Sitting at home, Mia and Lohan saw the group of people moving in the tunnel. They were talking excitedly while probing their way forward. One of them struck a match. Mia recognized him in the light . . . It was the old director! Tears ran down her face.

“Mia, your day is coming,” Yang whispered.

Mia nodded vigorously.

The party drifted away.

“Why am I sad? I shouldn’t be sad!” Mia said loudly, “We have our business and it’s growing!”

“Good for you, Mia! I’m going home now. I’ll have another drink there to celebrate. Tortoise, why don’t you spend some time with Milan and I’ll pick you up this afternoon.”

Yang went home satisfied.

“I’m so happy, Mia,” Lohan said.

“We’re having a run of good luck,” Mia said.

Before Mia’s clinic had officially opened for business, a patient sought her out.

He was a man in his fifties but looked older. He sat down at the table with his head bowed.

“I’m a buffoon left behind by history. I hope the herbal medicine will calm my soul.”

“Chinese herbs can help you in just this way,” Mia said.

Mia’s heart pounded. She heard something familiar in his tone. She couldn’t believe her first patient had such expectations for herbs. Did this happen thousands of years ago? Or is this how the world was made? Mia told him that she wasn’t yet able to practice medicine on her own, but she knew some of the properties of herbs, and she could give him some to try. If they didn’t work, she advised him to go to Yun Village to see Mrs. Yi.

“You must have heard of Mrs. Yi, haven’t you?” Mia said.

“Yes, of course. But I think, I live in Deserted Village, so I should see our village’s doctor. In the beginning, didn’t doctors become doctors because patients went to them for help?”

“Uncle Ling, I can’t thank you enough. You bring me hope, and all good things will begin today. Just a moment, I’ll get the medicine for you.”

She went to the back room and came out with some herbal powder.

Uncle Ling smelled the herbal powder.

“It’s so intoxicating. Just a sniff, and I’m half-healed.”

Watching Uncle Ling’s figure disappear in the misty rain, Mia said to Lohan, “Chinese herbs do have feet. They can walk into people’s lives by themselves.”

“He often came to the herb hill to watch the herbs growing,” Lohan remembered.

“Is that the difference between a barefoot doctor and a doctor in the city?”

“Yeah, this means you have to learn by yourself.”

Mia thought about “to learn by yourself”—had she actually learned? Sometimes she thought she had, but most of the time she felt that she was only blindly fumbling around without yet reaching the essence. Chinese medicine was a huge system; she was still shut out from it. The fact that the elders of Blue Mountain had been here today didn’t indicate that she was gifted in medicine; they were probably here on other business.