"Huh? How could that be?!" A-Mian was stunned. "He used to look quite robust."
That's the body of someone who sells food, does laundry, and works non-stop all day.
“Her family has been making a scene on this street these past two days. Sigh, I have to say, that tofu stall owner really had a run of bad luck,” Song Dongjia coughed twice. “Of course, he used your name to shield you from this disaster. Now her sons are all pressuring the stall owner to pay compensation!”
A-Mian lowered her eyes. "But didn't the stall owner say he would take her to see a doctor?"
"Oh dear, you're right! It's those quack doctors who kill people!" one of the workers chimed in. "They say she prescribed some kind of medicine, and after taking it, she felt worse every day until she couldn't eat anymore. So her family held a funeral and buried her!"
“There’s something strange about this. Just listen to this, but when those people brought that coffin to block the road and demand money, I felt…” Song Dongjia whispered in A Mian’s ear, “that coffin looked incredibly light, as if there was no one inside at all.”
This made Ah Mian feel really uneasy.
Could it be that Granny Liu has risen from the dead?
Or did they become vengeful spirits?
"You...you mustn't say such things." A-Mian muttered "Amitabha" to herself, but then she thought that she hadn't done anything wrong.
Song Dongjia shrank back. "It's true. Everyone's been talking about it privately these past few days. Besides, you can't be sure about ghosts. Who knows if she's narrow-minded and thinks everyone on this street is deliberately making things difficult for her... In that case... she might come looking for revenge!"
"Ah!" Ah Mian's hair stood on end, she was startled, and goosebumps instantly rose on her arms.
Lu Dongjia, now completely losing his composure as a boss, was so frightened that he ran away in a panic.
Mr. Song snapped open his fan, feeling a pang of guilt. He really shouldn't have scared the child like that.
After running around aimlessly, still in shock, Ah Mian mustered her courage and shouted in her heart: "Aunt Liu, I always pay you your wages on time every month. If you can't do the work at my house, you can't blame anyone else. Don't be petty and cause me trouble!"
She wanted to ask Dr. Mo Man what had happened, how someone who could stand up back then could be gone in less than a month!
Arriving at the pharmacy, Mo Man listened to her gesticulating wildly and chattering away, first throwing out a firm statement:
There are no ghosts in the world.
Amian whispered, "How can you say for sure?"
Mo Man and she have completely different worldviews. At this moment, A Mian and the others firmly believe in the existence of gods, ghosts, and demons to explain the phenomena they have seen but can never understand.
For example, the reason why there is thunder in the sky is because there are thunder gods and lightning goddesses in the heavenly palace.
Without these explanations, people would feel filled with so much confusion that they simply couldn't live a proper life.
Mo Man didn't explain much about the matter to her. Instead, she said, "That day, I saw that Aunt Liu was probably old and calcium deficient—well, you can think of it as bones being more brittle as people get older. I'm afraid she had a rib fracture because I saw that she was coughing up blood. The traditional method is to bandage her up with cloth strips, restrict her movement, and let her recover slowly. She can survive."
"But why...? They say she took a few packets of medicine and then... she couldn't take it anymore!" Ah Mian shook her head. "If we had..."
"Doctors can cure physical ailments, but they cannot cure people's own obsessions."
But why did Aunt Liu do this? A-Mian couldn't understand it at all.
“I didn’t say I’d charge her any money at the time, so letting you see her wouldn’t cost me anything. The treatment method you’re suggesting wouldn’t cost much either; you could just buy some strips of cloth or even tear up an old garment. I really don’t understand.”
"Ah. Because she sees me as so young and a woman, what I say doesn't go into her head."
Mo Man said, "Perhaps you think this is really stupid. But in all my years as a doctor, I've seen countless people trapped in deeply ingrained beliefs. Sometimes, the shattering of those beliefs is even more terrifying than death itself. Let me give you an example. Imagine your baby tells you one day that she never wants to get married and that she'll die if you force her to; or your husband tells you that he's going to give up everything to learn opera and that he'll die if you don't let him. What would you think then?"
Amian sat on the wooden chair, thought about it seriously for a moment, and replied, "That's impossible."
"Yes, because in your mind, people are supposed to get married, and actors are the lowest of the low. In our brains, there are many tiny 'paths' that are so small that they are invisible, called neural networks. You take the same road into the city every day, just like your mindset. It is also the same path you have walked in your mind countless times throughout your life, making the exact same choices."
“But—but!” A-Mian suddenly interrupted, “If my baby or my husband says that they will die if they don’t do this, then I still think that we should let them go.”
Dr. Mo propped his face up with one hand, smiled as if thinking of something, and said, “I once asked my parents, if you love me, then why can’t that love overcome a certain idea in your mind? Later, I did a lot of research and found out that changing one’s mindset is sometimes harder than death. People think it’s a huge denial of their own existence.”
“Little Amian, you are still young, and the connections in your mind are not yet fully solidified. You can be molded into any shape you want, like clay. But one day, you may encounter times that cause you great pain, which often come from those you truly care about, where your views differ.”
Amian was completely confused; she truly couldn't understand where the faint sadness in Doctor Mo's eyes came from.
After leaving the clinic, A-Mian was finally less afraid. She continued to discuss things with Aunt Liu in her mind:
—Don't come looking for revenge at our house. It's that thing called "concept" that's ruined you.
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