A fine drizzle fell from the sky. Zhou Yi rarely had a moment of leisure as he sat in a tavern in Qingzhu Village, drinking.
Looking out from the second-floor window, the clouds were so black that light could barely penetrate them. The villagers of Qingzhu Village knew this was the prelude to a torrential downpour, so they all stayed indoors. Those who had gone out wore bamboo hats and thick straw rain capes as they moved through the drizzle.
Zhou Yi withdrew his gaze from the tavern window and quietly considered how to obtain his next Body Refining Technique. If he relied solely on the merit from his daily patrols, it would probably take another half a year. Nor had he told his master that his Jade Lock Skill had long since reached perfection...
Zhou Yi tapped the tabletop with his fingers as he thought.
Suddenly, a burst of commotion rose from downstairs. Zhou Yi's thoughts were interrupted, and he looked toward the source of the noise.
"Shopkeeper Liu, hurry and take a look by the river!!!" The speaker was a somewhat hunched old man. He wore a bamboo hat and a straw rain cape over tattered clothes.
Seeing the old fisherman who usually delivered fish to him desperately tugging him outside, Shopkeeper Liu asked in confusion, "Master Gui, what happened? Why are you in such a panic?"
Master Gui, who made his living fishing, saw that Shopkeeper Liu remained unhurried and immediately said anxiously, "When I was fishing just now, I pulled up a corpse. Its face was swollen from soaking in the water, so I couldn't tell who it was. But the clothes it was wearing were exactly the same as the clothes your daughter wears!"
At this, Shopkeeper Liu's face turned deathly pale. If Master Gui had not supported him from the side, he would probably have collapsed onto the ground.
Seeing Shopkeeper Liu's expression, Master Gui grew anxious as well and promptly comforted him. "Shopkeeper Liu, it might not be your daughter. Didn't I come to get you to identify the body?"
Hearing Master Gui's consoling words, Shopkeeper Liu seemed to have seized a lifeline. His eyes suddenly regained their focus. "Right, it might not be my daughter. Right, it might not be my daughter."
Shopkeeper Liu kept muttering those words, then ran out of the tavern.
Seeing Shopkeeper Liu rush outside, Master Gui followed him into the rain.
The people who had been silently eating in the tavern lost their appetite after witnessing this and began whispering among themselves.
"Hey, I heard Shopkeeper Liu's daughter is quite pretty. Shopkeeper Liu usually treats his daughter well too. She shouldn't have jumped into the river, right? What could have happened?" The speaker was a diner at the table beside Zhou Yi.
"Heh, I suppose you don't know about this, then!"
"What, is there some hidden story behind it?"
"Well, I only heard it through the grapevine, so it might not be accurate."
Before the diner at the neighboring table could continue, most of the people in the tavern had already grown impatient and cried out, "Hurry up and tell us!"
Seeing so many people listening, the diner at the table beside Zhou Yi no longer dared to keep anything under wraps and revealed what he knew.
He cleared his throat, then said loudly, "Do you all know Scholar Xu from our village?"
"Scholar Xu, the one who took the exam for five years and still never became a Juren?" a nearby diner answered.
"That's right, Scholar Xu. Even if he couldn't become a Juren, he could still have become a teacher in our village. But Scholar Xu was unwilling to accept that. He had endured ten years of studying by the light of a cold window—how could he give up so easily? Everyone knows Scholar Xu's family was not well-off. To study, he had already sold off all his family's possessions."
"What does this have to do with Shopkeeper Liu's daughter?" the nearby diner asked impatiently.
"Don't rush me. Aren't I about to get to the story of Scholar Xu and Miss Liu? After Scholar Xu repeatedly failed the imperial examinations, his family no longer had any surplus grain. In his daily life, he could only make a living copying books for others."
"Miss Liu was also someone who loved reading. While Scholar Xu was copying books for the Liu family, somehow he and Miss Liu caught each other's eye. But think about it—could money-grubbing Shopkeeper Liu possibly take a fancy to a penniless scholar like Scholar Xu? Yet he feared openly refusing would break his daughter's heart, so he came up with a plan: he told Scholar Xu to go take the Juren examination."
"Shopkeeper Liu really had his abacus beads clicking. If Scholar Xu failed to become a Juren, he wouldn't be able to marry his daughter. If he succeeded, Shopkeeper Liu would be the one marrying up. Either way, he couldn't lose," a nearby diner praised Shopkeeper Liu's scheme.
"Exactly. But the trouble happened during this examination. Think about Scholar Xu: he was merely a scholar, without the strength to truss a chicken. For several examinations, he had paid to travel with merchant caravans, which was how he safely reached Luoshi City to take the exams. But this time, his luck was poor. The merchant caravan Scholar Xu traveled with was also wiped out by the strange."
"When the news reached Miss Liu's ears, she naturally cried and shouted that she wanted to go look for Scholar Xu. But how could Shopkeeper Liu let his daughter go? So he locked her inside the house."
After finishing, the man lifted the tea on the table and drained it in one gulp.
After the surrounding diners fell silent for a long while, a voice suddenly rang out.
"Everyone, we still don't know whether the corpse by the river is Miss Liu's, do we? Why don't we go take a look?" The voice grew quieter and quieter toward the end.
"Then... let's go take a look."
In the main hall, a table of diners suddenly rose and headed for the door, intending to verify the corpse's identity, completely ignoring the heavy rain outside.
Seeing this, the other diners followed after them as well.
Zhou Yi hesitated for a moment, then picked up the saber on the table and followed them out.
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