Early the next morning Su Ya called Ning Tao and said she had found a kind patient. The patient was actually an ordinary villager of the Sword Pavilion Village. His wife ran off with someone else, and he lived alone with his child. After he fell ill, he didn't go to the hospital for treatment, considering the tuition and living expenses of his kid who studied in a junior middle school in town. That villager only had more than 10 points of merits of good intention, but Ning Tao not only treated him, but also gave him 50,000 yuan through Su Ya to relieve his pressure of life.

He was also a poor and good man, but Ning Tao could not give hundreds of thousands or even one million yuan to every kind man as before. Helping the poor had never been the responsibility of the owner of the Sky Clinic. Besides, there were so many people in need that he couldn't help everyone. Even if he had the heart to help, he couldn't do it.

Construction machinery had been brought in to level the ground and dig the foundations on the open ground in the village. A new Suns.h.i.+ne Orphanage would be built here. With the Sword Pavilion Cave here, this remote mountain village would be Ning Tao's base. No matter where he was in the world, he could just come here through the Sky Clinic.

At noon the day, Ning Tao had lunch at Lu Nan's house. After lunch, he left.

Su Ya sent Ning Tao to the entrance of the village. Along the way, Su Ya seemed to want to say something, but didn't say it out.

Ning Tao paused, smiling, and asked, "You've been hesitating to say something on the way. Just shoot. I'm not an outsider. Is there anything in your mind that you find it hard to disclose? Tell me if you want. I'll listen and help you out."

"Aren't you an outsider?" Su Ya asked in a soft voice.

"Of course not, I'm like your brother," Ning Tao replied.

Su Ya rolled her eyes at him and retorted, "My last name is Su, and yours is Ning. How can you be my brother?"

Ning Tao shrugged, saying, "Even if my last name isn't Su, I can be your brother. Tell me what you have in mind. If you don't know how to say now, tell me know when you think it over. Oh, you can go back, and I must go."

"I..." Su Ya hesitated, and finally spoke her mind. "I'm going to be 18 years old next month."

Ning Tao paused slightly and said, "Is that it?"

Su Ya nodded, avoiding Ning Tao's eyes.

Ning Tao chuckled. "I thought it was a big deal. There's no need to hide it. You tell me exactly what day it is, and I'll buy you a birthday present and a big birthday cake to celebrate your birthday."

Su Ya suddenly turned and ran away.

Ning Tao's smile froze on his face. He wondered why she was reacting like this.

Su Ya ran a few feet and shouted back, "I will tell you when the time comes."

Ning Tao smiled again and replied, "Okay, don't forget it. The 18th birthday is a big day and cannot be treated carelessly. As your brother, I will do it well for you."

"You're not my brother!" Su Ya glared at Ning Tao and ran faster.

Ning Tao looked at her back for a moment and then mumbled, "Is it not good for me to be your brother?"

There were different kinds of brothers in the world, but the brother Ning Tao referred to was clearly not what Su Ya wanted.

An hour later, Ning Tao appeared on the rooftop of a high-rise building next to the j.a.panese consulate. He looked down and saw everything around the consulate. With the doors and windows of the consulate closed, he did not see Tamao Takeda, s.h.i.+nsuke Takeda or Crewe Arthur.

After waiting for a while and getting nothing, Ning Tao suddenly came up with an idea. He opened the small medicine chest and took out the small porcelain bottle with the incomplete Ancestor-seeking Elixir before he pulled out the cork, and then poured it into the palm. Under the sun, the Ancestor-seeking Elixir's green misty elixir light was invisible, but its smell did not weaken, still very fragrant.

Ning Tao woke up his nose to make it enter the state of smelling, put the Ancestor-seeking Elixir up his nose and took a deep sniff.

Boom!

In the state of smelling, the smell of the incomplete Ancestor-seeking Elixir flooded into his nasal cavity like a tidal wave. His divine sense gave a violent shook, followed by a burning sensation in his eyes. Under this intense stimulation, a strange scene appeared in his field of vision.

He was not on the rooftop of a building, but in a void. In front of him were several j.a.panese Mitsubis.h.i.+ Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter and Army Type 1 Fighter in World War II. He could even see the grin on the lips of the j.a.panese pilots in the c.o.c.kpit, and the scratches on the bomb.

There were a vast expanse of stilted buildings and crisscrossed streets and mountain roads. Some buildings were burning and smoke was billowing out. Some people were running in the streets, some crying beside the bodies of their loved ones, and a helpless boy looking for his mother...

The j.a.panese consulate where he had been watching was a school at that time. The school building had been destroyed, and bombs were falling from the sky toward a group of fleeing students.

