Chapter 5
Chapter 5: The Itch That Ignited Desire
### **The Inescapable Favor**
- **An Awkward Entreaty:**
Xu Ling's gaze lingers, rendering him speechless and rooted in a state of stunned amazement as Yu Mengna pointedly averts her eyes. Her words quiver with a palpable sense of desperate urgency:
*"Hurry… My back is a *fiery torment.*
- **Tentative Consent**: With a hesitant and faltering *"Could I…?"*, he gingerly lifts the hem of her blouse. His fingertips glide over her skin, which feels as cool and velvety as *"silk spun from the ethereal glow of moonlight, transmuted into the supple softness of living flesh."
- **Fumbling Interlude:**
*"Higher—no, *substantially higher*!*" Yu hisses through tightly clenched teeth as his hand laboriously ascends her spine, only to be abruptly halted by the *"unyielding, uncompromising band"* of her undergarment.
### **The Collision of Chance and Yearning**
- **Euphoric Reprieve:**
Xu deftly nudges the strap aside, and his nails tenderly trace the spot that has been plaguing her with a gentleness that borders on reverential care. A shuddering sigh of profound relief, laden with a sense of sweet release, escapes Yu, as if "the tender, revitalizing warmth of the winter sun is thawing skin that has been numbed and desolate by the harsh, biting frost of an endless winter."
- **Reluctant Retreat**: His fingers linger, loath to withdraw, engraving the *"luxuriously plush and velvety warmth"* of her bare back indelibly into his memory. Her sharp inhalation shatters the serene moment.
*"Adjust the strap! My… *clothing* is all in disarray!*
- **A Touch Misguided:**
Xu squeezes his eyes shut tightly and reaches out blindly, his hand inadvertently brushing against *"uncharted, unexpected contours".
- **Yu's Outcry**: *"That is *unequivocally not* my spine!*"
- **Aftermath Aflame**: They stand motionless, the air thick with *"acute mortification and a slowly smouldering, electric tension that crackles with unspoken emotion"* as Yu turns away, her cheeks suffused with a deep, vivid crimson that betrays her intense humiliation.
Scent and Schemes
Xu Ling remained seated, utterly still. His gaze meandering in a meditative fashion from her nose to her lips, his thoughts lost in a realm of abstraction, he suddenly raised his fingertips to his nose, inhaling ever so slightly, and a delicate sweetness hung in the air.
"Sister Na", he enquired, his brow furrowing with curiosity, "what fragrance graces your skin?"
"Does the natural aroma of my skin… appeal to you?" Yu Mengna whispered, a delicate flush of crimson blooming beneath her porcelain-like cheeks.
"Deeply", Xu Ling murmured, completely entranced by her nearness.
"You impudent rascal," she chided, yet the sidelong glance she cast his way sparkled with amusement.
"Is it so wrong to relieve an itch? This is slander!" He clasped his hands together in a show of mock solemnity, his eyelids closing dramatically, much like those of a penitent monk in prayer.
"Silly boy!" Her laughter tinkled like the sound of wind chimes. "I'm only joking—your honor remains untarnished…"
"Please go and rest now, Sister," he gently urged. "The spies of dawn are beginning to stir. Let us not allow idle gossip to spoil this moment."
Yet, the stillness of the night masked its ominous significance.
In the shadowy lanes beyond, Wu Tiedan, the malevolent kinsman of Liu Shuxiang, gathered his group of conspirators. The eyes of the furtive individuals glittered with malice as the sycophants hissed their complaints:
"Xu Ling continues to thrive without a care! Your exile was for nothing!"
"While the tigers are away, the jackals assume power!"
"Yes! Even Xu Fengchun, that old and crafty fox, is grovelling at the feet of that young upstart!"
Tiedan's knuckles turned white as he gripped his teacup tightly. "Then the common village troublemakers won't be enough," he spat through clenched teeth, his fierce glare piercing towards the west, where the light from Xu Ling's hearth glowed.
Hu Lai, a slippery and unwelcome presence, slithered forward: "Your Liu Dagou is still limping, while that favoured one wallows in wealth."
"We'll unleash a rabid dog," Tiedan growled menacingly. "At sunrise, I'll go and fetch Sun Dali, the city's fearsome butcher. His cleaver is eager to taste the flesh of those who dare to rise above their station."
Chen Sanpi, with his weasel-like face, smirked and simpered: "Sun Dali rules over the darkest corners of the county. His gaze can wither the crops in the fields, and his very breath can snuff out the stars in the sky."
