Chapter 6

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Around first light, two figures landed in the rear court of Xi Ping’s guest room. These were Pang Jian and Zhao Yu.

“After leaving the Imperial College yesterday, the deceased Dong Zhang left the city under the guise of an outing in the countryside. In reality, he went to visit a grave.” Zhao Yu briefly reported the matter of Young Master Dong keeping a mistress outside the city. “In the carriage he rode in before his death, the imperial guard discovered a proposal card on red paper. The horoscope written on it is the same as on the paper money he scattered—the horoscope of his mistress.”

“I see, a love affair’s debt from the netherworld,” Pang Jian said coolly. “I’m afraid this Young Master Dong didn’t go to visit a grave. With the Grand Selection at hand, he was worried that his ‘golden house outside the world’ would be discovered, and he went to get his affairs in order, right?”

Xuanyin Mountain valued cleverness in its disciples more than Kunlun and the other sects did, so in the Grand Selection, it didn’t choose children whose intellects had yet to develop; the males had to be over sixteen, and the females over fifteen.

The immortal path was long, and commonplace worries were a great hindrance. The immortal sect stipulated that those who were selected could not be married.

But the Grand Selection came only once in ten years. This was too hard on the scions of Jinping’s upper ranks—before each Grand Selection, nameless bastard children and their nameless mothers died in batches; Pang Jian was already used to it.

“Well…he must have visited the grave, too.” Zhao Yu sighed and quietly said, “The driver driving Dong Zhang’s carriage last night was his mistress’s father.”

Pang Jian frowned. “Do you mean the driver who was the first to die of the bitter fleabane curse when the carriage door opened?”

“That’s right,” Zhao Yu said. “If the driver hadn’t died, we would have had to take him to the Quell and thoroughly inspect him.”

“Does he have any surviving family members?”

“No, he was a widower, and this daughter was his only child. She died at the beginning of the year. He worked as a servant and had a taciturn disposition. Apart from driving, he had no other communication with people. We found nothing at his residence. There was a considerable amount of ashes from burned paper under the bed. He had clearly burned everything there was to burn… Commander, as I see it, this really is the customary style of evil cultivators.”

A bitter life, a solitary existence, no contact with others.

“I see,” said Pang Jian, unable to deny it. He approached the guest room and listened to the sounds within. “He’s sleeping pretty soundly. This kid can keep his cool.”

“If he can sleep peacefully under the noses of eight karma beasts, he may truly have nothing on his conscience,” Zhao Yu said. “The investigation shows that Dong Zhang’s death must be connected to the driver. Provided that the karma beasts also think there’s nothing wrong with the Viscount of Yongning, then perhaps he really…”

Pang Jian put his hands behind his back and looked at him calmly, his expression hard to read.

Zhao Yu weighed his gestures and looks and immediately changed tack. “Though it’s still too much of a coincidence to run into him twice. I think we should investigate the people he has daily contact with. They must all be Jinping City residents with known backgrounds. It won’t be hard.”

Hearing this, Pang Jian smiled, thinking that this Zhao was worthy of his family name; he didn’t let anything slip by.

Everything he had said seemed neutral, but actually he was quietly pushing the Viscount of Yongning out of the business, not forgetting to hint that Xi Ping’s family background was clean, so even if he had been pulled into some dirty business, he must be passive and innocent.

“Fine, you take the lead in the investigation, I won’t take part. Ah, I’m a country bumpkin, I can’t compare to all of you with your great families. I can’t make sense of all the relationships between those people in Dangui Lane.” Pang Jian looked at the pitch-dark guest room and said, meaningfully, “This pretty boy has some connections.”

Xi Ping, the pretty boy with connections, slept until full daylight.

He regularly went to bed late and didn’t get up until the morning was over; it had been a long time since he had had such a substantial sleep. His whole body had limbered up. He was just about to get out of bed and call for Haozhong to come and attend him when something rubbed against him uncomfortably.

Xi Ping vaguely felt around and pulled a small silk brocade bag out from under his butt. Only then did he remember that Jiangli had given him a present.

Last night had been too bizarre; he had forgotten about this detail.

