Chapter 6

Uncle Liu didn't pay much attention to Chen Jue's probing gaze. Thinking of his own son with the broken leg, he couldn't help but feel grief well up: "He just lies there all day, barely eats a thing... and he flies off the handle at the drop of a hat, even hit his daughter-in-law so bad she ran off..."

Chen Jue's fingers twitched slightly as he listened. Something about this didn't sit right.

He didn't interrupt Uncle Liu. This was the first time Uncle Liu had spoken about his family troubles, and Chen Jue hadn't realized how dire things were. Despite such hardship, Uncle Liu had still come to take care of him for three days—even just cooking two meals a day was more than generous.

Chen Jue listened without saying a word.

Uncle Liu rubbed his face, his eyes red, and continued: "Xiu Er was such a good daughter-in-law. She never once complained about his leg—brought him tea, emptied his bedpan, washed his clothes, changed his bedding. Not a single word of complaint. But he... I don't know what got into him. He turned into a different person. Either he'd curl up on the kang staring into space, or he'd lose his temper and smash bowls and dishes. After the outburst he'd regret it, saying he was a good-for-nothing cripple. Then he started lashing out...

He drove Xiu Er away. My poor little granddaughter Nannan is only three years old and now she's lost her mother. Tell me, what's gotten into Qingshan?"

Chen Jue had a rough idea of what was wrong, but he couldn't be sure without seeing the patient. So he stayed silent.

Uncle Liu didn't expect an answer from Chen Jue anyway—Chen Jue wasn't a doctor.

He muttered to himself: "Why is life so hard?"

He had originally come to persuade Chen Jue to look forward, but in the end, he was the one who ended up feeling sorry for himself.

He gazed into the distance, his wrinkled eyes full of old sorrow, and spoke slowly: "At first, people said a man as tall as me couldn't have kids. But I had three, and every one of them turned out fine. My eldest married into Liu Family Village beyond the mountains for just a few taels of bride price to pay for his father's medical treatment. He comes home maybe once a year. My youngest, Qingzhu, is fifteen now, just about the age to get married. But he won't even consider anyone, because he knows this family can't do without him. I've let him down..."

Uncle Liu let out a deep sigh. To comfort Chen Jue, he'd opened up about his own family's suffering. Chen Jue looked at that weathered face and finally spoke: "Uncle Liu, things will get better."

He wasn't good at comforting people—that was the only thing he could say.

Every family has its own troubles, and in this poor, ancient world, they were especially hard. Uncle Liu's family was the worst off of them all.

By the time he finished speaking, Uncle Liu had already finished cleaning the chives. He wiped his hands on his apron, set the basket of vegetables on the flat stone, and said to Chen Jue: "I'm glad you've come around. I'll be going now—Dashan needs looking after."

"I'll come with you."

Chen Jue decided to go see Zhou Qingshan. Something about Uncle Liu's description felt off.

He needed to see the man himself.

Not to treat the broken leg, but something else.

Since Zhou Qingshan had made it back alive, even if someone had accompanied him, he'd been bumped along the road for over half a month. Any wound that was going to heal would have healed by now. A severed limb couldn't be reattached—even if they could go back to the very beginning, with the medicine they have now, it couldn't be saved.

What he needed to check was something else—his mental state.

A month after injury, once a person gets past the physical pain, they fall into a different kind of suffering.

He had to see the man himself to be sure.

He might not be able to help Zhou Qingshan get better, but he could at least prevent things from getting worse.

Chen Jue wasn't sure why Uncle Liu was so good to him. The original owner had only been married into this village for a year, and the memories he'd inherited weren't particularly detailed.

Chen Jue hadn't paid much attention himself. These days, his mind had been occupied with how he'd died.

People are independent, with strong self-awareness. Even in someone else's body, they immediately reshape their own thinking.

Others' memories get overwritten—the brain rewires itself quickly.

He was the same way.

Though he didn't know why Uncle Liu was so good to him,

he didn't like owing people favors. He'd help where he could.

Uncle Liu's heart was entirely with Zhou Qingshan. When he heard Chen Jue's question, he assumed he was asking about Qingzhu, and sighed: "While you're at it, help me talk some sense into Qingzhu too."

Talk him into what? Getting hitched sooner?

He was no good at that.

He'd never married himself. What made Uncle Liu think he could persuade anyone? What if he talked the boy out of getting married at all...

