Winter Break Plans and Traces of Ta Lo Village

At the beginning of December, on a cold Friday, frigid wind swept through the streets, carrying fallen leaves along with it. Winter had arrived in New York.

After school, Lin Hai stood beside the heater in the clinic's backyard, cradling a steaming cup of ginger tea as he watched the shadows of herbs sway in the firelight.

Midtown High School would begin winter break in another two weeks, and he had to decide whether to stay in New York or return to Huaxia.

"Master." Lin Hai looked up at Doctor Chen, who was sorting medicinal herbs.

"The school's been preparing for finals lately, and my winter break is coming up. I need to discuss something with you."

Doctor Chen did not even look up, a ginseng root pinched between his fingers. "Homesick?"

Lin Hai froze, then gave a bitter smile. "How do you know everything?"

"You're sixteen, and it's your first time being away from home for so long. It's normal to want to go back." Doctor Chen finally looked up, his gaze gentle.

Lin Hai lowered his head and took a sip of tea. Amid the rising steam, he seemed to see the lively scenes of New Year celebrations back home.

Just then, the wind chime at the clinic's front door rang.

"Lin! We're here!" Peter's voice rushed in along with the cold wind.

Lin Hai turned and saw Peter, Harry, and Gwen wrapped in thick coats, their cheeks reddened by the cold but their faces full of excitement.

"Why did you all come together?" Lin Hai asked curiously. He remembered that the three of them did not take the same route home.

"We ran into each other at the school gate. Harry said he had something to discuss with you, and Peter did too, so I just came along." Gwen was looking around the clinic. It was her first time there.

Harry smiled slightly and took an exquisite gilded envelope from his backpack. "An invitation to the Osborn Group's winter research program. Two weeks, with food and lodging included."

Peter's eyes widened. "Wait, you want to drag Lin into research? What about our 'winter break special training plan'?"

Peter was not yet the Spider-Man who swung through New York on webs every day. After seeing Lin Hai easily deal with Thompson using Tai Chi techniques, he had become interested in Tai Chi. He also felt that learning some martial arts techniques would somehow give him much more confidence when facing Mary Jane.

Lin Hai also believed that teaching Peter the basics of physical training in martial arts, along with some self-defense techniques, would benefit both the current and future Peter. They had agreed to train during winter break whenever they had time.

"What special training plan?" Gwen looked suspiciously at Peter.

"Uh... I mean, a winter break science experiment group!" Peter hastily changed his words, but everyone could tell he was making it up.

Lin Hai could not help laughing. "Don't rush. I happen to have something to discuss with all of you too."

He took a deep breath and looked at the three of them. "I might be going back to Huaxia."

The room fell silent for a second.

"Back to Huaxia?!" Peter was the first to cry out. "Then what about our... uh, experiments?"

Harry remained calm. "How long has it been since you went back?"

"Half a year," Lin Hai said softly. "My parents understand that I'm studying in the United States, but if there's a long break, they still hope I can return."

Gwen suddenly remembered something and said in confusion, "According to the school calendar, classes start again around January 10, while Huaxia's Spring Festival is in mid-January this year. You..."

Lin Hai nodded, his voice calm. "I definitely won't make it back for the New Year. But I might have even less time to return in the future. You all know I have some special abilities. As those abilities grow, I have a feeling there will be more and more times when I can't act as I wish. So while I still have the time and opportunity, I want to spend as much time with them as I can."

The atmosphere in the clinic grew somewhat heavy.

Peter's parents had died in an accident when he was very young. Harry's mother had also passed away during his childhood. Although both of Gwen's parents were still alive, because of her father George Stacy's work, she had seen no shortage of partings and deaths.

Chen Bing walked over then, carrying several packets of prepared herbal tea. "Hey, why are we talking about all this? Little Lin misses home! He's a sixteen-year-old kid who's been abroad alone for half a year. That's perfectly normal."

Indeed, he simply missed home and wanted to go back for a few days. It was not anything serious. The mood livened up again, and Lin Hai noticed the support in Peter and Harry's eyes, as well as the understanding in Gwen's.