"By the first touch of the frost," Tiedan vowed, his face twisted into a mask of venomous hatred, "Xu Ling's name will be forgotten and rot beneath the cold winter soil."
---
As the golden rays of morning crept in, Yu Mengna ate her breakfast with a sense of ceremonial haste. After softly bidding farewell to Xu Ling's household and the wise old chieftain, she mounted her scarlet motorcycle and sped away, disappearing like a metallic streak that faded into the dust of the county road.
The Whispering Woods
With Yu Mengna's departure, Xu Ling released the tension coiled tightly beneath his ribs. Village Elder Xu Fengchun placed a gnarled hand on his shoulder, the gesture carrying the weight of decades filled with bountiful harvests and arduous hardships: "Let these aged bones of autumn safeguard the orchards. Go and seek what the cure for your father requires."
"Uncle," Xu Ling replied, his gaze fixed on the phoenix-shaped peaks that pierced through the clouds, "the veins of Fenghuang hold remedies that no apothecary has in stock. The sickle moon of August waits for no one's recuperation." His bamboo basket seemed to sigh as he adjusted the hemp straps, and the foraging sickle at his waist glinted in the dawn light like a protective amulet.
The elder's laughter rumbled like thunder in the distance. "Then be on your way, before the mountain spirits consume all of the daylight."
---
Xu Ling vanished into the verdant depths of the forest. The hesitant rays of dawn gilded the spiderwebs strung between the ancient pines that had stood for a thousand years, their trunks lined with furrows that resembled the brows of wise old men. His boots sank into the rich loam that was brimming with the memories of forgotten seasons, and with each step, the earth released whispers of decaying leaves and the hidden secrets of mycorrhizal networks. Ahead of him, the cliffs of Fenghuang rose imposingly, like black obsidian fangs encrusted with mosses that were older than entire dynasties.
In the place where the shadows were the thickest, he knelt. Pressing his palms against the stone that hummed with ancestral memories, he became a channel for the legacy of the Medicinal Sage. The cliff face seemed to tremble, and its mineral surface seemed to dissolve, revealing treasures nestled within the crevices: ginseng roots coiled in a perfect mandala pattern, polygonum tendrils cascading down like celestial calligraphy, their medicinal glow visible only to those with enlightened vision.
Twenty metres above the reach of mortal danger hung the most precious specimen—a ginseng king whose rhizomatic crown represented centuries of growth. Xu Ling's sickle touched the limestone, causing crystalline fragments to protest with sparks. He climbed upwards, his ascent as fluid as ink spreading on rice paper, his toes memorising the tiny fissures that were no wider than the wings of a cicada.
Halfway through his vertical journey, the air grew thick and oppressive. Six serpentine guardians emerged from their lichen-covered camouflage, their emerald hoods flared menacingly. Their leader swayed from side to side, its jewelled hood expanded, and its venom sacs swelling like poisonous grapes, as Xu Ling's heartbeat pounded in rhythm with the ancient pulse of the mountain.
Serpent's Gambit
Jade-hooded serpents slithered out from the depths of the cavern, their forked tongues flickering, leaving behind streaks of crimson in the air. Xu Ling found himself surrounded by the alpha viper, as thick as a python during the monsoon season, undulating in front of him with a reptilian arrogance that was palpable. Its emerald scales glistened like a hoard of cursed treasure, and its lesser companions remained motionless, frozen in a ritualistic formation behind their leader.
A withered leaf twirled gracefully through the stillness of the air. Xu Ling's pupils shrank to tiny pinpoints, and in a flash, he launched himself backward. His hemp sandals skimmed the surface of the cliff face with an otherworldly lightness, much like a water strider effortlessly gliding across the surface of a pond. The alpha viper struck at the spot where his shadow had just been, its fangs sinking into the granite. Its hiss echoed through the pores of the limestone, filling the air with a menacing sound.
"Clever creatures," Xu Ling murmured under his breath, his hand gripping the sickle tightly in a trembling display of defiance. The battalion of serpents advanced with a tactical precision that was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. Their diamond-shaped heads wove through the air, creating a venomous pattern that seemed almost like a macabre dance.
When the serpents launched their collective attack, a blur of scaled bodies moving with the speed of lightning, Xu Ling unleashed the *Soul-Reign Art*. Golden filaments burst forth from his irises, ensnaring the vipers in a gilded web of paralysis. The alpha viper convulsed violently, its neural pathways being disrupted and unravelling under the overwhelming power of the medicinal sage's dominion.
