I Borrowed This Body for Only Three Years

In the autumn of 1998, logging stopped at Liuhe Forest Farm. One hundred and seventy-three people waited for reassignment notices.

Lu Shouzhuo was nineteen. He had taken his father's place at the farm three months earlier. He couldn't chop trees; all he could do was recite books: the Book of Changes, the Book of Burial, the Dragon-Shaking Classic, and a stack of boxing manuals copied from the salvage yard. Everyone at the farm called him "the one who recites books."

An accident: a falling tree crushed the old doctor's back. Lu Shouzhuo fell to his knees and said something no one believed: "A broken back can't bend."

Later, he was transferred to the watchtower on the mountain, a post no one wanted. The earth west of the tower's foundations was warm in September.

He sat on that patch of earth for twelve days and cultivated a furnace of true qi. The price was a nosebleed.

From that day on, he could see things no one else could: whose leg was hurting, where the ground was hollow, and which person still had a breath of life left in them.

But this body was borrowed.

The lease was for three years. When the term ended, he would have to return it.