A young boy from the 1970s, separated from his family, fled famine and led his younger brother into

At 4:58 a.m. the next morning, Su Nianci's biological clock was two minutes earlier than her alarm.

When she opened her eyes, a sliver of grayish-white light shone through the gap in the curtains. The spot next to her, where Lu Xingzhou was sitting, was empty. The blankets were folded neatly, and the pillows were patted flat—habits from the military were hard to break.

The sound of a spatula hitting the edge of a pot came from downstairs, clanging and clattering.

Three seconds later, another low hiss was heard.

Su Nianci listened with her eyes closed for two seconds, then turned over.

Oil splattered on my hands again.

She didn't go downstairs to check, put on a coat, went into the study, and turned on the desk lamp.

The moment the lights came on, everything that had been spread out on the table last night came into view—her father's handwritten prescriptions, the diagrams Su An brought back, Lu Xingzhou's list of twenty-three items, and the notebook she had copied most of herself.

Su Nianci sat down, turned to a blank page in her notebook, and picked up a pen.

We will begin by numbering and archiving the twenty-three lost prescriptions on the list.

Each one must be cross-referenced with existing atlases: overlap of main ingredients, compatibility logic, processing methods, and dosage labeling habits.

She wrote four characters.

"Incorporate it into the system."

Then I started working.

It's exactly five o'clock.

The sky outside the window was not yet fully bright; in the study, only the light from the desk lamp and the scratching sound of pen nibs gliding across paper could be heard.

The sound continued until 6:47, when it was interrupted by a series of thumping footsteps.

The study door was pushed open, and Banxia stood in the doorway in her pajamas, her hair sticking up like dandelions, her mouth agape as she let out a long yawn.

"Mom, the sweater Dad put on me has buttons in the front."

Su Nianci looked up.

Banxia's sweater does indeed have buttons in the front.

The problem is that the buttons on that sweater should be at the back.

"Turn around."

Banxia made a round.

The back of the collar was torn and deformed, with the label sticking out, a white, exposed section.

Su Nianci's forehead twitched.

"Did your dad give you these?"

"Um."

Where's Hoshino?

"My brother's sweater is also inside out, and the left sleeve is rolled up to his elbow."

Su Nianci put down her pen and stood up.

When I got to the stairwell, I saw Hoshino standing in the corridor. Her left sleeve was indeed rolled up on her elbow, but her right sleeve was pulled down, so far that her fingers were no longer visible.

"Where's Dad?"

Hoshino pointed downstairs with her right hand, which was swallowed by her sleeve.

"He's in the kitchen. The porridge is burnt, and he's scraping the pot off."

Su Nianci held onto the stair railing and glanced downstairs.

The sound of metal scraping against metal came from the kitchen, accompanied by Lu Xingzhou's deep, resonant, and heartfelt sigh.

She took a deep breath.

"You two come here, I'll help you change."

I finished two sweaters in three minutes.

Su Nianci went downstairs and into the kitchen. She saw Lu Xingzhou holding a pot in his left hand and a wire brush in his right. He was sweating and had scraped off most of the burnt porridge from the bottom of the pot, leaving only a small piece that stubbornly stuck to the bottom.

"Look up."

Lu Xingzhou looked up, a grain of rice stuck to the bridge of his nose.

Su Nianci reached out and flicked the grain of rice away.

"You can't even tell the front from the back of your sweater? Did you ever wear your body armor inside out when you went to the battlefield?"

Lu Xingzhou put the pot down and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

"The bulletproof vest has markings, but the sweater doesn't."

"There's a label on the sweater."

"The label is too small."

"You're a reconnaissance soldier, able to see a target 200 meters away at night, yet you can't see a two-centimeter tag?"

Lu Xingzhou opened his mouth slightly, then closed it sincerely.

Su Nianci took the wire from his hand, quickly scraped the bottom of the pot clean, rinsed the rice again, put it in the pot, and turned on the heat.