"*Twist and turn*," he hissed through his clenched teeth.
The king of the serpents obeyed, its body contorting and knotting into a complex pattern reminiscent of ancient Celtic designs. It then stretched itself taut, resembling a bowstring pulled to its limit. Xu Ling's palm made contact with its ventral scales, and he felt a shock of cold smoothness, like touching glacial silk. It was a sensation so intoxicating that it could drive even the sanest of men to keep serpents in luxurious ivory boxes.
"Gather the herbs that grow in the shadows," he commanded, his voice firm and authoritative as he imprinted his instructions into the subdued psyche of the creature. "Collect every rhizome and every leaf that is bathed in the light of the moon."
The entourage of scaled serpents retreated, their movements sluggish and obedient, as if they were under a spell. Their sinuous forms disappeared into the verdant depths of the forest, leaving Xu Ling alone. Now, he turned his gaze towards the most precious treasure on the cliff: a ginseng plant that was centuries old, clinging tenaciously to the shale. Its root system spread out like branches of lightning that had been frozen in amber, a testament to its resilience and age.
Roots and Revelation
The ginseng's foliage undulated like silken veils in a forgotten pleasure house of bygone eras, their flirtatious sway weaving a siren's call across the chasm. Xu Ling sprang between ancient arboreal sentinels bearded with moss, their trunks inscribed with the cryptic chronologies of dendrochronology, before seizing a sinuous vine to descend into the cliff's gaping maw.
Three centuries unravelled beneath his fingertips—each rhizome tendril a cartographer's ink tracing the contours of forgotten dynasties. When the root crown emerged at last, its fractal elegance as precise as celestial script, Xu Ling nestled the vegetal antiquity in sun-weathered linen. *"Even the Yellow Emperor's healers,"* he breathed, *"would spill blood for such a relic."
---
The apothecary's brass bell tolled with monastic gravity as he crossed the threshold. Wang Shanshan materialised like a devoted acolyte, her gaze hungrily mapping the bamboo basket's curves.
"Another patriarch of the earth?" Her voice hummed with botanical fervour.
Before Xu Ling could reveal his treasure, a bureaucrat reeking of stale parchment and ambition shouldered past, clutching a poultice bag like a shield of bureaucratic armour. Xu Ling's sage-awakened sight pierced the man's veneer—noble brow betrayed by ashen lips, a jaw set in righteous resolve undercut by flickering *shen.
"Your spleen's fire drowns in tides of phlegm," Xu Ling pronounced, charcoal skimming rice paper. "Steep mulberry bark in chrysanthemum ash thrice daily—procure swallow's nest clay if the tremors persist."
The official's scornful snort faltered as Elder Xie emerged in a haze of dried mugwort, his arthritis-twisted fingers hovering over the prescription.
"Magnesium depletion masquerading as liver yang excess…" Xie's rheumy eyes widened like a scholar unearthing ancient prophecy. "This formula—*it is alchemical pharmacopeia!*"
Xu Ling observed with detached amusement the ginseng's rhizomes now murmuring the ballads of terraced fields against the apothecary's scarred countertop. The bureaucrat extended a wrist veined with the anxieties of ambition, while dawn's golden light gilded the eternal dance between doubt and revelation.
Diagnosis and Destiny
Xie Baosheng adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles, lenses magnifying eyes alight with scholarly avidity. "By what arcane art did you diagnose acute epiglottitis without pulse palpation, young sage?"
Magistrate Liu Zhonghua's bureaucratic poise fractured. "Elder Xie! What spectral malady gnaws at me?"
"Your throat's guardian swells like risen dough," the herbalist intoned, nail tapping Xu Ling's prescribed vellum. "Had twilight found you untreated, Charon's ferry would demand triple toll." The official paled, clutching the herbal script as one might sacred texts rescued from conflagration.
"Xu Ling of Fenghuang", Liu declared with magisterial solemnity, "my office shall ever welcome your righteous cause."
As the magistrate withdrew, Xie Yuxuan emerged from behind indigo-dyed tapestries, her bespoke sapphire suit eclipsing the apothecary's dim lamplight. She smoothed imaginary creases from tailored wool, a smirk playing at her lips as she noted Xu Ling's rustic blush.
"Another trophy plucked from the mountain's breast, wild one?" Her scent—neroli and patrician hauteur—invaded his sensory realm.
Xu Ling unveiled the ginseng with a woodsman's understatement. Twin gasps converged as rhizomes, like lightning fossilised in amber, emerged from the bamboo cradle.
