The old ancestral hall was built partway up the mountainside. The climb up the stone steps wasn’t far, and even though Cheng Chang had just been discharged, this much walking was manageable.

There were a lot of people on the path, including the livestreamer from before. From what he’d said, there was also an old well beside the ancestral hall—the top-scoring student from before had likely done so well largely because he’d drunk from that well.

The last time He Yuenan had come, it was the off-season, before the holiday, with hardly any visitors. Back then Cheng Chang had been lying in intensive care, liable to take a turn for the worse at any moment, so He Yuenan hadn’t dared linger long in Xuancheng—he’d found the hall’s caretaker, asked roughly about Cheng Chang’s predecessor’s life, and hurried back to Hangzhou.

Today the hall was packed, mostly with high schoolers, all crowding around asking the caretaker to bless top-scorer talismans. Cheng Chang couldn’t even push his way in, and had planned to wait until the caretaker got off work to ask him directly. But then the livestreamer who’d climbed up with them turned out to have some skill—camera phone held high, he wormed his way straight to the caretaker’s table in no time and asked, “Master, how much for one of these top-scorer talismans?”

This place had gotten famous through livestreaming, so when the caretaker saw a streamer show up—and noticed the flood of comments still scrolling on the phone screen—he was especially patient. “We don’t sell talismans as such. Make a donation, any amount, and you’ll get one. As long as your heart is sincere, that’s what matters.”

The streamer asked, “Can I request one on someone else’s behalf?”

“Sure. Write the requester’s name on the talisman, then go bow before the Manjushri statue over there. Since you’re streaming anyway, have your followers bow to the bodhisattva along with you. Mail the talisman over afterward. Like I said, don’t get too hung up on the exact form—sincerity is what counts.”

This caretaker really knew his business.

The streamer, being thorough, traced the question back further. “Why is it a Manjushri statue? Didn’t you say the one enshrined here is a good man who was an incarnation of the Buddha?”

Nobody actually knew which bodhisattva the benevolent man had been an incarnation of. All that was known was that his surname was Chen, that he’d been born in the late Qing to Republican era, and that his family came from generations of physicians—practicing medicine to help others while also running a medicinal herb trade. The family had declined somewhat during the chaos of war, but their foundation was solid enough that life remained comfortable.

By that era merchants had already risen in status, and this benevolent Chen had been a young man of privilege. But despite his fortunate birth, he’d contracted a stubborn illness at a very young age.

“What illness did he have?”

“Not sure. Bone pain, fever, bleeding—sounds a bit like leukemia.”

Blood cancer was hard to treat even now, and in that era it was essentially a death sentence. The benevolent Chen had fainted several times in a row, and the villagers had assumed there was no saving him. But then, unexpectedly, he woke up and the illness resolved itself without any medicine—he went on to live to nearly a hundred, not passing away until sometime in the 1980s.

“How did his illness get cured?”

“No idea. He was just a man blessed with good fortune, that’s all. When the war broke out, the areas around here were affected to varying degrees, but this particular spot came through unscathed. During the famine years, plenty of places had crop failures everywhere, but the paddies behind the hall”—the villager gestured vaguely toward the back of the hall—”produced grain plumper than ever.”

“The villagers later said this was the fruit of good karma accumulated across generations of the Chen family practicing medicine to help others. So after the benevolent Chen passed, the villagers built this hall to honor him.”

“As for why a Manjushri statue got added later—well, a few years back there was that top scorer, and again, it comes down to not being too rigid about form.”

The streamer nodded.

He understood now: the Manjushri statue was there for the student visitors, but the donations went to both Chen and the bodhisattva together. Presumably both Chen and the bodhisattva were equally broad-minded—vast enough to take in all rivers—and understood that the village needed tourism to thrive, so neither cared who received the incense offerings.

“If you’re interested in the benevolent Chen’s story, you could ask around in Tongli, the town over the back mountain. There’s a hundred-year-old grandmother there who’s his niece. She’d know all about him,” the caretaker added.

Cheng Chang had been standing off to the side listening the whole time. What the caretaker said matched more or less what He Yuenan had learned before, but that one useful detail—about the niece in Tongli—made him want to head there right away. He’d already stepped out of the hall before he caught himself and turned back.

There was no telling yet whether this Chen fellow was really his predecessor. The chronic illness and the repeated fainting spells did line up, though.

Cheng Chang lit incense for him, made a donation, and in the noisy, crowded hall, closed his eyes, steadied his mind, and bowed three times with the incense held before him.

