A master of both medicine and martial arts, he picked up a beautiful CEO as his wife.

Lin Yuqing slept for a full day and night.

When she woke up, the sun was already setting. She was lying in the side room behind the alchemy room. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Ye Feng lying on the edge of the bed, his head resting on his arm, fast asleep.

She stirred. Ye Feng immediately snapped out of his daze and grabbed her wrist. He placed three fingers on her pulse point.

"It's alright now." He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling as if a nerve had been pulled out, and leaned back. "Go to sleep, sleep a little longer."

"I've had enough sleep." Lin Yuqing looked at him. "How long did you sleep?"

"Not sleepy."

"Ye Feng".

"Two hours," he honestly confessed.

Lin Yuqing reached out from under the covers and touched the dark circle under his eye, remaining silent. After a while, she asked softly, "What did I say that night?"

Ye Feng's hand paused.

"You realize you've spoken?"

"I don't know." Lin Yuqing shook her head. "I only remember that for a moment, I felt like I fell into a very deep well. It was dark and cold in the well, and I couldn't see anything. But I knew that there was something at the bottom of the well, looking up at me."

She paused.

"It recognizes me."

Ye Feng fell silent.

He only told half of what happened that night: she was pulled away once, and he pulled her back. As for what those dark eyes said, he didn't mention a word.

Lin Yuqing listened quietly without asking any further questions. She simply took her hand out from under the covers and placed it on the back of his hand.

"Your hands are cold."

"Of course, I didn't sleep a wink all night."

"Ye Feng," she suddenly called out to him, "I'm not afraid."

Ye Feng looked up at her.

"You think I'm afraid of that well?" She smiled, a slightly forced smile, but her eyes were steady. "When I took over the Lin Group at nineteen, there were seven people on the board who wanted to devour me. At twenty-two, I was drugged at a party. I've been afraid of many things. But I haven't escaped any of them."

"I won't dodge this one either."

Ye Feng looked at her for a long time, then reached out and ruffled her hair.

"Go to sleep," he said. "You don't need to hide from this one. I'll cover for you."

That evening, Ye Feng went to find Cen Heming. The old man was preparing medicine in the alchemy room. After hearing what had happened that night, the small scale in his hand fell to the table with a "clang".

"Borrowing acupoints," he murmured. "That thing... can borrow a person's acupoints."

"Have you heard of it?"

"I heard my senior brother mention it once." Cen Heming's hand rested on the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white. "That year, he was drunk and said there was something down the mountain that he would never dare to touch again in his life. He said that thing had been suppressed for two thousand years and was no longer the deadly demon it once was. It had learned to 'see'."

Ye Feng's heart sank.

"How did it find us?" he asked. "The seal in this mountain is still there. I went up to check the layer below the main peak, and it wasn't loose. But that line came down from outside the mountain."

Cen Heming remained silent for a long time.

"Because it didn't come from the mountains," the old man said. "It came by 'smell'."

"You have completed the twelfth cycle of your meridians. No one has mastered this technique in two thousand years. Anything in the world that has even the slightest connection to the 'Abyss'—whether it's in the earth's veins, on a person's body, or in someone else's hands—can smell this scent."

He looked up.

"Ye Feng, you need to understand one thing."

"From now on, the stronger you become, the closer they will be. There's no other choice in this deal."

"I know," Ye Feng said.

"You need to know something else." Cen Heming picked up the steelyard and slowly leveled it. "I heard everything that happened in the quiet room that night clearly from the corridor. But how many people in this courtyard heard it too, and who they told after hearing it—I don't know."

"In the past six months, thirty-seven lives have been lost in the mountains, but more than thirty-seven people have returned."

"You should be more careful."

The next afternoon, a person came down from the mountain gate.

He wasn't a visitor, but a messenger. A young Taoist priest, carrying a black lacquered wooden box, respectfully handed it to Cen Heming, saying it belonged to the Medicine King Valley of Hundred Herbs Mountain, and then turned and left.

Inside the box was an invitation. It was on gold-flecked paper, with extremely fine silver thread pressed into the four corners, and contained only eight characters:

"We cordially request that you spare some time to attend the Hundred Herbs Elixir Gathering."

The inscription at the bottom reads: Medicine King Valley.

"The Hundred Herbs Elixir Gathering, held every three years." Cen Heming looked at the invitation twice, his brows furrowed. "Six months ago, something happened at the mountain gate, and everyone assumed that the Nirvana Mountain lineage had ended."

"How did this invitation end up here?"

"It's not a mountain that's being given away," Ye Feng said.

He reached out and flipped the invitation over. On the bottom right corner of the back, in tiny print, a note was added, the ink still wet:

"I've heard that a direct descendant of a master physician has returned to Nirvana Mountain, possessing divine medical skills. This old man wishes to meet him. — Han Jiuhe"

Cen Heming's hand suddenly trembled.

"Han Jiuhe?"

"Do you recognize this person?"

"It's more than just recognizing him." Cen Heming's expression changed several times. "Your master back then—"

He stopped talking, got up and walked deeper into the alchemy room. He rummaged through a row of dusty wooden compartments for a long time and pulled out an old box covered in dust.

The box was opened, revealing a stack of old items: several unmailed letters, a medicine ledger, and—

An invitation from three years ago. The same gold-flecked paper, the same eight characters. Only the back has the master's calligraphy.

That line of writing was extremely messy, as if it were scribbled down in a great hurry:

"If you are looking for your other half, ask the herbs."

Ye Feng's breathing stopped. He placed the old invitation from three years ago and the new one in his hand side by side on the table. One of them was from three years ago, which his master had received but hadn't been able to visit.

One of them was handed to him three years later by an old man named Han Jiuhe, who lived across half of the Hidden World.

"The other half," Ye Feng said softly.

He took out the half jade slip from his pocket and ran his fingertip along the perfectly flat cut at the bottom.

"My master cut this thing in half, and hid one half in the mountains for me to come back and retrieve."

"The other half," he looked up, "did he take it with him, or... gave it to someone?"

Cen Heming said in a deep voice, "The Medicine King Valley of Baicao Mountain is the foremost reclusive medical school. At the Pill Gathering held every three years, eight or nine out of ten medical schools in the world have to attend."

"So that means," Shen Yu interjected, his expression grave, "that those who want to find you, who desire you, who want to see what the 'Millennial Pure Yin' looks like, will most likely be there."

The courtyard fell silent. The wind rolled down from the ridge, swirling up the fallen leaves. Lin Yuqing stood under the eaves, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders.

"When do we leave?" she asked.

Ye Feng put the two invitations, one on top of the other, into his pocket.

"the day after tomorrow."

"This time," he said slowly, gazing at the clouds in the west, reddened by the setting sun, "I'm not going to look for them."

"I told them to come find me."