On the road back to Chengdu, with each step, the heavy herb bundle bumped against his waist.
But Tang Wulie didn't mind and fell into deep thought. The subject was naturally the hallucination he'd experienced during the day.
'Was that really a dream?'
The closest thing to it was a dream. But could that common, inadequate word "dream" really describe that experience? Yet at the same time, there was no other appropriate expression besides dream.
That dream was indescribably long. It was less like a dream and more like a person's entire lifetime.
If it had just been long, he might have thought it was a strange dream caused by the strange mushroom and moved on. But there were many other odd things about it.
Dreams are usually flimsy.
While you're in a dream, everything seems plausible, but when you wake up and look back, it's all a mess with few parts that make sense.
But today's daytime dream was different.
From the start of the dream to the moment he woke up, every moment had a reason.
The 'me in the dream' had clear goals and acted to achieve what he wanted.
'It couldn't really have been Ou Yezi's life.'
Tang Wulie reviewed the memories again. The emotions he felt in the dream were still vivid.
The sensation of facing flying sparks. That heat. The satisfaction of creating a sword worthy of being called his life's masterpiece. Could such experiences really just be dismissed as a mere dream?
Tang Wulie looked at his hands. Not Ou Yezi's calloused hands, but Tang Wulie's thin, slender hands.
'Was it really just a simple hallucination? I can't figure out what happened at all.'
Tang Wulie sighed deeply and looked ahead.
He'd already entered the outskirts of Chengdu. People were walking toward their various destinations.
One person particularly caught his eye. A monk wearing robes with a kasaya over them.
'According to Buddhist stories, there's something called reincarnation.'
Even if you're human in this life, you might be an animal in the next. Even if you're human in this life, you might have been an animal in a previous life.
You might have been human in a previous life too. In that case, maybe I was Ou Yezi in a previous life?
Living without escaping the cycle of the Six Paths of Reincarnation, there might be such a life at least once.
Random thoughts make time pass quickly.
It didn't seem like he'd walked much, but the sun had already set and Tang Wulie had arrived at the clinic.
As usual, he was about to take the bundle to the storage room and organize the herbs when Tang Wulie noticed a small commotion and stopped walking.
The clinic door opened and two people appeared. One was Tang Wulie's father Tang Jianfeng, and the other appeared to be a patient.
The patient grumbled in an irritated voice.
"I heard the most skilled doctor in Chengdu was here. Turns out it was all empty rumors."
"I'm sorry."
"If I'd known this would happen, I wouldn't have come."
Tang Jianfeng bowed to the patient. But the patient seemed quite angry and continued grumbling for a while before leaving.
Both Tang Jianfeng and Tang Wulie were used to this situation.
Patients being difficult with doctors wasn't unusual. Patients are sick people, and pain makes even ordinary people sensitive.
Sensitive people get irritated if there's even the slightest thing they don't like. Naturally, the people who have to face such irritation most are the doctors caring for the patients.
Tang Wulie looked at the patient's retreating figure.
From his clothes, he was definitely an official, but it was unclear how high his position was. From his behavior and dress, you could only guess he wasn't low-ranking.
When Tang Wulie approached Tang Jianfeng, Tang Jianfeng looked embarrassed.
It was a familiar situation, but not one he wanted to show his son.
"You're back. Good work."
"Father, why was that patient like that? He was excessively rude."
"The Adjutant to the Assault-Resisting Commander came to get acupuncture for a stiff shoulder, but the needles must have hurt quite a bit."
"Hurt? He must be quite the whiner."
The medicine Tang Wulie learned from Tang Jianfeng included acupuncture. Since you can't learn acupuncture without receiving it, Tang Wulie had been needled by Tang Jianfeng at least hundreds of times.
Speaking as someone who'd been needled to death, Tang Jianfeng's acupuncture skills were as good as any doctor's, if not better.
Not only were the effects excellent, but there was almost no pain. Among countless patients, very few complained about needle pain.
Even little children didn't cry when getting acupuncture, so no further explanation was needed.
But unexpectedly, Tang Jianfeng's expression was subtle.
"No. I don't think that's it."
"Excuse me?"
"I lost my needle case recently and got new needles, but they're thicker than the previous ones."
"The needles are thicker?"
"Yes. When I insert them, they even draw drops of blood."
"Could I see the new needles?"