"Three centuries of growth!" Yuxuan's lacquered nails hovered, as if fearing profanity. "You carted this botanical relic like common greens!"
Xie Baosheng's offer erupted like Lunar New Year fireworks: "Two million yuan!" A sum to erect village infirmaries or claim a lakeside villa's western wing.
As Xu Ling pocketed the bank draft, the elder leaned across the sandalwood counter, his breath redolent of decades of bitter decoctions. "Now disclose your secret—how did you pierce Liu's qi corruption?"
"Have your tomes recorded," Xu Ling murmured as twilight gilded drying herbs, "the Luminous Breath Discernment Technique?"
Yuxuan's jade teacup stalled mid-air. Xie Baosheng's arthritic fingers spasmed against ledgers. Across the tiled floor, the ginseng's shadow stretched like a botanical prophecy, its fractal roots weaving the forgotten lore of diagnostic arts.
Breath of Destiny
Xie Baosheng's parchment-thin fingers coiled around Xu Ling's wrist, papery yet unyielding. "The Luminous Breath Arts vanished with Ming dynasty alchemists—what spectral hermit taught you these forbidden diagnostics?"
Xu Ling's laugh hummed with the resinous scent of pine and the echo of cliffside winds. "My master read qi tides in owl pellets and cicada exoskeletons." The partial truth glimmered like fool's gold in mountain streams, shrouded in deliberate ambiguity.
Xie Yuxuan's breath hitched. She conjured an image of his mentor: a wizened sage gnawing bitter herbs, deciphering pulse rhythms from the mating dances of fireflies beneath starlit canopies.
"Five autumns past," Xu Ling added, tracing phantom characters in the air as though etching a tombstone, "he ascended during meditation beneath the mist of Nine Phoenix Waterfall."
The elder's grip softened, shifting from inquisition to reverence. "The Chen heiress—her lungs draw breath, yet her soul withers. Will you…"
"Before the moonrise severs her shen's mooring," Xu Ling interjected, recognising the celestial qi dislocation described in the *Bamboo Scrolls of Xishan*, "I shall stabilise her spirit."
---
The Lexus' Nappa leather cradled Xu Ling like rain-soaked tree frogs clinging to slick leaves, a paradox of urban luxury and wild agility. He observed concrete skyscrapers fracturing earth's meridians through bulletproof glass, Xie Yuxuan's tuberose perfume clashing with the earthy tang of dried centipedes in his satchel—a battle of cosmopolitan elegance and woodland alchemy.
The VIP suite's air hung heavy as quicksilver. Beneath Swiss lace linens, the child's complexion mirrored bleached coral: a vibrant facsimile of life in the shadow of decay. Xu Ling's fingertips mapped three qi disruptions through her radial artery, each pulse a riddle written in ancient script:
1. **Celestial Pulse (Cun):** Drifting like dandelion spores on cosmic winds—an invasion of heavenly imbalance.
2. **Mortal Pulse (Guan):** Thick as congealed toad venom—phlegm calcifying the gates of her spirit.
3. **Chthonic Pulse (Chi):** Faint as moonstones buried in silt—depletion of her foundational essence.
"By whose authority do you intrude?" A roar shattered the diagnostic trance. A lab-coat-clad figure materialised, reflex hammer gripped like a mythic bludgeon.
Xu Ling's eyelids lifted slowly, pupils absorbing the residual qi auroras: swirling malachite tempests veined with arterial lightning. The child's core affliction clarified in his mind's eye: her celestial *hun* soul adrift beyond the mortal *po*'s grasp, the umbilical cord of her spirit severed at birth.
The Unspoken Diagnosis
The clinical sterility of the hospital corridor dissolved as a figure emerged—a middle-aged man in a starch-white coat, his brass insignia declaring *Director Pan, Internal Medicine*. Xu Ling's fingertips lingered over the unconscious girl's radial artery, his diagnostic reverie shattered by the interloper's visage: eyes like fractured onyx shards ringed by scleral halos, a raptor's beak of a nose above taut, bloodless lips, and cheekbones carving deep furrows of shadow. A physiognomy sketched in treachery.
*To parley with jackals is to squander breath,* Xu Ling mused, refocusing on the threadbare cadence beneath his touch. The weight of Xie Baosheng's presence at his shoulder lent silent sanction—this unorthodox examination now bore the seal of venerable tradition.
