The sweltering summer night clung like a feverish embrace, its heat undiminished even as dusk bled into darkness.
Xu Ling sat shirtless in the courtyard, palm-leaf fan fluttering futilely against the stagnant air. "Cutting waterlines at this hour..." he muttered, sweat tracing the ridges of his exposed chest like liquid mercury. "Do they mean to parch us to death?"
A voice laced with honeysuckle sweetness seeped through the gate's fissures. "Xiao Ling? Unlatch for me."
"Coming!" He jolted upright, the wooden bolt groaning in surrender. Liu Shuxiang glided through the threshold, her elbow grazing his pectorals in the half-light.
Moonbeams illuminated the widow's crimson-flushed cheeks. Her gaze lingered where perspiration pooled at the hollow of his throat before darting away. Xu Ling sidestepped sharply, already hearing the village matrons' gossip about midnight trysts.
"Shuxiang-jie", he ventured, securing the gate, "what urgency brings you under celestial witness?"
She twirled an ebony lock between her fingers, drifting toward his ramshackle abode. "The pumps have failed. Not a basin's worth to cleanse oneself..." Her voice dipped to velvet smokiness. "This constriction in my chest... Perhaps my trusted physician might diagnose its root?"
Xu Ling hovered at the threshold, shadows writhing across his furrowed brow. "The inner chamber rivals a steam bathhouse. Perhaps we might—"
"Does the healer fear his patient's bite?" Her laughter chimed like temple wind chimes as she dissolved into the gloom.
Within, she'd commandeered his bamboo bed; discarded mosquito netting pooled like silken entrails at her feet. The naked bulb gilded the straining buttons of her floral blouse—peasant garb clashing with widow's mourning drapery. Cicadas thrummed their parched symphony, syncopating with Xu Ling's suddenly ragged breaths.
Memories surfaced of her monsoon-season kindness—steaming mantou buns at his door, needle-mended shirts returned with jasmine sachets. Then, her eyes had mirrored riverbank willows' sorrow, fresh from burying her drunkard spouse. Tonight...
"Your radial pulse speaks of depleted xue and stagnant qi," he declared after leaden silence, fingertips anchored at her wrist. "The lunar cycle's irregularity plagues you, does it not?"
Shuxiang answered not with words but smouldering ocular fire. Xu Ling's mouth turned to sun-baked clay. The Suwen scriptures he'd memorised—*Menstruation ceases when heart-connected bao mai channels stagnate*—crumbled like ash in this crucible.
"The cot," he rasped, seizing his acupuncture case. "We must unblock the collaterals."
She reclined wordlessly, lashes sealing twin crescent moons. Flickering light sculpted the terrain where cotton surrendered to flesh. Xu Ling's Adam's apple convulsed as Taoist mantras churned through his mind, battling the inferno in his dantian.
"The filiform needles..." His vocal cords cracked like drought-stricken soil. "Garments... require adjustment."
Two heartbeats suspended in the viscous air.
"Turn your gaze," came the breathless command.
When he dared look again, the floral print lay coiled like a serpent upon his stool. Moonlight cascaded through shutters, mercury-bright in the valley between her collarbones. Fingers blanched against threadbare sheets as he advanced, silver needles trembling—a physician's tools transmuted into Dionysian daggers against his thunderous pulse.
The Alchemist's Legacy: When Meridians Ignite
Xu Ling suppressed the storm within his chest, his throat tightening as repressed desire gnawed at his restraint.
Liu Shuxiang's pulse raced—a widow's solitude entwined with forbidden longing, a tempest of anxiety and raw need simmering beneath her veneer of propriety. Her trembling fingers betrayed decades of starved intimacy.
"Patience, Sister Shuxiang," his baritone voice murmured through the thick air. "The acupuncture needles will wait until your meridians surrender to my touch."
Her wrist lay captive in his calloused palm, the contrast of her silk-like skin against his labour-hardened flesh sparking currents between them. The village laundress's hands held more delicacy than the gloved pretensions of Shanghai's elite.
"Foolish boy!" Her scold rang hollow, crimson blooming at her collarbone. The hand meant to chastise froze midair, arrested by the wildfire in his gaze—the same flames that had devoured her midnight reveries.
The dam shattered. With a growl primal enough to startle nesting sparrows, Xu Ling pinned her against the sun-baked clay wall. Her feigned resistance melted like morning mist, limbs tangling with his in a language older than Confucian edicts.
"Stop this madness!" The protest died as his palm ignited dormant energy along her *dantian*. Years of arthritic chill yielded to volcanic warmth radiating from his fingertips—an alchemy beyond mere medicine.
Her whimper of surrender proved more potent than any aphrodisiac. "If the ancestors condemn us..."
"Let them bear witness!" His teeth grazed her earlobe, unravelling three decades of widowhood vows. The straw-stuffed mattress creaked in disapproval as layers of homespun linen succumbed to urgency.
Fate struck with thunderous fists.
