I was under the notion that Old Man Xie had refused the director’s offer because he did not want any more relation to strangers. Even so, as we were on our way to the restaurant, the old man revealed to me that the dinner was only a guise for the director’s ulterior motive. Then again, Old Man Xie’s bizarre way of curing the patients had indeed sent ripples of wonders across everyone at the hospital. It should have been expected that they would most certainly want to know the truth behind the old man selection of the herb. With Lin Feng behind us, we followed the director’s car and came to a restaurant. From the design of its outer facade, it seemed that the director had decided no price was too high to learn a thing or two from the great Xie Bingyi. The meal here would surely hardly be able to escape a three-figure bill.

Once we got to the table, the director began pouring wine for Old Man Xie in earnest. “Master Xie,” he said, “Your reputation precedes you. To think that we have the fortune to receive you today…” Beside him, Old Man Xie looked more interested in quaffing his wine than responding to his theatrics. But the director was hardly a simple person. Realizing Old Man Xie’s frostiness, he turned to me and raised his glass. “Still, we have you to thank, young man. If it were not for you who had help enlisted Master Xie for his help, we would still be neck-deep in trouble!” He immediately emptied his glass respectfully and I too drained my tumbler in a gulp. Seeing this, the director commended. “You drink well, young man.” I flashed a thin smile in reply, saying nothing. “Long have we heard that Master Xie prefers a quiet and simple life,” the director continued, “A talented recluse who never leaves his abode to treat a patient. But yet, Master Xie chose the humble vocation of serving as a counselor at a National Studies Institute. Since you are able to request for Master Xie’s immediate help, I wager that you are also hardly unextraordinary yourself, young man!” You clearly heard how Old Man Xie had spoken to me, I thought quietly. Surely the pompous imbecile had more or less surmised our closeness. By complimenting me, the director, now swelling with fetid flatulence, was obliquely giving Old Man Xie a raving ovation. Instead, Old Man Xie, after hearing his portentous words of tribute, merely snorted morbidly, sending a wave of chill across the table and everyone’s smile froze, embarrassed and flustered. Pretending that nothing had happened, the director begged meekly. “Earlier, I heard Master Xie addressing you as ‘my boy’… Are you…” “My father is the head person of the Institute,” I said sharply, cutting him off as he returned with a bewildered “Oh”.

The blank and dry conversation went on, with only the wine to keep it from breaking down. After three rounds of the alcohol, the director finally decided to prod and quench his burgeoning curiosity. “Err… Master Xie…” The director began, albeit hesitantly. “The prescription you had come up with earlier at the hospital… Truth be told, we understand nothing of everything. We do not know why was the herb chosen, and the bacteria remains one that we have yet to identify. None of our antibiotics worked against it. We realize we barely graze the surface of your extensive knowledge. If you would please…” Old Man Xie shot a blistering glare at both the director and chief physician that the two men held their breaths before the old man’s demeanor subsided suddenly as he sighed. “Aye… Very well… It’s only for the sake of my boy here that I’ll give a short lecture today!” The joyous beams of the smiles on the two man’s faces shone as they rejoiced at their fortune. But amid their spree, I sat alone with a cloud of gloom hanging over my head. My God, I braced myself. “The old man’s up for another of his boring preaching,” I said to myself.

“The vocation of healing, no matter Western or Chinese medicine, strays not from the path of battling against bacteria and viruses.” The old man embarked on his oratory. “But through the never-ending war of attrition we healers wage against the waves of invasion by bacterias, we, the healers, are hardly the greatest winner and the key to the victory; definitely not the bacterias, but the patients themselves!” The old man paused, allowing the weight of his words to sink it as he took another swig off his glass. “Oh?!” The director remarked, his back straightened like a young and ardent soldier, waiting for his orders from a superior. “Why is that so?” The old man asked, and had another swipe on his glass. “It’s the patient’s own immune system that ultimately deals the fatal blow and vanquishes the bacterias! When you treat the flu, the medicine we prescribe to our patients work partially to ease the aggravations our patients suffer during their illness; the medicine does not fully eliminate the bacteria. It would be the immune system of the patient’s own body that eventually eradicates the bacteria. And sometime after, the body of the patient will begin to develop a certain immunity towards the same bacteria.”

The director and chief physician were bobbing their heads; their wide eyes fixed at the old man with intense concentration. I might know nothing of medicine, but the behavior of the two men that seemed like boys before Old Man Xie gave the impression that his words were nothing but the truth. The old man continued on his sermon, “The human body is an indescribable and unfathomable complexity of its own. But we know that in the center of this complex biological structure lies the brain, as you practitioners of Western medicine believe. But I’m afraid that’s wrong. When a person cuts his finger, do you ask the patients how many blood cells have been used to stem the bleeding? How many more other cells will be used to repair the wound? Through the brain, you can fetter your movements and command your leg to not move, but it will still shake and kick if I were to apply pressure on certain points with a needle using Chinese acupuncture, won’t you say?” The director and the chief physician nodded obediently again, hinting their agreement. The old man seemed to be enjoying himself as he began to feel pleased with himself. As if filled with another shot of passion, he began droning on his usual speech of how he discovered how to blend the shamanistic healing methods of Zhuyou and Chinese medicine.

