Cuifeng village sat nestled among the mountains—legend had it that ancestors had once taken refuge there, settling and multiplying over generations until it gradually became a secluded village cut off from the outside world.
Cuifeng had originally been quite poor. Over a decade earlier, someone from the Yin family of Lin’an medicine merchants had come foraging for herbs in these mountains and, wanting to help the villagers, had given them seed stock, arranging to periodically buy medicinal herbs from them in Pinghua town. Only then had the various households in the village grown more prosperous.
Because the village was surrounded by mountains on all sides, travel in and out was extremely difficult. At first, for convenience, villagers relied on climbing the vines along the cliff edge to get out. But after one villager fell and injured his leg while climbing, the village, having learned its lesson, cleared a mountain path circling around the peak—after that, unless there was urgent need, people used the path to leave the village.
Over the past decade or so, herb cultivation in the village had grown into a proper operation, with each household tending its own medicinal fields. Every month the villagers would gather the harvested herbs together, and one young man would carry them out of the village to sell—and because he carried the trust of the entire village on his shoulders, this herb-carrier was also the village head. In the current generation, that village head was Li Zhangniu.
Today should have been the day to deliver herbs to Pinghua, but Li Zhangniu hadn’t shouldered his basket and set out early as usual. He’d stayed busy in the medicinal fields until nearly evening, and once home, asked his wife Zhao Shi, who was weaving at the time, “How is he?”
“Doing fine. I kept a careful eye on him all morning.” Zhao Shi stood up and wiped her hands on her coarse cloth skirt. “The rice is simmering in the pot—will you eat now?”
“Let’s eat!” Zhangniu nodded, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Let me light incense for the bodhisattva first.”
He and Zhao Shi pushed open the wooden door to a nearby room, lit incense, and together bowed three times before the man lying on the couch inside.
The man on the couch had striking features—at first glance, he seemed almost otherworldly.
Once Zhangniu and Zhao Shi finished their bows, they placed the incense in the burner and withdrew respectfully.
The incense was made from medicinal herbs and seemed to have a mind-clearing, refreshing effect. Mixed with the smell of the freshly cooked meal, it drifted bit by bit into Cheng Chang’s nose.
Cheng Chang bolted upright, dazed for a moment, then looked around.
The room was simple, but the wooden basin stand in the corner and the style of the high window made it clear this was ancient times.
Was he… back in Da Sui?
But every previous time he’d come back, he’d either had a splitting headache or felt his body weighed down. This time, there wasn’t the slightest discomfort—if anything, he felt unexpectedly light and clear, as though he’d just woken from a long, good sleep.
The young prince’s body no longer existed—so how had he come back this time?
Cheng Chang couldn’t help but look at his own hands—these hands seemed to be his actual hands from the twenty-first century.
Could it be that this time his whole self had come to Da Sui?
Cheng Chang swung himself off the couch, intending to find a mirror to take a proper look at himself, when his foot caught on a small table at the foot of the bed, nearly tripping him. He looked down and realized there was a small incense altar set up in front of the couch, with incense burning and fruit offerings laid out.
Cheng Chang: “…”
A bad feeling washed over him all at once.
Just then, the door was pushed open. The Zhangniu couple, having heard the noise while eating their evening meal, had rushed over to check, and seeing Cheng Chang sitting up, cried out, startled and delighted at once. “The bodhisattva is awake?”
Cheng Chang: “…” Just as he’d feared.
The two of them hurried to the couch, saying, “Thank you, bodhisattva, for saving our lives,” and made as if to kneel and kowtow.
Cheng Chang quickly caught them and helped them up. Recalling their mention of “saving our lives,” he asked, “Did something happen to you, before this?”
It turned out that about two months earlier, a strange illness had suddenly appeared in Cuifeng village. Since the first symptoms resembled an ordinary cold, the villagers hadn’t paid it much attention—being herb growers themselves, they figured they knew enough medicine and mixed up a remedy on their own.
But the illness didn’t improve after the remedy. Within about half a month, it had spread among the villagers. At first only the elderly, weak, women, and children fell ill, but eventually several able-bodied young men in the village fell sick too, and only then did the villagers realize they might be facing an epidemic.
By the time they realized it, though, it was already too late—the illness spread quickly, and within about two months, eighty percent of the village had fallen ill. Worried the sickness might spread beyond the village, the village head Li Zhangniu had ordered the village sealed off a few days earlier and set out alone to Pinghua to request that the authorities send help.