"Open this door, or I'll reduce it to kindling!" Wu Tiedan's liquor-roughened roar cleaved their passion.
The lovers froze—a tableau of dishevelled robes and ragged breaths. Xu Ling snarled like an ancestral wolf-warrior, shielding his trembling muse. What followed was no mere brawl but a primal ballet: ribs cracking like percussion against splintering wood, the metallic tang of blood harmonising with Liu's stifled sobs.
When consciousness abandoned Xu Ling's battered form, it plunged him into the Celestial Library—a vortex of swirling sutras where the Medicinal Immortal's spectral fingers branded esoteric wisdom into his marrow. The *Medical Canon*'s secrets unfurled like lotus petals: pressure points became constellations, herbal lore transformed into poetry, every bruise a brushstroke in his awakening.
Returning to mortality, he found her tear-salty lips breathing life into his broken vessel. The once-timid widow now cradled his head with hands faintly aglow—unaware the immortal's legacy now pulsed through them both.
The Celestial Physician's Inheritance and the Tempest's Seduction
Xu Ling's fingertips grazed the miraculously restored nape of his neck, his consciousness spiralling through the labyrinth of that enigmatic medical legacy. Could this parchment hold the cypher to immortality?
His curiosity ignited like summer lightning fracturing the horizon, he vaulted from the bamboo bedframe. "Behold—unscathed as a temple bell forged in sacred fires," he declared to Liu Shuxiang, though his eyes glinted like tempered steel. "Wu Tiedan's adder-tongue still oozes venom. Barricade your thresholds this moonless eve—summon me should spectres stir."
The widow's unvoiced dissent dissolved into the monsoon-sodden darkness as he strode forth. Gravel wept beneath his boots, ancestral phantoms murmuring along the trinity-minute path to providence.
The clinic—its earthen walls steeped in centuries of Xu lineage alchemy—engulfed him whole. The oaken door thundered shut like a crypt seal as Xu Ling knelt upon the examination dais. Behind his eyelids, the *"Medical Immortal's Legacy"* throbbed, its gilded sutras unfurling as lotus blooms in stygian waters.
Revelations detonated: *zhenjiu* needles resurrecting necrotic lungs, *shennong* pharmacopoeia dissolving into marrow, meridian cartographies blazing like astral constellations. Yet coiled within this enlightenment writhed primordial ferocity—combative postures to sunder mountain ranges.
The first tier of nine celestial echelons unveiled itself. Even this embryonic phase vibrated with puissance to rend Daoist celestials tearful. A mirthless bark erupted from his throat. "The firmament's benediction fractures!"
Crimson dusk still haemorrhaged across the heavens when he initiated *qi* circulation through proscribed meridians. The manuscripts hissed admonitions: *A physician sans clenched fists is a paper lantern in the typhoon's maw.
**Rap-rap-rappity!
Nocturne's mantle enshrouded the hamlet when knuckles rapped. "Who trespasses?"
"Xiao Ling..." The voice dripped mellifluous implications.
Liu Shuxiang materialised like autumn mist swirling through moonlit willows, damp cotton clinging to undulating hips. Fragrant vapours coiled from her bamboo-tiered vessel. "I... braised pork belly with celestial star anise," she murmured, her lashes veiling ocular pools. "For yesterday's..."
"Auntie Shuxiang." Their fingertips collided as he accepted the oblation. The suspended memory—her form pinned beneath Wu's drunken groping, his arms transmuting to ramparts—thrummed between them.
He devoured the offering like a temple sentinel gorging on sacrificial meats. Her gaze traced the sinewed architecture of his throat, recalling its corded tension as he bore her home—her cheek imprinted upon the brine-cured hollow where clavicle met sternum.
"My vertebrae..." Her whisper slithered through the clove-laden atmosphere. "The ancient wraith nesting in my lumbar disc awakens."
Within the sanctum, she reclined like a Tang courtesan immortalised in nephrite. Qipao silk strained against fulsome contours as his palms located sacral dimples. Esoteric energy surged—not the sterile *tuina* of paternal tradition, but raw, voltaic force.
"Where... by which arcane tutelage did you master this witchery?" Her moan pooled like quicksilver spilling across obsidian.
"Bloodline mysteries," he growled, battling molten iron seething in his loins. Jasmine's unguent and feminine musk congealed the air.
CRACKBOOM!
Lightning cleaved the firmament. Xu Ling recoiled like a startled egret, monsoon needles tattooing shutters. "The hour..." He pivoted, linen breeches betraying nothing.
Her talons rent the examination parchment. "Cease not!" The qipao's rupture revealed lunar-pale flesh—a crescent brighter than bone bleached in selenic glow.
A thunderclap rattled clinic rafters. Liu Shuxiang's ululation married the storm's wrath. "Remain!" Xu Ling's vocal cords fractured adolescently. "The thoroughfares... the river hungers to devour carriage and oxen whole this night."
