"Today, gentlemen, I'll tell you the tale of Prince Su's heir, Xu Buling—how he bullied the men and ravaged the women, and forced a decent girl to be his wife…"
On the winter solstice of the tenth year of the Zhaohong era of Great Yue, a light snow fell on Chang'an. Around the corner towers of the ward markets, brothels and gambling dens stood row on row, and the local toughs and idlers crowded around the tea stall with braziers burning at their feet.
The storyteller's words poured out like lotus blossoms as he told of a curious affair out on the frontier:
"Last time I told you how our dynasty's Prince Su's eldest legitimate son, Xu Buling, with one horse and one lance, went alone into the northern desert, took over a hundred heads, and came back without a scratch—so the frontier officers called him 'Little Yama.' Now guess how old the young heir was that year?"
"How would small folk like us know anything about a prince's business…"
"Get on with it, get on with it…"
The whole crowd of listeners urged him on impatiently, plainly waiting for the main act—the bullying and the ravaging.
The storyteller drew out the suspense, then spoke with relish:
"The day the young heir came riding back alone with a rebel general's head on his lance, he had just turned sixteen!"
"Sixteen?"
"Impossible!"
The crowd erupted, plainly disbelieving.
The storyteller waved his folding fan in the dead of winter, utterly at ease:
"The whole court was shaken at the time—even His Majesty was stirred. Every official said the young heir was a tiger cub out of a general's house, outshining his forebears; give him time, and his achievements would be no less than those of Xu Lie, the founding prince…"
"General Xu is already a prince of another surname. If even General Xu is outdone, what title do you give him?"
"One rank above a prince of the blood, so naturally that makes him—"
The storyteller's face froze. He hurriedly raised a hand to shush the noise: "Don't go finishing other people's sentences. Are you tired of living? … As the saying goes, 'The tallest tree in the forest is the first the wind will break'…"
On flowed the storyteller, and the tea drinkers drank it up. Scenes like this were hardly rare in the back streets of Chang'an.
Just as the crowd was warming to the tale, a clamor suddenly rose from the street:
"You won't take the easy way, so you'll take the hard way…"
"Beat her!"
The tea drinkers turned to look. A female constable carrying a goose-quill saber was being chased and beaten by a dozen thugs swinging clubs.
Dragons and snakes mixed freely in the back streets of Chang'an, but beating an officer of the law was uncommon enough to draw plenty of heads peering out.
Soon three Imperial Guards came running; the leader was a junior commander, and he called out from far off:
"This is the capital, a place of consequence—private brawling is strictly forbidden! Who is making a scene here?"
The constable was a wreck from head to toe: "Sir, they dared to beat an officer of the law in the street! There must be something crooked in this wineshop…"
The commander did not go and question the thugs. He turned a cold eye on the constable instead: "This is not your jurisdiction. Cause any more trouble over nothing, and don't blame this officer for showing no courtesy."
A textbook case of tilting the scales. The onlookers shook their heads—the gambling dens and brothels of Daye Ward all had backers behind them, and this little constable was plainly new.
The constable's eyes went wide with shock: "A beating on an officer, right before your eyes, and you look the other way. You know perfectly well something is crooked in that wineshop, you walk right up to the door and won't even look inside. Sir, don't tell me you're a friend of that proprietor?"
The commander's face darkened: "Seize her. Let her superiors come and collect her."
"Yes, sir!"
Three sentences in, they'd had enough of each other. The Imperial Guards came forward with leg irons to take her.
The constable went livid: "You wouldn't dare! I'm with the Investigation Bureau—what gives you the right to arrest me?"
As she spoke, she drew her saber and set her stance, holding it before her.
The crowd thought, This is bad. A single rank above can crush a man to death, as the saying went—this constable was surely a fresh-fledged chick; on somebody else's turf, who ever heard of pulling a blade?
Sure enough, when the commander saw the constable daring to resist, he raged: "You have some nerve—defying orders and pointing a blade at a superior. Seize her!"
The two Imperial Guards closed in, and the back of a blade cracked hard against the hollow of her knee, dropping her to both knees. The other flung a lasso over her and hauled it taut.
Her face red and her eyes bloodshot, the constable cursed: "You dog of an official—in bed with the merchants, turning black into white! I'll report this to the Investigation Bureau, I will—"
"Bullshit."
The commander's eyes went cold. He strode forward and swung a slap at the constable's face, heavy and full of force—had it landed, teeth would have flown.
The watching tea drinkers all frowned, but when the authorities were handling a matter, they had no standing to interfere.
That slap, however, never landed on the constable's face.
The crowd looked over, and only then saw that at some point a young man in white had appeared in front of the constable. No jade pendant hung at his waist—a wine gourd did. A long sword was in his right hand; his left had caught the commander's bracer, and it would not budge an inch.
The young man in white had sword-straight brows dark as ink and a pair of peach-blossom eyes that carried an inborn air of nobility and, on a closer look, a certain enticement. He looked as though he had stepped out of a painting—like some wandering jianghu wastrel sticking his nose into other people's business.
The commander's face sank at this sudden interposition, and he snapped:
"The yamen is at work. Outsiders stand clear."
The young man in white was expressionless: "We all eat the court's rice. Why turn a blade on a fellow servant?"
