The Mountain Root Sitting on the Border of Two Courts

The Health Palace, ji e gong, is centred on the bridge of the nose at a specific point the tradition names the mountain root, shan gen, and that name marks more than a poetic description of the bridge's shape. The mountain root sits at the boundary between the Upper Court, which ends at the eyebrows, and the Middle Court, which begins there and runs down to the base of the nose, making the Health Palace's location structurally significant within the three court grid rather than simply falling inside one court like most of the system's other named palaces. A high, unbroken bridge here is read as a sign of strong constitutional health across a person's whole life, while a low, pinched or heavily lined mountain root is read as a caution about health, particularly around midlife, the years the Middle Court itself is read as governing.

Sitting exactly on that boundary gives the Health Palace a kind of hinge function within the whole system, connecting the inherited fortune the Upper Court claims to record with the adult years of effort and consequence the Middle Court claims to record, much as a person's constitutional health in the tradition's own logic connects what was inherited to what can still be built or spent through active adult life.