“From what we can see currently, her post-surgical condition is fairly good. The child still needs to be observed in the incubator for a period of time…”

The young doctor patiently conversed with the patient’s family outside the ward. The family member listened while nodding. “Thank you, Dr. Ni.”

“Women pay a great price to give birth to children, especially since she had a difficult delivery. Emotionally, you need to comfort her more. As for diet, just follow those precautions I mentioned. Take good care of her.”

The young doctor instructed gently.

“We will certainly follow the doctor’s orders.” The family member said.

“Dr. Ni, you haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

A nurse had just finished administering an IV drip to the patient in the ward and came out, calling to him with a smile.

The doctor glanced at his wristwatch. “Yes, I’ll go now.”

Passing by the nurses’ station, someone called out to him. “Hey, Dr. Ni! Your sister is here!”

He turned his head. A young girl sat on a bench in the corridor, head lowered as she looked at her phone. A female nurse had both hands braced on the counter. “She’s been here for two hours. You were doing rounds, so she just sat there waiting. She ate with us.”

“Thank you.”

He said to the nurse.

“What’s there to thank me for…”

Being watched by this Dr. Ni, the young nurse blushed a little. She watched him walk to the girl’s side. The girl wore headphones, focused on her phone screen.

“Ni Su.”

He called out. She didn’t react. He reached out and removed one of her earphones.

Ni Su immediately turned her face. “Bro!”

“Didn’t I tell you not to turn the volume up too loud when wearing headphones?” Ni Qinglan merely held the earphone near his ear to listen for a moment before frowning.

“…Haha.”

Ni Su laughed awkwardly.

“Doesn’t your medical school have classes today?”

Ni Qinglan asked.

“…I started summer vacation yesterday, bro.” Ni Su reminded him.

Ni Qinglan thought about it—it really was that way. He pressed his brow. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“Forgetting that is fine.”

Ni Su pulled out two tickets from her bag and waved them in front of him. “But you can’t forget this.”

“Let me go to the cafeteria and grab a bite first.”

Ni Qinglan said with a smile.

Today Que County Museum had an exhibition. The two of them had agreed several days ago to go see it together. Ni Qinglan had no surgeries scheduled for the afternoon. After eating, he changed clothes in the duty room and left the hospital with Ni Su.

Que County was in the neighboring city, about an hour’s drive away.

Ni Qinglan’s occupational habit kicked in. While gripping the steering wheel with one hand, he didn’t forget to quiz his sister, making Ni Su break out in a sweat. She couldn’t take it anymore. “Bro, I think you’re way scarier than our teachers…”

“Are you regretting going to medical school now?”

Ni Qinglan kept his eyes on the road ahead, laughing softly.

“The suffering is real.”

Ni Su thought of those thick professional textbooks. She sighed deeply. “But as for regret, there’s really nothing to regret.”

“We Ni family siblings are going to break through in obstetrics and gynecology.”

She laughed heartily.

Ni Qinglan laughed along with her.

They had been to Que County a few times before, but this was their first time at Que County Museum. Perhaps because it was the weekend, there were many people at the museum.

“Everyone move forward, try to move forward, yes… Now what we’re seeing in this display case…”

The guide’s voice came through the microphone. Ni Su was squeezed in the crowd, heads in front blocking her view completely, one after another.

“…Why are there so many people?”

Ni Su couldn’t help but exclaim.

Ni Qinglan protected Ni Su as they followed the crowd forward, passing many illuminated display cases. Inside, artifacts that had weathered the vicissitudes of time had settled into a beauty unique to them.

“I don’t know if anyone has heard of this, but in the Qi Dynasty, there was such a pair of Ni family siblings—brother Ni Qinglan, sister Ni Su. This Ni family brother, in that era when separation between men and women was paramount, dared to treat women’s private ailments, yet was not tolerated by worldly customs. His father forced him to abandon medicine for literature. His younger sister then took up the path of continuing his aspiration. Very regrettably, Ni Qinglan was killed by powerful nobles when he went to the capital for the imperial examinations. This sister then traveled a thousand miles to the capital to seek justice for her brother, beat the Denunciation Drum, and demand fairness…”

The guide’s voice gradually fell into everyone’s ears. Both Ni Su and Ni Qinglan silently listened to this familiar story.

In the medical history of traditional Chinese medicine, on the page about gynecology, the “Ni siblings” were briefly mentioned. So coincidentally, they shared the same names.

And so coincidentally, Ni Su and her brother today, hundreds and thousands of years later, had also walked the same path as that pair of siblings from the past.

Today, they had come for the Ni siblings.

