Bai Chenji had been in this nameless mountain village for five full days.
His injuries were actually not particularly serious. What truly pushed him to the brink of collapse was the utterly unacceptable quality of his “daily life.”
In the modern world, he was the heir to a conglomerate, the owner of a commercial empire headquartered in an eighty-eight-story tower, holding the power to make decisions over hundreds of billions in capital.
But now, in this tiny village, there was nothing.
To avoid attracting attention, he had taken off his custom-made designer suit and changed into the same coarse cloth clothes as the villagers.
The fabric was rough as sandpaper, rubbing his skin until it was red and stinging.
The straw sandals on his feet fit even worse. Every step felt like punishment.
And in this self-sufficient nameless village, there was no room for “idlers.”
Everyone had to work, including a billionaire CEO like him.
At dawn, when the sky had only just begun to brighten and the morning mist still carried a biting chill, Han Dongji slung a heavy bamboo basket over his shoulder and turned to look at him.
“Let’s go.”
Bai Chenji frowned deeply. “Where?”
“Up the mountain to gather herbs,” Han Dongji said matter-of-factly. “You’re staying at my house now. You can’t keep eating and drinking for free every day.”
Bai Chenji: “……”
After following him up the mountain, Bai Chenji finally understood what real physical labor was.
“Pull up the ones with purple stems. Don’t take the ones next to them with round leaves. They aren’t worth much.”
Han Dongji harvested deftly as he taught him.
Bai Chenji looked at the wild grass covering the ground, but his mind automatically switched into database mode: feature classification, yield screening, time-cost calculations…
And then arrived at the conclusion:
Far too inefficient. A waste of time.
The hands that were accustomed to signing contracts worth hundreds of millions were now scratched by thorny leaves, leaving several fine cuts that bled.
His feet and trousers were covered in mud.
On the way back, Bai Chenji spent the entire journey observing.
How many people lived in the village.
How many were elderly, women, children, and men.
Which household raised chickens.
Which household had cattle.
Which household hunted.
Which household grew vegetables.
What they did every day.
After spending the whole day gathering herbs, Bai Chenji still had to help chop firewood and heat water.
He exercised regularly, so wielding an axe to chop wood was not difficult.
It was just that after only a few days, more and more injuries had appeared on his delicate palms, which had never done hard labor before, and thin calluses were gradually forming.
At dinner that night, Bai Chenji took a bite of boiled greens and immediately frowned deeply.
The vegetables were almost completely flavorless.
“No salt?”
Han Dongji shoveled rice into his mouth and casually replied, “We’re almost out. We have to conserve it.”
Bai Chenji found it absurd. “If you’re out, why not buy more?”
Han Dongji stopped his chopsticks and looked at him as though he were an idiot.
“With what?”
Bai Chenji thought for a moment before asking, “There’s no currency?”
Since the other man frequently came out with strange words, Han Dongji had stopped being surprised by them.
“There’s no silver in the house.”
Bai Chenji froze.
After returning to the dim room, he took out the wallet he still had.
Inside were an unlimited-limit black card, a platinum credit card, and his identification card.
In the modern world, those few plastic cards could let him casually purchase several islands. He would only need to give the order.
But here, deep in these remote mountains, they could not even be exchanged for half a jin of coarse salt.
They had become completely useless.
For the first time in his life, he clearly realized:
He was worth hundreds of billions, yet at this moment, he had not a single penny to his name.
But he was not someone who would simply sit around waiting to die.
Instead, he immediately began planning in his mind, laying out his entire schedule for the coming month.
◆◇◆◇◆
Han Dongji lived with his grandfather.
His grandfather was the village’s old physician. He was elderly and seriously ill, yet he was the most knowledgeable person in the entire village.
Every day, the old man sat in the courtyard, taking the pulses of villagers waiting in line, prescribing medicine, and boiling herbs.
But at night, Bai Chenji would always hear suppressed coughing from the room next door.
There was blood in the old man’s phlegm, and he grew thinner by the day.
