The dog days of summer on Cyan Ox Ridge felt like a giant steamer, and the cicadas in the old locust tree outside the Medicine Cottage called in a way that made people restless. Yet Zhang Yifan was squatting by the stone mill, using a bamboo tube to pour sugar water into an ant nest. Huwa came over holding a sticky cicada-catching bamboo pole, sweat beading on the tip of his nose. "Brother Fan, you say ants moving sugar cubes are like deploying troops in formation, but how do they know which path to take?"
The boy suddenly looked up, the tip of his nose smudged with bright sugar residue. "Last year, I drew a Bagua diagram at the entrance of the nest. Look—" He poked the meandering colony of ants with a thin stick. "The ants taking the 'Qian' position carry small sugar grains, and those on the 'Kun' position carry big ones. This is called 'each to their own responsibility,' even neater than your dad's hunting team!" Huwa nodded, half-understanding, and suddenly caught sight of seven pottery bowls placed on the stone mill, petals of different colors soaking inside. "And what treasure is this?"
"A rain gauge!" Zhang Yifan shook the bamboo tube smugly, the bottom lined with sun-dried mugwort. "Master says 'a moist foundation brings rain,' so I made a few improvements—the petals curl up when they encounter moisture. Three curls of the red rose mean light rain, and five curls of the blue iris mean heavy rain. Yesterday it curled seven times, and sure enough, there was a heavy storm last night. It must have soaked all the mushrooms your family had laid out to dry, right?"
Just as Huwa was about to chase and beat him, a commotion rose from the mountain path. A few village men were carrying an old hunter with a sprained ankle into the Medicine Cottage. Zhang Xuanzhen was sitting in the shade pounding medicine; seeing the sugar residue on his disciple's nose, he laughed and scolded, "Are you using my honey to lure ants again? Watch out for wild bees stinging your backside!" Zhang Yifan stuck out his tongue, then suddenly caught sight of the red swelling on the old hunter's leg, his eyes lighting up. "Master, was this bitten by a mountain pepper insect? I wrote it down in the *Classic of Hundred Insects* yesterday—using dandelion juice mixed with earthworm castings is even more miraculous than your trauma medicine!"
The Old Daoist raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Then let's see you try." The boy immediately perked up, squatting on the ground to dig for earthworms. Huwa pinched his nose and hid far away. "Brother Fan is so gross, even more disgusting than Uncle Wang's smelly feet at the head of the village!" Without looking up, Zhang Yifan retorted, "Earthworm castings are treasures! The pumpkins your mother grew with them last year were bigger than a millstone!"
Sure enough, after the medicine was applied for half an hour, most of the swelling on the old hunter's leg had gone down. The villagers dispersed in amazement. Zhang Xuanzhen suddenly pointed at the crackling firewood in the stove. "Yifan, answer me again—what is the Dao?" The boy wiped his hands and stared at the roiling medicinal soup on the stove. "The Dao is just the heat control when Master brews medicine. Too fast and it burns, too slow and it does nothing. It has to be like 'Cook Ding butchering an ox,' following the natural tendencies of the medicinal properties." He suddenly flashed a mischievous smile. "Just like when Huwa sneaks and picks my purple-backed tiankui; I've long since smeared itch powder on the leaves. That is also the Dao—acting on behalf of Heaven."
The Old Daoist was choked into a cough. Xiaoxiu walked over carrying mung bean soup and laughed so hard she couldn't straighten up upon hearing the last line. "Brother Fan is up to mischief again. Huwa came crying to me this early morning, saying his back was itching so much he couldn't sleep!" Zhang Yifan blinked. "I'm teaching him to recognize medicinal herbs. The edges of purple-backed tiankui leaves are serrated, and touching the skin causes itching. Next time, he won't dare pick them randomly."
In the afternoon, master and apprentice sat on the millstone to cool off. Zhang Xuanzhen gazed at the terraced fields rolling away in the distance with the wind, the bamboo aqueduct flashing silver in the sunlight, suddenly remembering that snowy night ten years ago when the baby in swaddling clothes could now handle things on his own. "I heard you assigned 'insect soldiers' to the hunters? Fire-backed spiders guard the pepper fields, earth moles loosen the soil. You've truly become a 'strategist of a hundred insects'."
