Chapter 4 The Sky Clinic— a Trick

Ning Tao strode under the archway of Garden Street and into the quiet street. The street were paved with blue flagstones, marked with the traces of people, mules and horses. Each piece exuded the weight of history. The Sky Clinic was at the end of Garden Street. It was a low, blue-tiled house, with moss and ivy covering its stone walls, making it cannot be greener. It had no facade, only a wooden door set in the stone wall, and the paint on the door had almost come off. If it hadn't been for the signboard which read "The Sky Clinic" on the lintel, Ning Tao would probably have thought he was in front of a poor mountaineer's house. "Is this a clinic?" Ning Tao wondered helplessly. Glancing back at the street where he'd come from, Ning Tao found it empty. In terms of appearance and location, the clinic was doomed to fail even if it had not opened yet. "Well, since I'm here, I'd better go in and have a look." Ning Tao comforted himself in his heart. Then he took out the key Chen Pingdao had given him, put it in the lock and opened the door. Behind the door was a room, smoky and misty. He dimly saw a seven-star lamp burning quietly, but it was not enough to dispel the smoke and completely illuminate Ning Tao's vision. Nothing pertaining to Chen Pingdao was normal, and this clinic was apparently no exception. Ning Tao took a deep breath and walked into the room. After he entered, the door of the clinic slowly and automatically closed, but he didn't realize it. This was a very old room, about thirty or forty square meters, without windows. Tables and chairs, bookshelf and all kinds of utensils, bronze tripods, ceramic pots and other things of different sizes were placed in a disorderly way. The source of the smoke in the room was a huge bronze tripod. It was half the height of an adult, and on the side facing the door was a human face, with closed eyes, features but no expression, which looked strange yet natural. Ning Tao carefully leaned over to the side of the bronze tripod and peered into it, but he could not see what was smoking. Ning Tao gave up studying the bronze tripod for the time being. As he took a few steps forward, he saw a door on the left wall. On the top of the door was a wooden sign with the inscription "Classics & Magic Arts Store". Then he turned his eyes on the right wall. Through the smoke, he saw a door on the right wall. There were some words on the wall, too, but they were hard to read because of the smoke. Ning Tao took a few steps to the right, waved away the smoke. Then he was transfixed by the words on the wall. On the right wall of the door lintel hanging a sign engraved with "Elixirs & Equipment Store", and the wall was covered with shocking words written in red paint or blood. "I can't stand it anymore!" "I'm going crazy!" "I want to be free! Give me liberty, or give me death!" "I can't go on like this!" "I must think of a way, AHAHA!" "Chen Pingdao, oh Chen Pingdao, you gotta find a sucker to take your place!" At the sight of these sentence, Ning Tao suddenly remembered the words he vaguely heard when he was about to fall into a coma last night— "I'm free at last! There's a divine justice after all! Hahaha!" Somehow, Ning Tao was suddenly startled. "Is the sucker... me?" He hurriedly took out Chen Pingdao's transfer contract and opened it. There was nothing wrong with the contract and his signature was clearly visible. There were no traps in the contract! At this moment, the human face on the bronze tripod suddenly opened its eyes, and the smoke in the room went back to the tripod like the ebb tide. Then the contract in his hand trembled and changed! The white paper became old and yellow. When Ning Tao's eyes fall on the contract, he was horrified to see the writing slowly disappear and new content emerge. "Tenancy agreement of the Sky Clinic: Congratulations on becoming the owner of the Sky Clinic. The monthly rent of the clinic is 200 points of merits of good intentions and sins of evil intention. Overdue payment is offset by your life expectancy. A year's life is worth one point. This contract has been bound to your soul until the death of the body and soul." Ning Tao's signature was in the lower right corner of the lease. Ning Tao suddenly got it that Chen Pingdao had tricked him! "If I don't pay enough rent, I'll pay for it with my life. A year's life is only worth a point. If the clinic doesn't open for a month, how much rents will my life pay? Are you kidding? You go on, I quit!" Ning Tao got angrier and angrier, grabbed the contract and tore it up! Crackle! The soul pact was split in two and fell to the floor. However, at this moment, Ning Tao's body looked as if being cut in two as well, and all his blood seemed to be spilled on the floor. A feeling more anguished than death spread to every nerve of his being. He could not hold on for a second, and fell straight to the floor. The soul contract, torn in two, was spliced together in the air and merged into one. It landed squarely in Ning Tao's open right hand without a crack. Then Ning Tao's pain vanished. It came and went quickly, and everything returned to normal. Ning Tao got up from the floor. The weird thing that just happened to him showed that he had no choice but to open the clinic to earn the rent. What was the merit of good intention? What was the sin