Bai Chenji noticed a distinct hard mass in the old man’s abdomen. It often caused such severe pain that he could not sleep all night, and he could barely eat.
The villagers whispered among themselves:
“The old physician doesn’t have much time left.”
Bai Chenji had once managed the medical system under his conglomerate. He possessed basic modern medical knowledge and could read diagnostic reports.
Seeing the mass and the symptoms, he had a rough idea.
It could be a serious disease, possibly metastatic. It was probably already at an advanced stage.
One late night, Bai Chenji watched the old man cough up blood again and asked, “You’re a physician yourself. Is there really no medicine you can prescribe to treat it?”
The old man wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his withered hand and smiled. His laughter carried both openness and the weariness of age.
“A physician isn’t a god. We can cure illnesses, but we can’t cure fate.”
Bai Chenji fell silent.
The old man slowly said, “That’s why people can only finish what they ought to do while they’re still alive.”
The old man’s cloudy yet sharp eyes turned toward Bai Chenji.
“Young man, you don’t look like someone who’s ever held a hoe. Do you know medicine?”
Bai Chenji replied calmly, “A little. But I know business better.”
The old man suddenly asked, “You’re keeping track of the people in the village?”
Bai Chenji did not hide it.
“Yes.”
“What are you keeping track of?”
Bai Chenji answered truthfully.
The Zhang family had three cows.
The Zhou family had a flock of chickens.
The Lin family had two men.
The Wang family had four mu of dry farmland.
After hearing this, the old man merely smiled calmly.
“You’re keeping track of things.”
Bai Chenji said, “What else?”
The old man looked outside and slowly said,
“I keep track of whose daughter-in-law is about to give birth.”
“Whose child is working the fields for the first time this year.”
“Whose elderly person might not make it through the winter.”
Bai Chenji said nothing.
The old man slowly continued, “When you treat illness, you treat people. Business is the same.”
Bai Chenji fell into a long silence.
This was completely different from everything he had learned in his life, and he did not agree with it.
In his world, if you wanted a business to last, all you needed was to bind it to absolute “profit.”
Business relied on systems.
People’s hearts were the least reliable thing of all.
He would rather trust a written contract.
The old man looked into his eyes, then slowly shifted his gaze toward the distant sky over the Northern Frontier.
Several days later, a sudden torrential rain arrived.
That day, Han Dongji spent the entire day gathering herbs in the mountains, only to encounter a downpour toward evening.
The rain came so suddenly and violently that he was caught completely off guard.
By the time he stumbled home, all the medicinal herbs in his bamboo basket had been soaked through and ruined, becoming completely worthless.
That night, there was not a single grain of salt or a drop of oil in the household’s earthenware jar.
The old man was still coughing blood, yet he could not even have a bowl of hot soup.
Han Dongji did not complain. He silently dumped the ruined herbs away.
He even smiled at Bai Chenji and said, “It’s fine. I’ll just go gather more tomorrow.”
Bai Chenji sat beside the dim candlelight without saying a word.
He watched Han Dongji spend six shichen walking every day, only for everything to be destroyed by the rain.
The young man had been beaten pale by the freezing rain, yet he still forced a smile, as though he were already accustomed to it.
What Bai Chenji felt was not simple sympathy.
It was an extreme sense of “waste.”
Wasted manpower.
Wasted time.
Wasted productivity.
If this were his conglomerate, a supply-chain manager like this would be fired within three days.
He finally realized that this entire economic system had absolutely no ability to withstand risk.
In the past, the business decisions he made with a stroke of his pen only affected percentages after the decimal point on financial statements.
But here, a single rainstorm was enough to destroy the entire productive capacity.
This was not poverty.
It was management failure.
If the system were sufficiently sound, today’s rain would never have caused such a loss.
Before dawn the next morning, Han Dongji shouldered his bamboo basket and prepared to take Bai Chenji down the mountain to the market.
Before leaving, Han Dongji used a headscarf to wrap Bai Chenji’s hair.
