As the director walked on his aging legs, he felt a power still lurking inside him. This is the way he had felt for years. “For me too!” he said, his voice loud and strong.

He had almost reached the lean-to when he saw Kay and her husband. The man held Kay so tightly that she became a pillow in his arms. The director remembered Kay’s unyielding appearance when she was young. What was she made of? His two female students had shown up one after another, causing the director’s heart to blaze. The light he gave out lit up the path at once.

Inside the lean-to, he lay down amid the fragrance of the herbs, and an incomparable peace began permeating the air.

In the morning, the director returned to his place in the county seat. To his surprise, the half-collapsed house was restored. Someone was talking in the room when he entered.

“One side is bright, the other is dark—that’s a good sign!” He heard a hoarse female voice.

He turned on the lamp and stood in the lamplight. He saw no one in the room.

“Long time no see!” he said loudly.

No one answered him.

Looking out the window, he saw the sun rising and a thin woman walking toward him in the sunlight. The director hurriedly washed his face and combed his hair.

When he came out of the bathroom, the woman was nowhere to be seen. Something had been placed at the door. It was a stick of incense. He found a match and lit the incense. Then he sat down on his recliner. The adventures of these days in Yun Village were like a movie being replayed in his mind with a lot of dialogue. Some of the speakers he had met in Yun Village and some he had never met, but they looked familiar. He closed his eyes gratefully, listening carefully through the mist of incense, and clicked his tongue, making tut tut sounds now and then. Before long, he fell asleep. In his dream someone brought him some yogurt, and he drank his fill.

When he woke up, he saw Tauber sitting in the living room.

“Are you returning to the village tomorrow?” Tauber asked.

“No, I’m going to reopen the clinic.”

“Great!” Tauber smiled. “The cause you and Mrs. Yi are working for is blossoming everywhere.”

The director was about to speak when Tauber disappeared. Looking down, he saw that the incense had burned down to the end. The director remembered the power in his body, and suddenly he realized that it was for doing this thing. He would take the plaque out from the storage shed tomorrow and have it repainted and hung on the front door. He could open a medical training workshop.

The director sensed someone standing outside the door.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“It’s me. I’ve come here several times today.”

The director knew the voice, and he felt birds singing in his chest. This guy hadn’t been here for twenty years, had he? His name was Wang. Wang used to be his patient and a close friend. Ever since the director was defeated by the devil in his heart twenty years ago, Wang had disappeared from sight. Occasionally, in a drunken haze, the director would think of him and worry about the tumor in his head. Wang was so young back then. When he came to see him for treatment, a major hospital in the capital had diagnosed the thing in his head as a malignant tumor. But as long as the pain didn’t flare up, Wang looked like the happiest man in the world.