of evil intention? Ning Tao wondered, his eyes searching for answers. Soon he saw a small white porcelain vial on the desk with a piece of paper under it. Ning Tao walked over. Before he could examine the contents of the porcelain vial, which bore a handwritten label "Primary Elixirs," he saw the printed message on the piece of paper. It was left to him by Chen Pingdao, saying, "I'm sorry, young man. I had to do this. I am a cultivator, and my Taoist name is Taoist Heavenly Hound. I've been stuck in this clinic for more than 2,000 years." "You, like me, have good and evil spiritual roots and are in perfect balance." "You needn't doubt it. I'm sure you've seen your innate aura. Others are colorful, but yours are black and white." "I don't know the exact history of the clinic. Although it is called a clinic, its establishment couldn't be traced. I was also fooled to become its owner. It will charge you good and evil value monthly as rent, and if you exceed the time limit, your life will be offset. I always could not earn enough rent, so my life is getting shorter. I don't think I could have lived much longer without you." "The so-called good and evil value is the merit of good intention and sin of evil intention." "The merit of good intention is the merit that people harboring good thoughts do something good; the sin of evil intention refers to the sin that people harboring evil thoughts do something evil. You must earn the reward of good and evil from men." "The bamboo slips on the bookshelf are the account books of the clinic, which can calculate the good and evil value of people; the tripod in the middle of the room is a good-evil tripod. As long as you write a prescription pact and ask one to sign it, the tripod will automatically extract the value of good and evil from him." "So you have to do the deed within the clinic. The key was made of iron, and nothing in the world can destroy it. You have to carry it with you, so wherever you are in the world, you can just draw a lock with your blood on the wall or on the door, and then you can go back to the clinic when you open the door with the key." "The vial contains my last five Primary Elixirs. It is used in conjunction with the prescription pact, capable of curing all but the most fatal diseases of the common people. It's a present for you. The drawer contains the formula and refining method of Primary Elixirs, and you can make it by yourself when you have mastered the magic of elixirs in the medical book." "There are two doors in the clinic. One is the Classics & Magic Arts Store, and the other is the Elixirs & Equipment Store. I haven't been in them, so I don't know what's in them." "Finally, do not think that good and evil value is easy to earn, the people who are not great good or great evil have very little good or evil value. Let me put it this way, we all say that saving one's life is better than building a seven-storied pagoda for the god, so it should be a great merit to save someone's life. But in fact, saving a life is only worth seven points of merit of good intention. It matters to your life. Keep it in mind." It was signed by "Never see you again, ashamed Chen Pingdao". "I don't believe you're ashamed of yourself!" After a while, Ning Tao was a little calmer. He opened the desk drawer, and saw the formula and refining method of the Primary Elixir that Chen Pingdao left. He scanned it, but couldn't make head or tail of it. Then he uncorked the little porcelain vial and poured out the pills. Indeed, there were only five tiny bronze pills with a delicate smell, which looked like particles of metal rather than elixirs. After that, Ning Tao put the Primary Elixirs back in the little porcelain vial, put it in the drawer, and finally closed the drawer carefully. For him now, this was not a small bottle of medicine but an extra life! Then Ning Tao turned his eyes on the bronze tripod next to the desk, the face still staring at him. It was the good-evil tripod. Ning Tao remembered the smoke when he first came in. He cautiously went to the side of the tripod and looked inside. There was nothing in the good-evil tripod, except some strange lines which looked like countless rivers on the earth, crisscrossing and gathering at the bottom. Ning Tao looked away from the tripod to the bookshelf, where had no books but bamboo slips. If there was no surprise, it should be the ledger of the Sky Clinic. Ning Tao went to the bookshelf and picked up the bamboo slips. It was heavy, and had a bone-chilling feel. Obviously, it was not made of ordinary bamboo. He unfolded the bamboo slips, and the contents immediately appeared, "The inventory of Sky Clinic is as follows, the merit of good intention: zero; the sin of evil intention: zero; from next rent payment time: 29 days and 12 hours." 29 days and 12 hours! It was timing him! Chen Pingdao was a cultivator, who had a long life, but he almost got crazy and tried to escape because his life was drawn. Ning Tao's situation was even worse. After all, he was just an ordinary human, with only a few decades of life, and a month's rent could exhaust his life! Then Ning Tao put the clinic's ledger of bamboo slips back on the bookshelf. "Now that I can't get rid of it, I will start my new life here! Chen Pingdao, you can't run the clinic, but I can!" He said with the look of fortitude in his eyes.