The Doctor, full of pent-up frustration, went home and collapsed into sleep, only waking up in the afternoon. Upon waking, he began facing the wall in reflection.

This was a habit he had recently developed. After returning to his own body, although the memories from the year when Fu Su’s soul had occupied it remained, since they weren’t his personal experiences, he had to constantly replay them to deepen his own memories. Moreover, he hadn’t expected Fu Su’s surgical skills to be much higher than his own. During that year, he had performed several major surgeries consecutively and even participated in a heart transplant surgery. It was precisely because of Fu Su’s excellent performance that he had been able to get promoted so smoothly.

After returning to his own body, he had found a note Fu Su left in a drawer at home. The other party had sincerely apologized for the body-snatching incident and said these surgical skills were compensation for the magpie occupying the dove’s nest. Of course, there was also a bank card with significantly increased deposits…

To master these skills, he had to put in much more effort over the past half year. Not only did some profound professional knowledge need studying, but surgical techniques required constant practice.

So he often sat by his bed, staring at the plain white wall in his home, repeatedly replaying his memories in his mind. But now he was reflecting on today’s emotional outburst.

After staring at the wall for half an hour, the Doctor concluded that he must be under too much pressure recently and needed to go out for a big meal to decompress. He immediately changed clothes and went to the commercial street for a buffet. However, when eating alone, his appetite was never good. In the past at times like this, he would always run to the Dumb House first to drag the Boss out to eat together. Although the Boss didn’t eat much, having a friend’s company and someone to listen to his grumbling complaints felt completely different.

Flipping through his phone contacts, he found that his colleagues were basically all on duty at the hospital, and those not on duty were busy catching up on sleep – no one was available.

After eating his fill without tasting the food, the Doctor unconsciously wandered to the front of the Dumb House again. Only when he pushed open the carved door and saw Lu Zigang’s surprised gaze did he silently curse how terrifying the power of habit was.

They had just quarreled this morning – though perhaps it couldn’t even be called a real quarrel – but the Doctor felt they couldn’t continue this standoff. He took the initiative to walk over and sit down. With practiced familiarity, he grabbed a tea cup from the shelf, casually wiped it with his hand, picked up the teapot from the counter, and poured himself some tea.

Lu Zigang’s mouth twitched. What the Doctor held was a Northern Song Jian kiln rabbit’s fur cup. The glaze surface of rabbit’s fur cups was black as lacquer, with a lustrous sheen like dark jade. The glaze surface was covered with uniform, fine veins, resembling the fine, soft, long fur on a rabbit’s body – hence the name. Among them, the silver rabbit’s fur type in the Doctor’s hand was the most precious.

This type of tea cup was used for whisking tea during the Song Dynasty and wasn’t meant for brewing tea at all. But he knew that explaining antiques to someone like the Doctor was like playing music to a cow – as long as he didn’t break it, there was no problem. Lu Zigang glanced at him once and continued focusing on his handiwork.

“What are you doing?” The Doctor drank a few sips of warm tea, relieving the greasiness in his stomach and soothing his inner irritation. He was already thick-skinned enough, and seeing that Lu Zigang was ignoring him, he leaned forward instead, acting as if the morning’s incident had never happened.

Lu Zigang didn’t have such thick nerves and said stiffly: “Making incense seals.”

The Doctor noticed that the incense burner Lu Zigang had in front of him wasn’t the gilt flying dragon Boshan incense burner that the Boss often liked to use, but a lotus-shaped celadon small incense burner with a large opening.

The Doctor scanned the shop’s furnishings and found that not only was the gilt flying dragon Boshan incense burner missing, but several familiar ornaments and antiques were also gone. He couldn’t help asking: “Where’s that Boshan burner? Why not use it?”

Lu Zigang didn’t even lift his eyelids and said coldly: “Don’t worry, I didn’t dare sell them all.”

After he spoke, even he felt his tone was wrong, but didn’t know how to remedy it. He had always dealt with antiques and didn’t need to care about social niceties, so this morning’s questioning from the Doctor had really bothered him. Like a thorn that he didn’t know how to pull out, yet it pricked him painfully.

However, the Doctor had seen all kinds of unreasonable patients and family members at work, so Lu Zigang’s little petulant temper wasn’t a problem for him at all. But since Lu Zigang wouldn’t answer, the Doctor slowly recalled that he seemed to have seen Lu Zigang put away several antiques into the inner room during a previous visit to the Dumb House. Presumably, he was afraid his abilities weren’t up to the Boss’s level and couldn’t suppress these strange old fellows.

That Boshan burner ancestor was probably fuming with anger in a dark, narrow brocade box right now!

The Doctor amused himself with internal complaints while watching Lu Zigang carefully take out a package of ivory-white incense ash to spread in the celadon incense burner, and pulled out his phone to search for incense seals.

Tch, this was the information age – who still needed others to explain technical terms? Soon, the Doctor had browsed through web pages and watched Lu Zigang flatten the incense ash before taking out a row of twelve lotus seed-shaped celadon small incense jars from a brocade box.

These small incense jars were each about the height of a thumb joint, round and particularly cute. Lu Zigang took a matching lotus petal-shaped celadon incense dish and began using a purple copper bamboo-joint incense spoon to take incense powder from each jar. The amounts of each type of incense varied – some as large as a pinky fingernail, others just a small pinch.

The Doctor remembered that he had seen the Boss take incense powder before, but had never seen him make incense seals. The Boss had mentioned that during the Han Dynasty, there were no stick incenses, only incense materials ground into powder. Looking at these celadon incense tools, they should be from at least the Northern Song period, but seeing Lu Zigang’s precious handling of the incense powder, these powders were probably quite aged.