"From now on, I'll lay out the child's clothes the night before. Just wear them as is, don't try to improvise."

"receive."

8:30.

The porridge was ready, and four bowls of porridge, a dish of pickled vegetables, and a plate of egg pancakes were placed on the stone table.

Su Nianci had just sat down when there was a knock on the courtyard gate three times.

The rhythm was slow, with each beat spaced two seconds apart.

Lu Xingzhou went to open the door.

Zhang Chengzhi stood at the door, leaning on his cane, with an old briefcase slung over his shoulder. The briefcase was bulging, and the zipper was almost bursting open.

"Is Su girl here?"

"Yes, Grandpa Zhang, come in."

Su Nianci stood up from the table.

Zhang Chengzhi stepped over the threshold, placed his briefcase on the stone table, unzipped it, and poured out a stack of books—all old, some with their covers missing, revealing the thread-bound spines.

"Regarding the atlas and lost prescriptions you mentioned on the phone last night, I went back and spent the whole night looking through old materials."

He tapped the top of the stack of books.

"These are internal academic newsletters from the Chinese medicine community in the 1960s and 1970s. Three of them specifically discuss the issue of the loss of folk remedies from the late Qing Dynasty. The bibliography cited in them will be useful for your cross-referencing."

Su Nianci took the stack of books and flipped through the table of contents of the top book.

"Grandpa Zhang, did you stay up all night?"

"The old man doesn't need much sleep; if he can't sleep, he might as well do something productive."

Banxia came running over with a bowl of porridge in her hands. The bowl was wider than her face, and she wobbled as she walked. The steam from the porridge floated onto her bangs.

"Grandpa Zhang, have some porridge!"

Zhang Chengzhi bent down to take it, and two drops spilled onto the rim of the bowl.

Banxia wiped her hands and then ran back to get the second bowl.

This time it was served to Lu Zhenhua.

Lu Zhenhua entered through the side door at some point, carrying a roll of Xuan paper and an inkstone, which he placed on the stone table.

"I heard you're compiling a collection of traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions? I'll grind the ink."

Su Nianci looked at Zhang Chengzhi, then at Lu Zhenhua.

"Did you two plan this?"

The two old men snorted simultaneously.

"Who made a date with him?"

The exact same tone, the exact same intonation, even the angle of the upturned corners of their mouths were exactly the same.

Hoshino squatted under the table leg, using an empty bowl to catch the falling egg pancake crumbs, muttering something without looking up.

"Same again."

The two old men turned and glared at him at the same time.

Hoshino lowered his head and continued picking up the crumbs, his face expressionless.

Banxia stood in line with her water cup, one in her left hand and one in her right, her body swaying slightly to maintain her balance.

As she walked past Zhang Chengzhi, half a cup of water spilled onto his shoes.

"Grandpa Zhang, I'm sorry!"

Zhang Chengzhi looked down at his shoes.

"It's okay, my left foot has been dry all day, I'll just water it."

Banxia went around to Lu Zhenhua's side and spilled another half cup on his trouser leg.

"I'm sorry, Grandpa!"

Lu Zhenhua stared at the water stain on his trouser leg, his lips twitched twice, and he pushed the inkstone to the safest spot in the middle of the table.

Su Nianci categorized all the materials—the diagrams were on the left, the handwritten prescriptions were in the middle, the lists and lost prescriptions were on the right, and the references brought by Zhang Chengzhi were piled at the far end.

Zhang Chengzhi sat in a chair, leaning on his cane, and opened the first academic newsletter. He held the pages with one hand and took notes on a sticky note with the other.

Lu Zhenhua was grinding ink beside him. He had a good grasp of the ink concentration in the inkstone. If it was too thick, he would add water; if it was too thin, he would add ink. He ground the ink by turning his wrist in circles, using the same technique he used when he was young and writing battle plans in the command post.

Su Nianci sat at the table, flipping through the diagrams with her left hand and checking the numbers on the list with her right. She marked each completed copy with a red pen.

