The Zhai brothers were worrying over the hexagram, while the culprit had already walked far enough away. The old man lifted the brim of his bamboo hat and turned his head slightly, glancing back from the corner of his eye at the tax silver procession, whose tail had long since vanished from sight. A youthful vitality at odds with his age appeared on his weathered, haggard face. "I didn't expect Xiao Fang to be here, too."
If Zhai Le were still around, he would have been surprised as well.
In his travels around Xiaocheng, he'd made few friends close enough to share courtesy names with. How did this old man, whom he'd met only once, know him?
The Shepherd Boy twirled a crude, roughly made bamboo flute between his fingers.
In a worldly tone, he said, "This was unexpected. Good things rarely come without a hitch."
The old man smiled and asked, "Now that Xiao Fang and Zhai Huan have both turned out to be 'unexpected,' should we still carry out the plan as intended?"
The Shepherd Boy countered, "What else would we do? Heh, one Zhai Xiaofang, one Zhai Yuewen—they're still wet behind the ears. Young Master Shen is nothing to fear."
Seeing the Shepherd Boy so confident, the old man shrugged.
"There's something I don't understand."
The Shepherd Boy's childish voice was cold. "Ask."
The old man furrowed his brow in puzzlement. "You're only twenty-four or twenty-five, and Zhai Huan has already come of age. Even if he's younger than you, let's say he's twenty-one or twenty-two. So why do you always talk like an old man? You sound as though you're two or three generations older than Zhai Huan."
"Then why does Young Master Shen like taking liberties with Zhai Xiaofang? And who is that 'son' of