Cuifeng village was surrounded by mountains on all sides—apart from the one mountain path, the only way out was climbing the vines along the cliff edge. But the path wound on for miles, taking at least three to five days at the fastest—there was no time for that. Without a second thought, Zhangniu had chosen the vines.
Whether it was fate or mere coincidence, a thick fog had rolled in the morning Zhangniu set out. Unable to see clearly, he’d taken a wrong turn and, at the base of the cliff, instead of finding the vines, had stumbled upon a man lying in the underbrush.
The man was strikingly handsome, but no matter how Zhangniu called out to him, he wouldn’t wake.
After much deliberation, Zhangniu had decided he couldn’t just leave the man to die. He’d taken off his own protective mask against the epidemic, put it on the man, and carried him back home on his back.
At the time, Zhangniu’s wife Zhao Shi was already infected. Afraid of passing the illness to the stranger, she hadn’t dared come near the room, only helping from outside by fetching water and doing chores. But during the very half-day that Zhangniu had carried the man back, Zhao Shi noticed her own symptoms had improved significantly, and a day later, even her fatigue and stomach pain had cleared up entirely.
Zhangniu and Zhao Shi, tracing back the cause, discovered a few sprigs of purple wildflowers in the pockets of the clothes they’d taken off the man.
Likely, having lain in the wilderness for so long, the flowers had snapped off and, caught by the morning breeze, blown into his pockets.
The flower was called qixiang—it grew abundantly in the wild woods below the cliff and had never been considered medicinal before. But Zhao Shi had a hunch it was this flower that had cured her, and went out to gather more from the wild, brewing it into a medicinal broth to give to a few neighbors’ young men willing to try it. Within two days, their symptoms had visibly improved, and after that, the whole village began taking the remedy.
Since this qixiang flower had been brought to them by the man Zhangniu rescued at the cliff’s edge, the villagers, seeing the man’s appearance—so radiant, like moonlight or clouds—concluded he could be no ordinary mortal. They decided Zhangniu’s good deed had saved a bodhisattva, and that the bodhisattva, in his compassion, had brought them the cure for their illness.
With the epidemic mostly cleared from the village, Zhangniu, worried it might spread to Tangli, Lin’an, and other places outside, had gathered the village’s men to collect qixiang flowers, planning to send them out of the village first thing the next morning.
“Huzi and the others are already waiting up on the cliff. I was just about to get things ready tonight and lead everyone out at dawn tomorrow—didn’t expect the bodhisattva to wake up right now,” Zhangniu said.
“On the cliff?”
“Yes, up top by the old vines. It’s faster to leave that way.”
By now Cheng Chang had gathered from Zhangniu’s words that this was a village somewhere near Lin’an in Da Sui, and asked, “What year is it currently?”
“Third year of Wangan.”
In the dream, three years into the Wangan era had also been when Yun Xi was in Lin’an city.
Cheng Chang asked urgently, “Has the current third-rank General Yunhui arrived in Lin’an prefecture recently?” After a pause, he added, “She’s a female general.”
Zhangniu scratched his head. “Our village is pretty cut off, sir—we wouldn’t hear news like that.”
Cheng Chang supposed that made sense. But his mind was still occupied with the earlier confusion, and he asked, “Do you have a bronze mirror here?”
Zhangniu didn’t have one, but there was a shallow stream outside, and he led Cheng Chang there. Looking down at his reflection rippling in the water, Cheng Chang confirmed—it really was his modern self staring back.
His modern self and the young prince of Da Sui had always looked seventy or eighty percent alike—if Yun Xi were to see him, she’d surely recognize him.
Thinking this, Cheng Chang felt some relief.
No wonder this time he’d felt no discomfort coming back at all—it was because it was truly him, in the flesh.
But he’d just had surgery—why wasn’t there any pain in his chest at all? He reached up to touch his own heart and suddenly realized the pacemaker was gone.
Cheng Chang strode back into the room and pulled open his robe to look. What should have been a chest covered in gruesome scars now bore only a faint, thin trace, as though someone had smoothed away every wound he’d suffered across half a lifetime.
Cheng Chang suddenly remembered—long after he’d removed the oxygen mask and lost all sense of life, he’d been abruptly awakened by a blinding flash of light, opening his eyes to find himself surrounded by a room full of dusk-colored light.
The diary the benevolent Chen had left behind had one line: “The blood affliction was cured without medicine, on account of the dusk.”
Did that mean his heart condition, too, had been healed?
Standing here now was his true self—his real, healthy self.