“Your hair is too conspicuous. This is safer.”
Han Dongji carefully looked him over once, then pondered for a moment.
Bai Chenji did not understand. He thought something was wrong.
There were no mirrors here. Normally, he could only check his appearance by looking at his reflection in a container of water indoors, or ask Han Dongji to check for him.
“What?” he asked.
Han Dongji merely shook his head with a smile.
“Nothing.”
He simply felt that even after changing into coarse cloth clothes and wrapping his hair in a headscarf, the man’s naturally cold and dignified aura, so different from that of the people of Dasheng, still could not be concealed.
The two then headed toward the market, one in front of the other.
The entire route consisted of rugged mountain paths, and because of the previous day’s rain, Bai Chenji was unaccustomed to walking such roads and found the journey extremely difficult.
It was the first time he learned that the people here had to walk three shichen on their own two feet just to exchange for one jin of salt.
Along the way, Han Dongji did not forget to casually pick medicinal herbs growing beside the road.
Bai Chenji looked at the herbs that had already filled half the bamboo basket and asked, “Isn’t that enough already?”
Han Dongji answered matter-of-factly, “These are all money.”
Bai Chenji looked silently at those low-value herbs that could be found everywhere.
Three shichen later, they arrived at the market at the foot of the mountain.
There were no restaurants and no major trading houses, only several dozen crude stalls.
Very few people were using silver or copper coins.
What unfolded before Bai Chenji was the most primitive form of a “barter market.”
One bundle of firewood for two pieces of tofu.
Three jin of wood ear mushrooms for one bolt of coarse cloth.
Two wild ginseng plants for one forged sickle.
Han Dongji walked familiarly up to the man selling salt and pulled out a large handful of medicinal herbs.
But the salt seller shook his head.
“No. We still have medicine at home.”
Han Dongji helplessly went to the second seller, then the third.
In the end, a cloth merchant was finally willing to reluctantly accept the herbs. Han Dongji then exchanged the cloth for half a jin of coarse salt.
Holding that half-jin of salt, Han Dongji already felt that his luck had been pretty good today.
But Bai Chenji frowned.
His capitalist brain had begun spinning furiously.
“…The efficiency is too low.”
Bai Chenji muttered under his breath.
He did not hurry Han Dongji away. Instead, he walked through the crowd, saying nothing, simply observing.
Ten-odd minutes later, the corners of Bai Chenji’s lips curved into a smile.
He had found the blind spots in the market’s supply and demand.
There was an oversupply of medicinal herbs.
Farmers preparing wedding celebrations were desperately short of eggs.
The blacksmith, who was short of medicine, had no one coming to him.
And the salt seller was actually going around looking for eggs to satisfy his children’s cravings.
When Han Dongji was preparing to find the next person, Bai Chenji called out to him.
“Wait.”
Han Dongji looked at him in confusion. “What?”
Bai Chenji pointed at the other half of the medicinal herbs remaining in the bamboo basket.
“Don’t go looking for the salt seller.”
Han Dongji grew anxious.
“But we still need salt and oil at home.”
Bai Chenji said calmly, “That’s exactly why you can’t go directly to him.”
Bai Chenji took control of the situation.
“Listen to me. Take your herbs and go west to find that blacksmith.”
Han Dongji scratched his head in confusion and went over half-believing it.
The moment the blacksmith saw the medicine for bruises and injuries, he was so grateful that tears nearly came to his eyes. He immediately thrust a brand-new hoe into Han Dongji’s hands.
Han Dongji was dumbfounded.
Normally, this amount of medicine could only be exchanged for a small bag of coarse rice.
Today, it had gotten him an iron tool.
Next, Bai Chenji pointed toward a farmer at the edge of the market who was preparing to clear some land.
“Take the hoe and go find him.”
The farmer was worried about not having a good tool. The moment he saw the new hoe, he immediately took out ten eggs and a bag of soybeans in exchange.
“Next, go to the salt stall.”
