From the unreachably high wall top appeared a classically elegant face with an oval shape, hair piled high in a topknot, and a bright cinnabar mark between the brows. He looked like a refined gentleman, but if one heard his voice from inside a house, they would mostly think it was a child playing on the ground. He waved his snow-white sleeve at Liu Yan. “Looking at you, you seem like an honest person. That one drinking tea in the back room is completely no good person. If you trust his words too much, you’ll be in trouble. I have a very good conscience and would absolutely never deceive you.”

Liu Yan’s lips moved slightly. “You are Shui Duopo…” The refined gentleman on the wall smiled at him. “Yes, that’s me.”

Liu Yan’s gaze swept toward the horse carriage in the courtyard. “I heard that you… have excellent medical skills…” The gentleman on the wall waved his hands repeatedly. “Many people have much more excellent medical skills than me. I’m just a quack doctor.”

Liu Yan said in a low voice, “Whether you’re a divine doctor or a quack, can you save his life? I’ve come from far away, and if I hadn’t coincidentally met Brother Mo, I couldn’t possibly have found this place. Since there’s this opportunity, I beg you to save his life.”

“Mo Ziru!” The white-robed gentleman on the wall suddenly shouted loudly. “Did you deliberately bring people here just to cause me trouble?”

Mo Ziru in the room drinking tea closed his eyes. “How dare I? This gentleman wanted to find you. Seeing his difficult journey, I couldn’t bear it in my heart.”

Shui Duopo snorted. “You deliberately made him climb a ladder that would break…” Mo Ziru opened his eyes, his pupils still clear and transparent, as if penetrated by a spiritual air. “I did not.”

Shui Duopo rolled his eyes at him, withdrew his head from the wall top, and seemed about to leave. Liu Yan was alarmed. “Shui Duopo! If you can save his life, whatever price you want we can agree to. Even if it’s ten thousand taels of gold or rare treasures, he can afford it.”

“Eh…” That refined gentleman’s face appeared over the wall again. “What if I want two hundred thousand taels of gold?”

Liu Yan didn’t hesitate. “Acceptable!”

Shui Duopo beamed with joy. “Then what about two million taels?”

Liu Yan said decisively, “Acceptable!”

Shui Duopo became even happier. “Then what if two thousand…” Liu Yan said, “Acceptable!”

Shui Duopo muttered to himself, “Eh… do I really love money that much? Two million taels of gold it is, but before collecting payment you must first fix my ladder.”

Liu Yan was stunned. This ladder was clearly in Mo Ziru’s courtyard – how could it be Shui Duopo’s ladder? Shui Duopo saw his confusion. “When that scoundrel Mo borrows things from me, I naturally lend him broken ones. Who knew he’d use it to harm you?”

Liu Yan was stunned again. These two eccentric neighbors were truly very strange indeed.

Seeing the broken wood scattered on the ground in no recognizable shape, how could it be easy to rebuild this pile of wood chips into a ladder? Moreover, Liu Yan had absolutely no talent for carpentry work. He picked up two broken pieces of wood and after looking at them for a long time still didn’t know how to connect them. But Shui Duopo sat on the wall top, watching him piece together wood with great interest. Soon after, Mo Ziru came out from the room carrying tea, holding a book scroll in his hand, occasionally sipping tea lightly while leaning against the door in the courtyard.

Liu Yan slowly arranged the scattered wood pieces on the ground one by one. In this brief moment, he had already understood that the two people beside him were actually equally matched. Mo Ziru’s expression was indifferent, seeming not to be watching him, but like Shui Duopo, he was just watching the show with deliberate intent. His mind had never been very clear, but at this moment it was exceptionally lucid. There wasn’t half a bit of anger in his heart, and all his attention was focused on the broken wood in his hands. After pondering for a while, he tore a strip of cloth from his tattered sleeve and tied two broken wooden strips together.

Mo Ziru turned a page of his book. Shui Duopo somehow produced an oiled cloth bundle and placed it on the wall top. A pale green shadow flashed, and Mo Ziru, maintaining his reading posture, appeared on the wall top. If anyone had been watching, they would have felt their eyes blur, and Mo Ziru was still on the wall reading, his posture as elegant as before, only the oiled cloth bundle had been opened and whatever was wrapped inside – whether rice balls or whole chicken – had vanished without a trace. Shui Duopo kicked the oiled cloth bundle into Mo Ziru’s courtyard with one foot and looked at Mo Ziru with a smile. “Was it delicious?”

Mo Ziru’s eyes slightly closed. “Plain rice.”

Shui Duopo’s sleeve fan opened with a “snap.” “Only plain rice will cook just by being placed on the stove.” Mo Ziru closed his book scroll and said calmly, “When shall we go to the wine house to drink again?”

Shui Duopo watched Liu Yan tie the wooden strips together piece by piece below the wall. “With you? Drinking with you would definitely lead to getting lost. Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve lived here for two years and don’t even know what the main road in front of the mountain is called.”