Chen Jue thought this but said nothing, putting the vegetables back in Uncle Liu's basket without a word.

Uncle Liu tried to push them back: "Keep these melons—they go good with cornmeal."

Mentioning cornmeal reminded him of the corn grit porridge he'd made himself. Chen Jue felt nauseous again and pressed a hand to his stomach. It wasn't that he was being picky—it was the baby in his belly turning its nose up.

Uncle Liu kept trying to push the melons on him, stuffing them over the wicker fence, insisting he keep them. Chen Jue was terrible at arguing over domestic trivialities, so he gave up, took the melons, set them inside the fenced yard, latched the gate, and carried Uncle Liu's basket toward his house.

Passing the vegetable garden, he pointed vaguely at a plot: "Uncle, my garden has plenty of vegetables—you don't need to bring me any. There's plenty in the field."

He was pointing at random, unsure which plot was his. These hillside gardens were all reclaimed land, varying in size and shape, hard to tell apart. He didn't have that memory.

Uncle Liu corrected him, pointing to a well-tended plot in front of them: "Child, your vegetables are indeed well grown, but you didn't plant these loofahs. Just the other day you asked me to save you seeds to plant next year."

So loofahs were called "tiao gua" here.

Thanks to Shennong tasting a hundred herbs, Chen Jue wasn't completely ignorant of crops.

Uncle Liu walked him through the garden, pointing out his plots along the way.

Past the garden, they reached Uncle Liu's house.

Uncle Liu's home was below Chen Jue's, about a kilometer away—three mud-brick rooms with a wicker courtyard. Through the low fence, one could see the whole situation at a glance. It seemed even worse than the yard Chen Jue currently lived in—at least his house was made of stone.

Uncle Liu's little granddaughter Nannan was playing with a tuft of rabbit-tail grass in the yard. Sitting under an old pomegranate tree weaving straw sandals was Uncle Liu's youngest son, the ge'er Zhou Qingzhu.

Another ge'er.

Chen Jue studied him carefully.

He was thin, his complexion sallow from the food scarcity. But his hands worked skillfully. The straw sandals were well-made, woven with tough leather strips—sturdy and strong. He had the clean, fresh look of a growing teenager.

Little Nannan spotted Uncle Liu from afar and called out happily: "Grandpa!"

The ge'er Zhou Qingzhu also looked up and smiled at Chen Jue: "Brother Chen, you're here."

His smile was warm and familiar—he must have been close to the original owner. Chen Jue nodded back at him.

Qingzhu brought him a stool to sit on. Chen Jue observed him without making it obvious.

Uncle Liu was also a ge'er, but at his age it was hard to tell. So Chen Jue looked to the younger one.

Uncle Liu had said his youngest was a ge'er—so that was Zhou Qingzhu, who looked exactly like any ordinary boy.

"Ge'er" must be their local term for men who could bear children.

Zhou Qingzhu had the appearance of an ordinary man—at most, his features were a bit refined and his contours softer, but he had an Adam's apple.

This didn't really count as a distinguishing feature, since many fifteen or sixteen-year-old boys hadn't hit puberty yet, and quite a few of them were fairly delicate-looking.

He'd need to observe more people before he could draw any conclusions, and he couldn't count himself in that either, since the body he was in was only nineteen.

Chen Jue had a cat's curiosity, and on top of that, he had a doctor's occupational hazard—whenever he came across some strange creature, he couldn't help but want to study it.

He was using himself as the research subject.

Judging from Uncle Liu's tone, it wasn't easy for him to get pregnant either. He even used himself as an example, saying that back then everyone thought he couldn't have children, but he ended up having three, and all of them were perfectly healthy.

In other words, it was hard for men like him to conceive, but as long as they could, the children born were all acceptable and healthy individuals.

Whether a male could bear children might be something in the local water, or perhaps a genetic trait of the ethnic group.

There were too many species in this world that science couldn't explain. Although Chen Jue was a firm materialist, he also knew that at the end of science lay the mystical.

Oh, that was what the head nurse had said.

Thinking of the head nurse, he really wanted to call her and ask if she had ever seen someone like him give birth.

He was a cardiac surgeon. Even though he had become thoroughly familiar with obstetrics and gynecology knowledge over the past year thanks to Jiang Xinhe, he had never encountered a case of someone like him giving birth.

With a fully developed uterus, would it still be the same process?

And after giving birth, how would breastfeeding work?

Staring at his flat chest, his mind started to drift.