“Qi Dynasty history briefly mentioned a Winter Examination Case. The catalyst for this Winter Examination Case was the death of the Ni family’s elder brother… This story can be so specific because the Qi Dynasty Ni siblings’ ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Gynecology’ circulated widely. Legend has it this story was personally recorded by the Ni family’s younger sister, Ni Su, in ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Gynecology.’ Originally this couldn’t be verified because most of what’s circulated now are copies.”

“But last June, the Qi Dynasty Ni siblings’ ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Gynecology’ excavated from the Nanxiangling tomb cluster in our Que County was confirmed by historical experts to be the original of ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Gynecology.’ The brief account at the end also confirms the authenticity of the Ni siblings’ story…”

Accompanying the guide’s voice, Ni Su looked at the precious original in the transparent display case. An indescribable emotion arose in her heart. She truly couldn’t articulate what it was.

Perhaps it was a kind of absurd feeling that despite being separated by hundreds and thousands of years, it still felt familiar.

The crowd moved forward. Ni Su also moved forward in her daze. She saw that beside that copy of ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Gynecology,’ there was also a copy of ‘Strategies for Great Peace.’

Her heart suddenly stirred.

“What’s puzzling is that at the same time we discovered the original of ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Gynecology,’ we also discovered ‘Strategies for Great Peace’ written by Qi Dynasty’s General Yujie, Xu Hexue.”

“Xu Hexue, courtesy name Ziling, was appointed Great General Yujie at age nineteen, yet his young life was destroyed by treacherous ministers and a fatuous emperor. The poems and writings he left behind in his lifetime were extremely few. To this day, we only have the portion compiled by He Tong, who was first a Hanlin scholar and later appointed to the position of Assistant Administrator of Political Affairs in the Qi Dynasty. ‘Strategies for Great Peace’ is one of the ten great military texts of ancient China. It has always been passed down as the masterwork of General Yujie Xu Hexue, but we still cannot know the specific time when ‘Strategies for Great Peace’ was written…”

“Historical experts have confirmed that this ‘Strategies for Great Peace’ excavated together with ‘Miscellaneous Discussions on Gynecology’ is General Yujie’s original, but they also don’t know why an original gynecology medical text that pioneered gynecological medicine and an original military text aimed at achieving great peace would appear together… ‘Strategies for Great Peace’ played an extremely important role in the Qi Dynasty’s military campaigns and also had a significant impact on later generations. Now let’s look over here…”

In one display case, three books were exhibited. One was a gynecology medical text, one was a military text, and what about the other one? Ni Su remembered the pictures she had seen on web pages. She squeezed forward a few steps with the crowd. Bright lights shone on the books—ancient objects that had spanned hundreds and thousands of years, settled in history, and only today saw daylight.

It lay there quietly.

“Based on the handwriting, this ‘A’Xi’s Food Record’ should also have been written by General Yujie. This shows that our general not only had extremely high talent in military strategy, but also had his own research on the matter of food. But among all this, what attracts the most attention is still a poem on the title page.”

The museum’s large screen displayed the title page of that food record in a timely manner. The enlarged subtitles appeared line by line.

Ni Su raised her head.

It was a poem titled “Song of Youth.”

It was that general’s brief life, his past, and also his regret.

“If in youth, golden wind and jade dew, holding hands cutting red candles.”

At the right moment, the narrator read out this last line. “From this we can see that this General Yujie must have had someone he really liked when he was alive. It’s just a pity that his affection ultimately became regret…”

Perhaps the screen’s light was somewhat glaring, or perhaps because of something else, Ni Su couldn’t help but have her eyes moisten slightly. She had no way to describe this strange stirring in her heart.

Her phone vibrated in her hand. Ni Su came back to her senses and answered the call in the noisy crowd. “Dad…”

“Where’s your brother? I’m calling him and this kid absolutely won’t answer!”

Father Ni’s voice on the other end of the phone carried some anger. “The Lin family’s daughter is such a good girl. What’s wrong with me asking him to meet her? Didn’t you go find him? What are you two doing? He…”

“I’ll let my brother listen to you!”

Ni Su feared his nagging the most. Holding up her phone, she turned back. “Bro…”

The lights in the museum clustered like flowers. Ni Su’s voice stopped abruptly the moment her phone was about to touch someone’s cheek. Behind her, there was no Ni Qinglan at all.

A young man in white shirt and black pants, a face with refined bone structure, eyes transparent as dew.

Because of the height difference, her phone only reached below his earlobe. There were many people around, yet he clearly heard that urgent and angry voice coming from the phone: “Ni A’Xi! Are you even listening?”

“No one knows exactly how ‘A’Xi’s Food Record’ got its name. We can perhaps have a romantic interpretation—perhaps it was because of the ‘she’ in that ‘Song of Youth’—called A’Xi…”

On the screen, accompanied by melodious music, the documentary’s narration sounded.

Before the transparent display case, two people’s eyes met.