Peril of Life and Death-Finding Someone to Die in One's Place

The proprietors of ordinary taverns felt it most deeply: business was getting better and better, while expenses were shrinking instead. Why? Because water was free!

Throughout South Mountain City, nearly everyone yearned to meet the legendary Prefect Lin Su, yet they had little chance to do so. Lin Su spent very little time in South Mountain, and even when he was there, he simply never went out.

To be precise, in everyone's memory, he had only gone out twice. Once, he had led a team to Prince Luyang's Mansion. The other time, he had led a team to the shores of Dongting Lake.

The first time, he had forcibly seized the Yanghu Waterway from Prince Luyang, completely changing Prince Luyang's control over Nanshan Prefecture.

The second time, ten great ships had arrived from Haining by way of Dongting Lake, bringing livelihoods to five million people in South Mountain and completely transforming Nanshan Prefecture's impoverished and backward state.

Two outings, two legends.

Today was the third time everyone had seen him go out!

He had come to South Mountain Inn!

The scholars all rose to their feet and bowed upon hearing that the visitor was Prefect Lin.

That bow might not have been for a prefect, but for a Literary Grandmaster.

In several rooms partitioned off by gauze curtains behind them, people rose as well. They were the leading courtesans of the local pleasure houses. Whenever great figures gathered and men of letters assembled, their presence was indispensable.

They too had seen the man they had dreamed of more than anything else.

The founding patriarch of courtesan ci: Grandmaster Lin!—Though they could not possibly know that ci had been created by Lin Su, eight or nine out of ten of the ci they sang were Lin Mouren's. Moreover, the Divine Melody