The sun was three poles high. Shopkeeper Sun, a rag draped over his shoulder, cleared the wine bowls and dishes from the tables, and every so often glanced up at Xu Buling in his white robe and Ning Qingye leading a black horse, the two of them fading slowly down the warm, sunlit bluestone alley.
Shopkeeper Sun shook his head with the trace of a smile, then let out a faintly rueful sigh.
Another generation had turned over in the blink of an eye. Court or jianghu, the new always drove out the old—even the ordinary folk of this alley were no different.
Shopkeeper Sun had run a wine shop in this alley his whole life and seen his fill of the world's warmth and cold. As for handsome young men and pretty girls meeting by chance out there—he had seen far, far too many of those.
In his experience, when a jianghu drifter met a rich man's daughter, it usually ended in tragedy. Unequal station, mismatched houses—half of them eloped and were never heard from again, much like a scholar off to the capital for the examinations falling for a rich man's daughter.
Turn it around, though—a swordswoman of the jianghu and a young gentleman of a great house—and most of those ended in marriage. Most women of the jianghu were fierce, while sons of great houses were raised gentle and refined. With the woman strong and the man weak, any fellow thinking of toying with her and then tossing her aside had better first weigh the three legs he was standing on.
These two young people in the prime of their youth, though—they did look like a match.
Still, judging by the pair of them, the man's thoughts ran far deeper. If his heart were not set right, that girl was in for a sore loss.
But what the man was really made of, Shopkeeper Sun had seen clearly enough:
Hear of some injustice over the wine table, and he would leave without a word, sword in hand.
Walk once through a mountain of blades and a sea of blood, all so the bowl of cloudy wine in his hand would go down easier.
Among scholars they called that a gentleman; in the jianghu they called it a hero; and among the neighbors in an alley like this, they called it—hell—a good man.
Shopkeeper Sun raised his eyes: the two of them had already vanished into the depths of the alley. He sighed softly again.
A pity that in this world, a good man does not always get a good end.
Love and hate, kindness and grudge—those things were forever strung together, and once you entered the jianghu there was no escaping them.
That down-and-out scholar who used to lodge in the wine shop had been a good man to the bone, his head stuffed full of "learn letters and martial arts, and give them to the emperor's house." He kept exact count of how many bowls of rice he ate in the shop each day, and before he left he went out to sell his calligraphy so he could clear every copper he owed.
And a man like that still went down in the end before the ways of the world. Bitter and thwarted, he entered the jianghu, his wife died, and a daughter that fine turned on him as an enemy. A shame and a sorrow—you could only say Heaven is blind...
While Shopkeeper Sun was brooding, a customer arrived outside the wine shop.
An old woman with a magpie-tail flower pin in her hair came shuffling up with a bamboo basket on her arm, dazed and vacant. The old warmth was gone from her face, and nothing was left in her eyes but emptiness.
Shopkeeper Sun blinked. "Sis, what's happened to you? You look like you've lost your soul..."
The old woman came back to herself. Tears hung in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and she hesitated a long while before saying, hollow and haunted:
"Old Zhang is gone. I came to buy him a jug of wine. It was the one thing he loved best in this life..."
"Oh no!"
Old Sun hurried out, wiping his hands on the towel. "Master Zhang was in such good health—how could he... Ai... Come in, come in, sit down and tell me..."
The old woman sat down in the shop with her basket, her eyes lifeless. "A few days ago, Old Zhang took a job—something about going to White Horse Manor to guard a house for someone. Who would have thought... Ai... I told him and told him, a jianghu man ends up dying out there sooner or later, I said retire, hand the martial academy over to your disciple. He wouldn't listen. And now look..." Her voice broke into sobs.
Old Sun's brow furrowed. The White Horse Manor business from the past few days he of course knew about. Sancai had no family, and it was he who had found someone to bury the body. But he had never imagined...
"Ai..."
Shopkeeper Sun sat down on the bench across from her. He was silent a long while, and there was nothing he could say.