Tempestuous Plumes
_"Such... brazen impropriety!"
Liu Shuxiang's countenance flushed with the delicate fervour of daybreak peonies, her demurral dissolving into tremulous whispers that clung to the clinic's camphor-laden air.
Xu Ling's retort carried the sterile precision of surgical steel: _"This establishment boasts dual chambers. The outer bench shall suffice for my repose while the inner sanctum's pallet remains at your disposal."
A thunderous detonation convulsed the latticed windows. Shuxiang's work-worn fingers pleated her homespun skirt into helical distress. _"Since girlhood, celestial artillery hath unmanned my constitution,"_ she breathed, her ocular caress lingering where lunar luminescence sculpted the topography of his clavicular restraint. _"To thy noble custodianship I commend myself."
The physician's laryngeal constriction betrayed him. Atmospheric density intensified, saturated with medicinal bitterness and libidinous static. _"Terror's sovereignty ends at these walls,"_ he declared through enamel-grit resolve, the interstitial void between their bodies resonating with dynastic decorums and modernist transgressions.
---
**Oneiric Cartographies**
Sequestered beneath spectral moonlight, Xu Ling's digital peregrinations along the clinic's mortar fissures mirrored meteorological turbulence within:
_Two monsoon cycles prior – when Jiangnan University's academic laurels still adorned his brow. The recollection unfurled as a sutured lesion: Lin Yuqing's scarlet silk ablaze against Li Guangfei's reptilian oxfords during their courtyard duel. Steel-reinforced soles impacting flesh – thirteen concussive iterations separating consciousness from revival within these very walls, now his solitary bequest...
---
**Matutinal Penumbra**
The candlestick telephone's strident ululation fractured the predawn hush.
_"Your progenitor insists upon premature convalescence..."_ The matriarch's vocal transmission crackled through patinated wires freighted with lacrimal suspension.
Seventh-floor antiseptic glare revealed an alien physiognomy – the oxcart-stalwart agrarian reduced to papyrus epidermis stretched across avian ossature. Diagnostic imagery proffered its clinical indictment: _subdural haematoma with irreversible neural compromise. Therapeutic delay – terminal prognosis.
_"Li Guangfei!!"_ The appellation erupted as a vulpine snarl, Xu Ling's metacarpals blanching against institutional verdigris. Wang Cuifen's calloused implements anchored his seismic fury. _"The Li dynasty's taproots asphyxiate equity itself!"
---
**Hermetic Awakening**
Defying neurological fatality, Xu Ling's phalanges thrummed with ancestral resonance. Under Nocturne's cloak, he orchestrated paternal repatriation. Guided by atavistic meridians, his _qi_ navigates Xu Wenhai's temporal conduits – an alchemical marathon dissolving clotted shadows through sanguineous attrition.
_"The autumn yield...?"_ The septuagenarian's vernal utterance precipitated maternal prostration. Xu Ling proffered "neural decompression" sophistry, omitting the luminous runes that had choreographed their phantasmal ballet beneath his palpebral veil.
---
**Auroral Bounties**
Primordial light found Xu Ling ascending Phoenix Mountain's nimbus-shrouded inclines. Folklore murmured of celestial corvids nesting within arboreal heartwood, their moulted plumage undergoing pharmaceutical transfiguration. His neoteric vision penetrated lithospheric stratigraphy – there, beneath fulmination-scarred cedar, aureate ginseng rhizomes throbbed with tellurian vigour...
The Alchemist's Vision: Thorns Among the Ginseng
In a moment suspended between disbelief and revelation, Xu Ling's rationality teetered as the phantasmagoria crystallised before him. His fingertips dug into eyelids until starbursts bloomed, yet the verdant anomaly remained—serpentine roots clawing through loam in blasphemous mimicry of human limbs, jade leaves whispering secrets to the mountain mist. The mandrake-esque monstrosity thrummed with primordial vigour, its very existence a slap to mortal sensibilities. When the ocular firestorm subsided, leaving only the banal brutality of the footpath, understanding detonated: his awakened sight—legacy of the ancient healing sages—had rent reality's veil, exposing treasures festering in forbidden ravines.
The wilderness metamorphosed into a hermetic laboratory under his transfigured gaze. Where peasant hands had plundered the lower slopes to sterility, jagged ravines loomed like nature's forbidden treasuries. Ancestral warnings of disappearing woodsmen and tusked marauders dissolved before ginseng roots worth emperors' ransoms. With ascetic meticulousness, he exhumed a dozen rhizomes, their labyrinthine filaments—slumbering dragons captured in a woven bamboo herbarium.
Silence shattered like porcelain. That fractured cry—Shuxiang's voice—froze his marrow.
He found her caged against a paper-barked birch, summer's silk qipao torn where Liu Dagou's coal-stained talons claimed territory. The village brute's grin split tobacco-yellowed teeth. "Tracked you since first light, my pretty pheasant," he crooned, spittle glinting on boar-bristle jowls. "Time to moult those silken plumes, eh?"
