Yang came up to Gray and shouted at him, “You get out of here, now!”

Gray left the house dazed. He walked through the woods and came to the road. The houses in Deserted Village were hidden in the dark; only the lights flickered like the blinking eyes of ghosts. A cold wind was blowing, and Gray’s legs were shaking. He quietly cursed himself.

A shadow appeared on the road. It was a man.

“Who are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for Mia.”

“You can’t just go looking for her. Is there some particular reason you need to see her?”

“She asked me to help her plant herbs.”

“I see. You can leave now.”

“Why would I do that? I haven’t seen Mia yet.”

“You can’t. Didn’t I tell you this a moment ago?”

“You did. But . . .”

“Back off. Now! Or I’ll beat you up! Damn it!”

Gray ran away in a panic. In the dark, he couldn’t distinguish directions, and he didn’t know where he was.

When he slowed down and stopped, he saw the hill in the moonlight.

Ah, banlangen! Ah, plantain! Ah, monkey grass! Ah, heartleaf! Ah, spider fern! Ah, ardisia! Ah, motherwort . . .

Gray crawled on the ground, listening to the voices of the herb roots. His pores were dilating. He felt that he was melting into the soil. These were Mia’s herbs. They were as dear to him as Mia was.

“This guy doesn’t give up easily.”

Gray heard the man talking somewhere. He stood up and whisked the dirt off his coat. He glanced around but didn’t see the man.

Looking down at Deserted Village on a night like this, Gray was confused. He saw only some lights flickering in the woods. No people were visible. Neither were houses. He thought, Mia is such a straightforward, naive young woman, how can she live in such a creepy place? If the village is really haunted, then how can the existence of this herb hill be explained? Thinking about what had happened just now, Gray felt that he himself was the problem. He was too shallow, and he had only a superficial understanding of the work. He didn’t know its inner secret. Obviously Mia knew more than he did. Gray believed that both Grandpa Onion and Yang were profoundly engaged in this cause, and that’s why they were so serious. One lived in Yun Village and the other in Deserted Village, but nonetheless they had come together, hadn’t they? They even talked the same way!

As Gray went down the mountain, he felt that some of the conventional wisdom he had absorbed was shaken. After one strange thing after another happened to him, he had now become very dissatisfied with himself. Indeed, he was a half-hearted person, and a loner who loved almost no one. How could Spoon trust him? Living with him, she would feel bored, tense, and even hopeless. Spoon had been right to leave him. He hoped she would never look back.