When Han Dongji placed the ten eggs in front of the salt seller, the man’s eyes lit up.
He not only cheerfully gave them a jin of refined salt, but also threw in a small piece of cured meat, repeatedly praising Han Dongji for solving his immediate problem.
After the entire sequence was complete, Han Dongji stood there completely stunned.
The same bundle of herbs had previously been able to buy only half a jin of coarse salt.
Today, it had gotten him a jin of refined salt, a piece of meat, a bag of beans, and even several eggs left over.
He simply could not believe it.
The two sat on a large stone beside the market to rest.
Han Dongji looked at the abundant supplies in the bamboo basket and still felt as though he were dreaming.
Bai Chenji picked up a branch and drew three circles in the mud, connecting them into a triangle.
Han Dongji asked blankly, “What are you drawing?”
Bai Chenji threw away the branch and dusted off his hands.
“This is called a supply chain.”
Han Dongji: “…?”
Bai Chenji looked at him deeply and said calmly, “You used to think only about ‘what you have,’ but you never thought about ‘what other people lack.’”
Han Dongji listened quietly.
“Trading isn’t about forcing what you have into someone else’s hands. It’s about accurately delivering what someone else needs most directly to them.”
Bai Chenji then proceeded to give this young man from the ancient countryside a lesson.
“From now on, don’t gather the same herbs every day. If everyone has herbs today, go gather the mountain pepper the tavern is short of. If it rains tomorrow, carry firewood. When there are fewer hunters in winter, sell animal hides. Every time you come to the market, don’t rush to set up a stall. First figure out who is short on goods today, who hasn’t opened, and what has become more expensive. First conduct ‘market intelligence research.’”
Han Dongji’s eyes grew brighter and brighter as he listened.
It was the first time he had learned that going to the market was not a waste of time.
On the way back, Bai Chenji looked at the endless mountains stretching before him, and a blueprint had already unfolded automatically in his mind.
He discovered that this village was not poor at all.
The mountains were filled with valuable medicinal herbs, wild honey, wood ear mushrooms, and bamboo forests.
The reason they were poor was because there was “no circulation,” no organization.
These people did not even know their own “value.”
If these resources were gathered together and transported collectively to a major city, their prices could at least double.
If they were then processed, dried, graded, and packaged, the prices could increase fourfold again.
He calculated continuously in his mind as he walked.
He had already figured out his next step.
He could not let the villagers fight their own battles individually.
He would turn the entire village into an organized “supply chain,” consolidate the goods, negotiate prices collectively, and create an absolute seller’s market.
He might currently be penniless, but the most valuable thing he possessed was still in his mind.
He was not simply trying to help people.
He was doing this for the arrangements he would make next.
Han Dongji, who had been walking ahead, suddenly stopped.
He lowered his head and remained silent for a long time before finally asking in a low voice,
“Bai Chenji.”
“Hmm?”
“What… did you actually do before?”
He felt that Bai Chenji did not seem like someone who had lost his memory, because an amnesiac person would not understand these things.
Bai Chenji stopped walking and looked at the mountains disappearing into the clouds and mist in the distance.
The afterglow of the setting sun fell across his profile, outlining the sharpness and pride that belonged to the heir of a conglomerate deep in his bones.
He answered calmly, “I don’t know.”
Then a naturally amiable smile appeared on his face.
“But I do know that I won’t harm you or your grandfather. Because you are my benefactors.”
The word “benefactors” seemed like the most absolute and safest guarantee, carrying an almost overwhelming persuasiveness.
Han Dongji’s gaze remained on Bai Chenji’s face.
That expression, those eyes, did not look as though he was lying.
Bai Chenji had indeed helped him greatly today.
So he decided to observe him for a while longer.
But he did not know that this nameless little mountain village was about to undergo earth-shaking changes.
That night, beneath the dim lamp.
Bai Chenji did not sleep. He held a piece of charred wood and wrote on a wooden board.
