Open the Gate

The sky had only just begun to brighten, before even the first cockcrow, when Chen Ping'an got out of bed. His thin bedding simply could not hold in any warmth, and during his time as a porcelain-making apprentice, he had also developed the habit of rising early and sleeping late. Chen Ping'an opened his door and stepped into the small courtyard, where the earth was soft. After taking a deep breath, he stretched, then walked out. Turning his head, he saw a slender figure bent over, carrying a wooden bucket of water in both hands and pushing open her courtyard gate with her shoulder. It was Song Jixin's maidservant. She had likely just returned from fetching water at Iron Lock Well in Apricot Blossom Alley.

Chen Ping'an withdrew his gaze, threaded through the streets and alleys, and jogged toward the eastern side of town. Mud Bottle Alley lay in the west, while at the easternmost gate, someone was responsible for managing the passage of merchants and travelers, as well as night curfews and patrols. He also collected and passed along letters sent back from outside. Chen Ping'an's next task was to deliver those letters to the townsfolk. The pay was one copper coin per letter, and he had only secured this means of earning money after much begging. He had already agreed with the people there that after Dragon raises its head on the Second day of the second lunar month, he would take over this line of work.

In Song Jixin's words, Chen Ping'an had been born with a poor and bitter fate. Even if fortune entered his home, he would not be able to hold on to it. Song Jixin often said obscure things, presumably lifted from books, and Chen Ping'an could never quite understand them. For example, a couple of days ago, he had muttered something about the biting spring cold freezing young men to death. Chen Ping'an had understood none of it. As for how, after surviving winter, there was often a stretch after spring began when it became even colder, the Young Man had experienced that firsthand. Song Jixin said that was called a late spring chill, as fierce as a cavalryman's turning spear on the battlefield, and that was why many people died at such Ghost Gate Passes.

The town had no walls around it. After all, not to mention bandits and roving brigands, even thieves and petty crooks were rare. So while it was nominally called a city gate, it was really just a row of old, lopsided fences. As long as there was roughly a place for pedestrians and carts to pass through, that counted as the face of the town.

When Chen Ping'an jogged past Apricot Blossom Alley, he saw quite a few women and children gathered beside Iron Lock Well. The well's pulley creaked without pause.

After turning around another street, Chen Ping'an heard a familiar Sound of Reading coming from nearby. There was a village school there, established with pooled funds from several of the town's wealthy families. The teacher was an Outsider. When Chen Ping'an had been little, he often ran over, hid outside the window, squatted there in secret, and pricked up his ears. Though the teacher had been extremely strict while teaching, he never berated or drove away children like Chen Ping'an who came to mooch off the lessons and Elementary Education. Later, Chen Ping'an became an apprentice at a Dragon Kiln outside town and never returned to the school.

Farther ahead, Chen Ping'an passed beneath a stone archway. Since the archway had been built with twelve stone pillars, the locals liked to call it the Crab Archway. As for its real name, Song Jixin and Liu Xianyang had very different accounts. Song Jixin swore that an old book called the County Annals referred to it as the Grand Scholar Archway, an archway bestowed by Emperor Master himself to commemorate the literary and military achievements of some great official in history. Liu Xianyang, a country bumpkin just like Chen Ping'an, said it was the Crab Workshop. They had called it that for hundreds of years, so why the hell should it be called the Grand Scholar Archway? Liu Xianyang had even asked Song Jixin, "Just how big is a Grand Scholar's Official Hat? Is it bigger than the mouth of Iron Lock Well?" The question had made Song Jixin flush bright red.

At that moment, Chen Ping'an ran one circle around the Twelve-legged Archway. Each face bore four large characters, written in strange scripts that all looked different: "Do not yield in benevolence," "Speak little, be natural," "Do not seek externally," and "Qi Chong Dou Niu." Song Jixin had said that aside from one set of four characters, the stone inscriptions on the other three plaques had all once been smeared over and altered. Chen Ping'an was muddled about such matters and had never given them much thought. Of course, even if the Young Man wanted to Get to the Bottom of it, it would have been futile. He did not even know what sort of book the County Annals, which Song Jixin so often mentioned, was.

Not far past the archway stood a luxuriant Old Scholar Tree. Beneath it lay a tree trunk that someone had moved here from who knew where. After being roughly chopped, with Two Pieces of Bluestone slabs propped beneath its ends, the large trunk had become a simple long bench. Every summer, the townsfolk liked to come here to cool off. Elders from better-off families would even fish up baskets of chilled melons and fruit from the well. Once the children had their Full Meal, they gathered in gangs and frolicked beneath the shade of the tree.

Chen Ping'an was used to climbing mountains and crossing waters. By the time he reached the fence gate, he stopped before that lonely yellow-mud house without his heart racing or his breath coming hard.

Few outsiders came and went from the town. Logically Speaking, now that the official kiln, that money tree, had collapsed, there should have been even fewer new faces. When Old Man Yao had still been alive, he had once gotten drunk and told apprentices like Chen Ping'an and Liu Xianyang, "What we make is the one and only official kiln business under heaven. It is Imperial Porcelain for Emperor His Majesty and the Empress. No matter how rich other common folk are, no matter how high an official they may be, if they dare touch it, they will lose their heads." That day, Old Man Yao's spirit, Qi, and essence had been especially different.

Yet today, when Chen Ping'an looked beyond the fence, he found quite a few people waiting for the city gate to open—no fewer than seven or eight, men and women, young and old.