"Submerged pulse… yang depletion… a guise of dual deficiency," he murmured, the technical lexicon belied by his racing deductions. The patient's peony-blush complexion mocked conventional pathology. When her lids parted to reveal discordant pupils—one constricted to a starlit pinpoint, its twin dilated into an abyssal void—certainty crystallized.
"Remove your peasant grime from our esteemed patient!" Director Pan's spittle splattered Xu Ling's rolled shirt cuff. "Credentials! Sterile garb! You reek of barnyard and provincial obtuseness!"
With ceremonial slowness, Xu Ling tilted the child's jaw upward, observing the director's carotid pulse flutter like poisoned tributaries beneath papery skin. "Bilateral pupillary disparity confirms pulmonary stasis," he intoned in precise Mandarin, wielding terminology as both scalpel and provocation.
Xie Baosheng's cane struck the marble with judicial finality. Materializing between them, the elder's murmur carried the edge of a honed blade: "Three days you've wasted. Shall we review your billing codes alongside Governor Li's impending visit?"
The director's arm froze mid-gesture. Xie Yuxuan advanced, her platinum hair gleaming under the institutional lights as she unfurled a silk-bound array of acupuncture needles.
"Four-fifths certainty," Xu Ling preempted, rotating a millennia-old *Hua Tuo* needle. His palm hovered above the xiphoid process—not the anatomical heart's cage, but the crucible where primal dread coalesces. "The earth's embrace caused no fracture. It stifled the cry now drowning her qi channels."
As the silver steel pierced the *Danzhong* acupoint, a wet, rattling sigh escaped the child—the visceral verse of damned sorrow finding voice.
The Fractured Hierarchy
Xie Baosheng's diminutive eyes flared like split mung beans scalded by sudden heat. *Four-fifths certainty?* The boy might as well have claimed dominion over命运's pendulum. At the bedside, Madam Zhou's trembling fingers danced across her phone, kindling hope through etheric currents that sparked muted sobs in distant receivers.
"Walk as if treading upon glazed jade," Xie Yuxuan cautioned, her glacial elegance fissured by apprehension. "This lineage's roots interlace with power's deepest taproots—one misstep entombs us all."
Director Pan's mobile clattered against sterile steel, his arms splaying like tattered crow's wings over the prized patient. "This temple of healing brooks no rural sorcery!" Beyond the glass, the security detail's advance vibrated the floor—mercenaries disguised as orderlies, their leader a colossal form cleft by facial scars like petrified lightning.
Xu Ling sensed the assault through rippling air before the recruit's boot leather creaked. A serpentine sweep of his leg met space, yielding the sharp crack of a tibia dislocating from its socket. Polyurethane batons hung mid-strike as the doorway thundered: "Cease!"
Vice-Chancellor Wu's entrance unravelled the chaos like Athena parting the storm of Troy. Director Pan's lips writhed, spinning new falsehoods: "These mountebanks—"
"—were expounding on theories of haematological stagnation," the vice-chancellor interjected, his gaze igniting with recognition as it fell on Xie Baosheng's patriarchal visage. The unspoken name hummed through the ward—a living relic from the hospital's founding annals, his likeness echoing in oil portraits lining the Dean's Hall, where revolutionary medals tarnished behind glass.
The security detail recoiled as if scorched, their weapons turning to leaden weights in their hands. In that suspended moment, two sovereigns faced eternity's reflection: one crowned with the silver needles of peasant wisdom, the other enthroned upon the leather-soled illusions of authority.
The Scales of Trust
Vice President Sun's congenial facade fractured as Xie Baosheng's reedy voice pierced the sterile atmosphere. "Your institution's decay begins at its helm—so reckless in conferring rank upon farmyard upstarts!" The deputy director's jowls quivered, his venomous sidelong glance at Director Pan telegraphing imminent professional annihilation.
"Master Xie", Sun murmured with calculated deference, "had we anticipated your esteemed presence…" His ocular dissection of Xu Ling's frayed cuffs screamed silent derision. "Might this… *specialist* require access to our modern facilities?"
Xie's silver beard rippled with suppressed amusement. "The celestial healer scorns mechanised cages. Witness—his needles conduct the primordial symphony of yin and yang!"
Director Pan lurched forward like a derailed puppet. "Deputy Director! This mountebank—"
"—carries burdens my ancestral honour shall bear," Xie's voice avalanched through the ward. "Your expertise lies solely in polishing bureaucrats' heels."
