A week later, at the Special Department’s sanatorium.
Zhou Hui tasted the soup and said, “You can’t do this; it’s all MSG. This is terrible for the patient. And Little Beauty has internal organ injuries, it’s not like he gave birth to your child and can’t lactate, why are you making so much crucian carp and big bones?”
“…” Yu Jingzhong humbly asked, “I ordered this from the military hotel. So what do you think he should eat?”
—Zhou Hui was someone who loved to play the teacher.
Unlike Chu He, who meticulously planned everything for you but told you nothing, and who had no particular interest in anything, Zhou Hui’s interests were very broad. As long as you hit on a point that interested him, he wouldn’t mind sharing what he was most proud of.
“When visiting a patient, nourishing blood and replenishing vital energy are most important. And the most important thing about soup isn’t taste, it’s nutrition. Adding so much MSG and seasoning is useless. If you have money, just buy two five-hundred-year-old ginseng roots casually. I know a few ginseng dealers in Changbai Mountain; whether the price is fair is another matter, but the goods are definitely genuine. If you don’t have money, simmer a black-boned chicken or black fish slowly at home until the bones and meat melt into the soup. Add bamboo shoots and goji berries, simmer it down to a small bowl, and giving the patient one bowl a day is also very nourishing.”
Zhou Hui lifted the thermos in his hand and said, “Here, this is black-boned chicken stewed with five-hundred-year-old mountain ginseng. A small piece the size of a fingernail is enough. And the most important thing for stewing soup is the heat. Don’t use induction cookers or pressure cookers to make up the numbers. Can twenty minutes of electric heating compare to two days of slow simmering in terms of nutrition?”
Yu Jingzhong nodded, accepting the lesson. They walked up the sanatorium steps together, passed through the bustling lobby, and headed towards the elevator.
Zhou Hui continued to earnestly instruct, “Don’t think this task is time-consuming; it’s actually not tiring at all, just keep an eye on the heat. Think about it, what does Little Beauty want with you? You’re a poor civil servant, do you have money to buy him a house within the Third Ring Road or a luxury car? Can you give him three European shopping trips a year? Don’t look at me like that, you’re freaking suspended for investigation, not only do you have no money, but your future is almost over. What will you do if you don’t put some thought into keeping him? —And you’d better pray that Little Beauty hasn’t heard the golden rule ‘Don’t want anything other than someone being good to you,’ otherwise, giving him a hundred bowls of soup a day will be useless, and he’ll dump you with a green hat in minutes.”
“…” Yu Jingzhong said, feeling incredibly wronged, “I really don’t have any improper thoughts about Yan Lanyu…”
“It’s best if you think that way,” Zhou Hui slapped his thigh, very satisfied and understandingly saying, “—Honestly, as your brother, I should support you, but I can’t speak against my conscience. What do you have? Let’s not talk about those pitiful savings accounts. You finally got to be a deputy director, but now you’re suspended for investigation, let’s not mention that either. As for age, to put it nicely, you’re older and can care for someone, but to be honest, your energy isn’t as good as a young man’s, it’s hard to say how many times you can perform at night… Sigh, I feel sorry for Little Beauty. You know, if he had even found that disaster of a nephew from our family, although he’s a bit silly, at least he’s a young, handsome, charming, rich, and good-looking guy. But he chose you, an unmoneyed, unhandsome, unsexy middle-aged uncle…”
“Zhou Hui!” Yu Jingzhong said angrily, “Yan Lanyu doesn’t have any ‘this or that’ intentions towards me either! Don’t talk about him like that!”
The elevator door chimed open, and Zhou Hui forcefully put his arm around Yu Jingzhong’s neck, walking out with a lewd, wicked smile: “I get it, I get it. There’s nothing between you two, truly nothing. You didn’t smoke and cry by his bedside like you were dying, and he didn’t twist his own hands off to save you… Nothing, you two have a pure revolutionary friendship, your brother understands.”
Yu Jingzhong desperately tried to break free, but Zhou Hui held on tightly. The two scuffled down the corridor, and doctors and nurses along the way greeted them. The young nurses, seeing Zhou Hui, blushed shyly.
Zhou Hui greeted the young beauties in a good mood, while asking Yu Jingzhong, “So, are you really going to be removed from your position?”
At the mention of this, Yu Jingzhong wanted to light a cigarette, but seeing the four bright red “No Smoking” signs in the hospital corridor, he reluctantly endured it and said, “I impulsively killed that old man. The old man’s faction wants to kill me, so my suspension is also a form of protection.”
“When will you be reinstated?”
“I don’t know.”
Zhou Hui looked at him lovingly: “How about it, why don’t you come work with your brother? Last time, the Koreans sent someone to ask me to be a minister or something, paying 800,000 RMB a month… How about you do it, and I’ll still be your lackey, how’s that?”
Yu Jingzhong said glumly, “No.”
“Oh, you,” Zhou Hui said, “You don’t know how to adapt, and you don’t know how to make money. Who the hell would be your wife? I was going to sell you half a ginseng cheap. How will you ever afford it otherwise!”
