Zai Ni Mei Shao Dian Hua Deng – Chapter 179
“Alright, the paperwork’s done. Just scan the code over here to pay.”
The head nurse handed Cheng Chang his discharge certificate.
“With a condition like yours, we’d really recommend against being discharged—you still have a surgery coming up in a few days. But since you’re insisting, once you’re out, make sure to rest and keep your diet light. Your surgery is scheduled for the ninth of this month. Remember to come in two days early to handle admission, and you’ll need a full checkup at that time.”
Cheng Chang nodded. “Understood.” He paid the fee, tucked away the discharge certificate, and carried his bags out of the inpatient ward.
It really had been a stroke of luck—his attending physician from Shanghai happened to be in Hangzhou for a conference half a month ago, and upon hearing what had happened to him at Hope Elementary School, had borrowed a operating room from Zhejiang Provincial Hospital to arrange an emergency surgery, which was what pulled him back from the brink.
Cheng Chang had been unconscious in the hospital for over ten days, waking a week ago. Every physical indicator had come back fine—it was just that he’d been utterly listless, plagued by nightmares the moment he closed his eyes.
Understandable, really. Watching yourself turn to ash with your own eyes wasn’t something anyone recovered from easily. It was only in the past two days that he’d improved enough, after finishing a psychiatric evaluation, to go through discharge procedures.
Cheng Chang reached the parking lot and called the old monk. “Where are you two?”
It was noisy on the other end. “Just got in line, waiting to order some skewers. You done with the paperwork? Want to come eat something? This skewer place is seriously popular, run by an actual Chengdu native—family recipe passed down for generations!”
Skewers, at noon?
Before Cheng Chang could answer, he heard He Yuenan speak up in the background. “He’s got a heart condition. Can he even eat that stuff?”
“Where are you?” Cheng Chang asked.
The old monk gave an address. Cheng Chang nodded. “Fine, you two eat. I’ll come find you.” He put his luggage in the trunk and got in the car.
These past few days happened to fall over the May Day holiday, so there were more travelers than usual out and about. The old monk’s trip to Hangzhou was mostly for sightseeing—he’d already mapped out an itinerary before arriving. During the stretch when Cheng Chang was unconscious, the old monk had split his time between keeping watch at the bedside and running around: he’d visited Xixi Wetland, Qiandao Lake, made several loops around West Lake. With nothing left to do these past two days, he’d taken to watching local food livestreams, and had come across a skewer shop being hyped up beyond belief. He Yuenan had told him it was just marketing, but the old monk had fallen for it anyway and insisted on dragging him along.
Say what you will, the little hole-in-the-wall place really was popping. With the holiday crowd, even at noon there was a line, mostly high schoolers and college students packed shoulder to shoulder inside.
The old monk and He Yuenan had barely started eating when Cheng Chang arrived.
He parked by the roadside and walked over, loose strands of hair framing his forehead, eyes cool as distant stars, moving with the kind of ease that made even May’s slightly sultry sunlight feel clean and gentle by comparison.
Handsome would’ve been one thing, but his bearing was on another level entirely—when he folded his long legs down onto the little stool, he somehow managed to look like a noble scion out of some ancient dynasty. The whole shop was staring at him.
The shop owner’s wife hurried over with the menu, all smiles. “Skewers for you too?”
“No need,” Cheng Chang said. “I’m waiting for my friends.”
“Take your time, take your time.” She beamed and turned away.
The old monk asked, “Really not going to eat anything? We’ve got non-spicy ones.”
“Already ate at the hospital.”
The owner’s wife, who’d been listening in with one ear, caught that last part. She looked him over—his color seemed fine, nothing about him suggested illness—and brought over a cup of hot water instead. “A doctor, huh? Rough line of work.”
Cheng Chang didn’t bother explaining. “Mm.”
Cheng Chang had expected a longer wait, so he bent his head to exchange a few messages on WeChat with a senior classmate from Zhejiang University. But the old monk and He Yuenan finished quickly, and the owner’s wife rushed over to wipe down the table, practically ready to walk them all the way to the car herself.
The old monk loved the big G-Wagen and scrambled straight into the passenger seat. Cheng Chang settled into the driver’s seat, and finding the sunlight a bit harsh, pulled a pair of tea-colored sunglasses from the glove compartment. Before he could even put them on, the old monk snatched them away and launched into a tirade. “No—absolutely not. You already look like that, and now you want to put these on too? Have you no consideration for the rest of us? Can an ordinary-looking young man not be allowed to live? Didn’t you notice my master’s turned into a mere backdrop the second we started eating skewers?”
Cheng Chang: “…”
“I wear these,” Cheng Chang glanced back at He Yuenan in the back seat, who looked thoroughly done with life, and after a moment, explained earnestly, “to block the glare. The sun’s strong. It’s easier to drive this way.”
“Oh.” The old monk handed the sunglasses back. “Where are we headed? Straight to Xuancheng now?”
“Zhejiang University first.”
Cheng Chang had a senior from his Fudan days who’d studied chemistry, gone on to earn a master’s at Zhejiang University, and stayed on afterward to do chemical engineering research. A week ago, right after waking up, Cheng Chang had given him something to have analyzed, and today he was going specifically to pick up the results.