Her defiance crumbled like dried chrysanthemum petals. "This...this violates celestial law!"
"Law?" Dagou's bark sent crows exploding from pines. "Who hears the rabbit's death squeal in the wolf's gullet?" His butcher's paw descended.
Xu Ling materialised between them in a crackle of displaced air. "Touch one downy filament," he hissed, "and I'll string your vertebrae for temple wind chimes."
The switchblade flashed—prison-forged precision honed by a thousand shiv duels. "Should've smothered you in swaddling!" Steel kissed sunlight en route to his xiphoid process.
Time warped. Xu Ling's palm met the thrust with the grandmaster's foresight, metacarpals crunching through cartilage. A crescent kick—executed with executioner's economy—propelled the brute skyward. Granite bedrock embraced Dagou's spine in a seismic consummation. Methodically, Xu Ling administered celestial retribution—each rib's collapse a haiku of childhood humiliations.
"Enough!" Shuxiang's plea pierced the violence, her jasmine scent mingling with iron-rich blood.
As Dagou's whimpers faded, Xu Ling became agonisingly aware of moonlight caressing her collarbone through rent silk. He averted his gaze, throat constricting. "Why tread these shadows alone?"
"Your parents..." She clutched tattered fabric like crumbling honour. "Discharged at dawn. I thought to..." Her voice fractured like Song-dynasty celadon. "Shall we harvest morels? Phoenix Mountain's bounty seasons brought most exquisitely."
Their foraging waltz thrummed with unsung tensions. When her whimper pierced twilight's veil, he found her porcelain-pale against pine resin. "Viper's lethal caress..." she gasped, clutching her left flank where twin rubies bloomed. Dying light sculpted her form into tragic chiaroscuro—a Ming-dynasty porcelain trembling on the brink of dissolution.
Hidden Thorns in the Mountain Path
Xu Ling's voice quivered with urgency as he pressed, "Sister Shuxiang, did you glimpse the serpent's markings?" His inquiry sought to discern the viper's lineage and venom potency.
Liu Shuxiang dabbed the perspiration pearls clinging to her brow, words faltering like autumn leaves. "I was... attending to nature's necessity when it struck my... unguarded flank." A scarlet tide surged across her cheeks as she motioned toward the whispering undergrowth where the predator had melted into shadow.
The young herbalist swallowed a sigh, acutely aware of rural women's unspoken burdens. "Might I assess the lesion?"
The village's jade blossom hesitated, calloused fingertips fretting at her meadow-stained tunic. After a war waged between maidenly reserve and survival's imperative, she acquiesced. Twin fang-wounds marred her peach-blossom flesh, delicate as celadon cracks, with rubied droplets persisting at their rims.
Noticing Xu Ling's storm-cloud brow, Shuxiang anchored herself to his forearm, her timbre trembling like zither strings in monsoon winds. "Does death's hour toll? Speak without veils!"
The healer's gaze lifted only to crystallise—Liu Dagou's earlier assault had rent her blouse askew, unveiling shoulders that gleamed like moonlit jade carvings. The rapid undulations beneath her collarbone betrayed not merely fear but the cadence of awakening thunder.
"The antidotal rite demands..." His throat tightened around unspoken proprieties. "...suction of venom. Given the wound's... intimate geography, decorum's code..."
"Let decorum drown in nightsoil pits!" Her jade fingers fused with his labour-roughened palm. "Would you trade my breath for wagging tongues?" Her defiance softened to willow-shyness. "Besides... your eyes ever carried... different stars than village louts."
Twenty stolen minutes unfolded—a symphony of shared breath and hawthorn-flushed cheeks. When the final tainted bead yielded, Xu Ling crushed bitter antidote herbs between her molars. "Does the flesh still sing with poison's fire?"
"A muted ache..." Her reply dissolved into twilight's embrace. Eyes tracing the lengthening mountain shadows, she ventured, "The descent wears viper fangs. Might your arms...?"
Xu Ling's pause hung like suspended tea-harvest mist.
"I'll conquer the final slope alone," she vowed, yet moulded herself to his unyielding frame like ivy seeking stone.
Their downward journey became a wordless ballet of suppressed breaths and lingering gazes. At the village periphery, Shuxiang lingered—her temple brushing his shoulder through three heartbeats' stolen eternity. "Will dawn find you at my threshold?" Her question shimmered in the gloaming like the first evening star.
The Herbal Connoisseur
The receptionist regarded Xu Ling with perplexity, her fingers nervously tracing the ledger's edge. "All botanical provisions at Yongchun Hall", she enunciated with practiced formality, "undergo stringent vetting through accredited purveyors."
Xu Ling's lips curled into a cryptic smile that crinkled the sun-weathered corners of his eyes. "Your associate Wang Shanshan and I", he interposed with deliberate calmness, "established prior communication regarding this consultation."
