Dark clouds covered the sky, blocking out the sun. Sudden fierce winds swept across the earth carrying swirling goose-feather snow. Tang Yuan got off the public bus and declined the kind-hearted elderly woman’s invitation to sit and take shelter from the snowstorm at her home across the street. He tightened his small down jacket, confirmed that the two candied hawthorn sticks in his hands and that bag of pastries hadn’t fallen, then pulled up his hood and charged headfirst into the wind and snow.

“Oh my! Which family is so heartless to let such a small child be out alone like this…” The elderly woman’s nagging was gradually scattered by the wind and snow until it could no longer be heard clearly. Tang Yuan wiped away the snow water stuck to his face, and immediately his little face turned as red as an apple from the cold.

Every time he went into the city for market day, he would regret why he lived in such a remote place. Tang Yuan was full of anger he dared not voice – who told him to be the one who wanted to go out? Unlike that ancestor at home who no longer consumed earthly food, and besides, he didn’t dare let that ancestor go out either!

After walking along the mountain path through wind and snow for a long time, Tang Yuan was just a ten-year-old child, but walking mountain paths alone didn’t frighten him at all. He was even familiar with the terrain here. Even though the wind and snow were so heavy they blurred his vision, he could easily avoid the collapsed pits on the road or sharp stones that jutted out. After running deeper into the mountain forest for another ten minutes or so, after rounding a dense grove, Tang Yuan saw that familiar little house under an old locust tree, with just a corner of its eaves visible.

This little house was very unremarkable, just like an ordinary white-walled, red-roofed tile house that farmers might build in the mountains. Only because it was old, some paint had peeled off the roof tiles, and the white walls were also grayish, making it look like no one had lived there for a long time.

After Tang Yuan saw the little house, he didn’t slow down but ran faster and faster. Just as he was about to crash into the fence outside the house, he stretched out his small hand to push off the fence, and his little body nimbly performed a front flip over the fence, landing perfectly on both feet with a thud.

“Perfect score!” Tang Yuan waved his small fists, proudly puffing out his chest.

Then another thud sounded. He looked down and immediately made a bitter face, hurrying to pick up the candied hawthorn that had fallen to the ground because his movements were too dramatic. Fortunately, when he bought them, he had asked the shop owner to wrap them in an extra layer of kraft paper, so they weren’t dirty.

Tang Yuan shook the snowflakes off his body and head before pushing the door to enter the house. The swirling wind and snow were shut behind him by a wooden door, making him immediately feel warm. As he walked into the house, he took off his clothes – down jacket, coat, sweater, thermal shirt… By the time he reached the small courtyard behind the house, he was left wearing only a small undershirt and large shorts.

Tang Yuan held the two candied hawthorn sticks and that bag of pastries, admiring the scenery that no matter how many times he saw it, would still make him secretly marvel in his heart, as he wobbled inside.

Outside it was now the depths of winter, but the back courtyard was as warm as spring, as if there were an invisible glass barrier in mid-air keeping all the cold outside. The garden had green grass like a carpet and flowers in full bloom – the scenery was no different from summer.

This back garden was completely mismatched with the tile house outside, like suddenly traveling from the Great Northern Wilderness to Suzhou gardens. There were artificial mountains and strange rocks, small bridges over flowing water, pavilions and towers. Though the layout wasn’t large, it had everything, revealing the owner’s ingenious mind. Even under the pavilion, there was a hot spring source, emitting billowing mist like a fairyland.

“Tang Yuan, you’re back?” Just as Tang Yuan was staring at a bee collecting nectar from peony stamens, a pleasant voice immediately made him bristle.

“I’m not Tang Yuan! I’m Tang Yuan! Tang Yuan! Call me Tang Yuan quickly! Otherwise I won’t give you candied hawthorn to eat!” Tang Yuan jumped up and down, crossed the small bridge over the stream, climbed the artificial mountain, and saw a young man sitting with his back to him in the pavilion, playing Go. The person was wearing an ancient crow-blue silk Taoist robe with crossed collars and wide sleeves, trimmed with dark blue borders. Looking closely, the Taoist robe was also embroidered with the eight trigrams of the I Ching, arranged in some mysterious pattern.

This person had deep black hair that, when you got close, you could detect had some deep blue-green tints. Most of his long hair was loosely tied in a knot, casually secured with three ivory hairpins, falling down across his chest like fine silk, smooth and lustrous. As Tang Yuan’s footsteps drew nearer, he also turned his head.

This young man was extremely handsome, like an elegant and refined ink painting, supremely graceful. Only at his brow, there was actually a hideous dark red scar that completely destroyed his appearance, making one sigh with regret. Moreover, he always kept his eyes closed, obviously having impaired vision – he was clearly blind.

“Tang Yuan, the candied hawthorn in your hands is about to melt.” This person sighed regretfully.

“Ah!” Tang Yuan immediately realized – the temperature in the back courtyard was no different from summer, so naturally the sugar coating on the frozen candied hawthorn would quickly melt, and even the kraft paper wrapping was stuck to it.

The young Taoist smiled slightly, and as if he could really see, accurately took one candied hawthorn stick from Tang Yuan’s hands and extended it outside the pavilion.

