The old temple Liao Zhuo had mentioned sat deep in the mountains, some eighty to a hundred li outside the city of Hangzhou. The nearest village was called Zhixian.

Cheng Chang had set out early, and it was not yet nine o’clock by the time he reached Zhixian Village.

The weather had held up somewhat — the wind had died down a little, and the rain wasn’t as relentless as the night before — but dark clouds still hung low overhead. Cheng Chang parked his car by the mountain road and found an elderly village woman to ask directions to the old temple.

Hearing that Cheng Chang wanted to go up the mountain, the old woman’s eyes went wide. “Don’t go! The typhoon knocked down trees yesterday, no power last night, pitch black everywhere, scary as anything.”

Cheng Chang said, “It’s fine, I just need to get a talisman, I’ll be quick about it.”

Seeing she couldn’t dissuade him, the old woman gave him directions.

The locals called the old temple the Guanyin Shrine. It was said to date back generations, standing since her ancestors’ time, and was now quite dilapidated.

Currently tending the temple was an old monk and his young disciple. The old monk was rather eccentric and somewhat mercenary, always squeezing extra money out of anyone who came seeking blessings — but, oddly enough, the safety talismans obtained there really were said to be effective, and the old monk’s occasional fortune-tellings tended to hit close to the mark, so the incense offerings never quite died out.

The Jiangsu-Zhejiang region had few true high mountains — what passed for mountains were mostly one or two hundred meters, really more like hills — but the path up was winding and steep, a small bend every five meters, a sharp turn every ten, making for difficult going.

It took Cheng Chang nearly two more hours before he finally spotted the temple’s upturned eaves. He parked on a gentle slope and, holding an umbrella, walked the rest of the way on foot.

The rain had grown heavier than before, accompanied by faint rumbles of thunder. Though it was midday, the sky was, if anything, darker than it had been that morning. In front of the temple, a young monk in a wide-brimmed hat was sweeping the steps. Seeing someone approach, he propped his broom against the temple gate and pressed his palms together. “Benefactor.”

Cheng Chang felt a brief moment of disorientation.

A place like this, still steeped in ancient atmosphere, and a person like this — it reminded him sharply of Great Sui.

After a long moment, he asked, “Is the abbot in? I’d like to inquire about something.”

The young monk nodded and stepped aside. “Please, benefactor, come in.”

The Guanyin Shrine truly was dilapidated, its walls weathered and mottled from a hundred years of wind and rain.

The young monk led Cheng Chang to the main hall, called out “Master” toward a figure dozing on a long table to the left of the altar, and left.

The “master” was a gaunt, wizened old monk. Hearing someone had arrived, he lifted his eyelids and asked, “Seeking safety, or a fortune reading?”

Cheng Chang said, “I’d like to ask you about something.”

“Oh, a fortune reading, then.” The old monk sniffed, seemingly not yet fully awake from his nap. “Fortune-telling in this temple depends on fate and circumstance. This humble monk sees no such connection with you today.”

He closed his eyes again and yawned. “For matters like that, watch the news more. Science and Buddhism together — that’s the path to a happy life.”

Cheng Chang: “…”

“I’ll get a safety talisman first, then.”

“Oh.” The old monk roused himself somewhat. “The talismans here come in three grades — low, middle, and high. Which would you like? Let me tell you upfront — the low grade is eighty-eight, the middle grade one hundred eighty-eight, and the high grade, six hundred eighty-eight.”

Cheng Chang: “…”

This really did have the flavor of extracting money.

“Could I take a look at the talismans first?”

“No.” The old monk lifted an eyelid and glanced at him. “You think you’re picking out merchandise at a shop? Once a talisman’s been looked over by mortal eyes, it loses its power.”

Cheng Chang: “…Then I’ll take one of each — low, middle, and high grade.”

“Heh!” The old monk’s eyes lit up. “Now that’s decisive!”

Cheng Chang took out his wallet. “That’s nine hundred sixty-four total. I’ll pay in cash.”

The old monk stopped him, pulling out two laminated QR codes from the table. “Just scan it. WeChat Pay or Alipay, either works. Counting cash is too much trouble.”

Cheng Chang: “…”

Deep in the mountains as this place was, the technology certainly hadn’t fallen behind.

Cheng Chang took out his phone and scanned the code, then knelt on the prayer cushion and bowed three times, solemnly, before the statue of Guanyin.

He wasn’t sure whom to pray safety for. After a moment’s thought, he picked three people from the scattered fragments of his life: Hé Jiǎn, Duan Mingcheng, and… Yun Xi.

“All done?” By the time Cheng Chang returned to the table, the old monk had already begun dozing off again. He pulled out three safety talismans from a drawer and laid them on the table.