It was afternoon by then, and the small town wasn’t too crowded—though the site itself had become popular, its convenient location (under three hours’ drive to Shanghai or Hangzhou) meant most visitors didn’t stay overnight, so the town had only a single inn. Since Cheng Chang needed to look into the benevolent Chen’s story, he went ahead and booked two rooms in advance—his health wouldn’t allow him to drive at night, He Yuenan didn’t have a license, and as for the old monk… well, his license, if he even had one, was probably picked up off the side of the road somewhere.

The townspeople were warm and welcoming. When the innkeeper heard that Cheng Chang wanted to learn about the benevolent Chen, he personally led the group deeper into town. The town was built along the mountain, just one main road paved with blue flagstones, wooden houses lining either side—full of character. The afternoon sun was quiet and mild. The innkeeper stopped in front of one house, where an old woman sat on a wooden stool doing needlework on a shoe insole, and said, “Grandma Chen, these visitors would like to ask you about Mr. Chen.”

Grandma Chen’s face was a mass of wrinkles—she looked very old indeed, but her eyes weren’t dim and her hearing wasn’t dulled. Her eyes, weathered by the years, carried a slight cloudiness, yet the single glance she gave them held the clarity of someone who had seen through all of life’s noise and color.

She only glanced at them once, made a soft “oh,” lowered her gaze, and went on with her needlework, asking unhurriedly, “What do you want to know?”

Cheng Chang said, “Hello, Grandma Chen. I heard that Mr. Chen suffered from a terminal illness when he was young. How did his illness get better?”

“Who knows,” the old woman said. “He fainted a few times, and then he was fine. But once he got better, he went mad.”

“Why did he go mad?”

“He said he’d watched himself die and couldn’t go back. A person’s alive and well—how do you watch yourself die? What’s that if not madness?” Grandma Chen held her needlework, thinking carefully. She’d been young at the time and didn’t remember it too clearly. “He was my own uncle. For a couple of years or so, he barely acknowledged anyone. It was me who stayed with him.”

Cheng Chang was silent for a moment, then asked, “Did he ever mention… another world to you?”

At that, Grandma Chen’s needle slowed to a stop. She lifted her head, looked over the three of them, and let her gaze settle finally on Cheng Chang. After a long pause, she shook her head. “Never mentioned it.”

Cheng Chang felt a flicker of disappointment and was about to ask something else when Grandma Chen spoke again, unhurried. “My little uncle never married in this life, never had children. He came into this world alone and left it alone, and in the end it was the villagers who saw him off together. He was handsome—even after he went mad, plenty of girls were still fond of him. When I was young, I once asked him why he never took a wife. Whenever I asked, he’d go quiet. It wasn’t until much later, when he was old, that he told me he had married once—only his wife had died young, and they were separated by life and death, or else he’d have gone to find her long ago. All those years I was with him, let alone marriage, I never once saw him grow close to any girl. When he said he’d had a wife, I thought at first it was just mad talk. But later…”

Grandma Chen paused. “He passed, and left behind a diary. I can’t read, so I never looked at it myself. Once, when I missed him terribly, I had a literate man in town read it to me. There was one line in it I still remember: ‘I have lived two lives in this one lifetime. In the other life I gave myself to my wife in marriage. Three years later, our love still unwavering, she passed away. I mourned her until my body turned to ash and I was returned to this life. My heart remains bound to one person alone, and so I will not remarry. If there were a way to have both…'”

She trailed off, not quite remembering what came after, only adding, “I don’t know if this other world you’re asking about is the same as the other life in my little uncle’s diary.”

Cheng Chang asked, “Did he mention what way he was looking for, to have both?”

Grandma Chen shook her head.

Perhaps it was written in the diary, but she couldn’t read it, and didn’t remember clearly.

He Yuenan asked, “Is that diary still around? Could we borrow it to take a look?”

Grandma Chen didn’t answer. The small inn’s owner spoke up instead. “It’s still around—kept in a cabinet in front of the shrine at the ancestral hall.” He checked his watch. It was only four. “There are a lot of visitors at the hall right now. Let’s wait a bit. Around six, once Old Zhang finishes his shift, I’ll have him bring the diary over so you can take a look.”

Old Zhang was the hall’s caretaker.

As he spoke, the owner took out his phone and sent Old Zhang a message.