Yu Jingzhong immediately, without a word, flipped through his pants pocket: “Ginseng? Hand it over!”
Zhou Hui covered his pants and yelled, “Old Four! Old Four, come out quickly! —Deputy Yu has gone mad and is trying to force your man, come out and protect me!”
In a nearby ward, Chu He put down his book and rubbed his forehead, thinking, Please, just let him force you. You two are a perfect match.
Zhou Hui, covering his crotch with one hand and protecting the thermos with the other, quickly lost ground. Yu Jingzhong pulled out half a translucent, white, perfectly shaped small ginseng from his pants pocket. He carefully tucked it into his embrace and turned to leave. Zhou Hui pretended to chase for two steps, and Yu Jingzhong immediately scurried off towards the intensive care unit. Behind him, Zhou Hui was still shouting, “Ten thousand a year! —I’ll give you a discount, ninety-eight hundred a year, and two more points for card processing fees!”
Yu Jingzhong stumbled, then ran off quickly and disappeared.
“Poor civil servant, can’t even find a wife through blind dates.” Zhou Hui shook his head with great emotion, carried the thermos into Chu He’s ward, and said flirtatiously, “Darling~ What are you doing?”
Chu He put away his book. Zhou Hui immediately pounced, forcibly snatching it despite resistance: “Hehehe—I knew you were secretly looking at a dirty book when no one was around, missing your husband, weren’t you? Isn’t your husband’s eighteen times a night much better than Fan Luo’s useless good looks? Hurry, let me critique and guide you—huh?” Zhou Hui flipped through the worn, yellowed thread-bound book, puzzled: “Holding a Corpse Child? I’ve heard of ‘corpse child,’ but what’s ‘holding a corpse child’?”
Chu He snatched the book back and stuffed it into the drawer, calmly saying, “What did you sell to Yu Jingzhong?”
Chu He, wearing thin pajamas, sat in an armchair by the bed, his eyes slightly narrowed as he stared at Zhou Hui. For the age of this human body, his skin and figure were exceptionally well-maintained. The lines from his shoulders to his back and waist were lean and slender, and a taut, slender arm peeked out from under his sleeve. His calves, extending from beneath his robe, were straight and long, a level of training no less than a runway model’s.
“Oh, I gave him half a ginseng…” Zhou Hui’s gaze fell on Chu He, and his attention immediately shifted. He meticulously scrutinized him from top to bottom with undisguised desire, almost spilling the soup while serving it.
“Darling,” he said solemnly, “Why don’t you just stay like this for a few hundred years? I think this is pretty good too.”
Chu He subtly raised an eyebrow, offering no comment, and took the soup, taking a sip.
“When your true body wasn’t destroyed, you were always appearing in your divine form, and honestly, it put a lot of pressure on me,” Zhou Hui flopped onto the hospital bed, his two strong, long legs spread wide like a great general, but he didn’t care at all, saying, “Let’s not even mention that Fan Luo, who was always staring at other people’s wives and children. Every time we went out, everyone only noticed you and not me. They dared to come up and flirt in front of me, did they think the main wife was dead? And that Fudo Myoo…”
“Cough, cough, cough!” Chu He choked on his soup, stopping him. “Zhou Hui!”
“Oh—not allowed to mention it now, you hypocrite.”
Chu He coughed repeatedly, slamming the bowl onto the table, and asked in surprise, “What is this taste? What did you put in it?”
Zhou Hui, with a gaze mixed with teasing, flirtation, and raw desire, visually stripped his ex-wife’s clothes off and examined her completely, then slowly said, “…That ginseng you planted.”
Chu He’s eyebrow twitched.
“Strictly speaking, it’s not even ‘yours’ anymore, since I’ve been watering it all these years, ah—I originally wanted to save it for when that idiot Yu Jingzhong, with his mortal body and flesh, reached his end, to extend his life.” Zhou Hui scratched his chin and sighed, “But that day after he killed the old man, I went to find him and saw him squatting by Little Beauty’s bedside, smoking. While puffing away, he told me: ‘Zhou Hui, if I die someday, don’t prolong my life. Just let me peacefully follow the cycle of life and death.’ —Look at him showing off like that. When I got home, I pulled out the ginseng, sliced it, and boiled it into soup.”
Chu He delicately said, “I think this is still the ginseng I planted.”
Zhou Hui immediately retorted, “What you believe isn’t necessarily the truth. For instance, many years ago, you thought I was your sex friend. Do you still think that now?”
“…” Chu He thought, I don’t think the time it took for you to evolve from sex friend to non-sex friend is shorter than the growth period of these two ginseng roots of mine, but he wisely didn’t say it aloud, instead saying more obediently, “Alright.”
Zhou Hui immediately looked triumphant.
The triumphant Zhou Hui still wanted to continue expounding on his theories about sex friends, Deputy Yu’s savings, and the ownership of the ginseng, but at that moment, there was a careful double knock on the door, and then Zhang Shun’s voice cautiously asked, “…Brother? Are you in there?”
Zhou Hui’s face immediately darkened.