Overall, the three talismans looked identical. If one had to find a difference, the high-grade one had a slightly more antique-looking paper, its cinnabar seal a bit more faded with age; the low-grade one had the most vividly colored paper, its seal looking freshly written in red ink.

Seeing Cheng Chang standing motionless before the table, the old monk assumed he thought he’d been overcharged, and explained with righteous confidence, “Don’t be fooled by how similar these three look — there’s real difference in their essence. This high-grade one, my master wrote it himself, it’s been sitting here for two or three decades, soaked in years of incense offerings. The low-grade one, my young disciple wrote it — though he’s inherited our lineage’s ancient methods, his cultivation isn’t deep enough yet, and what he produces doesn’t satisfy the bodhisattva much, so it’s not as effective.”

He’d grown accustomed to skeptical patrons and had developed a thick skin. Having finished his explanation, he pushed the talismans toward Cheng Chang. “You’ve paid, and I’ve delivered the goods — no refunds, no exchanges.”

Cheng Chang stared at the talismans, still silent.

For no particular reason — only because these talismans looked exactly, precisely, like the one he’d requested at the Guanyin Shrine in Baiyun Temple.

The only difference…

He picked one up and examined it closely. “Do you have the kind here that opens at one end? The kind where… you can put a slip of paper inside, with the name of the person to be blessed written on it?”

Hearing this, the old monk’s eyes went wide. “How do you know about that kind?”

Cheng Chang didn’t answer.

After a moment, he pulled out the talisman he’d once requested for Yun Xi at Baiyun Temple and handed it to the old monk. “Master, take a look at this. Have you ever seen a talisman like this before?”

The old monk took the talisman Cheng Chang handed him, turning it over a few times, then put on his reading glasses and examined the markings on it closely.

Distant thunder rumbled continuously. Without warning, the rain outside had turned torrential, wind moaning through the mountains, rattling the wooden doors of the Guanyin hall.

Before long, the old monk’s expression changed. “You— where did you get this kind of talisman?”

Cheng Chang said nothing, sitting down on the bench in front of the table, staring at him.

The meaning was clear: Master, you still haven’t answered my question.

The old monk said, “I’ve only ever seen this kind of talisman — including the way the markings are written — in ancient texts passed down through my own lineage. That style has been lost for a long time now. My master once told me that those who possess such a talisman are no ordinary people, they’re…”

He swallowed, unable to finish the sentence.

After a moment, he suddenly said to Cheng Chang, “Let me read your fortune.”

He’d said just moments ago that there was no connection today — now, suddenly, there was.

Cheng Chang said nothing further, simply nodded. “Alright.”

The old monk handed him a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. “Write down your name, your ancestral home, and your exact date and time of birth.”

Cheng Chang did as instructed. The old monk took the paper, pulled out a thread-bound book, and flipped through it, murmuring as he read. “You… did you grow up without a father or mother, or lose them early? Thin family ties, ill-fated toward kin and friends?”

Cheng Chang said nothing.

The old monk continued, “And were you… plagued with misfortune from a young age, chronically ill?”

Cheng Chang still said nothing.

The old monk concluded, “You bear the fate of a Heaven-Cursed Lone Star! And what’s more—”

“What’s more, what?” Cheng Chang, seeing the old monk trail off midsentence, pressed him.

He had indeed lost both parents early. Saying he was ill-fated toward kin and friends wasn’t baseless either — the old director who’d adopted him had treated him well, only to die unexpectedly in a car accident when he was in middle school.

His family ties were thin — he had good friends, but no truly close ones; throughout his life, no one had ever truly stepped into it.

As for illness — he suffered from a severe, congenital heart condition.

Outside, thunder cracked one after another, the wind growing fiercer than before.

The old monk looked somewhat unnerved. Gritting his teeth, he pushed the book toward Cheng Chang. “See for yourself.”

The book was printed in vertical columns, the characters in traditional script. Cheng Chang glanced over it — the line the old monk was pointing to read: “Heaven-Cursed Lone Star, virtuous through three lifetimes, one fate, twin tracks.”

One fate, twin tracks…

The old monk stammered, “My learning is shallow, I don’t fully understand what this line means. But my master once said the last four characters explain the first part. He also said…”

He paused. “A person like this — their natural lifespan appears short, but is in truth long. They don’t die easily. Sometimes things look dire, but they turn around, find a way through. And if… they truly do die before their allotted lifespan is up, they’ll come back to life.”

Cheng Chang was silent for a long moment, then asked, “What does ‘come back to life’ mean, exactly?”

Does it mean waking, at the point of death, in another body, in another time and place?