When Han Dongji got up during the night and came over to look, he saw:
Current resources: mountain products, medicinal herbs, honey, bamboo forests, wood ear mushrooms, animal hides, eggs.
Labor: hunters, women, the elderly, children.
Needs: salt, oil, iron tools, cloth, seeds.
“What are you doing?” Han Dongji asked in confusion.
Without even looking up, Bai Chenji replied calmly, “Taking inventory of the balance sheet.”
Han Dongji: “…?”
Bai Chenji turned his head and looked at the sleeping village outside the window, the corners of his lips curving slightly upward.
“The entire village.”
Han Dongji did not understand what meaning there was in listing all these things.
“What are you taking inventory for?”
“You’re not poor. It’s just that no one has ever told you how much you’re worth.”
In Bai Chenji’s eyes, this was no longer a backward village.
It was a “company” that had yet to be registered, filled with untapped resources.
Bai Chenji concealed the deep calculations in his eyes and looked up at Han Dongji, his tone calm and sincere.
“I want to learn more about this world. Would it be convenient for your grandfather to teach me? He’s unable to move around much. When you’re away, I can stay here and take care of him, so you can leave the house without worrying.”
Upon hearing this, Han Dongji agreed almost without hesitation.
During this period, whenever he went out to gather herbs or visit the market, what worried him most was his elderly grandfather at home. He was always afraid something might happen to the old man while he was alone.
Now that someone was willing to take care of him, he was grateful beyond words.
“Okay! I’ll go discuss it with Grandfather right now.”
Han Dongji gave a hearty smile and turned to run inside.
Bai Chenji remained where he was, his gaze deep as he watched the young man’s departing back.
There was no gratitude in his heart.
Only cold calculation.
One day, when he left this isolated village and entered the outside world, he would need someone who was absolutely obedient and familiar with the local customs to guide him.
Han Dongji was currently the perfect candidate.
No matter how clever Han Dongji was, he had little experience and a pure heart.
As long as he was pointed in the right direction, he would move forward on his own.
He only needed a push.
If Han Dongji became entangled by this village, by family ties, and had his feet held back…
When necessary, Bai Chenji would personally give him a “push” from behind.
Freeing Han Dongji from the restraints around him.
—A chess piece does not necessarily have to know that it is a chess piece.
◆◇◆◇◆
From that day onward, whenever Han Dongji went to the mountains to gather herbs or traveled outside the village to trade at the market, Bai Chenji naturally remained in the house, taking care of the old man while drawing knowledge of this world from him.
At first, what the old man taught him was the purest form of “survival.”
The old man sat beneath the eaves, gazing at the distant horizon.
Suddenly, he asked, “Will it rain tomorrow?”
Bai Chenji looked at the sky and habitually answered according to his rigorous logic.
“Without meteorological observations, numerical data, and other relevant information, it is impossible to make an accurate prediction.”
The old man did not understand what “data” or “information” meant, but he merely chuckled.
He raised his withered finger and pointed toward the swallows flying low beneath the eaves, then toward the ants swarming and moving their nest in a group by the corner of the wall, and finally toward the fine, fish-scale-like clouds along the edge of the sky.
“These are the signs of Heaven,” the old man said solemnly.
Bai Chenji watched the swallows flying low.
In his memories, there had only been cold, inorganic high-rise buildings and convenient weather forecasts.
But in this world where there was nothing, people could only rely on “experience.”
From that day onward, the old man passed on every survival rule of the mountains and wilderness that he knew.
How to find water according to the terrain and vegetation; which mountain springs were safe to drink and which stagnant waters were poisonous; which wild fruits and roots could fill one’s stomach and which could kill you if touched; how to start a fire on a rainy night; how to pickle and preserve food using the simplest methods; how to determine one’s direction on a starless night.
Gradually, their conversations expanded from the mountains and wilderness to the world at large.
The old man began telling him how vast the territory of Dasheng was, how bitterly cold the snow and winds of the Northern Frontier could be; what one could do and what would violate the laws of Dasheng; as well as the unspoken rules of the martial world that could save one’s life even though they were never written down.
