This chapter opens with a soliloquy by the young man who has just returned from the battlefield. He tells the reader that he has come back from the front to find his master dead. He asks the reader to imagine what it must have been like to be a prisoner in the front of the Ming army. The young man tells his master that he is tired and wishes he could go back to the front, but the prince refuses to allow him to do so. The prince tells him that he will not let him go because he is still in love with the young woman. He also tells the prince that he must find a doctor to treat the man. When the prince asks him what he should do, he tells him to get a medicine ointment and apply it to the man's body every day. The ointment will cure the man within two days, but if the ointment remains in his body for longer than that, it will cause him to die