An Unexpected Turn of Events

Shunyang Prefecture, Ningzhou Road.

In recent years, Ningzhou Road had maintained a very low profile. The good thing was that it had suffered few disasters; the bad thing was that nobody paid it any attention. Still, as a transfer station along the important inland waterway north of Jinhuai City, Shunyang Prefecture was far more prosperous than the rest of Ningzhou Road.

Every morning was when the merchant ships docking at the wharves outside the city came and went in the greatest numbers. The river channel here had been expanded several times over the past few centuries, yet it still felt somewhat crowded.

At a bustling mutton restaurant outside the docks, merchants passing through in the morning would hastily down a bowl of mutton soup before hurrying away again. After the morning, however, the place became even busier, because the dockworkers would stop here to eat some lamb offal and fill their stomachs, usually washing it down with cheap liquor.

There were scarcely a few places in the entire south where people drank in the morning, and this was one of them. After drinking, the dockworkers could sleep, then rise at midnight the next day to continue unloading and loading cargo.

Besides the dockworkers, some travelers occupied the restaurant's inner rooms and second floor. Unhurriedly enjoying the fresh, delicious mutton soup and morning liquor, they watched wave after wave of busy dockworkers come in, then leave in wave after wave.

In a private room on the second floor near the official road leading to the docks, Liu Huaien, Lu Shan, and two others sat around an Eight Immortals Table. A bowl of liquor stood before each of them, while freshly stewed mutton was laid out in the middle of the table.

"This really is delicious. No wonder word of it has