The old monk shook his head, saying he didn’t know. By now, all trace of the mercenary bluster he’d shown when Cheng Chang first arrived had vanished entirely.

He put the book away, his expression deeply conflicted. “But from the literal meaning of that line in the book, it seems to say that you’ve been virtuous through three lifetimes, yet unfortunately bear this fate of a misfortune-plagued Heaven-Cursed Lone Star. Heaven, unable to bear it, compensates you with this ‘one fate, twin tracks.’ As for what exactly ‘one fate, twin tracks’ means, or what ‘coming back to life’ really entails, I…”

Before he could finish, the entire Guanyin hall was suddenly lit by a flash of lightning, followed immediately by a crack of thunder so loud it seemed to shatter the sky. A fierce gust of wind burst through the high window, nearly extinguishing the eternal lamps burning on either side of the shrine.

The old monk froze, stunned by this seemingly heaven-sent omen. After a moment, as if something had suddenly clicked into place, he looked at Cheng Chang, and said, panicked, “That’s not right — you, why did you come here today?”

“You… you still haven’t answered me — where did you get this talisman, one whose style has been lost for so long?”

Cheng Chang looked at him, then, after a moment, said, “I could tell you, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”

The powerful typhoon winds outside drowned out human voices entirely, overwhelming even the thunder and the pounding rain, howling across heaven and earth.

The old monk hadn’t quite caught what Cheng Chang had said. Only now did he begin to truly study the young man before him.

He was extraordinarily handsome — so handsome that the word alone felt insufficient to describe him. Sitting composed in this square hall, the eternal lamps still burning behind him, he looked, at first glance, like a young noble stepped straight out of an ancient painting.

But a young noble in a painting should be untouched by the mortal world’s dust. Here, the howling wind and rain, the leaden sky, seemed instead to cast a murky, inauspicious shadow across his handsome features.

He was clearly a well-bred, dignified man — one of society’s elite.

Why, in weather like this, a fierce typhoon bearing down, would he come here?

Why would he drive alone, deep into these remote mountains, to this crumbling old temple?

The old monk’s thoughts circled back to the beginning. He’d come for a safety talisman.

An ordinary person, receiving such a talisman, however ancient and refined it looked, wouldn’t trace its origins back, wouldn’t go searching for which temple had consecrated it — unless… something had happened to them because of this talisman.

With this thought, eight characters suddenly surfaced in the old monk’s mind — “one fate, twin tracks, come back to life.”

When he’d been telling this young man those absurd, inexplicable things just now, there hadn’t been the slightest trace of surprise on his face. Was that really the reaction of a normal person?

The old monk shot up from his seat, staggering back two steps, staring at Cheng Chang as though looking at some kind of monster, pointing at him. “You, you…”

But he couldn’t finish articulating whatever it was.

Seeing the old monk’s panic, Cheng Chang rose as well, explaining, “Master, something did happen to me. I came here today precisely to get to the bottom of it.”

He didn’t know where to go from here.

He only wanted to understand the fate that bound this life.

One fate, twin tracks — did that mean that no matter which world he was in, the twenty-first century or Great Sui, he was fated to always be an out-of-place traveler?

Lightning lit up the entire hall, illuminating Cheng Chang’s pale skin until it looked thin and translucent. In that moment, his strikingly beautiful features looked both like a god’s and like a spirit’s.

The old monk no longer wanted to hear whatever Cheng Chang was saying. In his mind, only four characters kept circling: come back to life.

“Go, go, get out of here quickly!” In the next instant, the old monk, summoning courage from who knew where, came storming around the table, pushing at Cheng Chang with startling force.

He shoved Cheng Chang out of the hall entirely, out into the endless, sweeping wind and rain. “You’ve got a hard fate, you won’t die easily — you’re some virtuous soul reincarnated, or a spirit reborn, but you bring calamity wherever you go — my temple can’t hold you! Look at this sky — this disaster, it’s you who brought it! If you stay any longer, sooner or later I’ll go down with you!”

With that, he flung Cheng Chang’s umbrella out after him and slammed the temple door shut with a bang.

Rainwater ran down his collar and soaked into his clothes; in an instant he was drenched through.

Cheng Chang stood there, soaked to the bone by the downpour. He’d never been treated this way by anyone before. He stood frozen for a long moment before finally picking up the umbrella from the ground, opening it over his head, and slowly making his way back to where he’d parked.

Fortunately he’d brought a change of clothes. Cheng Chang carried his suitcase back to the car, changed out of his wet clothes, dried himself off, and put on something clean.

He sat in silence in the car for a while, then turned to look back toward the old temple.

The rain stretched endlessly between heaven and earth; the temple’s upturned eaves, faintly visible on his way up, were now nowhere to be seen.

He had come here seeking an answer.