The old woman was a Chang'an native; Master Zhang had come from Youzhou way. The two of them had been drinking in his shop for decades.
Plenty of men came to Chang'an to make their way in the martial trade, and every last one of them arrived bursting with ambition, meaning to carve out a name in Chang'an on the strength of two fists.
But Chang'an was the last place on earth to run short of capable men—even a heaven-sent prodigy could find two more of his like somewhere in the city. And for a jianghu man to get a firm footing under the Son of Heaven's own nose, a set of skills was plainly not enough.
Whoever needed flattering got flattered; whoever had to be petty and mercenary was petty and mercenary. Everyone had a wife and children, elders and young ones—where was the room for dashing vengeance? Take a man's money, avert his calamity; and if in the end someone cut him down, he could only curse his own skills for falling short.
And yet—if he had not taken Sancai in back then, or Heir Xu had not given him that extra ingot of silver, or he had not told Sancai to save his silver up, perhaps none of this would have happened.
But who could have known before it happened?
However rotten this world gets, you cannot lay the blame at the feet of a good man for doing a kindness.
Shopkeeper Sun waited until the old woman had cried herself out, thought it over a long while, then went into the back room and brought out a packet of silver, which he gave to the old woman who had no one left in the world.
Now, apart from the dead man, everyone ought to rest a little easier.
After seeing the old woman out, Shopkeeper Sun shook his head and sighed, then went back to clearing the wine tables...
Around midday, Xu Buling rode his horse to the area near the corner tower of Daye Ward.
The gambling dens and pleasure houses had not opened yet. The winter sun was warm, and a crowd of riffraff and idle fellows had gathered around the brazier at a tea stall, listening to the storyteller spin tales of marvels from all four corners of the world.
Great Yue's cult of martial valor ran deep in the people's hearts, and with no newspapers or broadcast channels to speak of, the most popular fare was naturally stories of mighty heroes from every corner of the jianghu—ridding the people of evils, fighting a hundred men alone—and the listeners' blood boiled to hear it. But the real jianghu was nothing like the glory in the storyteller's mouth. To Xu Buling's mind it came down to this and nothing more: those still standing got fame and fortune, those lying down had nothing at all.
Leading his horse to a tea stall, Xu Buling looked up and spotted Zhu Manzhi, dressed in a new set of clothes, standing beside a stall and looking about. The badge at her waist had been swapped for the bronze badge of Heaven Camp, gleaming like gold and drawing every eye; soldiers passing by, martial men included, all looked at her with respect.
Before, when Zhu Manzhi came to hear the storyteller, she would sit at the tea stall propping her chin on her hand. Now that she was a Wolf Guard of Heaven Camp with standing above the common run, drawing the salary of a seventh-rank military post, she naturally could not go slouching around like a slacker anymore. She stood perfectly straight, one hand on the saber at her waist, and there really was a dash of martial grace about her.
"Miss Zhu."
Xu Buling walked up and called to her.
Zhu Manzhi's eyes lit up and the stern look of a moment ago was swept clean away. She spun and hurried over, her big eyes taking him in from head to toe:
"Young Master Xu, you're finally here. You were all right after last time, weren't you? I saw you take a punch. I wanted to come and see how you were, but that prince's estate is so big I didn't dare go in..."
Xu Buling smiled mildly. "What could possibly be wrong with me? Come on, let's find somewhere quiet."
Zhu Manzhi nodded, smartly took the reins from his hand, and fell in beside him, then unhooked the bronze badge from her waist and gave it a little wave:
"That big White Horse Manor case last time—they handed me most of the credit and bumped me straight into Tianwei Camp, eighth in Heaven Camp. I'm somebody now. The brothers in Earth Camp have to grind ten years at least before they crawl into Heaven Camp, and I'd barely been here before I was in. They all say I got dog... luck. Hmph—being lucky is a skill too, wouldn't you say, Heir Xu?"