All morning.

The sunlight slowly moved from above the courtyard wall onto the stone table, casting the shadows of an old man, two middle-aged men, and three heads huddled together.

Hoshino squatted under the table to pick up scraps of paper—Su Nianci would occasionally tear off the wrongly written notes while proofreading, crumple them up, and throw them at her feet.

Hoshino picked up the crumpled papers one by one, smoothed them out, stacked them together, clipped them with a small clip, and placed them next to the table leg.

Banxia was in charge of serving water to everyone.

I ran back and forth between the kitchen and the yard seven times, spilling four and a half cups.

Her shoes were wet, her socks were wet, and the hem of her skirt was wet, but the small half-cup of water she brought to people was just enough for a couple of sips each time.

After lunch, Su Nianci continued, Zhang Chengzhi changed to a different reference book, and Lu Zhenhua finished grinding one ink stick and changed to a second one.

By four o'clock in the afternoon, Su Nianci had marked the thirty-seventh prescription with her red pen.

Her hand stopped.

The pen tip hovered half an inch above the paper, without falling down.

The content of this prescription is no different from the previous dozens of prescriptions—the main medicine, auxiliary medicine, dosage, and decoction method are all written neatly in the grid.

But there's something in the bottom right corner of the preparation notes section.

Very small.

So small that it would have been impossible to notice them if she hadn't scanned them line by line with a magnifying glass.

A small circle drawn with an extremely fine pencil.

Inside the circle, there is a single character.

read.

Su Nianci brought the magnifying glass closer, and the strokes of the character under the lens were clearly magnified—the first stroke trembled slightly, but the ending stroke was very crisp, as if the writer hesitated for a moment and then pressed down in one breath.

She recognized the handwriting.

The words are exactly the same as those on the three letters in the tin box.

Su Weiguo's courtesy name.

Su Nianci put the magnifying glass down.

Her fingers pressed against the small circle, her fingertips feeling the slight indentation left by the pencil marks on the paper.

The word "念" (nian, meaning "to recite") remained quietly in the corner of the yellowed prescription, as if it had been hidden away for many years, waiting for her to turn to this page.

"Grandpa Zhang."

Zhang Chengzhi looked up from the pile of books.

"Can you take a look at this mark for me?"

Zhang Chengzhi leaned closer, squinted at it for two seconds, and then picked up a magnifying glass to examine it carefully again.

His expression changed.

"This is the script of the State of Wei."

"Um."

Su Nianci removed her hand from the paper and flipped to the prescriptions that had already been proofread, checking the processing notes on each one.

Number 12.

In the bottom right corner, there is a small circle with a single character inside.

She picked up the magnifying glass.

The circle in the twelfth prescription does not say "read".

It's another word.

Her heart skipped a beat.

She continued flipping forward.

Number three.

Number seven.

Number 15.

Each time she turned to a prescription marked with a circle, she would write the number on a sticky note next to it and write the word circled in the note after it.

Zhang Chengzhi stood behind her, forgetting to use his cane, his hands resting on the edge of the table as he watched her turn the pages one by one.

Lu Zhenhua stopped grinding ink, not even noticing that the ink from the inkstone had seeped onto the tablecloth.

The courtyard was quiet.

Even the sound of Banxia carrying water had disappeared—she had somehow run to Xingye's side, and the two of them squatted behind the table leg, not daring to breathe.

Su Nianci finished flipping through the last page.

The sticky note had nine numbers written on it, each followed by a word.

She stared at those nine characters for three seconds.

Then put the magnifying glass down, press your finger on the sticky note, and count down one word at a time.

When she counted to the last one, her fingers stopped.

She didn't say anything.

Zhang Chengzhi peeked out from behind her and saw the nine characters on the note.

His breathing stopped abruptly.

Su Nianci pressed her fingertips on the last three words for a long time.

So long that her fingernails pressed a crescent-shaped mark onto the paper.