Moments later, the bamboo curtain clattered softly as a young woman emerged, her initial delight dissolving into apprehensive glances toward the supervisory desk. "Xu Ling!" Wang Shanshan's greeting carried both warmth and trepidation.
Drawing her aside near the apothecary's mortar ensemble, Xu Ling's calloused hands produced a linen-wrapped bundle. "Mountain-gathered Panax specimens," he murmured, "yet your associate claims private harvests lack provenance."
Shanshan's jade pendant trembled against her collar. "The Quality Assurance Superintendent..." Her whisper faltered as lacquered screens rattled abruptly.
"What provincial theatrics disrupt our commerce?" The nasal baritone preceded Yang's arrival, his serpentine appraisal lingering on Xu Ling's hemp-woven attire.
In the ensuing confrontation, when Yang derided the roots as "cultivated impostors", Xu Ling executed a silent demonstration – one fibrous tendril sundered with a crystalline *snap*, releasing gilded resin that pooled like liquid amber upon the mahogany counter.
"Enough buffoonery!" The thunderous interruption came from a silver-bearded patriarch whose mandarin-collared robe swayed with scholar's gravitas. Beside him, an ice-queen executive in tailored ivory observed through half-lidded eyes that missed nothing.
"Permit this elder," the venerable voice resonated with unassailable authority, "to authenticate these rhizomes." Yang's protestations withered mid-syllable beneath that gaze which had scrutinised five dynasties' worth of medicinal truths.
The Ginseng Covenant
The patrician observer inclined her jade-carved neck, riveted by the unfolding exchange.
"Venerable Curator," Xu Ling intoned with ceremonial gravity, "I proffer Panax Ginseng C.A. Meyer of primal wilderness." His calloused hands cradled the hessian-wrapped treasure, unveiling rhizomes whose contorted silhouettes echoed archaic oracle bone inscriptions petrified through aeons.
Elder Xie's breath crystallised in mid-air. Before him sprawled living antiquities – each tuber's dendritic extremities splayed like slumbering qilin talons, fractured rootlets mimicking shredded folios from Shennong's lost pharmacopoeia. "This...this constitutes sacrilege!" The scholar's tremor carried millennial anguish. "Such specimens demand Paulownia-wood reliquaries swathed in Suzhou brocade!"
His scion, Xie Yuxuan, whose celadon complexion belied mercantile shrewdness, leaned into the negotiation with calibrated grace. "Xu Ling, if memory serves? Yongchun Hall shall acquire your trove." Her vermilion nail traced a rhizomorph's sinuous contour. "Future excavations of comparable quality shall enjoy our exclusive patronage."
Xu Ling's peripheral glance captured Manager Yang's cowering silhouette before adopting bucolic guilelessness: "Might august connoisseurs ascertain provenance? I'd lament burdening your establishment with cultivated imposters."
The patriarch's mirth resonated like temple chimes. "Youth! While carbon-dating requires celestial consultation, discerning feral from domesticated growth proves transparent as cinnabar on alchemical scrolls!" His arthritic digits traversed the ginseng's tessellated periderm, deciphering its chronicle through epidermal braille.
Yang Feng's unmasking unfolded with karmic precision – his expulsion as abrupt as a snapped jade bi, venomous glares mirroring the legendary she-jing serpents guarding Changbai's herbal treasures.
Dusk descended upon the hamlet in lapis lazuli hues, Xu Ling's homecoming reverberating with ancestral pathos. His father's silhouette amidst moonlit orchard rows materialised as an ink-wash masterpiece of agrarian fortitude, while the talismanic banknote upon their oaken trestle shimmered with alkahestral potency.
The nocturnal alchemical ritual unfolded with esoteric grandeur: Xu Ling's lotus posture transmuted lunar photons into quicksilver cascades beneath sealed eyelids, his crucible exuding aromas that pirouetted between the apothecary's sanctum and alkahest distillery. As the primordial elixir baptised a withered ruderal, chronos itself hesitated – the plant's petrified stance whispering of botanical suspended animation.
The Alchemist's Revelation and Gathering Tempests
Xu Ling pressed a palm to his brow, emitting a mirthless chuckle. "A crude tonic of this grade could scarcely yield instant miracles..."
Enlightenment dawning, he abandoned his botanical scrutiny, methodically stowed his implements, and sought slumber's embrace.
By first light, he stirred with crystalline clarity of mind—an endowment from the Celestial Healer's legacy. His bare feet carried him to the windowsill where the humble weed now stood transformed.
"By the Nine Heavens! The draught proves potent!"
Where yesterday sprouted a thumb-length shoot, now swayed a jade-tinted stalk surpassing a handspan, its serrated leaves exhaling vivifying aromas. Clutching the phial's remnants, the young alchemist hastened to the ancestral orchards, dawn's chill clinging to his hemp robes.
