Chapter 3

The rooster crows three times, yang energy stirs, and life awakens.

Outside, it was already light. Three days had passed; today was the fourth, a new day.

Ever since Chen Jue accepted this child that night, he'd thrown out every materialist belief he'd ever had.

He could even recall the opening lines from the fringe branches of Chinese medicine.

Chen Jue climbed off the kang, steadied himself against the wall for a moment, and made sure his head was totally okay.

He'd had a mild concussion these past few days.

Chen Jue figured out why the original owner had passed out: probably from not eating enough during the pregnancy. Her blood sugar dropped when she stood up, she got dizzy, and she fell into the river. The river was shallow, so she cracked the back of her head on a rock.

Since she was in the water, the hit wasn't deadly—just a short blackout that made her drown.

So she ran out of oxygen, and that's when he slipped in.

It's been three days, and she hasn't come back, so she's not coming back.

Chen Jue shuffled out, holding onto the wall. The bump on the back of his head had gone down; except for a little soreness, he wasn't dizzy anymore.

Chen Jue unlatched the door and shoved open the heavy wooden door, which creaked, and looked out onto a peaceful little mountain village.

Even though he'd snuck out to look around the past two days when Uncle Liu was gone, the view still hit him every time.

The sun wasn't up yet, and mountains ringed the place on three sides.

Blue haze stacked over green, heavy fog everywhere—you couldn't make out the tall mountains in the distance, but even the air alone was enough to wake you up.

If he were just visiting, he'd have to say it was a great spot—"Picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, gazing leisurely at the southern mountains."

But now that he had to live here, Chen Jue looked around and figured he was living in the middle of nowhere.

It had probably rained a few days back; weeds had already poked their heads up in the yard, refusing to give up, growing like crazy—just like the waist-high weeds out back that stretched on forever.

Chen Jue glanced at the overgrown patch north of the yard, then at the few villagers' houses way off to the east, and figured he must be the newcomer in the village, stuck out here, far from everyone.

His place had weeds, but it also had trees.

Chen Jue sighed at the two big trees in the yard. Since they were at the foot of the mountain, trees were everywhere; the original owner probably needed a place to hang laundry, so he'd fenced in two trees.

One was a hazel tree, huge, maybe forty feet tall. If he ever wanted the nuts off that thing, it'd be a pain.

The real problem was he couldn't reach the leaves up there.

There went one more option for toilet paper.

At the thought of wiping, Chen Jue coughed and looked at the other tree. Chen Jue didn't really know what this tree was—he just knew the leaves were great for wiping your ass. About the size of a kid's hand, the back was fuzzy, but the front worked fine and was a little tough—way better than bamboo shards.

The tree wasn't tall—it was all twisted and crooked, thick and sturdy, with plenty of branches. That rooster that had been perched on a branch crowing at midnight pecked at a tassel, then turned and locked eyes with Chen Jue.

It wasn't scared at all, didn't even blink—like some feathered Taoist priest standing his post.

Chen Jue stared back at it for a bit and told it, "No point staring. Your old master's gone. I'm the one who's alive now.

Three days. I waited three days for him to come back.

But he didn't."

The rooster, of course, had no idea what he was saying; it flapped its wings and hopped to another branch.

Chen Jue quit babbling at it and went to the water vat to get some water to wash his face.

The reflection in the water vat was still his face—like how he looked back in the modern world after 48 hours straight in surgery, except now he looked even more like death: pale face, dead eyes, hair all over the place.

Same face, same everything—just long hair. And long hair meant this wasn't his body.

He'd jumped into a body with the same name and same face as his.

And just like that, Chen Jue accepted that he'd crossed over.

He splashed some water on his face, tied his hair up with a piece of white hemp cord—not because he was in mourning, but because he still couldn't figure out how to use a wooden hairpin. With this much hair, he had no clue how the original owner kept it up with one pin.

Once his hair was tied, he hauled the herbs out of the house to dry in the sun. The past two days, he'd only flipped them when Uncle Liu wasn't around, because some of them were abortion herbs.

