Where Every Reading of Adulthood Converges on the Nose

The Middle Court runs from the eyebrows to the base of the nose and claims the busiest stretch of real estate in the whole mian xiang system for a single court. The nose itself, read as both the Wealth Palace at its tip and wings and the Examiner Officer across its whole length, sits entirely inside the Middle Court's boundaries, as does the Health Palace at the bridge and the eyes themselves, read as the Supervisor Officer. No other court concentrates so many of the system's separate named readings into one span of face, a density that follows from what the Middle Court is held to describe, the years of adulthood roughly from thirty to fifty, when a reader would expect career, health, judgment and accumulated wealth to all be actively in play at once rather than settled by inheritance or deferred to old age.

The convergence is not treated in the tradition as redundant. A strong nose within a weak Middle Court, or a well formed Wealth Palace beside a poorly read Health Palace immediately next to it, gives a practitioner a finer grained reading than any single feature could on its own, since the courts, palaces and officers are read together as one layered system rather than as three separate face reading methods that happen to share a canvas.