"Master, look!" Zhang Yifan suddenly pointed toward the branches of the locust tree. Three golden-spotted Spring-Guiding Insects were crawling along the bamboo tube, chirping twice at every fork in the path. "I carved insect patterns on the bamboo tubes, and they act like guides showing the water current the way—I'm not just messing around. The *Huainanzi* says 'bird cries recognize the night, insect movements know the time.' Even insects understand how to adapt to the natural seasons."
The Old Daoist fell silent, tapping his tobacco pipe against the millstone three times. He remembered how, in his youth, he had traveled to famous mountains seeking the "Dao without form," never expecting his disciple to comprehend in the fields and dirt—from ants moving house to the chirping of insects—that "the Dao exists within form." Perhaps this was the true "Dao"—not high-sounding philosophical debates in imperial courts, but the down-to-earth flavor of everyday life.
As dusk crept into the mountain hollow, Zhang Yifan squatted by the medicinal plots to record in the *Classic of Hundred Insects*, his brush tip gliding across: "Cicada sloughs can be used as medicine; their calls correspond to the solar terms. Those that chirp at the start of the dog days are cool in nature, while those that chirp at the end are warm." Xiaoxiu walked over holding newly dried herbs and suddenly noticed that the cicada slough in his drawing had the ears of a Wooden Ox and Gliding Horse. She couldn't resist poking him in the back. "Brother Fan is drawing random nonsense again! If a cicada looked like that, Huwa would have knocked it down with a bamboo pole long ago."
The boy smiled as he closed the book, gazing at the darkening sky. "Xiaoxiu, do you think the people in Chang'an City are just like us, looking at the stars to tell direction and listening to insect calls to know the seasons?" The girl shook her head. "What's so great about Chang'an City? With all that hustle and bustle, how could it ever compare to the ease of our Cyan Ox Village?" Yet Zhang Yifan looked toward the distant mountain peaks, his eyes reflecting the first bright star to light up. "Master said I should go into the Mortal World to seek the Dao, but I feel the Dao is right here in this cicada song, in the flowing water of the bamboo tube, in the cloth doll you sewed for me..."
"Smooth-talking!" Xiaoxiu blushed and turned away, but accidentally knocked over the rain gauge, scattering the petals at the boy's feet. Zhang Yifan chuckled lightly, picking up a curled rose petal. "Look, even the flowers know they should close their petals at dusk. If this isn't the Dao, what is?"
As the night grew deeper, a faint fragrance of mugwort drifted from the Medicine Cottage. Through the window paper, Zhang Xuanzhen watched his disciple demonstrating to Huwa how to use cicada calls to judge the weather, while Xiaoxiu stood nearby laughing her head off. He suddenly felt that these past ten years of time had attained the Great Dao far more than his thirty years of bitter cultivation. Perhaps the true "Dao" had always been hidden in these trivial daily routines—hidden in the boy's shrewd and smiling eyes, in the tinkling flow of the bamboo tubes, in every ordinary day of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.
When the first frog croaked, Zhang Yifan suddenly heard his master calling him from the inner room: "Put the *Classic of Hundred Insects* into the camphor-wood chest. Tomorrow, accompany me to the back mountain to gather dew-covered grass—I hear the 'cicada-call alarm' you made for Huwa startled a mother deer. We should go make amends to the mountain god." The boy acknowledged the order, but as he headed out the door, he turned back to wink at Xiaoxiu. "Don't worry, I installed deer bells inside the alarm long ago; when the mother deer hears them, she'll just think companions are coming."
Moonlight washed over Cyan Ox Ridge, illuminating that row of gently swaying bamboo tubes outside the Medicine Cottage, illuminating the busy insects bustling across the fields, and illuminating the bouncing silhouette of the boy vanishing into the night. The so-called "Dao" perhaps was never distant at all; it was hidden in every moment of living with intention, waiting for someone with a mindful heart to discover it, to comprehend it, and to let this ordinary life burst forth with a unique radiance.