The staccato percussion of stilettos shattered the impasse. Zhou Yao materialised like quicksilver incarnate, her Valentino-sheathed consort Yan Ke billowing arrogance despite collar-ringed perspiration.
"Uncle Xie." Yan's shallow bow clashed with his sneering mouth. "This constitutes your paragon of healing arts?"
Zhou's vermilion-tipped fingers hovered near Xu Ling's homespun sleeve, contact avoided. "Does the maestro… require contemporary instrumentation?" Her Mandarin's Californian lilt gilded contempt. "Or shall we anticipate sacrificial fowl divinations?"
Xu Ling twirled a *Hua Tuo* needle across weathered fingertips—argent metal capturing fluorescence like imprisoned starlight. "Madam's vigilance humbles me." His wintry smile sharpened. "Shall we formalise doubts?"
He gestured toward the inert biometric displays. "Three insertions. Should her oxygen saturation fail to ascend ten increments, I'll surrender my hands to your judgement."
Zhou's retort died mid-breath, throttled by Xie Baosheng's rasping chuckle. "Phoenix gamble, boy! Best invoke your forebears' vigilance."
As Xu Ling's inaugural needle breached *Lieque*, cardiac monitors stuttered. Director Pan's fountain pen clattered like fallen royalty. Yan's Patek Philippe ticked like an Armageddon chronograph.
Nine stories beneath their feet, dawn's first rays ignited the hospital's tarnished brass plaque memorialising Xie's 1972 conquest over the pox. The ghost of irony smirked.
Alchemy of Trust
Xu Ling's self-deprecating smile held the crispness of autumn frost. "My apprenticeship unfolded beneath the tutelage of a village sage, his knowledge etched by seasons rather than parchment." His posture radiated acute awareness—a sapling amidst redwood sceptics.
The couple's synchronised glance toward Xie Baosheng reverberated with silent interrogation. The elder's laughter rumbled like distant thunder: "Vellum accolades measure dust! How many gilded scholars failed to decipher this enigma?"
Director Pan's jugular pulsed beneath his starched collar. "You'd stake an heir's vitality on… on…" His sputter crystallised the unvoiced *hedge wizardry* lingering like miasma.
Xu Ling's inquiry sliced through pretence. "Preceding unconsciousness—was there an impact?"
Liu Yan's nephrite cufflinks whispered affirmation. "A schoolyard tumble… superficial abrasions…"
"Abrasions that birthed internal tempests," Xu Ling countered. "Did coral-hued sputum precede the void?"
Zhou Yao's grip on her crocodile-skin clutch dissolved. This provincial youth had reconstructed their daughter's collapse through elemental deduction.
"Master Xu", Liu Yan inclined his Patek Philippe toward dawn's light, "rekindle her sunrise, and my influence becomes your celestial armour."
The requisition for auric needles provoked Director Pan's derisive snort. Xie Yuxuan's lacquered nails bit crescent moons into flesh—she'd seen Kyoto acupuncturists falter before the metal's mercurial will.
When the gilded filament materialised, Xu Ling's digits commenced their overture. The inaugural argent needle penetrated *Danzhong* with lunar certainty. Xie Baosheng's spectacles fogged—never in seven decades had he witnessed such preternatural precision.
As Xu Ling elevated the golden needle, chronos itself paused. Director Pan's sneer petrified. Xie Yuxuan's doubt duelled with dawning reverence.
The supple metal rippled like synaptic fire as Xu Ling's arm descended—a swordsman's strike meeting silk. When the filament quivered at military attention within *Lieque*, the pulse oximeter's banshee wail shattered delusion.
Beneath their feet, the hospital's tarnished plaque memorialising Xie's 1972 triumph gleamed with renewed lustre. Above, auric truth unravelled doubt's shroud.
Resonance of the Ancients
Xu Ling's eyelids descended as primordial qi enveloped the auric needle, transmuting its malleability to adamantine purpose. Xie Yuxuan's alabaster forehead creased—could this rustic practitioner truly command gold's mercurial nature?
The chamber's collective inhalation stilled as the gilded filament breached *Kongzui*穴, defying metallurgic logic like dawn penetrating frost. Director Pan's Montblanc rolled into shadows as subsequent argent needles blossomed across the child's meridians—celestial cartography mapping recovery's path.
A digitalis flick to the final needle's base unleashed vibrational harmonics. The HVAC system groaned with bestial reverberations—not mechanical clamour, but the dragon-tiger duet memorialised in long-lost treatises. Xie Baosheng's cane met linoleum in discordant cadence as epiphany struck: *This youth channels the Roaring Pulse of Azure Dragons.
