At dusk, when Chen Ping'an came hurrying back into town through the east gate, the slovenly gatekeeper was still there humming a tune, and had just reached the line "not a single inch of time may be taken lightly; glory and wealth may all be cast away." Startled, perhaps, by the strapping footsteps of the straw-sandaled youth, the man opened his eyes and chanced to meet the gaze of the boy trotting in through the gate. Seeing it was this little debt-collector, the man was thoroughly put out, and waved him off irritably: "Shoo, shoo — your inches of time aren't worth the price of bird cack. As for glory and wealth, those four words, if you so much as touch a single one of them, you'd best burn incense and give thanks to high heaven."
Chen Ping'an trotted on past, raised one hand high, spread all five fingers, and gave two or three vigorous shakes of his palm.
Plainly, he was reminding the gatekeeper that the two of them shared a bond of five coppers — a favor sealed in incense and kinship.
The man spat hard and cursed: "That one's no good bird either!"
The boy's figure soon vanished. The man raised his eyes to the clear, washed-out blue of the sky, which seemed like a fine glazed glaze.
Rubbing his bristly chin, the man clicked his tongue: "Master Qi once spoke a line of a poem — what was it now? 'fine things'... 'colored glass'...?"
A bullock-drawn cart rolled slowly out of the town, bearing a well-spoken blue-robed young scholar; the driver was a dull-faced middle-aged man.
The man promptly waved and called out with a laugh: "Hey, Yao, don't hurry off just yet. Your old brother here's got a line stuck in his belly — I can only remember 'fine things, colored glass' and such, the rest I can't call back to mind for the life of me. You're a great one for bookish learning, so give it to me straight!"
Zhao Yao, a beaming traveler's satchel hugged to his chest, declaimed with ringing voice: "The fine things of this world do not hold; the rainbow clouds scatter and the colored glass shatters!"
The man stuck out his thumb. "Just as I'd expect of young Yao — first-rate learning, you have. When you've made your fortune later, don't forget to come back and see your old brother. Who knows, maybe then you could stand in for your master and serve the town's children as a schoolteacher. That would be a fine thing indeed."
Zhao Yao paused a moment, then clasped his fist and smiled: "I take it as the good fortune of your kind words, old brother!"
Delighted, the man drew an embroidered purse from his sleeve, flicked his wrist, and tossed it high to the blue-robed scholar, grinning: "All these years I've had you write me so many spring couplets for nothing, and the key thing is you're a true-spirited lad, never once fussing over the trouble. Your old brother's eye for people has never failed — here's a little trifle for you, and a smooth road ahead!"
Zhao Yao caught the money-bag. "Until we meet again!"
The man nodded with a smile and waved toward the boy's cart, though he muttered under his breath: "Hard it'll be."
The straw-sandaled youth made his way deeper into the town, while Zhao Yao's cart sped toward the world beyond it, and the two passed each other by.
Sitting on a tree-stump, the man counted on his fingers: "The Great Sui lad toting his fish-basket of golden carp, that brat of Widow Gu's over at Mud Vase Lane, and now young Yao of Fortune & Rank Street — that's already three. But there are still so many more to come barging in. Won't there be nothing left but the rag-picking trade? Say, maybe I should seize the chance to take on a dutiful disciple who'll rub my shoulders and knead my back?"
The man tugged at his wrinkled, grimy cheeks and laughed softly to himself. "If only it were a pretty, willowy young female disciple, that'd be best of all. Hm — I could even suffer a plain face, but the legs simply must be long!"
This notorious bachelor of the town clasped both hands behind his head, tilted his face to the sky, and took his solitary delight, stealing a private chuckle. When he thought of these pleasant things, at once his cares were gone, and it seemed to him there was great beauty in heaven and earth.
——
Before Chen Ping'an left Mud Vase Lane, he had agreed with Liu Xianyang and the black-clad girl that they would meet at Liu Xianyang's house. When Chen Ping'an ran up to the place, the door was unlocked; he pushed it open and entered, and at the threshold of the main hall saw Liu Xianyang wiping and polishing his ancestral armor with a clean cotton cloth.