A complicated mix of feelings welled up in Cheng Chang’s chest—joy, and also a kind of wistful emotion. He strode out of the room and asked Zhangniu, “Are you headed to Lin’an? I’d like to come along.”
He’d already worked it out in his mind: go to Lin’an first, see whether Yun Xi was still there. If not, wherever she’d gone, he’d chase after her; once he caught up to her, he’d bring her back to Jinling to see his father and mother, finally settle the marriage he owed her, then accompany her to the northern frontier—she’d been out on her own for so long, surely she missed her brother.
Zhangniu looked somewhat troubled. “This humble one is heading out to deliver medicine—it’s a bit urgent. I might have to go by way of the cliff.”
Cheng Chang said, “I’ll go by the cliff too, then.”
Zhangniu hurriedly stopped him. “Bodhisattva, you don’t understand—the vines by that cliff are old and brittle. One even snapped not long ago. We villagers only use the vines for leverage, really—it’s mostly the cracks and ledges in the cliff face we climb on. That path isn’t safe unless you’re experienced with it—it’s very dangerous.”
As he spoke, he mulled it over, then struck his palm with his fist. “I’ve got it.”
Perhaps influenced too much by Feng Tun and Feng Guo from the Yangzhou silk shop, Cheng Chang, seeing Zhangniu’s expression, worried the man might ask something like, “Bodhisattva, being of divine nature, why not simply summon a cloud to fly up?” Fortunately, Zhangniu remained simple and practical, only saying, “Since this humble one has to take people out by the cliff to deliver the medicine, the village’s ox cart—normally used to carry herbs—will be free. I’ll find someone in a moment to escort the bodhisattva out of the village by ox cart, taking the mountain path instead. It’ll be slower, but safer.”
Cheng Chang nodded. “That works.”
He’d been lying on the couch for several days, and his clothes had long since been changed—he was currently dressed in a blue robe. As they spoke, Zhao Shi had gathered up the hospital gown he’d been wearing when he arrived, and came over to say, “Bodhisattva, this humble servant has already packed your divine robes into your travel bag.”
Just as Zhangniu was about to go find someone to escort Cheng Chang out of the village, he heard someone calling from behind. “Big Brother Niu! Big Brother Niu!”
He turned around—it was Huzi.
Huzi had also caught the epidemic recently but had recovered these past few days, and had been saying he wanted to go with Zhangniu to deliver the medicine to town.
“Big Brother Niu, people came to the village!” Huzi ran up, out of breath, bracing his hands on his knees, gasping several times before he could get the words out.
“People came? Who?”
“Not sure—might be officials from the town, brought some officers with them. They said the town’s got the epidemic too and were worried about our village, came to check on us specially. They just heard we found the cure and took away our qixiang flowers.”
“Took them away?” Zhangniu was stunned. “Who let them take it? Did you find out who they even were?”
Huzi, having grown up in the mountains, was only sixteen and hadn’t seen much of the world—simple-minded, too. Those qixiang flowers had taken the whole village two full days to gather, carried overnight up to the cliff, meant to be delivered to Pinghua, Tangli, and even Lin’an to help cure the sick—and Huzi had just handed them over to strangers without a second thought.
Huzi scratched his head. “Wasn’t the whole point of leaving the village to hand the herbs over to the authorities anyway? Those people looked like officials to me. This way we don’t even have to make the trip ourselves.”
“You… ugh!” Zhangniu let out a heavy sigh. What did “looked like officials” even mean? What if they weren’t?
“Are those people still up on the cliff?”
“Still there.”
“Never mind, I’ll go take a look myself.” Zhangniu, thinking that the village was short-handed right now and only Huzi was free, and that Huzi, simple-minded as he was, had decent skill—enough to escort the bodhisattva out of the village—instructed him, “Go bring the ox cart around. Take the bodhisattva to Lin’an.”
“Lin’an?” Huzi’s eyes lit up—he’d never been to such a big city before!
He immediately said “okay” and dashed off to fetch the ox cart.
Zhangniu, his mind on the herbs, didn’t have time to stand on ceremony with Cheng Chang. He gave him a hurried word of farewell and headed toward the cliff, gripping the vines and climbing up.
Once atop the cliff, Zhangniu looked around and saw that several dozen baskets’ worth of the herbs they’d gathered these past days were gone—presumably carried off by the so-called officials.
More than ten people still stood atop the cliff. Zhangniu’s gaze was instantly drawn to one woman among them. She wasn’t in official uniform, only a crimson combat outfit, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, with loose strands at her temples braided into small plaits woven into the ponytail.
