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"Uncle Chu, if there's nothing else, I'll head to school first?" Wei Zhao had said all that needed saying; how to handle the rest was Gu Pengzhan's affair.

"All right," Gu Pengzhan nodded. "And about today—don't tell Yao-yao. I don't want her to be too troubled by it."

"Don't worry, Uncle Chu. I won't go blabbing." Wei Zhao rose to his feet, ready to leave.

"Li Fu, drive Little Yi to school," Gu Pengzhan instructed Qing-bo, who stood to one side.

"Yes, Mr. Gu," Qing-bo answered with a nod.

"No need. I can just flag a cab downstairs myself," Wei Zhao said hurriedly. He meant to stop by a pharmacy, and he did not want Qing-bo trailing along; there were some things he would rather not have others know too much about.

"As you like, then." Seeing Wei Zhao say so, Gu Pengzhan did not insist. "Until I've sorted out the company's troubles, I'm entrusting Yao-yao's safety to you."

"Ha—" Wei Zhao waved a hand. "Uncle Chu, since my task concerns Miss Gu, naturally I won't let anything happen to her before I formally carry it out."

Gu Pengzhan nodded, then gave a faint sigh. At first he had felt this arrangement was letting Wei Zhao off easy, but now it seemed Wei Zhao was not all that keen on Gu Mengyao after all? He had no idea how his father had arranged things, but never mind—he would simply do as he was told.

"Li Fu, in a little while go notify the administrative department and have them prepare the meeting room. I'm convening the board this afternoon." The reason Gu Pengzhan had not pressed the point after Wei Zhao declined Qing-bo's escort was precisely that he had matters for Qing-bo to arrange.

"Yes, Mr. Gu." Qing-bo nodded and strode quickly out of Gu Pengzhan's office. Gu Pengzhan had a dedicated secretary, but there were many things a secretary could not be told—only Qing-bo, his trusted confidant, would do. And so in many cases Qing-bo also played the secretary's part.

Once out of Pengzhan Tower, Wei Zhao casually hailed a taxi.

"Where to, young man?" the driver asked after Wei Zhao got in, pressing down the meter.

"Master, would you happen to know where they sell Chinese medicinal herbs wholesale?" Wei Zhao was unfamiliar with the lie of Songshan City, but veteran cab drivers were living maps, thoroughly versed in every trade and trade in the city.

"Oh, you mean Chinese medicine—the loose kind, twigs and stalks, or the prepared patent medicines?" The driver did not know which sort Wei Zhao wanted.

"Ha—" At the driver's description Wei Zhao could not help but laugh quietly to himself. In the eyes of many ordinary people, Chinese medicine really was much the same as twigs and stalks. "The loose kind—twigs and stalks."

Wei Zhao did not bother correcting any of it. The man was no professional, after all; so long as he was understood and there was no barrier to communication, that was enough.

"If it's wholesale you want, you'd have to go to the Qiaonan Village Chinese Medicine Wholesale Market," the driver said. "But that's not in the city—it's most of a day's drive. If you're only buying a little, you could go to a larger pharmacy; they're fairly well stocked too."

At the driver's words Wei Zhao abandoned the idea of the wholesale market—at least for now he had no need to go. He could buy a little at a pharmacy for present use, and so he said, "Then help me find a fairly large pharmacy."

"That's easy enough." With that the driver started the car.

After a few turns the car pulled up before a large pharmacy. It seemed the driver had not taken him the long way round; the meter still showed only the base fare.

Wei Zhao paid the fare, thanked him, and got out, heading into the pharmacy.

Entering the shop, Wei Zhao sighed inwardly: it seemed that no matter the era, medicine was a highly profitable trade. In broad daylight the pharmacy was crowded with people buying medicine, and the counters for many common drugs were already ringed with customers.

What Wei Zhao wanted, however, was Chinese herbal medicine, and few people bought such things. He handed the list he had long since drawn up to the clerk, who wrote him a receipt and told him to go pay; the herbs he needed were numerous and varied, and weighing them out would take a while. Fortunately there were no other customers, and while the clerk weighed his order, Wei Zhao wandered at leisure about the shop.

"Gold wound medicine." A voice drew Wei Zhao's attention.

Gold wound medicine? Wei Zhao was taken aback. There was such a medicine?

The so-called gold wound medicine: "gold" meant metal objects such as blades, and in ancient times the thing that wounded men most was undoubtedly weaponry, so "gold" also stood for weapons; "wound" meant a cut. Gold wound medicine, then, was the medicine made specifically to treat sword cuts and other injuries inflicted by metal weapons, and its effects were to stanch bleeding, deaden pain, and reduce inflammation.

Only, gold wound medicine was merely an ancient name for it. These days there didn't seem to be any medicine called that anymore, did there?

"We're out. Sold out." The shop assistant answered the earlier speaker with a face entirely without expression.

Wei Zhao glanced over. The one asking was a girl dressed all in black, a navy cap on her head with the brim pressed so low that her features could not be made out. After receiving the assistant's answer that they were sold out, the girl said nothing; she turned and left, though her steps were somewhat unsteady...

Suddenly Wei Zhao's gaze fixed on the ground beneath the girl. Along the floor where she had walked dragged a bright smear of blood, clearly having run down from inside her trouser leg; yet in this pharmacy, crowded with people coming and going, it had drawn no one's notice, and the trail was quickly trampled away by the passing feet.

The reason Wei Zhao had paid the girl any mind at all: first, the gold wound medicine on her lips had roused his curiosity; second, because from her he had sensed a trace of something kindred, the aura of killing.

This thing called the aura of killing is a subtle matter. It is, in fact, a signal animals emit when they are about to attack one another, a signal that requires a "sixth sense" to detect.

Someone once performed an experiment: a wildcat from the forest and a mouse were placed in a box, separated by two thin soundproof panels set not far apart; then the smells were eliminated, and neither could see the other. In the end the cat seemed to sense something. As though it wanted to pass through the panel, it kept clawing at it without pause, while the mouse huddled trembling at the other side. One could see that the cat sensed the mouse was right next door, and the mouse sensed the cat as well. But how did cat and mouse sense each other?

The scientists' explanation: this is perhaps the sixth sense, beyond the five senses of animals; that is to say, they do not perceive the other through ears, nose, or eyes. Animals can use a sixth sense to feel the signal given off by a natural enemy or by any other animal that means to attack them, and that signal may be explained as the "aura of killing."

In fact, humans have a sixth sense too; it is only that, long separated from nature, we have let this feeling slowly weaken. Yet there are those whose perceptiveness exceeds others', and they still retain this sixth sense. Veterans of the battlefield, for instance, can often sense whether an ambush lies ahead, as can those hunters who have spent their whole lives in the forest hunting. People who have long walked the edge of life and death can gradually awaken this feeling.