Cui Dongshan's Sheet of White Paper

Zhu Lian arrived at Yashui Shop and disliked how long the place had gone without cooking. The stove had become mere decoration, so he had Pei Qian buy some vegetables and said they would make a meal to liven things up.

Worried about Sister Xiuxiu, who had gone to Yuye River, Pei Qian did not want to budge. She wanted to wait until Sister Xiuxiu returned. She said the Grass Head Shop next door cooked every day, so why not simply go there and mooch a meal? Sister Jiu'er's cooking was quite good; the fragrance of her dishes drifted through all of Qilong Alley. Zhu Lian refused. He said every shop had its own human warmth and feng shui. You could mooch food, but you could not bring back that human warmth. Where did it come from? Nothing more than daily meals and rest—smoke rising from the kitchen, bedding aired in the sun, preferably a little sound of reading. The sound of an abacus alone would not do. Wealth was difficult to keep in this world; it needed a measure of human warmth to gather it in the home.

Having no choice, Pei Qian said the old cook had too many rules, too many peculiar scruples, and she could not out-argue him anyway. She could only bring Right Guardian Little Millet with her to buy game and vegetables from nearby street shops. Shi Rou felt both guilty and afraid. She always felt Zhu Lian was needling her, despising her for being neither human nor ghost: she had neither helped Luopo Mountain earn great money nor improved the shop's feng shui. So Shi Rou secretly took out her personal savings and stuffed them to Pei Qian. Pei Qian said aloud, "How can I take this? How can I take this? Better