It was winter solstice once again, and the entire Capital City was wrapped in silvery white.
Qian Ping'an had both hands tucked into each other's sleeves. Wearing a dusty-gray padded jacket, he breathed out white vapor and trudged through the snow toward the tea stall he usually visited, each step crunching crisply.
Today happened to be the boss's joyous occasion. The rice shop had not opened, so he had taken the day off early and could go listen to the storyteller talk about the novel wonders published in the newspapers.
The world had changed greatly over the past year, but in the eyes of Qian Ping'an, a rice-shop clerk, life did not seem to have changed much. The only difference was that the southern and northern goods he had once considered rare and precious were becoming more plentiful and cheaper. Even his usually stingy and frugal employer had obtained a string of South Sea pearls and asked the monks at the temple to consecrate them.
Apart from that, everything remained as usual. Only the storyteller's tales had grown increasingly interesting. The martial world, once so distant from him, seemed almost within reach. Though he barely knew a few of his next-door neighbors, he could name all the great experts under heaven. Of course, "name them like household treasures" was a phrase he had learned from the storyteller. It made him look educated and worldly, like one of those experts hidden in the marketplace or wandering through the mortal world. And all of that came from something called newspapers.
They traveled back and forth through Teleportation Arrays, spreading news of the martial world everywhere until everyone knew it. Chen Xiucai at the alley entrance said that this was "knowing everything under heaven without leaving one's home."
"The boss has been frowning