At this point, it could be said he’d found one — or it could be said he hadn’t.

He still didn’t know where to go from here, or how he was meant to live out this life.

Forget it. If he couldn’t work it out, better not to think about it for now.

Better to just focus on staying alive.

Cheng Chang’s gaze drifted to the medicine box in his suitcase, reminding him he hadn’t taken today’s medication on schedule yet. He grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the back seat, intending to take his pills with it, but when he pulled out the medicine box, he found he hadn’t brought his diuretic at all — instead, he’d packed a box of vitamin tablets.

He clearly remembered packing the diuretic in his suitcase. When had it turned into vitamin C?

Looking closer, the two medications’ packaging really did look quite similar.

The diuretic was one of the most critical medications for heart patients, preventing heart failure. For someone like Cheng Chang, who’d just undergone pacemaker surgery after cardiac arrest, this medication couldn’t be skipped for even a single day during at least the first month after surgery — skipping it risked relapse, even death.

Cheng Chang couldn’t understand how he’d made such a careless mistake, but there was no time now to berate himself.

He glanced down at his watch — exactly four o’clock, two hours until dark.

If the roads were clear, he could make it back to Zhixian Village before dusk. From there, it was about a forty-minute highway drive to Hangzhou, and then on to Zhejiang People’s Hospital.

With this plan in mind, Cheng Chang turned on the radio and started the car.

The traffic broadcast signal was poor, a woman’s voice cutting in and out, reporting that the powerful typhoon was intensifying today, the warning level upgraded from orange to red, and that the Shanghai-Hangzhou and Shanghai-Pu expressways would soon be closed. People were advised to stay indoors and avoid travel.

The wind and rain in the mountains were fierce beyond measure, the raindrops heavy and fast, crashing down, only to clash with the powerful gusts midair, scattered into chaotic disarray.

Raindrops struck the car windows from every direction, splattering into pea-sized droplets. Cheng Chang turned on the wipers, but visibility ahead remained poor.

He couldn’t turn back into the mountains — first, because he urgently needed to get to Hangzhou for his diuretic, and second, because he was already halfway along the route; going up or down the mountain now made little difference.

He knew he should stay well away from trees during a thunderstorm typhoon, but he had no choice — he could only ease down on the accelerator, driving quickly but steadily, racing to reach the main road before sunset.

Fortunately, he’d already made it safely through the sharpest bend earlier — if he could just get through the dense forest ahead, he’d be safe.

Thunder rolled continuously through the mountains, lightning flashing the car’s interior bright and dark by turns. The traffic broadcast signal grew worse and worse, and before long, it cut out entirely.

With no other human voice left, it suddenly felt as though it were just him against the entire heavens and earth.

An ordinary person, driving alone through such a surreal, storm-wracked scene, would surely have been terrified long before now. But in this moment, Cheng Chang felt something he couldn’t quite put into words.

His mind wandered, and somehow, the old monk’s words rose again in his ears: “A person like this — their natural lifespan appears short, but is in truth long. They don’t die easily.”

“And if… they truly do die before their allotted lifespan is up, they’ll come back to life.”

He thought of what he’d read in that thread-bound ancient book — Heaven-Cursed Lone Star, one fate… twin tracks.

With a burst of static, the radio in the car connected again, the same woman’s voice as before, cutting in and out: “…bringing you… the current time is… it is now, evening, five thirty.”

Five thirty. Dusk.

The sky above was thick with clouds; the setting sun was nowhere to be seen.

Cheng Chang’s eyes stayed fixed straight ahead. Without warning, a bolt of lightning struck down from the sky, hitting a thick old tree beside the mountain road. The old tree swayed, then snapped at its base, crashing down onto the road.

At that very moment, the symptoms of his missed diuretic finally made themselves known.

A sudden tightness gripped his chest, as though someone had struck his heart with a heavy mallet.

The tree crashing down ahead, the pain seizing his mind — Cheng Chang, clinging to the last thread of consciousness, wrenched the steering wheel hard, swerving away just as the car’s front narrowly avoided the thick fallen trunk.

But this was a mountain road, and turning the wheel meant driving down the slope.

The incline was steep, and the slightest misstep meant losing control entirely. Cheng Chang no longer had the strength to control it.

The car lost its balance, tumbling down the slope. The airbags deployed, slamming his forward-lurching body back into the seat, the back of his head striking the headrest, the pain, in the impact’s shockwave, stealing away his last shred of consciousness.

The rain had drenched heaven and earth into pitch darkness; not a single light shone in the mountains — nothing could be seen at all.

Yet in the moment his eyes closed, Cheng Chang saw, faintly, a figure running toward him, calling out: “Third Young Master.”