowing Feather flung herself to Tao Ang’s side and strained to lift the seemingly dead weight of him, crying out in panic: “Tao Ang! Wake up! Wake up! You promised me nothing would happen to you!”

“You stung him that hard — you think he could still be alive?” The director walked over to them, gave Tao Ang’s body a kick with his foot, then breathed a long, relieved breath and said to Flowing Feather: “Come back with me.” He shot her a cold sideways look. “As it happens, he reminded me — you are, at the end of it all, a demon creature. I had originally intended to treat you as well as a daughter. Clearly that’s unnecessary. From now on, if you obey, we can continue to coexist in peace. If not…” He didn’t finish the sentence. He turned and walked away.

He had barely taken two steps, however, when he felt something cold pass through his throat — accompanied by a sweetish, bloody smell — a sharp flash of silver light had driven straight through the back of his neck.

He looked down at the blade tip protruding from his throat, and at the drops of blood falling. His mouth opened wide. Two seconds later his body collapsed to the ground like a heap of mud.

“No matter how cunning the fox, it cannot outsmart the hunter.” Tao Ang propped himself up weakly, then gave a thin smile, and looked back at the bewildered Flowing Feather with a quip: “My technique for throwing darts is second to none. And so, apparently, is my technique for throwing a sword.”

“Tao Ang… you… I… ” Flowing Feather stared at this man she had believed was dead, joy and grief mingling in her blue eyes.

“Come, help me over there.” Tao Ang pointed to the director’s body.

Flowing Feather rushed to support him. The two of them stumbled to the body together.

Tao Ang knelt, made a laborious effort to roll the body over, rummaged through the inner pocket, and came up with the pouch. He said to Flowing Feather with a rueful smile: “Ha ha, this pouch is a treasure my family specifically designed to seal demon creatures — any demon creature that touches it will be repelled and hurt.”

“Your family?” Flowing Feather blinked, confused.

Tao Ang nodded. “The person who hunted you seventeen years ago and severed your wings — that was my father. He was a professional hunter of demon creatures.” An inescapable sadness rose in the depths of his eyes. “The day my father hunted you, seventeen years ago, my little sister, Little Xi, left this world forever. It was… quite a dramatically ironic coincidence.”

Flowing Feather was stunned.

“Back then he believed the rumors, and thought that you bee ghosts would harm humans — so he hunted you across the ends of the earth. Little did he know, those rumors had been deliberately spread by unscrupulous sorcerers. Under the pretense of hiring hunters to clear away dangerous demons, they paid hunters large sums and demanded they deliver the bee ghosts’ bodies so they could be destroyed en masse — in reality, they were using the bee ghosts’ wings to refine pills that would boost their powers.” Tao Ang let out a long breath. “My father was always someone who acted on impulse, who hated evil passionately. Because of those rumors, he killed a great many of your kind. Years later, when the truth of the matter came to light, my father — by then gravely ill — was devastated by remorse for what he had done. I had originally been unable to forgive him for my entire life; the harm he caused my sister and me is not something I can forget. I learned magic arts from him; I chose to study medicine — both for the sole purpose of protecting the people I cared about. No matter how he pressed me afterward, I refused to inherit his path and become a hunter. I had no intention of becoming someone like him. But on his deathbed, he told me the story of severing your wings seventeen years ago, and gave me a talisman that could help me find you. He charged me to return your wings before I died. I could not refuse, and his genuine remorse shook my resolve to hate him.”

Having said all this, he reached into his trouser pocket and drew out his phone, shaking the small glass-like orb attached to it, with a smile. “This isn’t a keyring charm. What’s sealed inside is a talisman that contains a trace of your blood left on my father’s dagger seventeen years ago. Once it comes close to you, it emits a light to alert me.”

“The world is so vast — relying only on this charm that glows when it gets close to me, you’d have had a hard time finding me…” Flowing Feather stared at him, her expression more complex than it had ever been.

Tao Ang shook his head and smiled. “You should know that among demon creatures, there is a kind of bird-bodied, human-faced creature called the Elusive Bird. These creatures spend their days doing nothing but gathering and selling information for others. In order to find you more quickly, I hired an Elusive Bird — had it catch the scent of your blood, and use its special ability to pinpoint your general location: the Yongfu Hospital on the outskirts of Wangchuan City. That’s why I came here. I brought the talisman with me, hoping to find you in the hospital as soon as possible. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to run into you. Ha ha.”

Flowing Feather lowered her head. A blue teardrop fell onto the back of Tao Ang’s hand. After a long pause, she said in a jumble: “I hurt you… I didn’t believe you… he deceived me with that fake recording…”

“Don’t blame yourself for that. It is our Tao family that is indebted to you. For the wrongs we committed, we have to make amends.” Tao Ang made the effort to lift his hand and touch her head, as he always had. “Now — turn around. My father severed your wings; only I have the ability to reattach them.”

Looking at Tao Ang — who, weak as he was, was still thinking of comforting her — Flowing Feather bit her lower lip, and slowly turned her back.

Tao Ang made a great effort to sit upright. He opened the silken cord wound around the pouch, and from inside drew out a mass of light that glowed a beautiful, moving blue. Then he bit open his right index finger, used his blood to draw a talisman on Flowing Feather’s back, and gently pressed the mass of light in his left hand against the center of the talisman, murmuring his incantation.