The black-clad girl, Miss Ning, had put on her hood of light gauze once more, a blade at her waist, while that longsword of snow-white sheath she carried loosely in her hand. For reasons Chen Ping'an could not fathom, the girl always seemed to hold this sword in some contempt.
That old heirloom of the Liu family, kept snug in a box at the bottom of the trunk and passed down generation to generation — called a set of "treasure armor" — in Chen Ping'an's eyes was honestly hideous and alarming. Over the great suit of armor ran iron sinews like the gnarls of withered trees, and there were five long, deep parallel gouges that slanted from the left shoulder down across the whole armor to the right hip.
On this point the two youths racked their heads to no avail; they simply could not imagine what manner of mountain beast, so vast in size, could have left behind such a fearsome sight. Later the court had sealed off many peaks, forbidding the common folk to enter the mountains to fell firewood and burn charcoal, and Chen Ping'an and Liu Xianyang almost never broke those prohibitions — in no small part for this very reason.
Chen Ping'an found it a little odd. Black as coal, that iron armor was, ugly for sure, but Liu Xianyang truly treasured it in his heart as a family heirloom. Even to Chen Ping'an, with their closeness, over all these years he had shown it only once, and before half an incense-stick had burned had carefully wrapped it away again in its vermilion lacquer chest and offered it up in reverence.
But seeing, now and again, how Liu Xianyang stole glances at the black-clad girl, Chen Ping'an felt a measure of relief. Liu Xianyang had always been this sort of fellow — when he saw a fair face he couldn't keep his eyes off it — yet he was not truly smitten in his heart; he only liked to put on a show. Back in the summer days by the gallery bridge, for instance, washing half-naked in the shallow stream, if a young girl of his years happened by, carrying seedlings or leading a yellow ox, Liu Xianyang was certain to run through his three practiced tricks: first, scrambling up onto the great blotched stone at the water's edge as if his tail were on fire; then a loud cough — on which Song Jixin once dryly commented, "announcing it to all the world"; and finally a clean headlong dive. Chen Ping'an, who had sharp eyes, could clearly see the looks and the color of those distant girls' faces, and had long wanted to tell Liu Xianyang the truth: those pretty elder sisters turned their eyes up in exasperation, some muttered curses under their breath, and most simply did not see him at all — not one of them had eyes that lit up in the least, nor any thought that here was a hero and a man of valor.
Of course, afterward Liu Xianyang had set his heart on Song Jixin's maidservant, Zhigui, and quite inexplicably sunk deep into infatuation. Since then, that tall youth's eyes seemed to hold no other pretty woman at all. Even now, flaunting his grandness before the black-clad girl, he wished mostly to let that haughty, cold girl know not to look down on him — she needn't think just because she'd a blade at her waist and a sword in her hand she could swagger about like some crowned king of heaven; this ancestral heirloom of his, Liu Xianyang's, was a thing unique to the town.
The girl under the hood-veil waited until Chen Ping'an arrived, then looked all around, and at last laid the longsword flat across an old display cabinet painted with gilt-and-floral designs, whose colored lacquer had chipped and peeled. To make room for the sword, she shifted aside many a jar, bottle, and knick-knack, and then discovered that the back panel of the cabinet bore an inset picture: a golden osmanthus tree beneath a full moon hanging in the sky.
Turning her head, the girl said: "I'm putting the sword here. Don't any of you touch it — otherwise you'll answer for the consequences. I'm not joking."
Liu Xianyang busied himself wiping the armor, now and again lowering his head to breathe mist onto it and trail a sleeve gently across the surface, utterly lost in his own delight.
Chen Ping'an promised: "We won't."
The girl said to Liu Xianyang: "This cabinet may be worth little, but that inset picture of the golden osmanthus over the moon — don't go selling it cheap."
Liu Xianyang answered without lifting his head: "That thing, I've never cared for it since I was small. If you fancy it, miss, go right ahead and scrape it off."
The black-clad girl, of course, would not put the whole scene to ruin by such an act; she only asked, curious: "What material is this picture made of?"
Liu Xianyang glanced back. "An object of several hundred years old — how would I know? Even my grandfather couldn't explain it head or tail."
Chen Ping'an said in a low voice: "It should be from pebbles gathered in the stream shoals, in many colors — only, Liu Xianyang's elders must have picked only the golden-yellow ones back in the day, ground them fine, then glued them together. We call these stones snake-gall stones."