Xi Ping quickly tore open the silk brocade bag and took out a piece of red jade. The color wasn’t pure enough for blood jade. It was a bit big, without any decorative carvings on it. It looked like it cost less than the bag itself. But there was a faint, subtle fragrance permeating the jade, which was as sleek as soft skin. At a glance, this was something kept close by a woman year in, year out.

What did she mean by giving him a close possession? Any normal person could understand that. Xi Ping was a little fed up with this and was just about to toss it aside when he felt notches on the other side of the jade.

He casually turned the piece of jade over and saw the small line of writing on it: Baishao of the Ning’an Chen family, Ding Chou year, 4th month, 9th day, Mao hour.1

The Ning’an Chen family? Who was this?

There wasn’t so much as a flower carved on the piece of jade. What kind of signature was this? Anyway, a signature would only be accompanied by a year and month, occasionally a day. No one would write in the time of day as well, not like a horoscope…

Wait, a horoscope!

With a start, Xi Ping’s head cleared.

No… This wasn’t a signature; it was a place of origin, given name and surname, and horoscope!

It was an old custom in Great Wan for young ladies to carry a “birthday jade” close to their bodies from childhood. When it came time to negotiate a marriage, after the matchmaking and betrothal gifts were done, the bride would give the groom her birthday jade. The groom would accept the jade and give a pearl in return, fulfilling the perfect pair of pearl and jade.

In other words, a birthday jade with a horoscope carved on it was approximately equivalent to a marriage proposal.

He had heard that a birthday jade had also fallen off of Wang Baochang’s body. And the instructions Exalted Zhao had given him earlier at Prince Zhuang Manor sounded in his ears—don’t accept anything with a horoscope written on it, or anything resembling a marriage proposal note!

Xi Ping hurled the piece of jade to the foot of the bed, jumped up, and slapped himself all over, as though improving his circulation could protect him against turning into a walking corpse.

Overnight, he had nearly forgotten Dong Zhang’s discontented rotting face. Now, with this suspicious birthday jade as a reminder, he once again recalled it.

He hadn’t even had a chance to be a human’s husband yet; was he going to be forced to be a ghost’s husband? And they’d have to shave his head after he died!

Was this the tragic fate of all beauties?

No way, Xi Ping thought, he absolutely couldn’t agree to this marriage!

Without even putting on his shoes, he prepared to charge out the door, planning to let out a shout and beg the blue-clothed Exalteds to “beat apart the lovebirds.”

Haozhong was putting away the bedding in the outer room when he watched dumbfounded as his young master shot out like a firecracker, scaring away the second half of his yawn.

“Young master, what…”

Then he saw the young master slap the guest room door and interrupt him with a raised hand, his expression imposing. In this pose, he pondered for a while. Then, as if sleepwalking, he turned and went back to his room.

When Xi Ping had reached the door, he had suddenly remembered that this jade had been given to him by Jiangli.

Jiangli wanting to hurt him…that didn’t make sense.

First, he thought he was the most lovable man on earth. He absolutely didn’t believe that a woman could stand to hurt him.

Second, he had treated Jiangli fairly, even worn chest-baring, open-backed female clothing in public and outshone all the discontented female ghosts of Jinping. What more did she want?

Taking the most extreme view, even if Jiangli hated him out of thwarted love, she could have put rat poison in his wine any time, enough to kill him eight times over. There was no need for her to arrange a posthumous marriage for him.

Xi Ping picked up the red jade with a towel. He was puzzled—if Jiangli didn’t want to hurt him, then what was this thing?

Just then, Zhao Yu’s voice came through the window. Xi Ping heard the Exalted ask Haozhong: “Is your young master up?”

This was Heaven's Design Pavilion, not his own home. He couldn’t laze around in bed. So Xi Ping quickly put the jade away, hastily cleaned himself up, and went out to see Zhao Yu.

Exalted Zhao had accepted Prince Zhuang’s ancient painting. In front of others, he avoided the suspicion of bias, but in private he treated Xi Ping much more kindly. First he said a lot of pleasant nonsense, all “keeping him at the head office was a mere formality, they didn’t suspect of him anything” and so on. Then he gave him a small porcelain bottle. “I’ve heard that the Marquis has heart disease. It was unavoidable for us to disturb him last night. These heart pills were refined by an elder of mine in the sect. This medicine is mild. Ordinary people can use it. Take it to your father for me. Another day I’ll pay a visit to apologize.”