The still picture suddenly moved.

The plane flew forward a little, and the bomb came closer to the students. The helpless little boy raised his hand as if to grasp the hand of a pa.s.sing adult.

In the chaotic scene and the milling crowd, a woman wearing a red cheongsam raised her head. In this dim picture, her red cheongsam was so striking, like a burning flame. If there had been no war, she would have lived well—smoking expensive cigarettes, drinking tea and watching the play in the theatre, playing mahjong with some rich ladies. However, in this picture, she was a woman running for her life. Ning Tao didn't know what was waiting for her—a bomb or running hungry and cold.

This was a historical picture of j.a.pan bombing the Shan City, presented in front of Ning Tao in this unexpected way.

Anger was boiling up inside Ning Tao. He wanted to jump on the bomber, pull the pilot out of the c.o.c.kpit, and throw him on the propeller to grind him up!

The rage made him realize something. He immediately put the incomplete Ancestor-seeking Elixir into the small porcelain bottle, and then plugged the bottle cork. As the smell was gone, his anger faded fast. Then the fighter jets were gone, and the stilted buildings below were gone as well, replaced by high-rise buildings and busy streets.

Ning Tao put the porcelain bottle into the medicine chest. Although he could not see the historical picture that buried in the long river of time, the woman wearing a red cheongsam inexplicably emerged in his mind.

"Wait..." Ning Tao suddenly realized something was wrong. That was very strange!

He did not see the woman in the red cheongsam before the picture trembled, but after that tremor, she appeared.

Ning Tao was filled with surprise and confusion. "She appeared the moment the picture trembled. Did she run out of a building, or did I not notice her before?"

There was clearly no answer to this puzzle.

Ning Tao closed his eyes, trying to remember her. He felt as if he were back in the sky, in the war-ridden history, looking down on the tragic scene from above. Everything on the ground reappeared quickly in his mind, but not as clear as just now. Everything was blurry except for the woman in the red cheongsam.

He saw her. He saw her face.

The moment he saw her face clearly, he felt as though something had struck his heart, and then an indescribable sense of horror came over him!

She was elegant and beautiful, with a trace of smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, which was like the first light of dawn.

Her eyes, looking up at the sky, were pale green as the still pool of millennium!

She was a demon!

She smiled in the war-torn s.p.a.ce of history, looking up at the sky as if just to see him! Suddenly they saw each other, and she smiled!

Ning Tao opened his eyes, couldn't wait to put the incomplete Ancestor-seeking Elixir that had just put into the small porcelain bottle in the palm of his hand before he took it to his nose and sniffed it deeply.

Once again Ning Tao entered into the "drug allergy" state, and a new picture appeared in his line of sight.

What he saw was an undulating mountain, and everything was covered with thick primeval forest. On a winding mountain road, a man with a shaved head and a pigtail led a cow motionless.

Judging from the man's hairstyle and clothes, he was clearly in the Qing dynasty.

Ning Tao tried again. In the same place, he saw a group of Ming dynasty cavalry on horseback, still without the woman in the red cheongsam. Three experiments in a row let him understand one thing—the same place experienced thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, even billions of years of history, and, in his "drug allergy" to the incomplete Ancestor-seeking Elixir, he never saw the same thing every time.

The woman in the red cheongsam might never appear again, because he had no chance of finding her in the long history of billions of years. Finding her was more difficult than looking for a needle in a haystack.

Ning Tao gave up. He put the incomplete Ancestor-seeking Elixir back in the small porcelain bottle, but he still couldn't help thinking about that woman. "Who is she? Her smile, her smile... Was she looking at me?"

At the moment, footsteps came from behind him.

Ning Tao turned around and saw a motorcyclist coming out of the stairwell. It was Yin Molan.

"I knew you'd come here." Yin Molan walked up to Ning Tao and said, "But it's no need. s.h.i.+nsuke Takeda has gone back to j.a.pan, and Tamao Takeda has gone to w.a.n.gjing and as for Crewe Arthur, he's gone to Russia."

Ning Tao paused for a second before saying, "They failed last night. Both of their killers died. It was normal for them to run away for fear of reprisals, but..."

Yin Molan looked at Ning Tao and asked earnestly, "But what?"

Ning Tao replied, "It's okay that you left that killer there to feed snakes last night, but this is an important thing, and why didn't you tell me earlier?"

Yin Molan was silent for a while before explaining, "My phone ran out of battery, and it wasn't charged last night, so I came over to tell you in person. You can't blame me. We used to send letters by pigeon."

Ning Tao found himself at a loss for words.