The commander yanked at his hand again and it did not come free, so he shouted:
"You reckless brigand—carrying a weapon in the street, assaulting an officer of the law…"
And with that he drew his saber with his left hand and cut at the young man in white.
The two Imperial Guards let go of the rope and pressed in at the same time.
The watching commoners all caught their breath. When ordinary folk clashed with soldiers, being beaten to death was their own fault; this white-robed youngster was far too hotheaded—carrying a weapon only handed them an excuse.
The constable, frantic, was just about to tell this recklessly bold rich boy not to meddle—when a flash of cold light cut across her sight.
The commander's saber swept out, and cold dread shot straight to his marrow; he tried to raise his blade to block, but it was already too late.
Shhk—
The long sword of the young man in white arrived first though it moved last, sweeping past in front of the commander before sliding cleanly back into its sheath.
In that fleeting glimpse, four characters could be seen engraved on the blade:
'Unbidden, It Is Done.'
The "Buling" of Xu Buling: "unbidden."
Blood sprayed, trailing a curtain of crimson beads through the air.
The two Imperial Guards went on alert as if facing a mighty foe, but by the time they sensed something was wrong, it was too late.
The commander's whole body locked up. His saber dropped to the ground; both hands clutched his throat, blood streaming between his fingers, his eyeballs bulging almost out of their sockets as he stared at the young man in white. He staggered back a few steps and fell, his blood seeping into the seams of the flagstones.
One sword, one throat.
In an instant the back street went dead silent.
The thugs and idlers watching from a distance were white as paper, frozen where they stood.
Beneath the surface of Chang'an, gang fights that ended in death were not rare, but out in the open the law still had to be respected; anyone who dared kill in the street could hardly escape the autumn executions. Killing an official in the street—no one in Chang'an dared that. This was the ground beneath the Son of Heaven's feet!
A few drops of blood had spattered the constable's face. She stared at the Imperial Guard commander, who twitched a couple of times and then went still, her own face ashen; for a long moment she could not collect herself.
She had not even seen how the young man in white drew his sword, and a commander of the Imperial Guard was simply dead?
The young man in white put away his sword and looked at the two dazed Imperial Guards beside him.
Their courage shattered, the two Imperial Guards backed away with their sabers out: "You… you have some nerve… right beneath the Son of Heaven's feet, killing an Imperial Guard commander in the street…"
Stammering and trembling, they ducked into the side alley, and moments later several signal fireworks shot up.
"Aah—"
A shriek went up—from which brothel, no one could tell.
The back street dissolved into chaos in an instant; the dozen enforcers outside the wineshop had no idea what to do.
The constable stared at the corpse for a long while. Only when the young man in white reached out to help her up did she come back to herself; she scrambled to her feet, urgent and furious:
"You… how could you kill him? Killing an official is the same as rebellion, you—"
The young man in white glanced at the body: "Colluding with merchants, shielding and covering for them, striking a fellow servant of the law—any one of those is enough to die for, never mind drawing a blade on me."
The constable had lost her head entirely. Looking at this young man in white she had never met before, she said anxiously:
"However great the crime, he can only be executed after the Three Courts have tried and sentenced him. You… you're so hotheaded—how is this going to end?"
The young man in white did not answer. Sword in hand, he walked toward the wineshop.
The wineshop's enforcers braced as if facing a great enemy—the man had already killed an official, he was an outlaw now; if they killed him, they would only be helping the authorities run down a bandit.
The enforcers' leader's eyes went cold; two short knives slid from his sleeve, and he went for the white-robed man's chest, one after the other.
Before the word "Careful!" could leave the constable's mouth, she saw the young man in white step up onto the stairs, and heard a crisp crack—
The flagstone split into a turtle-shell of cracks. The young man in white launched himself like a starving tiger on its prey, and in the blink of an eye he was in the air and slamming into the enforcer, both knees driving into his chest.
Boom—
Bones cracked, chest caved.
Before the leader could react, two hollows appeared in his chest and the back of his tight jacket burst open.
Splintered wood flew in a clatter.
The enforcer was launched backward, smashed through the door panel behind him, and did not stop until he had crushed a square table inside the wineshop.
The young man in white kept both knees jammed against the leader's chest; his left hand clamped like a hook on the man's throat, and before the man could make a sound, his fingers tightened a touch—crack.
Blood seeped from the enforcer's mouth. Two gurgling uh—uh—sounds, and the hands gripping the young man's arm fell limp to the ground.
The constable was terrified out of her wits at the sight!
Skill like that could not be built without decades of hard training.
This young man in white was perhaps not yet twenty. Is he even human?
"M-murder! Murder!"
Only then did the screams break out along the street.
The dozen onlooking thugs had long since lost their wits; they scattered in every direction, not caring which way they fled.
The constable was stunned, her goose-quill saber in hand with no idea what to do. She hurried after him into the wineshop:
"Are you… are you insane? How can you be so reckless—two dead! Even if you were the Jade Emperor himself, there's no way this ends well today…"
Hearing this, the young man in white looked a little defiant:
"The Jade Emperor himself still does what yours truly says."
Arrogant words—and not a word of exaggeration.
For this insufferably high-handed young man in white was the "Little Yama" the storyteller had been speaking of: Xu Buling, eldest legitimate son of the only prince of another surname in all of Great Yue—a transmigrator who had opened the game with two jokers and four twos.
But to explain how this murder came to pass, we have to go back to that morning…