This trip had gone unexpectedly smoothly—asking around about the benevolent Chen’s story had run into almost no obstacles. With three unplanned hours now on their hands, the old monk took his ordination certificate and went to register at a small local temple in town, and He Yuenan went along with him.

Underneath his less-than-serious demeanor, the old monk was, in fact, properly certified. Having managed to get out of the deep mountains for once, he naturally wanted to rack up some accomplishments—he couldn’t get a spot at a major temple like Lingyin in Hangzhou, but hearing that Tongli had a temple too, he figured registering there, going through the motions, would at least count as fulfilling his duty to spread the dharma. Of course, he couldn’t give up meat or air conditioning, so he’d still be eating and sleeping at the inn later.

With He Yuenan and the old monk both gone, Cheng Chang was left alone, feeling suddenly at a loss. Grandma Chen kindly pointed to the wooden stool beside her. “Sit.”

Cheng Chang thanked her and sat for a while, then got up to buy a bottle of mineral water from the little shop nearby. He sat in the mild, thin sunlight, sipping the water bit by bit, and before long his forehead and palms were damp with sweat.

Then he got up and bought another bottle.

Grandma Chen glanced at him and suddenly said, “Young man, you don’t look too well.”

Cheng Chang was startled for a moment, then didn’t try to hide it. “Yeah.”

“I remember my little uncle was like this for a while, back then,” Grandma Chen said.

Cheng Chang was silent a moment, then said “yeah” again.

In truth, the results of his psychiatric evaluation hadn’t been optimistic—it showed moderate-to-severe depressive tendencies, though not full clinical depression. Many people who’d been forcibly separated from someone they loved most ended up like that; Cheng Chang’s case was just a bit more pronounced.

The psychiatrist hadn’t originally recommended discharge. But withdrawal treatment wasn’t ideal either, and since the patient himself had proposed getting some fresh air, that counted as actively cooperating with treatment—so the psychiatrist had suggested to the cardiac surgeon that Cheng Chang’s operation be postponed and that he be discharged for two days. If his mood improved, recovery afterward would likely go more smoothly.

Cheng Chang had been on the move most of the day, so on the surface he’d seemed fine. But now, sitting there alone with nothing to do, a boundless emptiness slowly welled up inside him.

He thought about what would happen if he could never go back for the rest of his life.

What would become of A’Ting then.

He deeply regretted it now—he should have listened to He Yuenan, found a coffin, and lain down quietly to disappear.

It wasn’t that he feared the pain. He just felt he shouldn’t selfishly go looking for her simply because he wanted to see her. She’d watched him turn to ash—she must have been devastated.

He didn’t want her to be sad.

Cheng Chang drank four bottles of mineral water in a row. By the last one, the hand holding the bottle had begun to tremble slightly. At one point a girl in a long red dress walked past the mouth of the alley, and Cheng Chang shot to his feet and chased after her—only to realize, a few steps in, that she was just a female student in hanfu. He turned back and sat down again, his shirt soaked through with sweat.

It really was a wretched state to be in.

Cheng Chang didn’t let himself keep spiraling. Seeing that the old monk and He Yuenan hadn’t returned yet, he said goodbye to Grandma Chen, went back to the inn, showered, changed into clean clothes, forced himself to eat dinner, then lay down on the bed and closed his eyes to rest.

When he opened them again, it was already dark outside. There was a knock at the door—the old monk and He Yuenan had returned together, and they’d brought back the benevolent Chen’s diary.

The diary was only a dozen or so pages, its contents largely matching what Grandma Chen had described, except for one added line: “The blood affliction was cured without medicine, on account of the dusk.” Cheng Chang had no idea what “the dusk” referred to—was it the dusk during which he’d traveled back and forth through time several times? If so, why hadn’t his own congenital heart condition healed yet?

The final page of the diary contained the very line Grandma Chen had recited from memory: “I have lived two lives in this one lifetime. In the other life I gave myself to my wife in marriage. Three years later, our love still unwavering, she passed away. I mourned her until my body turned to ash and I was returned to this life. My heart remains bound to one person alone, and so I will not remarry. If there were a way to have both, I would wish to return to that other world, to guard her through life and death, to stay by her side, faithful until death.”

The old monk pointed to the very last line of the diary. “What’s this?”

The last line was a passage of text resembling seal script, which Cheng Chang couldn’t quite make out, though he could roughly guess that this script belonged to whatever writing system the benevolent Chen had used in his other life—just as the script Cheng Chang himself had used in Da Sui wasn’t quite the same as modern simplified Chinese.