Cardiac monitors wailed their electronic dirge. Crimson ichor desecrated bleached linens as Ranran spasmed, ejecting onyx-hued coagulum. Zhou Yao's Hermès silk stifled a whimper. Liu Yan's Brioni sleeve constricted—patrician composure fracturing at parenthood's precipice.
Director Pan pounced, a jackal scenting vulnerability. "Behold the fraud's carnage!" His manicured claws lunged toward the oscillating needles.
Xu Ling's palm met thoracic armour—a crane-wing strike propelling Pan into defibrillator carts. "Disrupt this constellation," his voice carried arctic finality, "and her qi river runs dry."
Xie Yuxuan observed the auric vectors now emitting uncanny radiance. Her grandsire's awed murmur hung suspended: *Longyin Huxiao Zhenfa…* The Dragon's Chant, Tiger's Cry Method—preserved solely in Southern Song manuscripts consumed by Red Guard flames.
As the EKG flatlined, Xu Ling's thumbs anchored Ranran's *Yintang*穴. The golden array hummed a fractal lullaby. Twelve eternities compressed into moments until—
A gasp. Frail. Moist. Mortal.
Pulse oximetry resumed its verdant ballet as Ranran's eyelids rippled—not coma's vacant tremor, but sentient emergence. Zhou Yao's Birkin tumbled, disregarded, as she lunged, arrested by Xu Ling's raised palm.
"The serpent's venom yet writhes," he intoned. Argent tendrils spiralled from his phalanges, embroidering the needle matrix. "Tarry but moments, noble mother. Your phoenix-child breaches the veil."
Nine tiers beneath their drama, the hospital's commemorative plaque quivered in its mounting—whether shaken by subterranean truth or mundane machinery, history declined to clarify.
The Haemal Epiphany
"What profanity compels you?" Xu Ling's resonant admonition arrested Director Pan's invasive gesture mid-transgression. The bureaucrat recoiled, nursing his violated wrist like fractured jade. "Does your occluded vision conflate healing crises with mortal jeopardy?" Pan's bombast swelled beneath Liu Yan's magisterial observation. "This provincial healer dallies with Thanatos' shears!"
Xu Ling's chuckle resonated with the permafrost's austerity. "True temerity resided in your custodianship. A pulmonary haematoma arising from nursery misadventure—primal knowledge among field scholars."
Vice Dean Sun's titanium chart met the flooring in metallic dissonance. "Absurdity! Vascular lesions cannot invoke protracted sopor!"
"Save when entwined with twin psyche-shattering traumas," Xie Baosheng decreed, examining the pitch-black coagulation befouling Ranran's bedding. "Mark well—congealed plasma murmurs secrets your contrivances silence."
Zhou Yao's memory pierced the mourning shroud. "The earth-dweller's touch… her cry when chill annelid grazed her sole…"
Xu Ling inclined his crown. "Initial trauma incarcerated essence; its successor manacled respiration. Your aeriform manacles forged opulent bondage." The censure loomed—lancets above sanitised arenas, epochs of institutional dereliction anatomised by humus-scented digits.
As vitals steadied, Xu Ling's culminating needle penetrated *Xuanji*. Crimson resurgence streamed, auroral-hued and revivifying. Ranran's waness yielded to magnolia's flush; thoracic metre reanimated through selfhood's volition.
Director Pan's vocation flatlined with the electrocardiogram's renascent tempo. Xie Yuxuan's clinical codices lay discarded—here throbbed the ur-language of healing, inscribed in qi's ideograms and ancestral tenacity.
Nine substrata beneath, the sanitarium's memorial tablet imbibed novel radiance. Chroniclers, it seemed, preferred their exemplars untainted by neon's artificial glare.
The Pulse of Rebirth
Argent filaments retracted like celestial bodies retreating from daylight's dominion. Liu Yan and Zhou Yao flanked the revival bed, their ocular caresses tracing their daughter's resurgent vitality. Behind Vice Dean Sun's stoic façade, Director Pan's sodden collar betrayed his disintegrating composure—perspiration's hieroglyphics etching professional demise.
The deputy director's palate tasted funeral pyre cinders—relief's nectar poisoned by career apocalypse. "Mr Liu", he entreated, "might advanced diagnostic imaging provide… comprehensive validation?"
Pan's parroting acquired simian urgency: "Precision demands computed tomography! Lingering haematomas require technological revelation!"