The original owner used to pick herbs for a living. After marrying Huo Lin, who owned this stone house, the two of them didn't have much land, so they kept on living like they always had: Huo Lin hunted, and he picked herbs.

These herbs had piled up because nobody had sold them after Huo Lin got drafted for forced labor, so there were a lot, and all kinds—including a few herbs that could cause an abortion.

The first time Chen Jue saw those herbs, he'd set them aside to dry on their own.

Going by how he usually did things, he should've taken them the second he had them all—while the baby was still tiny, easiest to get rid of before three months—but he didn't.

Maybe it was guilt from not being able to save a kid that was eating at him; the nightmares he had at night were a mirror of what was going on in his head.

But the bigger reason was that he thought this was all a dream, and when he woke up, he'd go back to his old world.

Even if going back meant he was already dead.

He'd spent thirty years learning materialism, after all; that kind of thing doesn't change overnight.

If this was a dream, he wouldn't mess with this body.

Now three days were up. No matter how weak you are, three days is enough to recover some—at least his head was clear now, and he couldn't keep fooling himself with the dream excuse.

If you put it in idealist Taoist terms, after three days, the soul had settled in, and there was no going back.

The big rooster was staring at him from the tree, and Chen Jue said it again to the rooster: "He's not coming back."

The rooster heard him and turned its head away, its fat comb wiggled a couple of times, looking all perky and full of itself.

Chen Jue stared at its comb and thought that as soon as he stopped having nightmares, he'd slit its throat—for crowing before the sun was even up, and show it a real-life version of "killing the donkey after it's done with the mill."

Teach it what harsh reality really means.

He was a little hungry and wanted some meat.

The only living things in the yard were this rooster and one hen.

These were the only two chickens he had.

It wasn't that this rooster was all about monogamy—it was that the other chicken was already in his belly.

During the three days he was laid up on the kang, Uncle Liu, the neighbor who lived downhill, came to look after him. When the doctor said he was pregnant and needed to eat well to keep the baby safe, Uncle Liu went ahead and killed the other hen and cooked it for him.

This body must have been starved of nutrients for a long time; that one hen only gave him back a little strength.

My stomach was still growling, wanting meat.

But I couldn't eat these two chickens now—if I did, they'd be gone, and I needed to earn money.

Chen Jue rolled up his sleeves by the morning light and began processing the medicinal herbs. He needed to keep himself busy, to do the work the original owner of this body had done.

He knew how to handle the dug-up herbs, slicing and drying them by type.

Because Director Zhou had once made him help her organize herbs.

Director Zhou was a TCM practitioner. Normally, she wouldn't need to sort these herbs anymore—modern TCM had clear divisions, and those who took pulses didn't necessarily need to know how to fill prescriptions or prepare medicines.

But because he had studied abroad, learning only Western medicine and scalpel work, he couldn't even identify Chinese herbs after returning home.

So Director Zhou had returned to her old trade, from pulse-taking to identifying herbs and preparing them, forcing him to go through the whole process.

Chen Jue hadn't paid much attention to those herbs back then. It wasn't that he didn't remember the TCM knowledge Director Zhou had taught him through osmosis—he knew TCM was impressive.

There was a saying: TCM cures the root, Western medicine treats the surface. Though that saying was too absolute, there was reason why TCM was better for internal regulation.

But back then, he was obsessed with Western medicine, focused entirely on his scalpel, so he hadn't studied TCM properly. Now he only remembered a smattering.

He hadn't truly learned Director Zhou's skills, and now all he could do was long for her.

Chen Jue closed the small herb cutter and lifted his head, gripping the handle.

Maybe it was because of pregnancy mood swings, but his emotions swung violently, and his vision was so blurry it took a while before he could make out the clear blue sky.

Lately, all he'd thought about were the consequences of his death—how this kind of death would ruin Zhonghai Hospital's reputation.

Those rampant rumors played through his mind like a movie reel, as clear as if it were yesterday.