Flowing Feather felt as though her back had caught fire — and then a bone-chilling cold pressed in, as though this body she had inhabited for twenty years might be torn apart by the alternating extremes of heat and cold.

Whoosh! Brilliant blue light radiated outward from Flowing Feather’s back, dyeing the sky above them in an instant the color of the sea. In that moment, even the moon above seemed to sink into the deepest ocean — blue and dizzying.

Flowing Feather felt as though a great, wide door had been opened before her eyes. A warm large hand took hold of her spirit — so long confined — and flew with it toward the widest sky.

Countless blue-and-white points of light fell like shooting stars from the sky, settling gently on Tao Ang’s body.

He raised his head to look at the elegant figure hovering in the air above him, long hair loose, the whole of her bathed in a beautiful blue radiance, her wings lifting and falling — like an immortal from another world. He smiled with heartfelt relief.

“Now… you can go anywhere you want to go…” Tao Ang’s pale lips curved upward with great effort. He wanted to hold this smile for as long as he could. “But remember… don’t sting anyone. Not ever… when a bee stings someone, it dies too…”

Freed from the human body and restored to liberty, Flowing Feather descended gently from the air, eyes blurred with tears, and wrapped her arms around Tao Ang. “I promise — I won’t sting anyone. Never again… but what about you? You promised me things too. You said you’d take me to the most wonderful place, where I could run as far as I like, fly as high as I like!”

“I… will go with you… I will…” Tao Ang lifted his hand, stroking her head gently, the way he always had. “I’m just a little tired right now. Once I’ve slept it off, I’ll take you…”

His eyelids grew heavier and heavier. His body grew lighter and lighter. Drowsiness washed over him in waves, like the tide.

Dad — the thing I was meant to do, I’ve done.

Tao Ang’s hand slowly fell. Beneath him, the hard earth seemed in that instant to turn into the most comfortable of cushions, and every inch of ground seemed to be saying to him: Sleep. It’s time for you to sleep.

Flowing Feather’s tears froze on her face. She grabbed Tao Ang and shook him with all her strength. “Tao Ang, don’t sleep! Wake up! I’ll take you right now to find someone who can give you an antidote! You can be saved! I know it!”

“Made a mistake, and still able to make it right — both Dad and I will be very glad… the first time I saw you, I thought of Little Xi… the two of you are so alike… so easy to love…” Tao Ang could no longer open his eyes, only murmuring as though in a dream, “I’m dreaming again… I dreamed the sea and the sky traded places… countless beautiful feathers drifting in the moving air… Flowing Feather, those feathers are you, aren’t they… you’ve always longed to be as free as they are… how wonderful. I have returned your freedom to you…”

“Don’t say any more…” Flowing Feather shook her head sorrowfully, closed her wings around herself, and drew the body of Tao Ang — growing cold — into their shelter.

A small notebook slipped from Tao Ang’s arms and fell. The night wind turned its pages with a soft flutter. Flowing Feather’s gaze passed through the tears in her eyes and fixed on the drawing on the very last page…

A great cluster of red cockscomb flowers, blooming in full glory beneath a blue sky dotted with white clouds. In the sky, a young man in white, holding the hand of a blue-eyed little girl with wings on her back, was flying through the air with a face full of joy…

I’ll take you to the most wonderful place there is, where we can have all the fun we could ever want. No hateful walls, no ceiling — only space as far as the eye can see. Lots of birds and flowers and grasses, and wherever you want to run, however high you want to fly — it’s all yours!

I will certainly go with you… I will!

A voice from far away — clear and bright as the most radiant ray of sun — pierced through the deepest layer of darkness on that moonlit night.

Epilogue

“That story was so long.” Black Robe Number Three had talked himself dry. He grabbed the water jug and took a long drink.

“Flowing Feather told it to you?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Number Three shook his head. “A bee told it to me. That year I was napping in a wild flower patch on a mountain, and a bee landed on one of the flowers. It could actually talk! I asked if it had come to collect nectar. It said no — it was just a bee that liked to fly around everywhere with its companion.”

“Companion?”

“That’s how it put it. Though I only ever saw the one bee.” Number Three wiped his mouth. “It told me this story, then flew away. At first I thought for sure it was going to sting me!”

I smiled. “If it stung you, it would die itself. It’s not going to do something foolish again.”

“So you should learn from it!” Number Three suddenly slapped my shoulder. “As the old saying goes — the hornet has a sting in its tail, and the most venomous thing in the world is a woman’s heart…”

He hadn’t finished the sentence before I punched him flat.

“Even if I have a ‘sting,’ I’d only use it on someone with a mouth as foul as yours!” I stood over him with my fist raised.

Ao Chi, very helpfully, helped him sit back up, leaned close, and murmured: “You’re not married yet, right? No wonder… It’s all right though — you get stung enough times and you get used to it. Your big brother here speaks from experience.”

“Ao Chi!” My brows shot up.

“I need to use the facilities!” He was out of the tent in an instant.

That infuriating creature — he never fails to make me want to laugh and cry at the same time!

If I truly stung you dead, who would wander the ends of the earth by my side.