In this hamlet of Xu, apple groves sustained generations. Though summer's zenith lingered weeks away, the trees yet bore marble-sized orbs swathed in viridian youth. From the moss-crowned well, Xu Ling drew water, watching as a single azure droplet spiralled through the wooden pail, transmuting its contents to liquid peridot.
"Let creation bear witness."
He anointed the roots of a burdened sapling, guided by the *Codex Medica Arcana*'s promise of swift fruition. As morning's rice porridge steamed in his parents' cottage, anticipation coiled serpent-tight about his ribs.
"Linger! What sorcery kept you moon-gazing past the night watch?" His mother's chiding held more curiosity than reproof.
"Let the sun climb higher, Niang. Marvels demand a celestial audience," he parried, eyes dancing with guarded triumph.
His father's convalescent pallor warmed with amusement. "Our seedling scholar cultivates mysteries now! Lead us to this daybreak wonder."
What met their dawn-bleared eyes stole breath from lungs—a single tree stood as if transplanted from autumn's heart, boughs bowed beneath rubescent globes. Their honeyed breath hung heavy where yesterday lingered only adolescent tartness.
The crunch between Xu Ling's teeth unleashed ambrosia—nectar-sweet yet vivaciously crisp; the fruit's essence sharpened thought like whetstone to blade. Thus did ancient wisdom manifest: the humblest scroll from heaven's apothecary held power to remake earth's fabric.
"Fetch the willow baskets, woman! Let not the noon sun steal their dew-kissed glory!" The elder Xu's command sent his wife scurrying, illness forgotten in harvest's thrill.
Alone amidst whispering leaves, Xu Ling began his silent consecration of other saplings. But before the third libation, panting disruption arrived—Liu Shuxiang, her apron fluttering like a distress banner.
"Ling! That cur Liu Dagou and his jackal pack besiege your courtyard!"
Ice flooded the alchemist's veins. He found his home encircled by a growling throng—weather-beaten faces twisted in borrowed righteousness. At their fore swaggered Wu Tiedan, grief's vulture feasting on manufactured outrage.
"Defiler! You dare soil my brother's memory by tupping his widow?" The accusation dripped venom.
Xu Ling's vision hazed crimson. Before reason's leash could tighten, his palm cracked against the slanderer's cheek—a thunderclap silencing the mob's jeers.
"Cease this madness!" His mother's cry cleaved the tension, frail arms spread like a sparrow shielding its nest.
"Let us share wine, and wiser words come dusk," his father entreated, the peacemaker's smile brittle as autumn ice.
The spectacle of parental humiliation turned Xu Ling's triumph to ashes. Yet before contrition could take root, Wu Tiedan's roar shook the courtyard:
"Filth! You'll pay in bone and blood for this insult!"
Retribution in the Swine Pen
Wu Tiedan's face burnt scarlet with wounded pride as he bellowed commands. His lackeys converged on Xu Ling like jackals scenting blood.
Wang Huifen clutched her trembling hands, voice fraying at the edges: "Tie'er, for mercy's sake! We'll make good every copper! Spare my boy!"
"Mother, these gutter rats merit no fear." Xu Ling's lips curled as he seized Wu Tiedan's collar, lifting the hulking man skyward like a straw effigy.
A collective intake of breath rippled through the onlookers. Liu Shuxiang's gaze lingered on the corded muscles straining beneath Xu Ling's threadbare shirt, her throat bobbing involuntarily.
The thugs surged forward – too late. With a bone-jarring crash, Xu Ling dashed their leader earthward, then became a whirlwind of vengeance. *Crack! Crunch!* Three moves later, the henchmen writhed like upended beetles.
"Son! These vipers have long fangs!" Wang Huifen's warning quavered.
"Shall I forget how this filth pawed at Shuxiang?" Xu Ling's boot connected with Tiedan's midsection, reducing the brute to a wheezing fetus.
"Quarter! Quarter!" The bully-chief gargled through blood-flecked spittle.
Xu Ling's smile chilled the air. "My forebears' urn lies shattered. The pigsty gates splintered. Fifty thousand silver tales might soothe ancestral wrath."
"Highway robbery!" Tiedan's protest died as Xu Ling flourished his smartphone, its QR code gleaming like a magistrate's seal.
When the digital ransom changed hands, the defeated cur thought himself spared – until Xu Ling's iron grip hauled him toward the reeking fermentation pit. A single fluid kick sent the villain wallowing in putrescence, his sputtering curses drowned by the villagers' roaring approval.
"Let this stench cling to your blackened soul," Xu Ling intoned, nostrils flaring at the poetic justice.
Liu Shuxiang's fingers brushed his arm. "Today you've sown dragon's teeth..."
"Let him nurture the harvest." Xu Ling watched the retreating figure, every squelching step etching humiliation deeper than any blade.
Bittersweet Harvest
Xu Wenhai assessed the circumstances with measured composure.
"Mother, Father, let us first tend to the orchard! Should Wu Tiegan dare provoke us further," Xu Ling interjected with sudden resolve, "I shall ensure his manhood becomes mere memory!"