#They all said he was a genius, cold-blooded by nature, looking down on everyone, never sympathizing with patients—and now he's killed two people in one shot, a major screw-up.#

#Dean Chen really is unlucky. Chen Jue was just an abandoned child he adopted out of compassion back then, and now he's dragged him down with him. You know the hospital's largest shareholder is the Huo Group—this isn't something Dean Chen can fix.#

#I always said Chen Jue would mess up eventually—becoming Director of Cardiac Surgery so young was definitely unreliable, and now he's finally slipped up.#

#A 30-year-old cardiac surgery director—the first ever, right? Even for a genius, that's too crazy.#

#With Dean Chen as his dad, what couldn't Chen Jue do? If he hadn't died, he might've taken the dean's seat in a few years.#

#What makes Chen Jue, an adopted kid, so special?#

Why him?

Chen Jue looked up at the sky. These negative comments weren't his imagination—he never hoped for much. This was what he had actually experienced.

He was Dean Chen's son, and ever since he became Director of Cardiac Surgery at 29, these remarks had followed him constantly. Now that he was dead—and after killing two people at once—those comments would only be harsher, not kinder just because he'd died.

Chen Jue sliced a handful of Kudzu root into pieces before taking a short break.

Over the past three days, besides the failed surgery, he'd thought about these comments—they had completely consumed his thoughts.

He hadn't let himself think about how heartbroken Dean Chen and Director Zhou would be when they heard he'd died.

The old burying the young.

He was too afraid to think about it.

He was rarely home, spending little time with Dean Chen and Director Zhou. Even when he was home, he never expressed his feelings properly—otherwise, Dean Chen wouldn't have made him take psychology classes.

Now he knew what regret felt like.

Chen Jue stood up, laying the sliced herbs out flat in the bamboo baskets, just like he used to dry them for Director Zhou. As he dried them, he said softly, "Dad, you always told me to respect life—respect their coming into the world and their leaving it. Birth, aging, sickness, and death are natural laws, so you must be able to accept my death too, right?"

Chen Jue knew what he was saying was too harsh, so it took him a moment before he spoke. "Dean Chen, I'm sorry. Director Zhou has a bad heart—she can't get too emotional. Please help me comfort her. Tell her... tell Mom that there will be kids better than me. Don't be sad—adopt another child who can be a joy to you and carry on your legacy. That way..."

"Mom, I'm sorry."

It took Chen Jue a moment before he whispered to the shelves of herbs.

At home, he rarely called Dean Chen "Dad" or Director Zhou "Mom"—it was always "Dean Chen" and "Director Zhou." Now that he wanted to call them that, they couldn't hear him anymore.

Chen Jue thought, he regretted it. All those years, he'd only focused on carrying on the legacy, never being a good son to them.

Chen Jue smiled bitterly. He hadn't been a good son, and because he was gay, he hadn't given Dean Chen and Director Zhou any grandchildren—so now they had to bury their child in old age, with no one to care for them in their later years.

He now felt like he was a cold, heartless person.

He was an orphan abandoned at the hospital right after birth, and Dean Chen and his wife had adopted him.

Maybe because he'd been abandoned, he was distant by nature.

Aside from not embarrassing Dean Chen and Director Zhou in medicine, he'd failed at everything else—he hadn't been a good son to them.

Even though Director Zhou and Dean Chen were good to him, pouring all their heart into raising him, he still kept them at arm's length deep down.

Maybe he was afraid of being abandoned again.

But now, it wasn't Dean Chen and Director Zhou who had abandoned him—it was him who had abandoned them, all on his own.

Only at the moment of death did he feel regret—regret for never showing them the love and devotion a child should.

If only there were a cure for regret in this world. But there wasn't.

Chen Jue whispered to the rising sun, "Dad, Mom, I'm sorry. I wasn't a good son. I'll live well in this world—don't worry about me.

Oh, and I got married in this world. I don't know who he is, but his surname is... Huo."

His brow unconsciously furrowed when he said the last word.

Even saying that surname felt hard.

It wasn't that the surname Huo was bad—it was that the person who made him feel so much pressure that he psychologically resisted happened to have that surname, ruining it by association.

Chen Jue paused for a moment, at a loss for words.

The child he'd killed was named Huo.

If there's such a thing as karma in this world, is this it now?