Harry smiled faintly. "If you want, the Osborn project can wait until you come back."

Peter's eyes lit up. "Maybe we can have a small special training session first? I mean, a science experiment!"

Gwen crossed her arms, smiling without quite smiling. "Peter, why have you been talking so strangely lately?"

Peter gave an awkward laugh and did not dare respond.

Looking at them, Lin Hai suddenly felt much more at ease.

"Alright, then it's settled." He raised his teacup. "I'll go back for two weeks to spend time with my family, then return early, and we can do our 'science experiments' together."

"Cheers!" Peter immediately picked up the thermos beside him and clinked it against Lin Hai's cup.

Harry elegantly raised the Chrysanthemum tea that had been poured for him earlier. Gwen smiled and shook her head, while Chen Bing merely gave a soft "hmph," though the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

The fire crackled, and snow continued to fall, but Lin Hai suddenly felt that this winter did not seem so cold after all.

The plane landed in a small southern city in Huaxia. The instant Lin Hai stepped out of the cabin, the familiar scent in the moist air washed over him, making his eyes sting. Was this what it meant to feel timid as one neared home?

"Xiaohai!"

His mother's voice pierced through the noisy arrivals hall. Lin Hai saw her petite figure in a navy padded jacket waving desperately. His father stood beside her, holding up a sign with Lin Hai's name on it, even though he could obviously recognize his own son.

"Mom! Dad!" Lin Hai dragged his suitcase over and was immediately pulled into his mother's embrace. She still carried that faint, indescribable scent, exactly as he remembered.

"You've grown taller, and sturdier too. Looks like you've been eating well?" His father took the luggage and gave Lin Hai's shoulder a heavy pat with his broad palm.

On the way home, Lin Hai greedily took in the passing scenery beyond the car window: the bun shop at the street corner that always steamed, the middle-aged women dancing in the square, the layers of small advertisements plastered onto utility poles. These utterly ordinary sights seemed so precious after he had been away for more than half a year.

"What made you decide to come back now?" his mother asked, turning around from the passenger seat. "Spring Festival is still a long way off."

Lin Hai looked at the darkening sky outside. "I just missed you both."

Those simple words suddenly silenced the car. His mother quietly wiped at the corner of her eye, while his father's back seemed to straighten a little more as he drove.

The small city was far quieter at night than New York. Lin Hai lay on the bed he had slept in since childhood. The posters on the walls and the copies of Five Years of College Entrance Exams, Three Years of Mock Tests on the bookshelf had not been touched, as though time had frozen here.

The days that followed felt like a gentle dream.

Lin Hai accompanied his father to an old teahouse to play chess, where a group of retired teachers surrounded him with questions about life in the United States. He helped his mother cure preserved meat in the kitchen and secretly used his abilities to restore several wilted herbs to life. These everyday moments could not have been more ordinary, yet the energy within him flowed unusually steadily and smoothly, as though a tree had rooted itself once more in familiar soil.

Three days before his return flight, Lin Hai's mother suddenly suggested going to the mountain goods market on the outskirts to buy New Year supplies.

"Even though you won't be home for the New Year, Mom will make some cured meat for you to take back. There's a stall at the mountain market with especially good mushrooms," she said as she packed a thermos.

The mountain roads outside the city twisted and turned. His mother led Lin Hai expertly through bamboo groves shrouded in morning mist. Just as they reached the market at the mountaintop, the energy inside Lin Hai began to pulse, as though it had sensed something.

After Mother Lin parked the car, Lin Hai got out with her.

"Mom, you go this way. I'll go take a look over there." Lin Hai pointed toward the other side of the market.

"Go on, go on. Just keep an eye on the time and come find me when it's about time." Mother Lin did not think much of it. The market was large, but it was not as though a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy could get lost.

Lin Hai immediately headed briskly toward the place he sensed.

At the end of the road stood a dense bamboo grove. Deep within it, Lin Hai gently touched a stalk of bamboo whose leaves bore faint golden patterns. He knew this was no ordinary plant.

