The Weird Hair Lord

Deep in a narrow alley paved with bluestone, a commotion suddenly broke out amid the air, thick with the scent of tea and sweat.

A red-lacquered, gold-trimmed sedan chair rolled through puddles, startling the laborers squatting by the wall and gnawing on steamed buns into scrambling to their feet. When the curtain lifted, it revealed half the face of a noblewoman dusted with pearl powder. She was none other than the wife of Lord Chen, the Vice Minister of Revenue.

"That makes five!" Old Wang, the flatbread seller, held up an oily finger.

"Yesterday it was the son of the Salt Transport Commissioner, and the day before, even the Old Woman from the Nine Gates Commander's residence came!" He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "They say when the Hair Combing Master runs his comb over your scalp, you can see your dead mother."

The rumors grew wilder with every telling.

Still, everyone was quite pleased. This alley had once been nothing more than an ordinary market where common folk bought and sold vegetables. It was lively, but mostly the poor came here. Now, with a Hair Combing Master in their midst, business on the whole street had suddenly boomed.

Some clever people stopped peddling vegetables and began selling tea and snacks instead. The young ladies and gentlemen from the grand households naturally wouldn't eat from their stalls, but whenever these people went out, they always had maids and servants following close behind to attend to them.

Those attendants had to eat and drink, didn't they? They needed somewhere to rest, didn't they? That was how business found its way to them.

Water dripped from the copper clepsydra. The afternoon had reached the hour of the Monkey.

The locust tree's shadow at the alley mouth stretched long, spilling darkly across the bluestone