"Twenty wen for a cheap goat-hair brush. Thirty wen for a ream of yellow paper. Fifty wen for an ink stick. Thirty wen for a white stone inkstone, and five wen for a clay water dropper. That comes to one hundred and thirty-five wen!" The young attendant heard Shi Feizhe's request and instantly replied in a listless voice.
Another dead broke customer!
Yesterday, Old Zhang had met a man in rags who'd bought dozens of taels' worth of goods in one go! Why couldn't I run into someone like that? the young attendant grumbled to himself.
"Uh... do you have anything cheaper?" Shi Feizhe asked again. He really was living off his savings now. Although he had a few taels of silver, he didn't know how long he'd be staying in Three Talents Town.
Lodging and meals all cost money! Back in Yi Yang City, he'd experienced the wretched state of a hero brought low by a single wen. The feeling of being hungry and unable to sleep was just too awful.
"No!" The young attendant's face fell, and he looked thoroughly annoyed. He felt like he was wasting his time!
"Do you have hard charcoal pencils?" Shi Feizhe had seen hard charcoal pencils in Yi Yang City.
"Those are for crude carpenters and bricklayers. This is a study! We don't have any! None!!" the young attendant said, shaking his head.
It seemed that when Shi Feizhe asked for charcoal pencils, the burly man with a face full of bristling flesh in the corner looked up at him, then continued copying a book.
"Then I'll take a ream of yellow paper!" As he spoke, Shi Feizhe began fishing out his money. He carefully counted out thirty wen and handed them to the young attendant.
The young attendant hurriedly took a ream of cheap yellow paper from the shelf and gave it to Shi Feizhe, then went outside the study and began calling out, "Fragrant Heart Study's exclusive..."
A "ream" of yellow paper meant a stack of sheets as thick as a knife, about 1.5 centimeters thick. The sheets were roughly the size of a book, and each one was fairly thick and shoddy. Shi Feizhe counted them: there were only a dozen or so.
He didn't know whether paper was expensive in this world, or just in Three Talents Town.
After leaving the study, he bought two hard charcoal pencils, then finally headed to Three Talents Manor.
The hard charcoal pencils were made by burning willow sticks and were about as thick as pencils. Carpenters and bricklayers mostly used them at work. Using them left your hands black, which was rather undignified, and their marks were hard to preserve, so hardly anyone used them to write or copy manuals.
But at a time like this, Shi Feizhe couldn't care less about dignity. What he needed was a martial arts manual: he could write it down, then practice it step by step.
The closer he got to Three Talents Manor, the more crowded it became. Following the flow of people, Shi Feizhe reached the entrance of a manor with upturned eaves.
Two stone lions stood at the entrance. The gatehouse took up the space of roughly four or five rooms, and between its six red pillars stood a pair of grayish-red gates.
It looked incredibly grand!
On either side of the gatehouse stood walls about two people tall. A plaque of nanmu wood hung above the gatehouse, bearing the three characters "Three Talents Manor."
"Line up to register! Line up to register!" The gatekeeper of Three Talents Manor stood at the entrance, his muscles bulging and his voice booming, signaling people to form a line.
"I am Zhan Ming of Three Talents Manor. Greetings to all you heroes from the jianghu!" He first clasped his hands and saluted in all directions, then said:
"Our Manor Lord Zhan has opened the martial arts manuals to the public. Anyone can go to West Manor and read them! But all you heroes coming and going must abide by a few rules. It'll make things easier for us, and for everyone else!"
"First, the martial arts manuals are all in West Manor. You're welcome to read and discuss them, but don't go to East Manor. That's where Manor Lord Zhan and the rest of us live, and our wives and families are inside. It wouldn't be appropriate. If you wander in by mistake, we'll take you for bandits and beat you to death, so don't say we didn't warn you!"
"Fair enough!" the people waiting to register chimed in.
They'd come for the martial arts manuals in West Manor. If they sneaked into East Manor and got beaten to death as bandits, they'd have it coming!