Bai Chenji was like an insatiable sponge, frantically and precisely absorbing this “intelligence.”
After that, the old man began teaching him “medicine.”
But the old man never taught him simply to memorize prescriptions.
He taught him why medicine was practiced.
One day, the old man examined two patients suffering from the common cold.
Before that, he had asked Bai Chenji to try prescribing medicine.
Relying on his photographic memory, Bai Chenji had perfectly reproduced the standard prescription in the medical text for that particular condition.
The old man glanced at it and smiled as he shook his head. He picked up his brush and altered the two identical prescriptions.
For the first patient, he removed several potent medicines.
For the second, he added several seemingly unrelated warming and nourishing herbs.
Bai Chenji frowned in confusion.
“The medical text doesn’t say this. The symptoms are clearly exactly the same. Why are the prescriptions different?”
The old man pointed outside the door.
“The first patient was still working in the fields yesterday, sweating under the blazing sun. The second patient hasn’t had enough to eat for three days because there isn’t even enough food in his household.”
The old man patted his shoulder, his tone carrying the clarity that came from a lifetime of experience.
“The illness is the same, but the people are different. You treat the person, not the prescription.”
Same illness.
Different people.
Those six words encapsulated the deepest compassion and wisdom of a physician.
Bai Chenji said nothing aloud, but those words landed heavily in his meticulously calculating mind.
He understood.
True medicine was not about looking at the name of the disease, but at how this person lived.
Besides medicine, the old man also taught him, without realizing it, how to “read people.”
One day, the old man treated a poor man dressed in rags. He administered acupuncture and medicine, yet did not take a single coin.
Afterward, while Bai Chenji was sorting the medicinal herbs nearby, he calmly pointed out, “You used up medicine and effort. You lost money on this. He can’t even afford food, so there’s no way he can repay this debt.”
The old man sifted through the herbs in the winnowing basket and smiled faintly.
“If he can’t repay it, then let him owe it for now.”
Bai Chenji frowned slightly, still unable to understand such an investment with no guarantee of return.
Unexpectedly, the next morning, the man arrived somewhat awkwardly at the medical clinic carrying two baskets of fresh eggs he had been reluctant to eat himself.
Bai Chenji looked at the two baskets of eggs and raised an eyebrow.
“You knew he would come?”
“I didn’t know he would come, but I believed he would.”
The old man paused and looked at Bai Chenji, his tone meaningful.
“A person can shirk a monetary debt. But debts of life and gratitude are difficult to shirk. Child, a medical clinic isn’t concerned with whether it makes money today. What it earns is people’s trust ten years from now.”
Bai Chenji stood there, his dark eyes shifting slightly.
In his original world, there had only been exchanges of benefits.
But at this moment, for the first time, he reclassified “human ties.”
He calculated the old man’s words in his heart as a kind of intangible yet highly efficient “credit capital.”
Using his own logic, he had comprehended another method of controlling people’s hearts.
As the days passed, Bai Chenji accompanied the old man on more and more medical visits.
At the end of the village lived a lonely old man who had been bedridden for a long time. His illness was already terminal, and medicine could no longer help him.
Yet the old man still carried his medicine chest there every day, tirelessly taking his pulse and boiling medicine for him.
Finally, one time on the way back, Bai Chenji could not help speaking.
“His organs are already failing. He can’t be cured. At most, he has a few days left.”
His tone was completely rational, merely stating an indisputable medical fact.
“I know.”
The old man walked ahead, his steps still steady.
“Then why do you still go?” Bai Chenji asked in confusion. “If failure is inevitable, investing time and medicine is meaningless.”
The old man stopped and turned to look at him.
There was no reproach in those cloudy yet compassionate eyes, only profound calm.
“Because he is still alive.”
The old man spoke softly.
“Being unable to cure an illness doesn’t mean you no longer need to go. A physician isn’t a god. We can’t save everyone. But as long as that person still has breath in him, we cannot give up first.”