Xu Ling's cervical inclination radiated tectonic calm. "Let alloyed truth bear witness to nature's craft." His equanimity engraved deeper humiliation upon institutional pretence.
Medical chariots desecrated the sanctuary. Pan loomed behind radiographers like a carrion-starved raptor, tablet glare illuminating his dilated pupils. "Pulmonary verification necessitates photon penetration!" he implored as stethoscopic pronouncements heralded physiological resurrection.
Xie Baosheng's chuckle resonated with dynastic gravitas. "Shall we consult the corporeal library?" His digital triad descended upon Ranran's radial artery—three pressure points decrypting qi's renaissance. The chamber suspended animation as ancestral wisdom communed with mitochondrial rebirth.
"Thirty solar minutes," the patriarch decreed, ocular arches challenging the youth.
"Sixty thoracic expansions," the rural savant amended, index finger raised like Greenwich's prime meridian.
As chronometric prophecy dissolved, Ranran's ciliary curtains parted—cosmic machinery fulfilling its covenant. Her expectorant symphony outshone temple carillons in maternal perception.
Nine strata beneath mortal drama; the commemorative plaque's verdigris absorbed new strata. Above, the physician and protégé exchanged imperceptible nods—one crowned with hoary wisdom, one clad in humus-scented humility—as biometrics charted vita's resurgence. Director Pan's murmured entreaty for positronic verification expired beneath Zhou Yao's seismic embrace.
Xu Ling sheathed his acupuncture arsenal, its unadorned bamboo casing belied by contained supernovae. The child's inaugural "Mater" became his Magna Carta, her capillary bloom his Hippocratic vindication.
History's parchment, it transpired, welcomed marginalia from improbable scribes.
The Currency of Destiny
Xie Baosheng watched Ranran's small hand reach for Zhou Yao before turning to Xu Ling, his gaze now alloyed with veneration. This rural virtuoso's trajectory shimmered like a comet through academia's stagnant firmament—a celestial phenomenon demanding early calibration.
Xie Yuxuan's constellation-dusted eyes betrayed begrudging admiration as she studied the young healer's unflappable poise. Across the antiseptic void, Liu Yan extended an onyx-hued card between fingers groomed for boardroom warfare. "A trifling gesture—100,000 yuan and my private line." The industrial prince's smile carried generational gravitas. "The Liu dynasty acknowledges its debt."
Xu Ling's work-roughened palms rose in instinctive refusal. "Such munificence surpasses—"
Xie Baosheng's chuckle was interrupted as he claimed the offering, depositing it into Xu Ling's threadbare pocket. "Let specie articulate what peasant humility cannot, boy."
Liu Yan's assessment deepened—here stood neither mercenary nor sycophant, but unalloyed mastery. His Rolex-adorned hand descended on Xu Ling's shoulder. "Address me as Yan-ge henceforth."
"Understood, Yan-ge." Xu Ling's nod balanced equanimity with self-possession.
Later, ensconced in the Mercedes' leather-bound silence, Xie Baosheng's whisper carried conspiratorial warmth. "That 'Yan-ge' controls logistics empires spanning northern frontiers. His sire? This prefecture's uncrowned king of industry."
Xu Ling's fingers traced the business card's gilded edges—its physical lightness belying symbolic mass. Beyond tinted glass, neon hieroglyphics blurred into existential metaphor, destiny's parabola recalculating mid-flight.
As the sedan glided to rest outside Yongchun Hall, Xie Baosheng's cough orchestrated the moment. "Yuxuan will navigate your homeward passage. Country lanes harbour nocturnal uncertainties."
The heiress's grip on the steering wheel tightened imperceptibly. Through the rearview mirror's silvered lens, their gazes collided—hers the jade chill of ancestral privilege, his tempered by loam's primal wisdom.
"The formality of 'Miss Xie' grates," she ventured, streetlights sculpting her profile into a Renaissance cameo. "Yuxuan will suffice."
"Then Yuxuan it is." Xu Ling's response carried unintended softness, his reflection's flush veiled by passing truck beams.
The engine's vibrato merged with cicada symphonies beyond the glass. In the shadows, the obsidian card rested against Xu Ling's thigh—a silicon sigil bridging agrarian past and gilded future.
Nine floors above the memorial plaque, in a sanitised suite now purged of medical relics, Ranran's crayon masterpieces fluttered in climate-controlled zephyrs. Her first post-coma artwork depicted a sun-radiant youth crowned with needles, his hands spilling chromatic auroras across hospital-white parchment.
To be continuous…