Many thanks to the great 【Da Shanzi】 for the Alliance Master donation. Current debt (2/58) (>﹏<)
Xu Buling galloped hard, and by the time he reached Daye Ward the sky had gone fully dark.
Snow whirled over the long street. Travelers were all bound for home, while the pleasure houses and taverns along the way rang with unending laughter, and now and then a snatch of talk drifted out:
"The wind has stopped; the dust smells sweet; the flowers are all gone; the day is late, and I am too weary to comb my hair..."
"Heir Xu really is a man of a thousand tender feelings. They say he's as handsome as an immortal, too..."
"Heir Xu won't even admit he wrote it..."
"Ahh~ that's the bearing of a gentleman. He simply doesn't care for fame—nothing like those worldly scribblers..."
From the sound of it, last night's business at Dragon's Roar Pavilion had already spread far and wide.
Xu Buling had nothing to say to that. He dismounted at the mouth of the alley and headed for the Sun family wine shop, meaning to draw a jug of Broken Jade Fire before going to find Zhu Manzhi.
Leading Zhuifeng by the reins, he passed through the long, narrow bluestone alley, and from far off he could already see the wine banner swaying in the cold wind beneath the shop's dim yellow lantern.
It wasn't so late yet, and for once the shop's three tables stood empty of customers.
Shopkeeper Sun had set out a little low stool and sat in the doorway of the wine shop that had stood open for decades. A wine jug was in his hand, but he wasn't drinking. His eyes were cloudy and his spirit low; he only stared at the far end of the bluestone alley.
Xu Buling walked his horse closer, and the clop-clop of hooves rang crisp through the wind and snow.
Before Old Shopkeeper Sun even turned his head, the worry had already been packed off his face and replaced with his usual amiable smile. He braced his hands on his knees and stood:
"Young master's here. The usual, is it?"
"Mm. Draw me a jug."
Xu Buling took down his wine gourd and handed it to the old shopkeeper, who had already gone behind the wine vats, and glanced around the shop a couple of times. The stools were all turned upside down on the tables, and the little plates that normally held drinking snacks were empty—clearly, the shop hadn't opened. He looked a little puzzled:
"Shopkeeper Sun, no business today?"
Shopkeeper Sun's face still wore its smile. He drew wine from the big vat, rich with bouquet, and sighed lightly: "A bit of trouble at home, so I wasn't going to open today... Old Qian, who's always in here drawing wine, is a proper old soak. He came knocking to ask why, and mentioned along the way that the young master had waited at the door a full hour this morning... Ai~ this old fellow was careless and forgot all about it. I'm truly sorry, young master."
Xu Buling's brows drew slightly together. Once he'd worked out the reason, he laughed:
"So Shopkeeper Sun came running over here and just sat waiting for me all day, dry as a bone?"
"Heh heh..." Shopkeeper Sun gave a small laugh and went on drawing the wine with care. "In business you keep your word. The young master drinks a jug of Broken Jade Fire every day without fail—if he doesn't come himself, he sends a servant. To stand at my door waiting a full hour means he thinks something of this old fellow's craft. How could I let the young master make the trip for nothing?"
"There's more than one wine shop in the world. Anyone else, kept waiting an hour for nothing, would never come back. How did Uncle Sun know I'd still come?"
Shopkeeper Sun shook his head.
"I've kept a wine shop my whole life. I've seen plenty of heroes of the jianghu, great lords of the court, and street thugs—I've even laid eyes on the late emperor and the present one a time or two. Live long enough and you learn to read people. The young master is a man who keeps to the rules. Disappointed this morning, he'd surely come by tonight to see what had happened. How could this old fellow let the young master make the trip for nothing?"
As he spoke, Shopkeeper Sun filled the jug and handed it to Xu Buling.
Xu Buling took the jug, thought it over, and for the first time stepped inside the shop. He flipped a bench down and set it right, then sat at the table nearest the alley. "Uncle Sun is a man who keeps to the rules too. It's still early, and drinking alone is no fun. Why not sit down and have a couple of bowls with me?"
Shopkeeper Sun wiped his hands on a white towel, glanced at Xu Buling, and didn't refuse. He went into the back room, brought out a plate of peanuts, fetched two wine bowls, and set them on the table.
The long road had no lamps; the wind and snow drifted and tossed.
Shopkeeper Sun sat down at the table by the railing, as courteous as ever:
"The young master must drink for some purpose other than thirst, I'd guess? A customer as devoted as you—in all my decades of selling wine, this old man has never met another."
"I've come down with a small ailment. The wine is a vehicle for the medicine."
Xu Buling picked up the gourd and poured two bowls, setting one in front of Shopkeeper Sun. At a drinking table rank doesn't count; the elder is the elder brother and the younger the younger brother—a rule that serves every trade and every walk of life alike.