She carried a sword and a bamboo painting tube on her back, her features bright and clean-cut—not conventionally stunning, perhaps, but there was something about her that immediately put people at ease, made them want to look twice.
Beside the woman stood a genuinely official-looking figure—thin, gaunt, with bulging fish-like eyes, dressed in an official robe. Zhangniu couldn’t tell the exact rank from the robe, but the man’s bearing made it clear he was someone important, likely from Lin’an.
Several villagers were explaining the epidemic situation to the woman and the official. Hearing that the epidemic in the village had largely subsided, the woman’s furrowed brow relaxed, and she gave a faint smile, a hint of relief in her eyes like clear skies after rain.
Zhangniu was momentarily dazed by that smile. Coming back to himself as the villagers called out to him again, he said to the woman in crimson and the official, “Sir, this is our village head, Li Zhangniu.”
Yun Xi waved off his formalities and asked, “How is the epidemic in your village? Can we take all these qixiang flowers with us?”
“Of course, my lord. The epidemic in our village has largely cleared up. We kept a bit of the qixiang flowers back, and we’ve already planted the seeds too—we’ve got enough.”
“Good.” Yun Xi nodded briskly and immediately instructed the men behind her to transport the remaining herbs.
She hadn’t brought many officers on this trip—most had stayed behind managing the epidemic in Tangli and Pinghua. At this point, even Sun Haiping and Zhang Dahu had shouldered herb baskets themselves, with two baskets still left over.
Yun Xi thought it over, took the bamboo painting tube off her back and held it in her arms, moving to pick up a basket herself.
Beside her, Zhang Dahu and Magistrate Liu both rushed forward at once to grab the basket from her hands—one saying, “General Yun, I’ve got plenty of strength, I can carry three of these baskets!” and the other, “How could I let the General trouble herself? Let me, let me—my aide and I have our hands free anyway.”
One out of flattery, the other trying to earn credit, the two of them scrambled over each other for the basket—and in the process, knocked the bamboo painting tube right out of Yun Xi’s arms.
The tube hit the ground with a crack, and despite looking sturdy, split open in four places, spilling out the scroll hidden inside.
They were standing on a small rise, and the scroll unrolled down the slope, revealing a portrait of someone with an almost otherworldly, jade-like beauty.
Everyone around went still. Zhang Dahu and Liu Qin both recognized the figure in the portrait, and both knew exactly how much that painting meant to Yun Xi. The two of them froze, not sure what to do.
Yun Xi was silent for a long moment, saying nothing. She walked over, bent down to pick up the painting, brushed away the dust that had settled on the painted figure’s brow and eyes, and was just about to roll the scroll back up when Zhangniu suddenly asked, “My lord, is this painting of the bodhisattva?”
Most people who saw the portrait asked the same question. Yun Xi, not thinking much of it, simply said, “Mm.”
Zhangniu, recalling that the official from Lin’an had addressed the woman as “General,” suddenly had a flash of insight. “Might you be the third-rank General Yunhui, currently serving at court?”
Yun Xi lifted her gaze. “How do you know that?”
Zhangniu was momentarily stunned—the timing was almost too perfect. Just moments ago, the bodhisattva had asked him whether a female general named Yun had come to Lin’an recently, and now, not long after, here was the very female general, carrying a portrait of the bodhisattva no less.
Zhangniu pointed at the portrait in Yun Xi’s hands. “This person in the painting—no, this bodhisattva—this humble one has seen him.”
“Well, not exactly him—the bodhisattva looks even more spirited and dashing in person than in this painting.”
“He asked this humble one earlier whether a female general from the court named Yun had come to Lin’an. So when I saw you, my lord, I couldn’t help but ask.”
Yun Xi froze.
In truth, she hadn’t intended to linger in Lin’an for so long. But on the day of the young Yin master’s wedding, walking alone through a deep alley, she’d distinctly felt his presence—had felt, somehow, that he was here.
So, using the pretext of inspection tours, she’d worked her way through the counties surrounding Lin’an one by one, having practically turned over every inch of ground, yet still found no trace of him, and had nearly given up hope.
“He… where is he now?” Yun Xi asked, somewhat dazed, hearing herself ask the question after a long pause.
Huzi had fetched the ox cart and taken Cheng Chang to the village entrance, pointing to a narrow mountain path. “We leave the village this way. It’s a bit slow going to Lin’an—takes about half a month. If you get tired, bodhisattva, you can nap in the cart, and Huzi will pick you mountain fruit to eat.”