Xi Ping accepted the bottle and thanked him. Then Zhao Yu said, smiling, “You’re very young, but you don’t panic in the face of trouble and have a tranquil mind. You may have a great future ahead of you.”

Xi Ping didn’t take this flattery seriously, and further deduced that Exalted Zhao must have spied on him while he was sleeping last night—only when he was fast asleep did he have anything to do with the word “tranquil.” So he asked, “Exalted, have I been cleared of suspicion?”

The laughter lines at the corners of Zhao Yu’s mouth froze. He couldn’t tell whether this wastrel was clever or stupid; he was very direct. So he said, “Your family background is clean. There was no suspicion to start with. It was as you said. We kept you here for a night only because we were worried you had crossed paths with evil cultivators without knowing it.”

Xi Ping readily changed his wording: “So, Exalted, am I still clean? I haven’t picked up anything dirty?”

Zhao Yu: “…”

“You…are fine for now.” Captain Zhao was sophisticated, after all; he forced his calm Bodhisattva’s face to remain in place and softly said, “Go home now, don’t make your family worry.”

Squeezing the little porcelain bottle Exalted Zhao had given him, Xi Ping thought that the scrap of painting that looked like vegetable peelings his san-ge had given Zhao Yu must have been rare indeed if it could make a great walker in the mortal world wish to curry favor with him.

His wicked mind cranked away, considering the matter. He felt that the painting Prince Zhuang had given Exalted Zhao, instead of being a precious gift, was a honeyed handle over him. So he had to try to pressing his luck: “But, Exalted, I’m still scared. Isn’t there something you can give that can…keep me safe?”

Zhao Yu paused. The look in his eyes became slightly grim as he watched Xi Ping.

Xi Ping put on a convincing show of nervousness. “If I so much as think of the south street covered in paper money last night, I don’t dare to go home. Though I suppose it’s been cleaned up, what if there are still a few pieces in some nook or cranny, hiding in the cracks of a stone or a brick wall? Ah, why don’t I go to Prince Zhuang Manor again today to scrounge a meal…”

He was interrupted by Zhao Yu placing a fan in front of his eyes.

The ribs of the fan were quite plain and neat. When the fan was opened, there were auspicious cloud patterns at the corners, and in the center was drawn a monster with eyes that took up half its head—just the same as the “embroidery” and “mural” in Xi Ping’s room last night.

As soon as Xi Ping opened the fan, the monster on the paper moved on its own. It first dug with its front legs, like a dog or cat burying excrement, then dashed to the other side of the fan!

“What kind of magic weapon is this?”

“It’s not a magic weapon,” Zhao Yu said. “This is Heaven's Design Pavilion’s sacred karma beast. Tradition says that it’s a sacred beast that belonged to the Southern Sage. It abhors evil. It can pass through paper, silk, walls…any place apart from the ground where there is something written or drawn—if there isn’t anything drawn in a place, you can just scribble down a few words. When common evil objects encounter karma beasts, they burn up. If you meet with paper money like last night’s again, you can wave it away with the fan.”

Xi Ping gave a cry and put the fan away. “Then I won’t stand on ceremony. Thank you, Exalted!”

Zhao Yu had no more attention to spare for him. He only wanted to make the brat get lost. “If you remember anything else, you can send someone to let us know.”

When he said this, Xi Ping remembered the birthday jade he was carrying and was just about to mention it when a blue-clotheser charged over at a gallop. “Huff—Zhao-shixiong, is the commander here?”

Before Zhao Yu could answer, Pang Jian walked straight through the courtyard wall in response. “Well, what are you panicking about?”

Damn! The legendary walking through walls technique!

Xi Ping stared at Pang Jian, for a time forgetting how to speak—with this skill, he’d be able to get in wherever he wanted when he came home in the middle of the night; he wouldn’t be caught at the door and scolded by his father!