Since the incense powder was all in powder form, Lu Zigang held his breath and concentrated, looking serious, afraid of blowing the powder away.

The Doctor was also infected by his expression and didn’t dare breathe heavily, but he smelled the light, sweet, solemn, or distant fragrances flowing around his nose as each incense jar was opened. He couldn’t help taking a deep breath and closing his eyes in intoxication.

At this moment, Lu Zigang’s incense spoon stopped at the last incense jar. From his angle, he could see that this jar’s lid had a small seal stuck on it. He hesitated for a long time, looked up at the Doctor in front of him, and after a long while, finally steeled his resolve and reached out to unscrew the jar.

He scraped at the bottom of the jar with the incense spoon for quite a while before extracting a pitifully small amount and placing it in the incense dish. Then, while the Doctor was looking down at his phone, he took out a small strand of hair from the brocade box, cut it into pieces with incense scissors, and mixed it among the incense powder.

The twelve types of incense powder mixed in the incense dish. Lu Zigang took out a purple copper incense seal carved with a hollow seal-script “fu” (fortune) character, gently placed it on the flattened incense ash, then used the incense spoon to place the prepared incense powder on the incense seal, carefully shoveling the powder into the hollow “fu” character with a small incense shovel. Finally, he carefully removed the incense seal, and a proper “fu” character appeared on the incense ash.

“Hey? It seems quite simple!” Although he had already seen the incense seal-making process on his phone, seeing it in person was different. Seeing Lu Zigang’s skilled movements, the Doctor felt his hands itch.

“It’s not that simple. When holding the incense seal, your hand can’t shake. Otherwise, if the incense seal character breaks, this round can’t burn to the end.” Looking at that perfect “fu” character, Lu Zigang’s mood improved considerably, so he explained.

Actually, incense seals were also a training method for hand stability. The more complex the lines of the incense seal, the higher the requirements for the person making it. Otherwise, if even a tiny part of the fine incense seal character broke, all previous efforts would be wasted. Lu Zigang had made incense seals many times in the past to train his hands not to shake when restoring calligraphy and paintings. But then he glanced at the Doctor, whose face was full of smugness, remembered his profession, and said no more.

The Doctor grinned and scratched his chin. Comparing hand steadiness with him, a cardiothoracic surgeon? Wasn’t this a joke?

Lu Zigang took a stick incense nearby, borrowed fire from the Changxin Palace Lamp, and lit the incense seal character in the burner.

A wisp of ethereal smoke rose, slowly swirling, moving, jumping, and spiraling in the air… as if something mysterious was controlling the smoke, involuntarily focusing one’s gaze on it, watching in fascination.

Lu Zigang took the incense burner lid nearby and covered the burner. This burner’s lid was lotus pod-shaped, with each pod having a hole in the center, crafted exquisitely and delicately. Moreover, because this incense burner had been used for quite some time, those holes had traces of being yellowed by incense smoke, making them look even more like lotus pod tips, lifelike.

After the incense burner was covered, the smoke wasn’t as thick, dividing into several wisps that curled out and quickly dispersed into the air.

Soon, an indescribable fragrance gradually spread with the smoke. The Doctor, who was accustomed to agarwood incense, now felt that this fragrance seemed to stir something deep in his heart, and for a moment he was entranced.

Lu Zigang brought an incense pill to his nose to smell and asked seemingly casually: “Is there anything you want to forget?”

“Forget?” The Doctor felt that his usually tense nerves had relaxed because of this fragrance, and he was somewhat dazed, not finding Lu Zigang’s question abrupt. He thought seriously before saying: “There are indeed things I want to forget, like my parents’ tragic death, relatives’ squeezing me out. You know, when I was little, I had to change foster homes almost every year or two…”

As the Doctor spoke, it was as if the negative emotions buried deep in his heart were all stirred up. He pressed his forehead with one hand, trying to push those memories back: “Eh… strange… why do I feel like I’m smelling burning protein…”

Lu Zigang watched the Doctor fall into silence, then fall into a deep sleep on the counter, and couldn’t help sighing.

“Your nose is really sharp. I added the Boss’s hair to the Hengwu incense. Forget him… forget that he was good to you. Excessive obsession is never a good thing. Besides, the Boss used to do this often. If he could come back, he would definitely do the same to you. I’m just doing what he should have done. Consider clearing away those unwanted memories as compensation…”

Lu Zigang, smelling the incense pill in his hand, murmured to himself, though it was more like convincing himself.

He also had someone he wanted to forget, but unfortunately, he didn’t have her hair.

He knew what the Doctor would become if this continued. He would increasingly lose normal life and might not even do his work well.

This wouldn’t do. The Doctor’s job was to save lives and heal the wounded. Even one tremor of his hand might cost a life. Today’s quarrel had already shown signs of such loss of control. If this continued, problems would eventually arise.

In that case, it was better for him to make the decision for him.

He and the Boss were originally parallel lines. Even if fate’s tricks had made them intersect by chance, it was time for them to go their separate ways.

Lu Zigang, smelling the incense pill in his hand, was naturally unaffected by the Hengwu incense burning in the room, but at this moment, he was already somewhat regretful.

Had he… done wrong?

Forget it. Even if it was wrong, it couldn’t be undone…

In the Dumb House shop, the winding, spiraling incense smoke dispersed silently, cold and lonely…

Dumb House: The antiques in the Dumb House each have their own stories, carrying many years with no one to listen. Because they cannot speak…