"Indeed! The harvest nearly slipped my mind!" Wang Huifen's sorrow transformed into eager anticipation, dabbing her eyes with renewed purpose.
"Spare yourselves the exertion—the tricycle shall suffice for transportation," Xu Wenhai declared, mounting the three-wheeled cart with rustic determination.
"Lingzi, does the season not contradict such ripeness? What sorcery graces your family's orchard?" Liu Shuxiang enquired, her bewilderment tinged with scientific curiosity.
"Dear Shuxiang, accompany me and witness nature's marvel," Xu Ling beckoned, guiding her neighbour through dew-kissed rows where trees dripped with vermilion globes—their surfaces gleaming like liquid rubies beneath the mystical "heaven's elixir".
"Can such perfection exist beyond dreams?" Liu Shuxiang breathed, marvelling at the fruits defying seasonal logic. "What arcane cultivation yields this bounty?"
"Trade secrets shall remain veiled," Xu Ling demurred, plucking a specimen that caught sunlight like stained glass. "Join tomorrow's mercantile venture—your silver tongue merits compensation."
"Service requires no recompense," the matron countered, her teeth sinking into the fruit's crystalline flesh with audible crispness.
At dawn's first blush, their laden tricycle creaked into Yunshan County's marketplace. While Xu Ling fumbled with novice uncertainty, Liu Shuxiang's oratory prowess summoned patrons like bees to blossom:
"Behold nature's nectar! Unblemished by chemical taint—savor before silver changes hands!"
Initial scepticism melted beneath the apples' ambrosial assault. A septuagenarian's dentures closed around the sample, then proclaimed with Juvenalian vigour: "Five decades' mastication never knew such ecstasy!"
As coins clinked and sacks filled, venomous glares festered among rival vendors. The market's underbelly stirred—Hei Zi, a knuckle-dragging brute with eyes like curdled malice, shouldered through the throng.
"Two catties. Immediately." His nicotine-stained finger jabbed toward Liu Shuxiang.
Xu Ling materialised between them, his voice winter-cold: "Commerce has concluded here."
"Who dares slight the Brotherhood?" A henchman's spittle flecked the air like toxic rain.
When the gang leader's calloused paw reached for Liu Shuxiang's chin, Xu Ling's grip became a vise—tendons standing in bas-relief beneath sun-burnished skin. "Defilement carries consequence," he warned, the promise hanging sharper than any blade.
The Street Thug's Demise
"Punk, what's your game? Think you can strut into *Zhang the Ruffian's* turf?"
The hulking gang leader lumbered menacingly forward, his sneer etched with contempt. Zhang's vendetta stemmed not only from Xu Ling encroaching on his racket but also from Liu Shuxiang's ethereal grace. His motives were twofold—to crush the upstart and seize the woman as his prize. To him, her radiance eclipsed the paltry profits of fruit peddling.
Xu Ling's gaze turned glacial. "Final warning: grovel and vanish."
Zhang's eyes narrowed, decades of street cunning honing his instincts. Most quivered before him; this whelp seemed mere prey.
"Scared? Prove your mettle!" Zhang jeered, ogling Liu Shuxiang with predatory intent.
"Vile creature!" she spat, fury tinting her cheeks crimson.
Xu Ling's sigh carried the weight of inevitability. "What delusions fuel your bravado?"
"These streets bow to *me*. You're nothing!"
"So be it."
Xu Ling's fist collided with Zhang's jaw in a blur. The brute reeled, a livid welt flowering across his face.
A collective inhalation swept the crowd. Never had they witnessed Zhang bested.
"You… *dare*?!" Blood flecked Zhang's lips as he bellowed, "End him!"
His henchmen surged, but Xu Ling danced through them like winter wind. Snatching one thug's wrist, he rammed a knee upward, catapulting the man into his cohorts. The final attacker was petrified mid-lunge, terror-stricken.
Xu Ling advanced as Zhang crab-walked backward. "D-don't!"
"Scram. Now. This stall's under my protection." A spectral glimmer darted from Xu Ling's fingers, dissolving into Zhang's trembling form.
The gang dispersed like rats, their retreat soundtracked by muffled applause.
"Xu Ling…" Liu Shuxiang whispered, hands trembling. "I feared…"
"Peace", he murmured. "You're shielded. Let's tend our trade."
A scarlet BMW purred to a halt. A woman emerged—mid-twenties, tailored blazer cascading over a pencil skirt, silk-clad legs ending in stilettos. The blazer's daring plunge framed collarbones like sculpted jade, her poise radiating cultivated allure.
"These apples—remarkable specimens," she observed, lips curving. "Heirloom varietal?"
"Untainted by chemicals, madam," Xu Ling countered, proffering fruit. "Ambrosia incarnate—crisp, saccharine, restorative. Taste enlightenment."
Liu Shuxiang reached for a paring knife, but the stranger demurred. "The perfume alone intoxicates."