Bai Chenji fell silent.
In his cold calculation model, a project destined to fail should be stopped in time to minimize losses.
But the old man showed him through his actions that there were some things in this world that people did not do because they were certain to succeed.
They did them because someone was still alive, and therefore it was still worth doing.
Those words were like a seed, buried deep within the impenetrable depths of Bai Chenji’s rationality.
The seed remained dormant, still hibernating.
As the days passed, the old man’s conversations gradually turned toward the past of this land.
One evening as the sun was setting, the old man sat in a wicker chair and looked at the ruined old earth outside the village.
“Things weren’t like this in the Northern Frontier before.”
Bai Chenji put down the book in his hands and listened attentively.
The old man slowly began recounting the past.
“There used to be many merchant caravans in the Northern Frontier, many medicine merchants, many traveling physicians. People came and went between north and south, and it was very lively. Then… war came. Epidemics came. The imperial army came as well. After that, everything was gone.”
Through the old man’s account, Bai Chenji gradually pieced together part of the truth behind the village’s ruin.
The barrenness and isolation here had never been inherent.
They were the decay left behind by history and the struggle for power.
What surprised Bai Chenji most was that the old man never simply “taught” him.
Sometimes, he would instead “observe” Bai Chenji’s own way of doing things.
One day, Bai Chenji worked out an extremely precise village supply-chain and population-management model on paper. The old man happened to catch sight of it.
He held the sheet densely covered with flows and figures and studied it for a long time. A trace of admiration flashed through his eyes, followed by a hearty laugh.
“So… this is another way of calculating how to live.”
The old man raised his head and looked warmly at the young man before him.
“I’ve lived for more than seventy years. This is the first time I’ve known that managing a village could be done with such a watertight method.”
Bai Chenji was slightly stunned.
The old man did not reject his coldness and rationality.
Instead, he calmly accepted his differences and even gave him recognition.
At that moment, Bai Chenji felt a genuine respect for this rural old physician—something even he himself had never noticed growing within him.
Once, the old man even half-jokingly and half-seriously asked him,
“Young man, if one day this village encountered a great disaster and everyone were going to die, how would you choose?”
If Han Dongji had been present, he would surely have blurted out, “I’d save everyone.”
But Bai Chenji stood there, thought for a moment, and calmly gave his answer.
“I would calculate the cost with the smallest possible loss, and use the method that could leave the greatest number of people alive.”
He was not saving people out of kindness.
It was simply a decision made after maximizing benefits.
People were also an important resource.
After hearing this, the old man nodded with a noncommittal smile.
He did not criticize Bai Chenji for his coldness, because he understood clearly that this was simply who Bai Chenji was.
The old man understood very well that sometimes, what this world needed was not limitless kindness.
They were human beings, not gods.
And because they were human, their abilities were limited.
This seemingly cold and heartless young man knew very clearly where his path lay.
In the end.
The old man’s body finally reached the end of its strength. His deep, muffled coughing grew weaker and more decrepit with every passing day.
He knew perfectly well that his time was near, yet when he spoke of life and death, his tone became increasingly calm.
One snowy afternoon, the old man leaned beside the brazier and suddenly turned to ask Bai Chenji, who was boiling medicine.
“Are you afraid of death?”
The palm fan in Bai Chenji’s hand paused slightly.
He did not conceal it and answered calmly.
“Yes.”
He was not afraid of the destruction of his physical body.
What he feared was that once his consciousness returned to zero, all his unfinished calculations, schemes, and ambitions would completely lose their meaning.
Hearing this, a peaceful smile appeared on the old man’s deeply wrinkled face.
“I’m not afraid.”
“Why?”
Bai Chenji frowned slightly, unable to understand.
In his eyes, life was the foundation of all calculations. Once it returned to zero, it meant total defeat.
Why, then, could a dying man face it without fear?
The old man did not answer immediately.
He merely turned his gaze toward the fine snow fluttering outside the window, then stared intently at Han Dongji in the courtyard, who was braving the snow and wind while chopping wood and sweating from the effort.