Such an innocent mountain child.
Cheng Chang smiled. “Have you traveled this path often before?”
“All the time.” Huzi nodded. “Big Brother Niu likes to take me along to broaden my horizons—these past two years, delivering herbs to Pinghua, he’s brought me eight times out of ten.”
His expression dimmed as he continued. “Though, that officer sister who just came to the village said the epidemic in Pinghua is pretty bad. She told Huzi to stay in the village and not go into town for the next while.”
An officer… sister?
Cheng Chang, hearing this, paused slightly. “The officer who came—was it a young woman?”
“What… what does she look like?”
Huzi’s eyebrows lifted. “All dressed in crimson red, real good-looking!”
Zhangniu, seeing Yun Xi’s dazed expression, realized he might have inadvertently caused trouble with his good intentions, and said, “The bodhisattva said he wanted to go to Lin’an. Seeing he seemed anxious to leave, this humble one had a village boy named Huzi escort him out just a moment ago.”
“This humble one suspects… the bodhisattva may in fact be searching for you, General.”
“Was she…” Cheng Chang closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the image of Yun Xi from his dream. “Dressed all in crimson, carrying a sword, with a green bamboo painting tube on her back?”
“That’s right, how did you know, bodhisattva?”
Yun Xi stood frozen, and just as tears threatened to spill over, she raised her sleeve and wiped them away. “Which path did he leave the village by?”
Zhangniu pointed down the mountain. “There’s a mountain trail south of the village below. Not far.”
Cheng Chang froze for an instant, then, paying no mind to the ox cart still moving, leapt down from it and turned to run toward the base of the cliff.
Yun Xi rushed to the cliff’s edge. Below, the mist was thin, and in the fading dusk light, she could just make out a hazy figure in a blue robe in the distance—she wasn’t even certain it was him. Without thinking, she grabbed the nearest vine.
Cheng Chang looked up—the cliff was very high, but the crimson figure had already begun making her way down, moving swiftly. That was his girl.
Zhang Dahu and Sun Haiping, hearing that their young prince had been found, stood dazed for a moment before following Yun Xi to the cliff’s edge, gripping the vines and rushing down after her.
Magistrate Liu, perhaps caught up in the emotion of this long-awaited reunion, grabbed a vine at the cliff’s edge too, and had already slid halfway down before his aide, gasping for breath, caught up and stopped him. “Sir, you can’t, you can’t—your old bones can’t handle this climb.”
Only then did Magistrate Liu come to his senses, scrambling and stumbling his way back up a couple of steps, patting his chest in shock, still not quite recovered. “Right—right, I can’t do this. Definitely can’t.”
He stared, wide-eyed, pointing up at the sky, then down at the base of the cliff. “That person—did they fall from the sky again?”
“Seems like it…”
Magistrate Liu still found it hard to believe. Steadying himself on his aide’s arm, he took a step forward and craned his neck to look down over the cliff’s edge.
The setting sun bathed the cliffs and green mountains in a soft, gentle dusk light. Yun Xi moved like a bird in flight, one hand gripping the vine, the tips of her toes tapping lightly against the rock face to swing herself down three feet at a time.
In no time she’d descended most of the cliff. Unable to resist any longer, she turned and looked down.
The person waiting for her at the base of the cliff was somehow different from before.
The corners of his eyes carried a sharper edge than before, three parts fiercer than she remembered. The gentleness in his gaze remained, but there was a new steadiness to it, a clarity that hadn’t been there before.
That singular, aloof, cool bearing of his blended perfectly with how he looked now.
Yun Xi knew—this was it. This was right.
The man waiting for her below was truly her Third Young Master.
No wonder the village head of Cuifeng had said her Third Young Master looked even more spirited in person than in her painting.
Her Third Young Master had finally come back.
Climbing down demanded absolute focus, especially descending, with the vines old and brittle as they were.
With only a bit over a zhang left to the ground, her grip suddenly slipped. Normally quick to react, Yun Xi, too overcome with joy in that instant, failed to catch herself in time—her whole body went slack, and she plummeted toward the ground.
Zhang Dahu and Sun Haiping beside her cried out, “Watch out!” and swung toward her on their own vines, trying to catch her.
But Yun Xi wasn’t afraid at all. She closed her eyes, reached out her arms, and threw herself down toward the man waiting at the base of the cliff with open arms—toward this life, this world, of hers.