Moreover, they were all strangers. When local townsfolk came and went, whether to fire porcelain or work the fields, they rarely used the East Gate. The reason was simple: the road stretching out from the town's eastern gate led to neither Dragon Kilns nor farmland.

At that moment, Chen Ping'an and those Outsiders stood on opposite sides of a wooden fence, staring at one another.

The straw-sandaled youth merely envied the thick clothes those people wore. They had to be warm, able to withstand the cold.

The people outside the gate were clearly divided into several groups and were not all traveling together. Yet they all looked at the Thin Young Man within the gate. Most wore indifferent expressions. One or two had long since looked past him, toward somewhere farther inside the town.

Chen Ping'an found it strange. Could these people not know that the imperial court had already sealed off every Dragon Kiln? Or did they know the truth, and therefore believe there was an opportunity to exploit?

A Young Man wearing a strange tall crown, tall and slender in build, with a green jade pendant hanging from his waist, seemed to have grown tired of waiting. He stepped out of the crowd alone and moved to push open the unlocked fence gate. But just as his fingers were about to touch the wooden gate, he suddenly stopped short and slowly withdrew his hand. With his hands Behind Back, he smiled at the straw-sandaled youth inside the gate without saying a word. He simply smiled.

From the corner of his eye, Chen Ping'an inadvertently noticed that among the people behind the Young Man, some seemed disappointed, some amused, some frowned, and some sneered. Their reactions were subtle and varied.

Just then, a disheveled middle-aged man abruptly opened the door and cursed at Chen Ping'an, "You little bastard, have you fallen into a money hole? Coming so early to hound me and summon my soul—are you rushing off to be reborn and meet your dead ghost parents?!"

Chen Ping'an rolled his eyes. The Young Man did not take such sharp and cutting words to heart. First, in this rural place where there were barely any books to speak of, if he got angry every time someone cursed at him, he might as well find a well and jump in, saving himself the trouble. Second, this middle-aged bachelor who guarded the gate was himself someone the townsfolk often mocked and teased. Especially those bold, fiery women—many not only cursed him, but even hit him. On top of that, the man loved bragging to children still wearing split-crotch pants, saying things like how back in the day, he had fought a grand battle at the city gate, beaten five or six big men until they were searching the ground for their teeth, with blood everywhere, and how the entire road before the gate, two zhang wide, had looked just like a muddy road after rain!

The man said to Chen Ping'an impatiently, "That little mess of yours can wait."

No one in town took this fellow seriously.

But whether Outsiders could enter the town was a matter over which the man held the power of life and death.

As he walked toward the wooden fence gate, he reached into his crotch.

With his back to Chen Ping'an, the man opened the gate. From time to time, he accepted a small embroidered pouch from someone and slipped it into his sleeve, then let them pass one by one.

Chen Ping'an had long since moved aside to clear the way. The eight people were roughly divided into five groups as they entered town. Aside from the Young Man with the tall crown and green pendant at his waist, two children around seven or eight years old passed by in succession. The boy wore a festive red robe, while the little girl was pink and tender, like a piece of finest porcelain.

The boy was more than half a head shorter than Chen Ping'an. As he brushed past him, the child opened his mouth. Though no sound came out, his lips clearly formed two words, full of provocation.

The middle-aged woman holding the boy's hand coughed softly, and only then did the child restrain himself somewhat.

Behind the woman and boy, the little girl was led by a burly old man with a head full of Frost Snow. She turned to Chen Ping'an and rattled off a long string of words, all while pointing at the boy her age in front of her.

Chen Ping'an could not understand a single word the little girl said, but he could guess that she was tattling.

The burly old man cast a sidelong glance at the straw-sandaled youth.

Merely because someone had deliberately or casually glanced at him, Chen Ping'an instinctively took a step back.

Like a mouse seeing a cat.

After seeing this, the little girl, who had been chattering like a little yellow oriole, immediately lost all interest in fanning the flames. She turned away and did not look at Chen Ping'an again, as though one more glance would dirty her eyes.

Young Man Chen Ping'an had indeed never seen much of the world, but that did not mean he could not read faces.

After that group had gone far away, the gatekeeper asked with a smile, "Want to know what they said?"

Chen Ping'an nodded. "Yes."

The middle-aged bachelor grinned. "They praised how handsome you are. Nothing but good things."

Chen Ping'an tugged at the corner of his mouth, thinking, Do you take me for an idiot?

The man saw through the Young Man's thoughts and laughed even more happily. "If you weren't an idiot, would I let you deliver letters?"

Chen Ping'an did not dare argue, afraid of angering the fellow and watching the copper coins that were almost in his hand fly away.

The man turned his head and looked toward those people, rubbing his scraggly beard as he clicked his tongue and muttered, "That woman just now—those two legs could squeeze a man to death."

Chen Ping'an hesitated before asking curiously, "That madam knows martial arts?"

The man was Stunned. Looking down at the Young Man, he said solemnly, "Kid, you really are an idiot."

The Young Man was completely baffled.

The man told Chen Ping'an to wait, then strode into the house. When he returned, he carried a stack of envelopes, neither thick nor thin, around ten in all. After handing them to Chen Ping'an, he asked, "A foolish man has foolish luck, and a good man receives good recompense. Do you believe that?"

Chen Ping'an held the letters in one hand and spread out his other palm, blinking. "We agreed on one copper coin per letter."

The man flew into a rage from embarrassment. He viciously slapped the five copper coins he had prepared beforehand into the Young Man's palm, then waved his hand grandly and declared with heroic boldness, "I'll owe you the remaining five coins for now!"