"This is... Golden-Thread Bamboo?" Lin Hai murmured the name. He had once seen it in an ancient book while browsing the treasured medical texts kept by his master. Golden-Thread Bamboo was also called Kunlun Bamboo, named for the golden patterns on its leaves.

Lin Hai frowned. These bamboos almost perfectly matched the descriptions in the book.

What concerned him even more was that at the bottom of the page describing this strange bamboo, there had been a line of small writing:

"Outside Ta Lo Village, the Path of K'un-Lun."

At the time, he had assumed the author had made that sentence up on a whim, so he had not thought much about it or taken it to heart.

Because in the Marvel Universe, K'un-Lun was K'un-Lun—the birthplace of Iron Fist, where an Yinglong named Shou-Lao resided—and Ta Lo was Ta Lo—the hometown of Shang-Chi's mother, where a Huaxia dragon lived in the village lake. How could the area outside Ta Lo Village possibly be K'un-Lun?

But now that he had seen Golden-Thread Bamboo with his own eyes, it not only stirred those memories but also made him reconsider that sentence.

If the K'un-Lun in that sentence referred to Golden-Thread Bamboo, which was also called Kunlun Bamboo, then everything seemed to make sense.

As he considered these questions, Lin Hai plucked a bamboo leaf. The patterns on it resembled ancient runes. When he tried channeling the Life Energy within him into it, the leaf and the entire stalk trembled faintly, producing a clear sound like wind chimes. More wondrously, he felt an energy responding to him.

"It seems like all these bamboos have been affected by some kind of energy." Lin Hai crouched down and pressed his hand against the ground, attempting to sense the flow of energy through the earth's veins.

Sure enough, he caught a faint pulse of energy. Though incredibly weak, the aura it contained was extremely ancient.

"Xiaohai! Where did you run off to?" his mother called from afar. "Coming!" he shouted back.

When Lin Hai walked out of the bamboo grove, the bamboo behind him swayed slightly. Then, as though everything that had just happened had been an illusion, the narrow path he had taken vanished.

Lin Hai was not too surprised. In the movie, the vast bamboo maze outside Ta Lo Village was just like this. Even Xu Wenwu, the true leader of the Ten Rings Gang who had lived for over a thousand years and possessed the Ten Rings, could not enter it. With his meager abilities, it was already impressive that he could sense any of this.

On the night before his return flight, his mother insisted on making dumplings. "Dumplings when you get on, noodles when you get off," she muttered as she rolled out the wrappers, reciting a traditional Huaxia custom.

Soon, plump, translucent dumplings that looked irresistibly delicious were brought to the table.

"Do you have a girl you like in the United States?" his mother suddenly asked. Lin Hai nearly choked on the dumpling he had just swallowed. "Mom! I've only been there for a few months!"

"Then who's Gwen?" his father asked teasingly, pointing at the phone Lin Hai had placed on the dining table.

Lin Hai looked at his muted phone. Its screen had lit up, displaying Gwen's name as the caller.

Gwen had called to confirm his return date. After Lin Hai hung up, his parents exchanged a look he knew all too well—the mixture of gratification and melancholy that said, Our son has grown up.

On the final morning, Lin Hai's suitcase was stuffed full: cured sausage, mushroom sauce, tea leaves, and even a small bag of soil from his hometown. His mother had heard that he was growing some special plants and insisted he take "soil from home" with him.

After seeing Lin Hai off at the airport, Father Lin and Mother Lin claimed they were sleepy and wanted to go home for another nap, then left without looking back. Lin Hai smiled bitterly. Who was it that said yesterday they couldn't bear to see me go?

As the plane soared into the sky, Lin Hai looked out at the clouds and rubbed the Kunlun Bamboo branch between his fingers. He could feel that the energy contained within this bamboo was older than that of any plant he had encountered before.

"K'un-Lun... Ta Lo... so close together?" Lin Hai murmured. He had never expected to find traces of Ta Lo's existence near his hometown.

And when he closed his eyes, in a daze, he seemed to hear a distant dragon's roar...