"Second, everyone who enters West Manor needs to register. If there are any fights, murders, or disputes later, we'll have a lead to follow based on the registration. That'll keep West Manor from becoming a den of chaos, rife with murders and disputes, while making it look like Three Talents Manor just stood by and did nothing!"
"Third, after dusk, we ask all you heroes to leave promptly! The manor does not provide lodging!"
"Fourth, our manor hasn't fully deciphered the martial arts manuals on the stone tablets. If you practice them wrong and go mad, don't come looking for trouble with us!"
"Fifth, there's a Big Cat in West Manor. It's incredibly powerful. Don't provoke it, or you might lose your life!"
A Big Cat? What kind of Big Cat? Shi Feizhe wondered.
The burly man finished his speech in one breath, then clasped his hands to the people in line. His manners were impeccable!
Then he began registering people. The process was simple: the visitor's appearance, name, and sect.
It didn't matter whether the names were real. As long as their general appearance was recorded and they could be identified as the same person, that was enough.
A few visitors from out of town refused to cooperate, but after seeing the muscular man demonstrate true energy bursting from his body, with one hand wielding ice and the other fire, they all meekly registered.
Those who hadn't cultivated true energy would probably be taken down with a single slap if they ran into the man!
Shi Feizhe registered too, then followed the crowd west to West Manor.
Compared to East Manor's high walls and grand courtyards, West Manor was really just a flat expanse with five or six thatched sheds and a few stone benches. Rows of upright stone tablets stood in the middle of the open ground, each carved with a martial arts manual. There were probably several hundred of them!
It was around nine or ten in the morning. Quite a few people were already studying the tablets, and others sat on the ground in the thatched sheds, deep in thought.
But most people had gathered to watch a Big Cat.
It wasn't that they'd never seen a cat before. It was just that this cat was truly enormous!
It looked like a gray tabby, with tabby stripes across its body. The fur from its chin to its chest was white, and all four paws were white too. Its coat gleamed with health; anyone could tell it ate well!
What was astonishing was its size. Shi Feizhe estimated it was three or four meters long, like a giant tiger! If not for its gray stripes, it could easily have been mistaken for a tiger.
At that moment, it had its paws tucked against its belly as if warming them, its eyes half-closed as though basking in the sun. It lay lazily not far from the entrance to West Manor, completely unbothered by the people watching it.
Beside it were two wooden basins and a wooden sign bearing sixteen characters.
"Big Cat can be petted, five taels a touch. Treats welcome, no beef!"
Below the words was a cat paw print.
As for the two wooden basins, one was filled with bright silver, while the other contained scraps of food and seemed to be the cat's food bowl.
In both his lifetimes, Shi Feizhe had never seen a Big Cat like this!
So he stood and watched for a while too. It was honestly hard to say which was rarer, the martial arts manuals or this thing!
"So this is Cat Master! As mighty and extraordinary as they say!" One of the onlookers couldn't resist wanting to pet him, but perhaps his purse was too light. He raised his hand, then lowered it.
"You know him?" someone asked.
"Legend has it Cat Master has lived for several hundred years and is a Great Demon in the True Person Realm!" the man said. "You rarely get to see a True Person Realm expert. How could anyone not be excited to see a True Person Realm Great Demon?"
"A True Person Realm Great Demon!"
"Lived for several hundred years?"
"Holy shit..."
The onlookers gasped too. The longest-lived martial arts experts only lived to be 149. Now there was a Great Demon several hundred years old right in front of them. How could they not be astonished?
Five taels of silver for a single pet really wasn't expensive! But they were all poor common folk, broke as could be. They really couldn't afford it, so they could only talk and speculate.
"Meow~!" Big Cat gave an annoyed cry and glanced at them.
It meant: Keep your voices down. You're disturbing my sleep!
Cat Master could have simply taken the money, but still let you pet him. He was so gentle!
Before you continue