Then the blue-clotheser jumped off his horse and took out a gaudy paper card. “Commander, Zhao-shixiong, please look at this.”

“What is this?”

Xi Ping craned his neck and glanced at it. “A Flower Viewing Invitation from Overflowing Splendor?”

“Yes, it’s a ticket to a private room on the last day of the Flower Viewing Festival,” the blue-clothed half-immortal said. He rubbed the card open; it turned out that the card had two layers. When it was torn open, there was crooked, dark red bloody writing hidden on the back; written there was a horoscope!

“Let me see it.” Pang Jian narrowed his eyes, then turned and asked Xi Ping, “Did you touch one of these?”

“No.” Xi Ping shook his head. “I didn’t need a ticket. I got in on the strength of my face.”

“Oh, well, pardon my manners,” Pang Jian said with undisguised sarcasm. He looked away, his expression cooling. He ordered: “Bring me Overflowing Splendor’s boss, its madam, all the stewards, whoever wrote these invitations, and whoever bought the pen, ink, and paper. Throw them in the Quell and question them!”

Xi Ping stared blankly.

Every child in Great Wan knew about the “Quell.” Naughty children had all grown up hearing “If you don’t behave, I’ll have you shut up in the Quell.” It was said that this was the place where Heaven's Design Pavilion kept evil cultivators. A hundred thousand evil monsters wailed there every night. If a mortal went in, they wouldn’t come out.

Was this…so serious?

But apart from him, none of the observers seemed to have any objections.

Zhao Yu asked, “Should we close down Overflowing Splendor?”

“Obviously! A filthy place that harbors evil practices like that should have been closed down long ago!” After this piece of misplaced blame, Pang Jian glanced at Xi Ping impatiently. “Viscount, if you haven’t received anything like this, please leave. Or is there something else?”

There was nothing else. Xi Ping made himself scarce. He picked up the page boy Haozhong and left.

It was only now that he realized that not just anyone could stay in Heaven's Design Pavilion’s “guest rooms.”

Without a prince for a cousin and an imperial consort for an aunt, however big your business, however wide your network, if you fell under suspicion of evil arts, you would soon end up in the Quell waiting to be interrogated.

So…it went without saying what would happen to a prostitute, as unmoored as wild grass.

In the blink of an eye, Xi Ping came to a decision. He had to conceal the jade.

Such a sensitive thing at such a sensitive time—if the Exalteds learned of it, they would certainly throw her in the Quell. With Jiangli’s physique, could she survive that?

Anyway, he didn’t know what was going on with the birthday jade yet. He couldn’t kill her so negligently.

The bustle of the Flower Viewing Festival had been like a fire with oil thrown on it, dazzlingly luxuriant, but it had vanished as if blown away by a strong wind. The brothel from two nights ago became a rathole. It was all gone. The monkeys had scattered; even the silks at the door had faded.

It was said that none of the stewards escaped; all of them went to the Quell.

As for the girls in the house, because of their status, they couldn’t precisely count as people, so they weren’t sent to squat in prison; instead, like Outstanding Splendor’s cats, dogs, and parrots, they were shut up in the house and not permitted to go out, to make it convenient to question them—this was what Haozhong went and found out after Xi Ping came home from Heaven's Design Pavilion.

Xi Ping asked, “What about Jiangli? Has she also been shut up in the house?”

“Miss Jiangli isn’t there,” Haozhong answered. “By coincidence, she left for the south of the city this morning.”

“Why did she go to the south of the city?”

“She said she’d gone to Southern Sage Temple to burn incense and make a vow before, and it worked—she took the camellia crown, didn’t she? So she went to fulfill her vow.”

Xi Ping nearly split his sides laughing—Southern Sage Temple was over ten li south of Jinping. Legend said it was the spot where the state sect Xuanyin’s founder had ascended to Heaven. Xuanyin had nearly written “men and women must not have direct contact” into the decrees of Heaven, and someone had actually gone to pray for the camellia crown at Southern Sage Temple!

Xi Ping said, “As if! If it had really worked, the old Southern Sage would have sent down a bolt of lightning to cook her! What was she thinking?”