The pavilion was located at the very edge of the back courtyard, where goose-feather snow was still falling outside. As the candied hawthorn moved with this person’s action, it seemed to pierce through an invisible barrier and was immediately exposed to an environment of more than twenty degrees below zero.

Seeing this, Tang Yuan immediately widened his eyes, ran ding-ding-ding to sit on the other side of the stone table, put down the pastries in his hands, and mimicking the young Taoist’s movements, also extended his candied hawthorn outside the pavilion. After counting to ten, he brought it back and peeled off the kraft paper wrapping – sure enough, the candied hawthorn was frozen hard again.

“This trick is amazing! You really are a skilled foodie!” Tang Yuan bit the topmost hawthorn berry, but because it was frozen too hard, his little mouth couldn’t bite through it all at once, so he could only lick the sugar on top bit by bit. “Hey! Tell a story! I’m so bored! This remote mountain wilderness can’t even get TV signals, and this blizzard is too strange!”

The young Taoist was extremely tolerant of Tang Yuan, not minding his disrespectful behavior, but good-naturedly corrected: “Tang Yuan, you should call me Master.”

Tang Yuan’s little nose huffed with anger: “No way! When you can stop calling me Tang Yuan, then I’ll call you Master!”

The young Taoist smiled gently: “When I found you, you looked so cute and fair, weren’t you just like a Tang Yuan dumpling?”

“But I’ve grown up now!” Tang Yuan bit the candied hawthorn as if venting his anger, bristling all over.

“Sigh… Didn’t you want to hear a story? Then let me tell you about the disciples I used to have…” The young Taoist pulled back his candied hawthorn and peeled the kraft paper wrapping with extremely elegant movements. “Once upon a time, well… a very, very long time ago, the eldest disciple I took was from Zhao.”

“From Zhao? Now there are only Chinese people!”

“Sigh… Wasn’t it a very, very long time ago? There was still a Zhao state then.”

“Zhao state? Are you trying to fool me thinking I haven’t been to school and don’t understand anything? I’ve read all the books in your study that I can understand! Only the Seven Warring States had a Zhao state! That was how many years ago!”

“Oh, actually later the remnants of Zhao declared themselves king again after Qin’s destruction, but they were wiped out by Han Xin… Sigh, I’m getting off topic again. Didn’t you want to hear a story? How can I continue if you’re being so nitpicky?”

“Fine, fine, fine, continue. My eldest senior brother was from Zhao, then what?” Tang Yuan huffed and reluctantly agreed to continue listening. Only then did he notice that the sugar on his candied hawthorn was showing signs of melting again, so he extended the candied hawthorn outside the pavilion again. The candied hawthorn was quickly covered with snowflakes – the bright red hawthorn with crystal-clear intact snowflakes looked like a perfect work of art.

Hmph! This was the correct way to eat candied hawthorn! All his previous methods were pathetic!

The young Taoist also ate candied hawthorn very elegantly. He traced twice in the air above the firmly frozen candied hawthorn with his fingernail, and the topmost hawthorn berry obediently split into four pieces, floating in mid-air. He accurately picked up half and put it in his mouth, slowly savoring it while saying slowly: “Back then, your master was traveling in Zhao. Your eldest senior brother was still a child. He treated me to an osmanthus candy, and I felt this child had great potential, so I took him as my eldest disciple.”

Tang Yuan was immediately speechless. You could accept disciples like this? One osmanthus candy could trick such an awesome master? His eldest senior brother was really lucky! No, he should say cunning! Tang Yuan bit his candied hawthorn and urged: “Then what?”

“Then? Then I discovered his heart was impure, so I stopped teaching him and left Zhao, wandering to Qin.”

“Oh my, it really was the Warring States period? Then what?” Keep making it up! Tang Yuan was full of complaints but didn’t take it too seriously. It was just storytelling after all!

“Then? I arrived in Qin and found a pitiful child, so I took him as my second disciple.”

“Oh, then what?”

“There’s no ‘then’!” the young Taoist said innocently. “Didn’t I say I’d tell you about the disciples I used to have? Look, actually I took many more disciples later, but I think you, Tang Yuan, probably wouldn’t want to hear such details.”

Tang Yuan helplessly covered his face, feeling that asking this guy to tell stories was a wrong choice. Who wanted to hear which countries his eldest and second senior brothers were from?

Seeing that Tang Yuan finally stopped asking questions, the young Taoist contentedly relaxed his brow and enjoyably ate his candied hawthorn.

Tang Yuan didn’t particularly like this sweet and sour thing. After eating two pieces, he didn’t want to eat anymore. Watching the young Taoist eat with such relish made him feel quite uncomfortable. So when he saw the young Taoist’s expression change after eating a piece of hawthorn, Tang Yuan immediately gloated maliciously: “What’s wrong? Did you eat a worm?”

The young Taoist slowly swallowed the hawthorn piece in his mouth, his tightly closed eyelids trembling slightly as he murmured: “The wind is rising…”

The wind is rising? There was no wind at all in this barrier! Tang Yuan looked puzzledly toward the outside of the pavilion and was horrified to discover that the wind and snow outside had intensified even more – even the mountain forest across the way was completely invisible…