Tang Jianfeng took out the needle case from his pocket and handed it to Tang Wulie. Needles about one to one and a half finger lengths were densely inserted.
Tang Wulie examined the needles. Since he'd been reading only medical books recently, it had been quite a while since he'd looked closely at needles.
As Tang Jianfeng said, compared to the needles he used before, these were at least twice as thick.
But that was because the needles he used last time were excellent, not because these needles were thick.
Judging coldly, the needles Tang Jianfeng showed him now were much thinner and better than what amateur doctors used.
Normally, Tang Wulie would have said, 'He's not a child—how can a grown gentleman complain about needles like this? He must be quite the whiner,' and moved on.
But now it was different. Looking at these needles, he felt strangely irritated.
'They sold these crude things calling them needles?'
How should he put it? It was like watching a quack doctor who couldn't even feel pulses selling worthless weeds as cure-alls at high prices.
"These are needles?"
"Well, what else would they be if not needles?"
Tang Wulie examined the needles again. The biggest problem was indeed the thickness. If things like this pierce skin, it's normal for them to hurt.
But even excluding thickness, there were many problems. Parts that he wouldn't have noticed as strange before kept catching his eye.
Starting with the needle lengths being all over the place. Even needles for the same purpose varied between long and short ones.
The cross-sections weren't round but square. He understood that. Making thin needles completely round would be extremely difficult. The needles Tang Jianfeng originally used were also flat.
"By any chance, how many days ago did you get these needles?"
"It was the day you went to get herbs last time, so two weeks ago."
Needles less than a month old were already slightly bent. Even though the needles hadn't been handled roughly, this was definitely strange.
He could even faintly see traces where the sides of needles that had been quenched and tempered were later hammered.
From a doctor's perspective, this wouldn't be a flaw, but it would bother a blacksmith. Whether skilled or not, blacksmiths want their creations to be perfect.
Blacksmiths regard the things they make like their own children. Poorly made items shouldn't be casually fixed up and sold—they should be completely remade from the beginning.
In other words, such items shouldn't have been in Tang Jianfeng's needle case.
'A guy with no skill who doesn't want to work properly, just cutting corners, would produce results like this.'
Then Tang Jianfeng reached out and took back the needle case.
"Don't worry about it. This happened because my skills are lacking, so I just need to work harder."
"But—"
"I said forget it."
Tang Jianfeng coughed a couple of times and disappeared into the clinic.
Tang Wulie soon returned to his room. And he belatedly felt something strange. Tang Wulie wasn't familiar with blacksmith work—he'd never even held a hammer.
'How did I notice the needles were shoddy?'
Until recently, needles were just thin pieces of metal to Tang Wulie.
Whether needles were slightly bent, had flat cross-sections, were made from impure scrap iron, or showed traces of being hammered later to correct their shape—none of that was Tang Wulie's concern.
Actually, it wasn't that he wasn't concerned—he had no way to notice. Tang Wulie didn't know blacksmith work. Tang Wulie was a doctor but completely ignorant about metallurgy, and he didn't even know what process needles went through to be made. To Tang Wulie, a good needle was simply a thin needle.
But today was different. Not only could he tell they were shoddily made, he even felt unbearable frustration and irritation.
'It's like I really lived as Ou Yezi the blacksmith.'
But that couldn't be. The dream lasted at most an hour. That's nowhere near enough time to learn anything.
It might all be a delusion. Actually, it probably was a delusion. Since he was suspicious that something was wrong, normal needles probably looked strange. That must be it.
But deep in Tang Wulie's heart, doubts bubbled up.
To dismiss it as simple delusion, the shoddy parts were too specific and clear. He could even guess the skill level of the blacksmith who made the needles.
Tang Wulie lay down and tried to sleep. But he couldn't shake thoughts about dreams, forges, and needles.
Tang Wulie forcibly cleared his mind.
'There's no point agonizing over this now. If I go to a forge tomorrow, I'll know everything.'
If he went to a forge tomorrow and watched a blacksmith work, he'd know everything.
The way a blacksmith worked would definitely be different from his dream. The dream of becoming Ou Yezi was probably nonsense nine times out of ten. It must have been a hallucination from that weird mushroom.
Once it became clear that everything was a delusion, these random thoughts would stop coming up. Certainty is the surest way to dispel confusion.
Tang Wulie closed his eyes and muttered again. Right. I should go to a forge tomorrow.