Winter Break Plans and Traces of Ta Lo Village

In early December, on a cold Friday, a bitter 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 back courtyard, holding a steaming cup of ginger tea as he watched the shadows of herbs sway in the firelight.

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

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

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

Without looking up, Dr. Chen held a ginseng root between his fingers. "Homesick?"

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

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

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

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

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

Lin Hai turned and saw Peter, Harry, and Gwen wrapped in thick coats, their cheeks reddened by the wind, all wearing excited expressions.

"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 so did Peter, so I just came along." Gwen was looking around the clinic. It was her first time here.

Harry smiled faintly and took an exquisite gold-stamped envelope from his backpack. "An invitation to the Osborn Group's winter research program. Two weeks, with room and board included."

Peter's eyes widened. "Wait, you're taking Lin off to do research? What about our 'winter break special training plan'?"

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

Lin Hai also believed that teaching Peter basic martial arts knowledge for physical conditioning, along with some self-defense techniques, would benefit both the current and future Peter. So they had agreed to train whenever Peter had time during winter break.

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

"Uh... I mean, a winter break science experiment group!" Peter quickly 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 you too."

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

The air 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 during 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 tenth, while Chinese New Year falls in mid-January this year. You..."

Lin Hai nodded, his voice calm. "I definitely won't make it home for the holiday, but I may 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 things are beyond my control. So while I still have the time and chance, 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 early childhood. Gwen's parents were both alive, but because of her father George Stacy's work, she had witnessed no shortage of partings and deaths.

Chen Bing walked over then, carrying several packets of prepared medicinal tea. "Ah, why talk about all that? 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 just missed home and wanted to go back for a few days. It was not anything serious. The mood brightened 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 get back."

Peter's eyes lit up. "Maybe we can do a small-scale 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 reply.

Looking at them, Lin Hai suddenly felt much lighter.

"Alright, it's settled then." He raised his teacup. "I'll go home for two weeks to spend time with my family, then come back early, and we'll 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 just been poured for him. 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 moment Lin Hai stepped out of the cabin, the familiar scent in the moist air rushed over him, making his eyes sting. Was this what it meant to feel timid when nearing home?

"Xiaohai!"

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

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

"You've gotten taller, and stronger 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 watched the scenery flow past the car window: the steamed-bun shop on the corner that always billowed steam, the aunties dancing in the square, the layers upon layers of little advertisements pasted on utility poles. These utterly ordinary sights seemed so precious after he had been away for more than half a year.

"What made you come back at this time?" his mother asked, turning around from the passenger seat. "Chinese New Year is still a long way off."

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

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 wall and the copy of Five Years of College Entrance Exams, Three Years of Practice 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, secretly using his abilities to restore a few withered herbs to life. These most ordinary daily moments made the energy within him flow unusually smoothly and steadily, as if a tree had taken root 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 if you won't be home for Chinese New Year, Mom will make some cured meats for you to take back. There's a family at the mountain market with especially good shiitake mushrooms," she said as she packed a thermos.

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

After Lin Hai's mother parked the car, he got out with her.

"Mom, you go over there. I'll take a look around on the other side." Lin Hai pointed toward the far end of the market.

"Go ahead, go ahead. Watch the time, and come find me when it's about time." Lin Hai's mother did not think much of it. The market was a little large, but it was not as if a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy could get lost.

Lin Hai immediately strode toward the place he sensed.

At the end of the road stood a dense bamboo grove. Deep within it, Lin Hai lightly touched a bamboo stalk whose leaves bore faint pale-gold 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 of his master. Golden-Thread Bamboo was also called Kunlun Bamboo, named for the golden markings on its leaves.

Lin Hai frowned. These bamboo stalks were almost identical to the descriptions he had read in that book.

What concerned him even more was the small line written at the very bottom of the page describing this strange bamboo:

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

At the time, he had assumed the author had written it casually, so he had not thought much about it or taken it to heart.

After all, in the Marvel Universe, K'un-Lun was K'un-Lun—the birthplace of Iron Fist, where the dragon Yinglong known as Shou-Lao resided—while Ta Lo was Ta Lo—the homeland 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, the memory resurfaced and made him reconsider those words.

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 pondered these questions, Lin Hai plucked a bamboo leaf. The patterns on it resembled ancient runes, and when he tried channeling his Life Energy into it, the leaf and the entire bamboo stalk trembled slightly, producing a crisp sound like wind chimes. More astonishingly, he felt a surge of energy responding to him.

"These bamboo stalks all seem to have been affected by some kind of energy." Lin Hai crouched down and placed his hand against the ground, trying to sense the flow of energy in the earth's veins.

Sure enough, he caught a faint pulse of energy. Though incredibly weak, it carried an extremely ancient aura.

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

When Lin Hai left 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 especially surprised. In the movie, the vast Bamboo Grove 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 trip, his mother insisted on making dumplings. "Dumplings when you get on the road, noodles when you arrive," she muttered as she rolled out the wrappers, reciting a traditional Huaxia custom.

Soon, plump, translucent dumplings that made one's mouth water at a glance were brought to the table.

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

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

Lin Hai looked at the phone he had muted. 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 comfort and wistfulness that said, "Our son has grown up."

On the final morning, Lin Hai's suitcase was stuffed full: cured sausage, shiitake mushroom sauce, tea leaves, and even a small bag of soil from his hometown. After hearing that he kept some special plants, his mother had insisted that he bring "soil from home."

After seeing Lin Hai off at the airport, his parents claimed they were exhausted and needed 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 gazed at the clouds outside the window, turning the Kunlun Bamboo branch in his hand. He could feel that the energy contained in 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 near his hometown.

When he closed his eyes, he seemed to hear a distant dragon's roar...