"Have you heard?"
In Shenjing's inner city, at a breakfast shop tucked away in an ordinary alley.
Dawn had yet to break, but the shop was already buzzing with voices, steam billowing through the air. A brine pot half the height of a man bubbled away at the entrance, sending up fragrant, rich oily vapors.
One diner set down his porcelain spoon and mysteriously told an old friend who had just taken a seat beside him, "The inside scoop on that big battle outside the city a few days ago is out!"
"Isn't it?" The newly arrived diner held a platter bearing a huge pork knuckle, soaked crimson and gleaming with brine. Stewed until it was so tender it nearly fell apart, the entire knuckle quivered with his movements. "It was a huge mess! The Yuan Family was conducting human experiments out in the suburbs!"
His voice rang with righteous indignation. "They were supposedly turning refugees into Yankui. What a sin!"
"Exactly!"
The first diner slapped his thigh, then took another mouthful of the fish-slice congee before saying indignantly, "They say some locals got snatched too. Terrifying."
Another diner had already begun gnawing on his pork knuckle. Hearing this, he seemed rather surprised and mumbled through a mouthful, "That can't be right, can it? Weren't they all those stinking outsiders?"
"Locals... chew chew... aren't short one bite of food... chew chew... what idiot would sell himself to those dirt-digging bastards from the Yuan Family?"
"Who says otherwise?"
The congee-drinker laughed heartily. "I was messing with you. The ones the Yuan Family grabbed were all street vagrants, plus those poor bastards from the outskirts. I was wondering why the city looked so much cleaner lately."
"Oh, so they were still just stinking outsiders."
Hearing that, the pork-knuckle eater breathed a sigh