After a moment, he smiled and closed his eyes.
“Because I know that when a person leaves, the road does not end.”
The old man extended his hand, dry and withered like a piece of dead wood, and gently covered the back of Bai Chenji’s hand.
His breath was weak, but every word he spoke rang through the cold snowy night like the tolling of a great bell.
“Everyone dies eventually, but knowledge does not. This medicine does not belong to me, nor does it belong to you. It just so happens that… it is our turn to safeguard it for a while. As long as there is still someone in this world who remembers it, it will live forever.”
He paused, as though using the last of his strength, and spoke softly.
“Medicine has never been meant simply to save one particular person…”
“Medicine is passing the flame on.”
Bai Chenji sat beside the flickering brazier, looking at the old man in the twilight of his life.
Then he looked toward the young and vigorous man outside the window. The reflections of the old man and the young man seemed to strangely overlap and intertwine amid the wind and snow.
This was the first time in his life that, beyond the cold logic of absolute rationality deep within his mind, he felt a profound weight that transcended life and death.
It was completely different from everything he had been taught since childhood.
Everything he had learned in the past, whether business, schemes, or other knowledge, had revolved around one ultimate purpose:
“The Gate.”
He had always remained clear-headed about the fact that he was nothing more than a chess piece placed on the board by Sheng Wenchang.
Now that he had fallen into another world, the position on that chessboard had surely already been filled by a new replacement.
But he knew that Sheng Wenchang would eventually die.
And a living chess piece that continued to evolve would one day be able to overturn the chessboard and become the true player moving the pieces.
He had to survive.
He had to live long enough to prove the value of the “Gate.”
Because it was not merely where he came from.
It was the entirety of the meaning of his existence.
The old man’s flame had been passed on through medicine.
And his own flame had to burn toward that Gate.
The old man’s gaze returned from the window and quietly settled on Bai Chenji’s silent profile, finally resting on his conspicuously short hair.
After a long while, the old man spoke softly.
“Go… take the box under the bed out.”
Bai Chenji gathered his thoughts and, as instructed, dragged out an old wooden box from deep beneath the bed.
A thin layer of dust covered the lid, clearly showing that it had not been touched for a long time.
“Open it and have a look.”
Bai Chenji lifted the lid.
Inside lay a bundle of long, ink-black hair, neatly tied with a faded white hair ribbon.
“Your short hair will inevitably cause trouble if you ever leave the mountains. This… was left behind when I once prepared a body for burial. I originally intended to burn it along with the deceased. If you don’t mind, you can use it.”
The old man looked at the bundle of hair, his gaze suddenly becoming distant.
He deliberately kept his voice light.
He did not say that it was actually a keepsake belonging to his son, who had died young.
“Thank you.”
Bai Chenji did not ask further. He solemnly put the wooden box away.
Looking at the old man’s peaceful face, Bai Chenji already understood.
So the old man had seen through him long ago.
He knew that one day, sooner or later, Bai Chenji would leave this village.
Although the old man’s breathing was heavy, his eyes were exceptionally clear.
“You will leave this place someday,” the old man said, looking directly at him.
Bai Chenji did not deny it.
“Yes.”
“Take Dongji with you.”
The old man’s voice was hoarse but firm.
“His medical skills are very good. The greatest illness of his life is that his horizons are too narrow. And you happen to have a pair of eyes that can see very far.”
The old man raised his withered hand with a tremble.
“This world is vast. You two shouldn’t be buried here. Go out and see it. When you’re tired… you can always come back.”
Most of the young people in the village had already left and gone out into the wider world to make a life for themselves.
Only Han Dongji had stayed behind for him and for this village.
He could not bear to let his grandson spend his entire life here without ever seeing the vastness of the world.
Bai Chenji looked at the old man without speaking or making any promise.
But he engraved those words deep in his heart.
Several days later, the old man quietly passed away, on an afternoon that was not much different from any other.