Shopkeeper Sun took the bowl and studied Xu Buling a few times. "This old fellow has sold wine in this alley for so many years, and I once met someone who looked rather like the young master. A girl. A daughter of the Lu family of the Eastern Sea, they said, and just as striking. That's why I remember her so clearly. She was later carried off by a prince's son and taken away to Xiliang."
"That was my mother."
Xu Buling looked faintly taken aback. He thought for a moment. "She fell ill a few years ago and it couldn't be cured... She was very good to me when I was little."
Shopkeeper Sun gave a rueful sigh. The bowl he had just lifted went back down, then came up again; he clinked it against Xu Buling's before sighing. "Birth, age, sickness, death—joy, anger, grief, happiness. All of it is the common lot of man, and every soul must taste it once. So long as the young master can make his peace with it, that's well enough."
Xu Buling raised his bowl and drained it. "True enough. Uncle Sun is older, and knows that truth—so what is there that you can't make your peace with?"
Shopkeeper Sun drained his bowl in the same fashion, wiped his mouth, and smiled wryly:
"The young master has a sharp eye... Ai. This old fellow has lived out a whole life, and I thought I could see through any man. Who'd have guessed that in my old age an eagle would still peck out these eyes, and I'd raise an ungrateful wolf..."
Since Xu Buling came here for wine every day, he had of course looked into the shop's background. Shopkeeper Sun had only one son, who had taken a post far away and hadn't come home once in years; apart from his apprentice, there was no one about him at all.
At that thought, Xu Buling's brows knitted slightly:
"Last I heard, Sancai had a taste for gambling. Has something happened?"
Shopkeeper Sun picked up a peanut with his chopsticks and nodded:
"Sancai lived right across from my house. As a boy he was lazy and greedy, and he picked up the gambling habit. Every time he lost every last coin, the men from the gambling den came round for the debt, and the old couple paid it off for him. That boy Sancai would kneel and knock his head on the ground and beg forgiveness every time, and every time he'd go right back to it...
...In the end the house and the fields were gone, his wife ran off, and the old couple fell ill one after the other and died. Before his mother passed, she held Sancai's hand and begged him to swear off gambling...
...And from then on, Sancai seemed to have mended. He worked as a carter and a porter, rough heavy work. We were neighbors, so I had him come to the shop to help draw wine and carry dishes and learn a trade. And he was a hard worker too..."
"Then life settled down, he had spare coin in his pocket, and he couldn't hold himself back again?"
"Just so. A mountain can be moved, but a man's nature can't... A few days ago I don't know what he got up to, but he came back and knelt in front of me, weeping, asking to borrow silver... Of course I couldn't lend it to him, and I gave him a talking-to besides, so off he went. I thought Sancai had taken offense and I'd simply written off that apprentice of mine—who'd have guessed that when I went home that night... Ai~ never mind... He's run off, and that's the end of it."
Xu Buling's brows drew tight. "Sancai stole your savings?"
Shopkeeper Sun tapped a finger on the tabletop. With one bowl of wine in him, a bit of color had come back into his deeply creased face. He was silent a moment, then let out a long sigh:
"Two hundred taels. Not so very much, really. This old fellow has no use for it anyway, so long as Sancai doesn't gamble it away again... Ai, I doubt that's likely..."
"A dog can't change its taste for shit."
Xu Buling raised his bowl and drained it. "I'll have a word with the authorities. All under heaven is the king's land..."
Shopkeeper Sun lifted a hand. "I've told the young master all this only because the wine loosened my tongue and a few true words came out. If it puts the young master to trouble, then the wine has lost its flavor... I watched Sancai grow up. If I report him, by law he'd be exiled to serve in the frontier armies. Let it be..."
While they were talking, a woman verging on middle age came into the shop to buy wine.
Old Sun got his usual warm smile back and rose with his stooped back, drawing the wine carefully and trading a few polite pleasantries:
"Has Master Zhang's old trouble in his back flared up again?"
"Ai~ don't even mention it. Teaching folk to fight since I was young, and now that I'm old it's nothing but aches and pains..."
The old woman was rather richly dressed, a kingfisher-tail flower pin in her hair—no doubt a love token from a sweetheart in her youth. She was very warm in her manner; she stood there with her jug and passed a few idle words before ambling slowly off.
Old Sun sat back down at the table and shook his head with a bitter smile:
"That old girl—her man teaches at a martial academy. Their son got into some trouble years back and was beaten to death by the Wolf Guard, and now there's only the two of them left. Master Zhang's temper has turned sour, and the poor woman, having lost her son, grieves herself half to death, yet she still has to coax her man into looking on the bright side. Ai! Next to her, this old fellow lives like an immortal. A man has to look at the better side of things."
Xu Buling was silent a moment and said no more. He left the price of the wine on the table, stepped outside, swung up into the saddle, and vanished into the alley...