Haozhong said, “Young master, why don’t I go meet her on her way back? I can tell Miss Jiangli to find someplace to hide for now instead of going back. There’s such a fuss at Overflowing Splendor…”

“Fine.” Xi Ping hesitated, then nodded. “Here, if you see her, ask her for me about yesterday, why she gave me…”

At this point, he stopped talking. For a long moment, there was no follow-up.

Haozhong waited for a long time and couldn’t resist asking, “What did she give you yesterday?”

“Forget it, don’t worry about it, I’ll go myself.” Xi Ping glanced at the sky. If he went out now, he would certainly be able to come back before nightfall. So he stepped right into his riding boots. “Close the windows and doors for me. If my dad and the others ask, say I didn’t sleep well at Heaven's Design Pavilion and I’m making it up.”

“No, young master… Ah, young master!” Haozhong’s small features twisted. Before he could protest, Xi Ping had run off.

A perfectly good Viscount; what a pity he had grown legs.

Though Xi Ping didn’t believe that Jiangli wanted to hurt him, it was still hard not to get hung up on her giving him such a thing at a time like this: both Wang Baochang and Dong Zhang had only gone off after running into him, the tampered-with Flower Viewing Invitation just happened to come from Overflowing Splendor, and Jiangli, who had for no reason at all given him a birthday jade as a gift, just happened to leave the city and avoid the investigation at Overflowing Splendor.

If this was all coincidence, then there were too many coincidences.

A normal person in his position, having seen Dong Zhang’s death with his own eyes and been dragged into this strange business, would have handed the birthday jade over to Heaven's Design Pavilion by now.

But the Viscount was accomplished at courting disaster. He had never followed common sense.

He had decided to say nothing and go to Jiangli himself to have her explain the story behind the birthday jade.

Even if there was something the matter with this thing, if he could only get back before nightfall, he would still have time to go to Heaven's Design Pavilion to beg to be saved. If there was nothing wrong with the jade, and he pissed himself with fear because there was a horoscope written on it and got a young woman thrown into the Quell over it, could he still claim to have balls?

So, carrying a heavy weight of boldness and his own principles, Xi Ping left the city by the south gate.

On leaving the south gate, there was the grand canal. On the banks of the canal, apart from crude laborers’ houses, there were factories shrouded in smoke, the machines inside them droning without regard for night and day. Near the banks there was a layer of green oil floating on the water, making a foul stink.

Along the river were peddlers selling mixed grain flatbreads. The vendors, more dead than alive, cried out “two for one.” Workers naked to the waist squatted by the banks, eating amid the brackish reek from the dirty water.

The atmosphere was foul, but on the southern mountains' Sage’s Road, there wasn’t a speck of dirt.

This mountain road went to Southern Sage Temple and had a carved marble railing on both sides, the height of a man. Carved into the railing weren’t auspicious animals or clouds, but inscriptions to eliminate dust and expel dirt. Inlaid along the bottom of the fence were jade stamp spiritual stones. Mixed with the rare sight of spring in the south of the city, it seemed like an immortal road that had accidentally ended up in the mortal world.

As soon as Xi Ping left by the city gate, he covered his nose. He puffed out his cheeks and chest, holding his breath until he had ridden quickly onto Sage’s Road, when he opened his nostrils and breathed.

To go to Southern Sage Temple, you had to go and return by Sage’s Road. Reckoning the time, Jiangli would be coming back now. He could meet her on the way. Jiangli’s driver Lao Zhang was a hunchback, particularly hunched; you could see him from two li off. And the road wasn’t busy now. He couldn’t miss them.

But instead, Xi Ping rode all the way to Southern Sage Temple Mountain without seeing a shade of Jiangli.

The sun had begun to sink into the west by now. It wasn’t New Year or a festival, and it wasn’t the first or fifteenth of the month; there were hardly any worshippers at Southern Sage Temple. There were just a few coaches tied up at the post outside the temple. Xi Ping asked around; everyone said they hadn’t seen Hunchbacked Zhang.

In spite of himself, he felt an apprehension: was that dog Haozhong dependable?

Just then, someone chimed in next to him: “The hunchbacked driver? I saw him. He didn’t stop at the post.”