The black-clad girl asked: "Pebbles? Are there plenty in the stream?"
Chen Ping'an smiled: "If Miss Ning wants them, I can gather a great basketful for you in a single day. Nobody around here sets any store by them; only Gu Can likes them, and he'd often go picking them all by himself."
The black-clad girl sighed, and gazed long at the poor youth of Mud Vase Lane. "A pauper sitting on a hill of gold and silver."
Chen Ping'an was astonished. "These stones — are they worth money out there?"
She adjusted her hood and said: "Whether the price is high or low depends on whose hands it falls into. Beyond that, even in the hands of a man who knows his craft, whether it turns out or not still rests on luck. With luck, a single one suffices; without it, even a mountain of stones won't do the work. But in any case, they are valuable — and very valuable. What I don't know is whether they can be carried out of the town; that is the crux of the matter."
Liu Xianyang cut in: "These stones have one quirk: once you take them out of the stream, once wind and sun touch them, the color fades; and especially after rain or snow, the color runs off even worse. Aside from that, there's nothing more to them."
The girl said, regretfully: "Just as I feared."
Chen Ping'an hesitated, then said: "How about I go tomorrow and gather a great basketful, and we try? Who knows — perhaps there'll be an exception?"
The girl shook her head. "For me, it would mean nothing."
Liu Xianyang had already carried the suit of armor back inside to hide it away, and was now leaning against the doorframe, smiling: "Chen Ping'an is a great money-grubber. Who's to say he won't be down at the stream groping for stones tonight."
The girl tossed down a single word: "I'm off."
As she reached the door, she turned her head and asked: "The hairpin and the prescription — I'll keep them safe for you. But tomorrow you'll still need to come to Mud Vase Lane, to help with the decocting."
Chen Ping'an nodded: "No problem."
She thought a moment; her face darkened with gravity, and she warned: "Of this lot of out-of-towners who came into the town around the same time as me, the most formidable is likely that old man from Zhengyang Mountain — this trip he's been escorting a little girl along. Next comes the Great Sui eunuch who laid me low, and after him Liu Zhimao, who took Gu Can away. And don't underestimate that smiling woman who hides a blade. So if the two of you run into that old fellow from Zhengyang Mountain, try your best not to quarrel; but if a clash does break out, just drag out the time — don't lay a hand on anyone, don't hold the least hope of luck. You must hold out until I appear."
Liu Xianyang murmured: "On our own turf — do these landless outsiders truly dare take a life?"
Chen Ping'an glanced at him and nodded. "They dare."
Liu Xianyang swallowed hard.
Chen Ping'an suddenly asked: "Still remember what Taoist Lu — that is, that fortune-teller at his roadside stall — told you?"
Liu Xianyang's head began to pound; after racking his brain, he scratched his ears and cheeks: "How would I remember it clearly? I only know they were some ill-omened words that boded no good — something about a great calamity, and burning incense and such. Rambling nonsense. I only thought he was spinning tales to cheat money out of folk…"
Chen Ping'an turned to the black-clad girl.
The girl snapped, wrathfully: "He can't even remember the lots himself — how am I to read the fortune for him? Did you think I was some divine being?"
Chen Ping'an was at a loss, unable to fathom why Miss Ning had flared up so suddenly.
The girl strode out of the house in great strides, far more brisk and decisive than when she had come in lingering and slow.
Walking along the wide lane, sword-girt girl thought to herself: shouldn't she, in a spare moment, go find a few books to gnaw on?
The girl, imagining herself someday roaming the four corners of the world, cleaving heads clean off with her flying sword and then tossing off a few impassioned, extempore lines of verse — even with no one else about, she thought it would look truly dashing!
——
Just as the girl was lost in this pleasant daydream, a familiar figure whisked past her shoulder like the wind.
"See you tomorrow, Miss Ning."
By the time the voice landed on the ground, the figure was already near the far end of the lane.
The straw-sandaled youth, a rush basket on his back, legs flying as fleet as his feet would carry him.
The girl stood dumb as a block of wood, murmuring to herself: "There really are money-grubbers like this?"