An hour before dawn is the quietest time on the streets of Jiugao City.
The red candles have burned out, the music has faded, and after a night of clamor, silence seeps from every crack in the bricks and every blade of grass. It carries a slight chill, brushing gently against the skin of those traveling through the night.
The city gates have not yet opened, and the vendors waiting to enter have not yet flooded the streets. Sparse wisps of white smoke drift from between the roof tiles—the woodsmoke from the fires of early-rising shopkeepers preparing for business.
At this hour, if someone were to cross the four sub-streets, turn past the market’s back alley, slip through the darkness into the depths of that lane, pass a solitary stone lion, stop by a crumbling brick wall with a gap in it, and then look up into the camphor tree, they would surely be scared half to death.
Amidst the dense branches dangled two feet clad in tattered cloth shoes. The soles were worn white, and they rubbed against each other from time to time, seemingly bothered by the nuisance of mosquitoes.
Unable to fall asleep despite having her eyes closed for a long time, Qin Jiuye turned over in the tree. Finding a more comfortable position among the thick branches, she propped her chin on her hand and began to take in the view.
Thanks to the hardships of the recent past, she hadn't come to see "her courtyard" for quite some time.
The weeds inside the walls had nearly overtaken the entire yard. Looking down at this hour, it was a dark expanse, making it almost impossible to distinguish where the roof tiles ended and the ground began.
But that didn't matter. Even if this place were burned to ashes, she could still tell at a glance where the door was, where the windows were, and where that half-broken old roof beam lay.
She figured that the house broker who had chased her through several streets recently probably hadn't brought anyone else to see the courtyard lately. After all, the mosquitoes were at their fiercest this season; just walking a lap around the yard would leave one's arms and legs covered in itchy welts. And besides her, no one would likely want to patronize a courtyard that was frequently "haunted."
Thinking of this, Qin Jiuye couldn't help but let out a soft laugh.
But as she laughed, the mirth slowly faded.
She dared to say that in all of Jiugao City and the surrounding eighteen villages, no one was as obsessed with a dilapidated courtyard as she was.
Yet her obsession had yet to find fulfillment or solace. Even counting the medical fees from the Su family and the salary Lu Zican had promised her, she was still short of the required silver.
To her, this silver was not just a number; it represented her quality of life for a long time to come. In the short term, she might have to work hard for another six months or a year; in the long term, it could be several more years. After all, who could say for sure when it came to business?
But why? Why did it have to be this courtyard?
She hadn't pondered this question before, but today, she felt she had to think it through.
Why was she so set on owning her own courtyard in Jiugao City? Why couldn't she live the life of that old flower-selling woman? Why couldn't she do as Old Qin expected—staying quietly in Dingweng Village, tending to Guoran Ju until she was eighty or ninety and could no longer walk out of the village?
If she did that, she wouldn't have to tighten her belt every day and count every copper coin. If she did that, perhaps she and Jinbao could eat meat several times a month. If she did that, she wouldn't have to endure the sour face of Old Chen at the crooked rice shop. If she did that, she wouldn't have had to suffer all these years just to save up that sum of money.
It seemed she had set an impossible goal for herself, torturing herself daily until she looked like neither human nor ghost, and she couldn't even be certain that life would be smooth sailing once she moved into this courtyard.
The answer was likely very simple.
Because, in the end, she was unwilling to settle for such a life.
Unwilling to spend her days and nights crossing mountains and ridges without even the time to look up at the sunrise or sunset; unwilling to weave through the crowds of the bustling market, bickering and scheming with her only friend over a few copper coins; unwilling to struggle in the mud, breathing in filth, swallowing her own tears and sweat, with her eyes fixed only on survival and scraping by.
Poverty and the daily grind were not her true pain.
*This* was her pain; this was the obstacle she could not overcome; this was the reason she and Old Qin were always at odds.
Looking back at her past life, she had indeed looked after her own safety well enough. But beyond that, there seemed to be nothing else. She was merely alive, no different from He Yuanzhou, who lived in a daze, driven by the primal urge to survive, wandering endlessly in hunger.
But a person, after all, should not just be alive.
She hadn't thought so before, but after everything she had experienced, she finally understood this truth.
The questioning voices of Tang Shenyan and Li Qiao still echoed in her ears, but her night-long hesitation suddenly vanished at this moment.
Li Qiao was not wrong; she was indeed the Qin Jiuye who understood the way of survival best and knew how to calculate for her own benefit.
But Qiu Ling was also not wrong; the complete Qin Jiuye was a bit more than just the version of herself that focused solely on making a living and earning silver.
The one who was frugal and stingy, wearing drab, old clothes, was her; the one who embroidered a tiny flower on a torn sleeve was also her.
She didn't ask for much—just a little bit more than "being alive."
For that "little bit more," she was willing to endure, to take risks, and to bear more burdens.
Thinking back now, the first person to see through to her essence was none other than her master.
She still remembered the day she first met her master. It was a clear midsummer day, much like today.
Qin Sanyou had taken her on a journey of a day and a night before they finally reached that dilapidated grass hut at the foot of Quexing Mountain. Both the old man and the young girl were covered in dust. She was small then, thinking only of her empty stomach, but Qin Sanyou was very nervous. He had little confidence in his basket of eggs and didn't know if her somewhat impoverished-looking master would be picky about her talent. Before this, Qin Jiuye had already been rejected by masters of all trades.