While they were talking, Liu Yan had already tied the broken wooden ladder back together. His clothes had originally been ragged, and now his sleeves were completely torn off, making his appearance even more wretched. But his eyes were very calm. “It’s fixed.”

Shui Duopo looked him up and down several times, then suddenly asked, “Can you cook?”

Liu Yan said, “A little, I suppose.”

Shui Duopo immediately beamed with joy. “Can you scramble eggs?”

Liu Yan frowned. “Scrambled eggs?”

Shui Duopo sighed. “Don’t tell me you can’t even scramble eggs? That’s really disappointing.”

Liu Yan’s brow furrowed deeper and deeper, finally saying, “I can make goji leaf soup.”

Shui Duopo was delighted. “Really?” Liu Yan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, pointing at the horse carriage. “His cooking is much better than mine.”

A white shadow flashed, and Shui Duopo was already standing in Mo Ziru’s courtyard, poking his head into Tang Lici’s carriage and beginning to examine his body with his hands. Liu Yan struggled to turn his body to watch Shui Duopo’s back. He saw that his movements had originally appeared quite relaxed, but gradually became less frequent. After a while, he actually maintained the bent-over examining posture, motionless for a long time.

Mo Ziru on the wall floated down gracefully, his voice clear and calm. “How is it? Difficult?”

Shui Duopo slowly withdrew from the carriage, straightened his body, and looked at the ground. “What is that thing in his belly?”

“It’s a person’s heart.” Liu Yan answered flatly. “Our brother’s heart.”

Shui Duopo’s face showed a very strange expression. “A human heart? He connected a human heart in his belly?”

Liu Yan nodded. “I don’t know where he connected it, but that heart is beating.”

Shui Duopo tapped his head with the folding fan hidden in his snow-white sleeve. “Where in the belly is there room to connect a heart? He must have damaged other internal organs, otherwise where would such a large human heart be placed? Moreover, if the heart is beating, it means blood flow is smooth, but where in the belly is there so much blood for a human heart to beat?”

Hearing him say these words, Liu Yan couldn’t help but feel admiration. For a doctor from a thousand years ago to understand the human body so well was truly not easy. “He said he connected all the places that could be connected.”

Shui Duopo tapped his head with the folding fan again. “That means although there’s no single blood vessel in the abdomen that could support a human heart’s beating, he connected multiple blood vessels together to the human heart, so this heart hasn’t died. But he must have severed most of the blood vessels in the abdomen, connected a foreign human heart in the middle, then reconnected the blood vessels back to the original internal organs. With so many blood vessels tangled together, many internal organs must have been displaced. And this human heart doesn’t match his own constitution…”

Liu Yan was greatly shocked upon hearing this. Was it organ rejection? Was the rejection reaction from transplanting Fang Zhou’s heart what made Tang Lici, who feared neither injury nor infection, become so weak? If there was rejection, it would have occurred from the beginning of the transplant. Tang Lici couldn’t have been unaware. He had endured years of pain just to leave Fang Zhou the slightest hope – and he himself – had actually buried Fang Zhou – not only buried him, but let him become a pile of rotting flesh.

“The worst part is that his own constitution is very good, so even though the organs in his abdomen have become such a mess, he won’t die for the time being.” Shui Duopo said regretfully. “If it were someone else, they might have died years ago. Now his displaced liver, stomach, and that heart are stuck together, and because of the blood vessel connections, his liver is gradually being damaged, so he feels pain and doesn’t want to eat.”

Liu Yan remained silent. After a while he slowly said, “He can’t eat anything, he vomits whatever he eats.”

Shui Duopo sighed. “Besides all this, the heart in his belly seems to have changed. It’s growing upward and pressing against his stomach, so he vomits easily.”

Liu Yan suddenly felt his teeth chattering. “Will he die?”

Shui Duopo looked at him with great regret. “He should have died when he buried that heart in his belly. Actually, you’ve known all along that he would die, you just didn’t want to admit it… His external wounds don’t matter, they’ll heal with simple medicine, but most of his internal organs are really ruined.”

Liu Yan’s teeth chattered, his whole body becoming cold. “You mean… you mean he won’t die now, but will continue… continue until he exhausts all his organ functions before dying?”

Shui Duopo himself shuddered all over. “Mm… he’ll be in tremendous pain.”

“Then what about taking that heart out?” Liu Yan asked in a low voice, his palms ice-cold, the chill reaching from his heart to the surface.

“That’s impossible now. Many of his organs are stuck together with that heart. Before they stuck together, one could have risked trying, but not now.” Shui Duopo’s expression was very regretful. “I can give him medicine, I can save him temporarily, but the longer he lives… the more painful it will only become, pain that you and I can hardly imagine…”

Liu Yan slowly turned his head toward the carriage. There was no movement from inside. He didn’t know if Tang Lici had long known such an outcome would occur. He remembered a story that had once made him cry. On the savage grasslands, there was a strong mare in difficult labor. While struggling, it kicked and broke its own exposed intestines. It dragged its broken intestines in circles across the grassland, running continuously, running continuously…

Sometimes life resists death in such a cruel form that it makes people feel… that sudden death is truly a mercy.