Stealing half a day's leisure from a fleeting life, Chen Ping'an walked down the street with Nuan Shu, a bundle slung across his shoulder and a wooden box in his hand.
The well-to-do women on the street wore elegant coiffures and splendid clothes, all in styles currently fashionable in the capital.
But Chen Ping'an did not spot a single familiar face from the townsfolk who had moved here from his hometown. He had a good memory; even after all these years, he would have recognized them if they passed him on the street. Had he wandered here ten or twenty years earlier, he probably would have run into old acquaintances. Most had sold their ancestral homes to Mountain Immortals for high prices. Farmers who once kept their faces to the earth and their backs to the sun had become wealthy men with grand houses. Yet that immense fortune, fallen straight from the sky, seemed to have vanished into the ground in the blink of an eye.
The seat of Chuzhou was a typical city of three government offices: those of the Prefect of Chuzhou, Lishui Commandery, and the Kuocang County Yamen. Add the Prefecture City God Temple and the newly established office for educational affairs, and five official institutions stood together here. There was also a persistent rumor that a General of Chuzhou might soon be appointed.
Nuan Shu asked curiously, "Mountain Lord Master, do the officials here know you've come to the prefectural city?"
"Of course they do," Chen Ping'an said with a smile. "There are plenty of Chuzhou Spies. Apart from the capital and the Secondary Capital, nowhere has more."
At first, they had been there to watch the cultivators from elsewhere who had bought houses in Huaihuang County City and keep them from causing trouble. They also