Contrary to Qin Sanyou's expectations, the master did not scrutinize her from head to toe like the others. He simply placed seven or eight types of herbs before her and told her to choose one as she pleased.
She hesitated for a moment, then reached out and grabbed a few small, bluish-purple berries.
She only learned later that she had chosen the fruit of the Shanjianlan—the Blueberry Lily. It was highly toxic and the only thing among those seven or eight herbs that was difficult to use in medicine.
She had managed to choose wrong even with a one-in-eight chance. Recalling this now, she still felt that perhaps Heaven had not intended for her to study medicine.
However, at that time, neither she nor Qin Sanyou knew anything about it. Her fate was in her master's hands. And her master was an eccentric who refused to believe in ill omens and loved to go against the will of Heaven.
She still remembered her master's "sophistry" at the time: *If this child studies medicine, to say she is unfit is also to say she is fit.*
To say she was unfit referred to Qin Jiuye's nature. She seemed humble and enduring, but she was born with a rebellious streak, always drawn to beautiful yet dangerous things. This would sooner or later embroil her in trouble. And a physician who courted trouble and didn't live long would naturally have much less experience to record in books.
And to say she was fit referred to her core. A person willing to take unconventional paths and strike from oblique angles, as long as they were willing to endure the wild loneliness and walk a path covered in thorns, would eventually reach places others had never been and attain insights that others had never broken through.
Later, she began to follow her unreliable master into the mountains to gather herbs. They often took the wrong path, wandering into deep forests and becoming trapped for days.
But her master never minded, and never gave up on those precious medicinal herbs growing on high cliffs because of it. Her master said: *If you want to reach dangerous and distant places, or witness exquisite scenery, you must inevitably take unusual detours, wrong turns, and dead ends. Conversely, the paths many people travel often lead only to crowded and barren places.*
Her master had a plain face; now, she could hardly remember what her master looked like.
Aside from the complex medical theories, classic treatises, and accounting methods, she thought she wouldn't remember anything else.
But it turned out she remembered everything her master had said.
As her thoughts churned, the eastern sky gradually turned white.
Qin Jiuye stretched her stiff body. Bracing herself against the rough bark of the old camphor tree, she stood up tremblingly among the branches.
Her movements were very slow because, although she had visited this courtyard and climbed this tree countless times before, she had never done this.
It wasn't that she didn't want to stand higher and see further; it was just that she knew the scenery from the heights didn't belong to her. What was the point of looking? It only brought the risk of falling.
Yet at this moment, as she stood atop the tree with shaking legs, looking out at the endless, low-slung houses in the distance, she suddenly felt that this "small matter" of no significance didn't carry as much risk as she had imagined.
Even if she didn't fall from the tree, she had tripped plenty of times on the broken road at the entrance of Dingweng Village. What she was doing now was merely changing from carefully crouching to carefully standing up.
The world didn't actually change because of this action, but she truly felt that the world in her eyes seemed to have gained something.
The dark green camphor leaves rustled above her head. Qin Jiuye looked up.
It was a magpie building a nest. It landed on the treetop with a twig in its beak, looking at her warily.
The person and the bird faced off like that. The magpie did not back down, perching high on the branch with its tail cocked, asserting its "sovereignty" until Qin Jiuye was the first to look away.
Even a bird wanted to climb a high branch to make a nest, chattering until the very end to defend a chosen tree. Why should she bind her own hands and feet before she had even started walking?
The mundane life of fuel, rice, oil, and salt in a small house was her desire; the frost-covered leaves, exquisite flowers, and the vastness of the sky and sea were also her desire.
She didn't always earn silver by practicing medicine and saving people, but she did it anyway. If she only considered earning silver, she didn't seem to be doing it for herself—but wasn't following her heart also a way of doing it for herself?
Perhaps it was time to change her way of moving forward.
And the youth who had questioned her might one day understand this as well.
A touch of warmth gradually descended. Qin Jiuye blinked, feeling the morning light slowly illuminate the depths of her eyes.
The sun had just climbed up, hanging among the branches of the old camphor tree, flickering like a small lantern that had stayed lit all night and forgotten to be extinguished.
The moment the sun broke through the canopy and the morning light cast itself upon the roof tiles, Qin Jiuye turned and jumped down from the old camphor tree, walking briskly toward the eastern part of the city.
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
--- | --- | ---
九皋城 | Jiugao City | The primary city setting of the story.
丁翁村 | Dingweng Village | Qin Jiuye's home village.
果然居 | Guoran Ju | Qin Jiuye's clinic and residence in her home village.
秦三友 | Qin Sanyou | An elder or relative of Qin Jiuye who took her to her master.
房牙子 | House broker | A traditional term for a real estate agent or middleman.
却行山 | Quexing Mountain | The mountain where Qin Jiuye's master lived in a grass hut.
山菅兰 | Shanjianlan | Blueberry Lily (Dianella ensifolia); a toxic plant with blue-purple berries.
和沅舟 | He Yuanzhou | A character mentioned as an example of someone living purely for survival.