The *snap* of her bite echoed. Her lashes fluttered. "Transcendent! Yu Mengna of *FreshDaily*'s Yunshan flagship." A lacquered card materialised. "Ten *yuan* per *jin*? Criminal undervaluation. Let's craft symbiosis."
Gilded Bounty
Yu Mengna's gaze ignited with smouldering intensity as she weighed the proposition.
"Your proposed collaboration model?" Xu Ling enquired, though the contours of her design already unfolded in his mind.
"I seek to establish your orchard as the **sole purveyor** to our emporium of fruits," she proclaimed, fingers tracing invisible contracts in the twilight air. "A perpetual procurement at **twenty silver per catty** (equivalent to 500 grams) – does this arrangement find favour?"
Xu Ling's lashes fluttered like startled sparrows as his eyes met Liu Shuxiang's. The arithmetic of ambition unfolded before them – if this merchant princess offered such gilded terms, the metropolitan markets must hunger for ambrosia disguised as apples.
"Your magnanimity humbles me, Mistress Yu!" Xu Ling pressed palms together in ceremonial deference. "May our alliance blossom like spring orchards."
"The remaining harvest shall be claimed ere nightfall," Yu Mengna decreed, her voice as crisp as autumn leaves underfoot. "Let my stewards tally the bounty while I render payment. Consider this our covenant's first fruits."
Xu Ling inclined his head, sunlight glinting off his wind-tousled hair. "For such a forthright exchange, let simplicity reign – a thousand celestial coins shall suffice."
Yu Mengna's lacquered nail paused mid-air, her appraisal deepening. "Master Xu, from which earthly paradise springs such nectar? I crave visitation to your Arcadia."
"Xujia's humble soil nurtures these wonders!" Liu Shuxiang interjected, her laughter rippling like mountain brooks. "Our gates swing wide for celestial envoys."
"Xujia..." Yu Mengna murmured, the syllables rolling like prayer beads. "Let chariots be harnessed! I would tread your hallowed groves ere the sun dips below Yingzhou's peaks."
Xu Ling's chuckle resonated with the warmth of crackling hearths. "Sister Shuxiang shall guide you through Eden's aisles. Meanwhile, I'll bid our kitchen's cauldrons conjure rustic ambrosia fit for phoenix palates."
"Na-jie suffices," she demurred, the formal veil dissolving into twilight mist. "Let no titles bar the communion of kindred spirits."
Twilight Encounter at the Orchard
"Enough dilly-dallying, you two! Fetch that city lass from the orchard before night swallows the path!" Wang Huifen's voice crackled with impatience, her hands flour-dusted from kneading dough.
"Patience, Mother," Xu Ling countered, snatching the rust-speckled flashlight from its hook. "Her inspection's the whole purpose of this visit. Whip up those pickled radish pancakes—she'll need hearty fare after tramping through orchards."
He'd barely traversed three rows of apple trees when the silhouette of two figures emerged through the honeyed dusk. Yu Mengna's laughter rippled through the twilight. "We cut the tour short—your Golden Delicious could rival Shaanxi's finest! However, do you cultivate such perfection?"
Xu Ling's lips quirked. The ancestral alchemy in his veins hummed in silent agreement.
The farmhouse kitchen brimmed with earthy aromas—woodsmoke-kissed pork belly simmering with dried chrysanthemum and scallion pancakes sizzling in cast iron. Liu Shuxiang's deft hands orchestrated the feast, her braid swaying like a metronome of rural grace. By the third round of sorghum wine, moonlight silvered the courtyard stones.
"Stay the night," Wang Huifen insisted, pressing another lotus-wrapped dumpling onto Yu Mengna's plate. "Country roads turn treacherous after dark." The businesswoman's protestations dissolved like rock sugar in hot tea.
Later, along the footpath edged with night-blooming jasmine, Liu Shuxiang paused beneath the ancestral scholar tree. "She suits you," she murmured, moonlight tracing the widow's delicate collarbones. "City-bred, yet not porcelain-fragile."
Xu Ling's chuckle held autumn's crispness. "Nǎinai's matchmaking again? She's our buyer, not some..."
Calloused fingers brushed his wrist. "These shoulders ache from lugging bushels." The unspoken plea hung heavier than persimmons on boughs.
What unfolded was a silent sonata—work-roughened palms kneading knotted muscles, thumbs circling the hollow where neck meets shoulder. When his touch strayed to the ribbon at her blouse's nape, she stiffened like a startled doe. "Enough," she breathed, though her pulse fluttered wildly at her throat.
Returning through moon-drenched courtyards, Xu Ling collided with restless shadows. Yu Mengna stood barefoot on cool flagstones, city-polished nails digging into her arms. "Your darkness... it breathes," she confessed. "Not like electric glare, but something primal—as if the night itself might swallow whole..." Her shiver had nothing to do with the evening chill.
To be continuous…