“But in truth, when we heal someone, our methods communicate with the command center! The one that we call the ‘heart’ in Chinese medicine. But in today’s world, it is colloquially known as the real heart in the human body. But damn the Western to Chinese translations! When Western medicine first reached our shores, the efforts to produce better translation were terrible! When Chinese say ‘Xin Xiang Shi Cheng’ (literally May The Wish from Your Heart Comes True), does that wish comes from the heart? When we say ‘this person is kind-hearted’, does the thought comes from the heart? The core concept of Chinese medicine, All Methods Are Birthed From the Heart; but do the healing methods sprang from our hearts? It is neither the brain nor the heart that captains the human body. When a baby is born, the baby’s umbilical cord is first clamped and cut to prevent infection. This is to inform the command center of the human body that the umbilical cord is not needed and the human body will abandon it. This will trigger a series of biological processes to prepare to relinquish the unwanted part. This is how the navel on human bodies come to be. A perfect demonstration of how the command center works. A patient becomes sick, is because a malfunction in the system is causing the command center to think that the malignant cells are natural to the human body. Doctors of Western medicine like you will use surgery to remove the infected cells to try disrupting the process and reboot the system. But if after some time, the system still continues to allow the existence of the malignant cells in the human body, it becomes what you Western healers call as ‘spreading’, only sometimes it’s not the disease spreading. It’s because the malignant cells have revived. Therefore some people will still die after a few years despite having surgery.”

“It’s like going to a bank but the guard bars you from entering. You can kill the guard and gain entry, albeit momentarily. The consequences of your action come due. Even if they don’t, there would surely be another guard the next time you come! Hence the correct way is to deal with the bank and negotiate a pass. Then you will have a permanent association with the bank for continued access. This is the same with curing an illness: We deal with the command center of the human body. But beginning negotiations with the command center would hardly be an easy feat; it has remained the crux of the quandary that has perpetually plagued both Western and Chinese medicine, and I fear that this conundrum will continue tormenting us still.”

The old man’s revelation left a lingering silence in the room. Both the director and the chief physician were wide-mouthed in amazement. They had not expected that Old Man Xie would deliver a discovery so alien and unheard of using Western comparisons. Still, Old Man Xie had kept much of his discoveries from them. The ancient skills of Zhuyou (Shamanistic Healing) believed in the healing of souls, a concept which was also accepted within the circle of Chinese medicine, which, in ancient times, used to cover a broader spectrum of both human mental and physique when it came to healing. This ancient healing disciplines of archaic China was what manifested the Zhuyou shamanistic healing techniques. The core concept of Chinese medicine that he had earlier mentioned, All Methods are Birthed From The Heart, referred, in truth, to the soul. Being both colleagues of dealing with the supernatural, both Old Man Xie and I believed in the existence of souls, ghosts, and whatnot. But to explain this concept using the term “command center of the human body” was indeed a touch of genius by the old man indeed.

It took seconds for the director to recover from his stupor. “Oh my!” He gasped, “What great words from a great man! No amount of studies and books would ever outdo listening to one of your lectures, Master Xie! I’m beginning to feel that the things we learned in medical school were nothing but the mere tip of an iceberg!” The old man waved him off dismissively. “Enough with your prattle. Back to our case. What happens if a man from the Tang or Song Dynasty is transported to the present time?” The chief physician was quick to the take, answering immediately, “He will die fast. There are lots of bacterias that have not existed back then, and his immune system will not be able to deal with all these bacterias at once. He’ll never live long.” The old man nodded, satisfied with the answer. He asked again, “But if the bacterias from ancient times were to infiltrate the body of a human from the present time, would the human be able to survive?” The chief physician fell silent; so was the director too. Who’d be able to answer such a hypothetical question, they wondered. Seeing that they both failed to answer, Old Man Xie looked at me knowingly. Realizing my cue to speak, I related the entire tale of the ancient zither and Yang Na’s contact with the instrument and the events that transpired after that. The two men listened to my tale, perplexed beyond comprehension. Old Man Xie scoffed loudly and said, “This is what caused the sickness of the students and their teacher! A bacteria that had laid in dormant through the ages following the death of its host. It had remained in slumber with the instrument which was buried together with its master. When the teacher, as skillful as she was in playing the instrument, plucked at the instrument’s strings, the vibration and resonance of the strings caused the bacteria to spread through the air and was picked up the teacher and the students. With new live hosts to thrive in, the bacteria grew and affected everyone’s body. Thus the answer to my question, the immunity that the human body developed against ancient bacteria had weakened and diminished through time. By now, our human body would have no power against bacteria of those time.”

The director and the chief physician froze with disbelief. Evidently, it was a theory that they found hard to believe. Yet, it was this theory that had allowed Old Man Xie to cure everyone. The old man reached for a bun with his chopsticks and muttered, “And how must one heal the patients if under such circumstances? With a bun? Surely not. The environment today is completely different from that of in the ancient past.” The chief physician then asked, his skepticism permeating through his very self, “But why beefsteak plants? Do they contain antibodies?” Old Man Xie shook his head, saying, “Of course not. If you’re picking fruits in the mountains and suddenly you saw a tiger, but it had not noticed you. You may continue picking your fruits; the tiger might wander off without realizing you. But what if a wildfowl leaps out of nowhere and lands in front of the tiger, and it begins munching on the fruits on the ground. The tiger sees it and pounces on it, sinking its fangs into the flesh of its prey. It notices you now. But after feasting on the chicken, it finds that it is still not yet full, and another prey is just before it—you…”