At the east gate of Zhejiang University, the senior classmate was already waiting. Cheng Chang left the engine running, told the old monk and He Yuenan to stay in the car, got out, and waved.
The senior jogged over and handed him an anti-radiation box along with a single page of report. “You wouldn’t let me take a sample, and you wouldn’t let me test the hardness with proper equipment, so all I could do was look at it under an electron microscope—couldn’t pin down exactly what it is. Composition-wise, it’s mostly water molecules, with some inorganic salts mixed in. Kind of like ice, but when I roughly tested it by hand, it’s a lot harder than ice.”
Cheng Chang nodded and opened the box to look inside.
Inside the radiation-shielded box sat a small bead, about half the size of a fingernail.
The bead was translucent, with something like shifting light swirling within—strikingly vivid in the dark, but now, under the midday sun, it seemed almost unremarkable, not unlike a luminous pearl, though it wasn’t one.
This was the thing that had suddenly appeared in Cheng Chang’s palm the day he woke from his coma.
If his guess was right, this bead must have come back with him from Da Sui, just as before.
The first time Cheng Chang returned from Da Sui, he’d brought back a peace talisman. The second time, Yun Xi’s bronze hairpin. He Yuenan had told him once that such objects followed a person back because of the force of their own will—
They were, each time, at the very brink of death, the thing that mattered most, buried deepest in the heart.
But Cheng Chang couldn’t recall ever having a bead like this in Da Sui. Even the diamond he’d once sought out for Yun Xi should have had a carbon molecular structure—so why would this thing resemble ice?
“Could this bead be some kind of antique?” Cheng Chang asked.
The senior shook his head. “Probably not. Antiques usually carry some trace of microorganisms—nothing like this. Though I can’t say for certain without a proper sample; the composition’s inconclusive.”
“If you’re really unsure, you could ask Duan Mingcheng for help—he’s got a hometown friend who graduated from the archaeology department at Nanjing University. Maybe that friend could introduce you to their advisor to take a look?”
“Alright. Thanks for the trouble,” Cheng Chang said.
“No trouble at all.” The senior smiled.
Cheng Chang returned to the car, and the old monk and He Yuenan immediately leaned in to ask. “So? Results in? What exactly is this bead?”
“Nothing conclusive,” Cheng Chang said. He put the box holding the bead into the glove compartment, set the navigation on his phone, and pulled out toward Xuancheng in Anhui. “We’ll figure it out later.”
Where they were headed was an old ancestral hall in Xuancheng, Anhui.
Among people like Cheng Chang—those living “one life, two tracks”—the ancient, singular manuscript passed down through He Yuenan’s sect recorded only three such individuals. The first two were beyond tracing now; the third had a somewhat more detailed account of their life, a person from the late Qing to Republican era, whose ancestral home was Xuancheng, Anhui.
While Cheng Chang had been unconscious, He Yuenan had specifically made a trip to Xuancheng in an effort to save him.
After Cheng Chang woke, he’d shut himself in his hospital room alone for several days, then asked to see the ancient manuscript and insisted on going to Xuancheng himself—even pushing back the surgery that had already been arranged.
Worried that Cheng Chang might end up losing his mind the way his predecessor apparently had, and operating on the principle of seeing a favor through to the end, He Yuenan decided to come along.
Cheng Chang had assumed the old ancestral hall would be tucked away deep in some mountain forest, much like the old monk’s temple to Guanyin—remote, rarely visited. They’d even stopped at a rest area along the way to buy snacks. But once they arrived, he nearly thought they’d taken a wrong turn: the foot of the mountain was thick with tourists, bustling and crowded, without even a place to park.
He Yuenan explained from the side. “Wasn’t there fighting across the country back in the thirties and forties? Most of Anhui got swept up in it to some degree, but this particular spot came through unscathed—peaceful for over a hundred years. The locals say it’s because a hundred years ago, a living bodhisattva came from here—handsome, kind-hearted—and after he died, the villagers built a shrine to honor him. That accumulated merit is supposedly what brought the good fortune that followed. This living bodhisattva, it seems, was your predecessor.”
Cheng Chang: “…”
He Yuenan went on. “None of that would’ve amounted to much on its own, but a few years back, there was a high school senior here who came up to the old ancestral hall to pray for good exam results, even drank from the well beside it. When the college entrance exam scores came out, guess what happened? Top science score in the whole county! The kid’s parents told everyone about it afterward, word spread, and now… it’s turned into an internet check-in spot.”
Just as He Yuenan finished speaking, someone in traditional hanfu walked past, holding up a phone on a selfie stick, apparently livestreaming. They stopped in front of a large tree and spoke into the phone. “This tree here should be the legendary immortal tree, touched by some divine presence, called… ” they glanced at the scrolling comments, “oh, an elm. Once you’re here, your heart needs to be sincere. Studying for finals over the holiday? No worries if you can’t get out—remote worship works just as well for good exam scores. Alright, close your eyes, calm your mind, count silently to five. Feel anything? You do? Thank you to Peking University’s Number Eighteen Little Flower for the big sword gift—coming up we’ll get you a blessed top-scorer talisman…”
Cheng Chang: “…”
Modern people really did know how to have fun.