Chu He gestured for him to open the door, but Zhou Hui procrastinated for a long time. It wasn’t until Zhang Shun knocked several more times, finally asking, “Zhou, are you in there too? You’re in there too, right?” that he impatiently snapped, “Yes! What do you want? Is the little tadpole looking for his brother to feed?”
Zhang Shun said humbly, “…Frogs are oviparous, they don’t lactate.”
Chu He’s lips suspiciously curved slightly, then instantly returned to an expressionless state. Only then did Zhou Hui shake his head, walk to the door, tear off a ink talisman stuck to the back of the door, and open it.
Zhang Shun poked his head in, first looking at Zhou Hui, then nervously at Chu He: “…Brother, I came to see you.”
Ever since the commotion that day, Zhou Hui had looked at Zhang Shun with disapproval. Although Zhang Shun felt a little wronged, he knew he was in the wrong and walked on eggshells every day, often running to Yan Lanyu’s ward next door and not frequently visiting Chu He.
Zhou Hui actually couldn’t stand people acting so timidly—if someone like Fan Luo had openly attacked him like with a real knife, that would have been fine; at most, he’d be beaten to death and thrown to the dogs, and then reincarnated and beaten to death eighteen more times and thrown to the dogs. But Zhang Shun, with his crestfallen, pitiful attempts to curry favor with his brother, was playing with something Zhou Hui had long since discarded, and now this sly little brat was picking it up and playing with it again. It was truly annoying to behold.
Just as the annoyed Boss Zhou was about to unleash his taunting skills, he heard Chu He’s subtly warning voice: “Zhou Hui.”
“—Oh! Getting defensive already? That little brat had a blast with the Star Absorbing Art that day, and I didn’t see him feeling sorry for you…”
“Zhou Hui!” Chu He snapped.
Zhou Hui rolled his eyes, about to deliver another two jabs, when he saw Zhang Shun extend his right hand.
—That hand, bearing the Buddha Seal, was wrapped tightly in bandages, not an inch of skin exposed from the fingertips to the arm.
“…” Only then did Zhou Hui give up, huffing coldly, “Come in.”
Zhang Shun, with his head bowed and shoulders hunched like a child who had done something wrong, tiptoed into the ward and placed the fruit basket he had temporarily bought downstairs on the bedside table—he had come to visit his elder brother without bringing anything, but once at the hospital, he felt guilty and ran to the hospital’s small supermarket to buy the most expensive fruit basket as an emergency, thinking he could use the infallible skill of peeling an apple if things got awkward.
“You two talk first,” Zhou Hui adjusted his sleeves, staring down at Young Master Zhang with a leisurely, proprietorial air. “Your brother is weak, don’t disturb him too long. Be sensible and leave when it’s time, okay?” Saying that, he waved the ink talisman in front of Chu He. “I’ll stick this on the outside of the door. Don’t run around, don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
The door clicked shut, and Zhang Shun couldn’t help but ask, “What was that?”
Chu He raised his chin.
Following the direction he indicated, Zhang Shun felt a chill run down his spine, realizing that more than a dozen identical yellow paper talismans with vigorous ink calligraphy were plastered on the surrounding walls, even on the headboard and ceiling. At first glance, they were as eerie as a haunted house.
“Imprisonment talismans,” Chu He said. “To prevent me from running away again when no one is paying attention. They’ve been here ever since I returned to Beijing from H City—don’t touch them.” He stopped Young Master Zhang, who had angrily stood up to tear off the talismans, saying, “Our affairs are not for you to interfere with, and these talismans have extremely domineering offensive power; you can’t withstand them.”
“But he can’t imprison you!” Zhang Shun said incredulously.
“Our affairs are not for you to interfere with.”
His brother’s face was very calm, devoid of any emotion, as if stating a simple fact. Faced with such an unyielding attitude, Zhang Shun was helpless. He could only plop back down, dejectedly saying, “I knew you wouldn’t give me any explanation…”
Chu He slightly adjusted his posture in the armchair, his long, cold fingers intertwined, resting on his lap. His gaze fixed directly on Zhang Shun’s right hand, which was messily wrapped in bandages.
“What happened?” he asked.
The bandages looked normal at first glance, but within the layers of wrapping, a faint, dull, old bloodstain was vaguely visible.
Zhou Hui hadn’t noticed it just now, but in front of Chu He, it was as if all parents immediately discover even the slightest hint of their child being sick; nothing could be hidden. Zhang Shun remembered how his brother usually indulged him, patiently and meticulously caring for him, raising him until he was grown, and his nose involuntarily tingled with emotion.
“I cut off the Buddha Seal,” he mumbled with a nasal voice. “The palm skin wasn’t torn off cleanly. I even went to the emergency room to get it treated two days ago.”
At that moment, he thought Chu He would flip the table, get angry, or even rush over and slap him; however, his brother didn’t do so. He maintained his posture, looked at Zhang Shun, and asked, “Why?”
Zhang Shun took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling sharply with it.
He stared motionlessly at his hand, as if concentrating on flowers suddenly blooming on the bandages. After a long pause, he swallowed, and softly asked, “…Brother, did Maha’s transformation have anything to do with me?”