Xi Ping looked around and saw an old man harnessing an ox cart near the teahouse, getting ready to wind up business.

As he worked, the old man muttered, “That man with a back even more bent than mine. When he finished making his purchase, he went south. I didn’t see him come back.”

“What did he buy?” said Xi Ping.

“Flowers.” The old man put his hands together and gestured toward Xi Ping, illustrating. “I brought a lot of white flowers today and thought I couldn’t sell all of them, but he bought them all up. Someone in the underworld has a guest today.”

Someone in the underworld…

Xi Ping froze. He looked south in the direction the old man was pointing—that was the direction of the south city’s Blissful Village.

The Blissful Village was a set of graves, done up quite properly, with someone to guard and take care of it daily, but it wasn’t a proper graveyard. Most of the names carved on the gravestones were false names—slave girls gone missing from beside the sons of the noble and wealthy, precious daughters who had lost their chastity and committed suicide, concubines kicked out of noble manors, batch after batch of “famous flowers” wilted on either side of a pleasure boat… These people, who couldn’t see the light of day, who couldn’t leave behind their names, all settled here when they had left the world of the living.

Jiangli had claimed to be going to Southern Sage Temple to fulfill a vow, but actually she had snuck off to the Blissful Village to visit a grave?

Xi Ping found out from the old flower seller that they hadn’t come back, so he urged his horse toward the Blissful Village.

He felt no taboo about the dead, and there was nothing to be afraid of about the Blissful Village. Though it was a graveyard, it had long since become one of Jinping’s destinations. Each year on Qing Ming and the Winter Clothing Festival, rich and idle young men would get together to go burn paper goods at the Blissful Village. This was known euphemistically as “paying homage to lovely souls.” They didn’t come empty-handed. Since they were already coming, they had to leave behind some eulogies, so the old pagoda trees and ancient cypresses were stuck full of nonsensical funeral orations, as if the trees had a skin condition. It was sickening enough to disperse any trace of ghostliness.

When Xi Ping reached the Blissful Village, perhaps because of the damp in the air, a fog rose in the woods. He pulled his horse to a stop. The horse snorted and continuously beat its two front hooves against the ground.

Animals were always unusually sensitive to places where bodies were buried. Xi Ping took no notice. He raised his voice and called for the grave guard. “Liu-ye, are you there?”

Liu-ye was the solitary old man who guarded the graves. He lived in a little cottage outside of the Blissful Village. Every month, he received twenty jin of grain and half a string of copper coins. In his spare time, he raised chickens and grew vegetables in his yard.

The chickens weren’t there now. There was only the old man, on his own, bent and loosening the soil for his vegetables.

Perhaps because he was old, his digging movements were unusually heavy, like a machine ready to rust.

“Hey, old man, rest for a moment.” Xi Ping took a piece of silver from his pocket and flicked it, tossing it into Liu-ye’s little yard. “I want to ask you something. Has anyone come here today?”

Liu-ye stared at the silver bead fallen at his feet. He stopped digging and nodded slowly.

Xi Ping said, “A young woman with a hunchbacked driver, right? Did they leave?”

“Uh-huh.” Liu-ye may have been senile. It cost him an effort to speak. After a long time, he finally spat out the words, “Still here.”

“Fine… Oh, right, do you know who they came to pay their respects to?”

The old grave guard was hard of hearing. Xi Ping asked twice, but he didn’t hear him, only concentrated on digging.

“Tsk, old thing.” Xi Ping ran out of patience. Seeing that it was getting late, he didn’t waste any more time talking to the old man. He urged his horse on into the woods.

Strange to say, his horse had just been unwilling to go into the woods no matter what, but now, there was no need for its master’s urging. As soon as the reins loosened, it dashed in.

The fog became thicker and thicker. Soon there was no trace of the man and horse who had gone into the woods, as if they had been swallowed by the fog.

Then, the thick fog spilled over from the woods and surrounded the grave guard’s little cottage.

The solitary grave guard hit the reeking earth with his rake. With a pop, something fell off his face and into the hole in the earth. When it fell, it rolled out…

It wasn’t a bead of sweat. It was a clouded eyeball.

As before, the old man brandished his rake again and again, completely unaware.