Turning Stone to Gold, Turning Paper into Silver

Yesterday, Master Chen, owner of a sauce shop in Mingde Ward, held a wedding banquet for his son.

Guests sat high at the tables as a lavish feast was laid out. The celebration was in full swing when Rogue Wang showed up.

Everyone in the surrounding villages knew what sort of man he was. The servants wanted to send him away, but the shameless rogue came over with a beaming smile, congratulated the groom, and refused to leave.

As the old saying went, it was hard to strike someone who greeted you with a smile. Besides, it was a wedding, and throwing him out by force would be inauspicious. He looked like he just wanted to grab a seat, mooch some food, and have a drink, so they decided to let him eat quickly and be on his way.

As if Rogue Wang would settle for that.

He kicked in widows' doors, dug up the graves of families with no heirs, and had a belly full of schemes. Did anyone really think he'd come just for a bite of the wedding feast?

That was underestimating his professional skills.

Rogue Wang went into the banquet hall, found a small dish, piled two pounds of pig's head meat onto it, covered it with a cloth, and made his way over to Master Chen.

Master Chen was talking with a table of local gentry when Rogue Wang came up, carrying his plate of pig's head meat.

"Congratulations, Master Chen!"

That was how you cleared the way. If you started with an auspicious greeting, people couldn't turn you away without courting bad luck.

The gentlemen at Master Chen's table were annoyed to see him. Who among them didn't know Rogue Wang, the bully who preyed on men and women and splashed human waste into people's homes? But they couldn't chase him off. He'd come to offer congratulations, after all.

If this had been a tea stall frequented by rough sorts, there wouldn't have been any fuss. If they took a dislike to you, they'd have beaten you out the door, no matter what you said.

But this was the wedding banquet of the young master of the Chen Family Sauce Shop, and the guests were gentry and wealthy merchants, men of standing who had to maintain appearances. They couldn't make a scene.

That was what people meant when they said a gentleman couldn't beat a villain: a gentleman followed the rules, while a villain had no shame.

"I've come to offer my congratulations, gentlemen. I specially braised a pig's head, just to bring it for you all to try today."

Master Chen thought, We've got plenty of fine food and wine on this table, including pig's head meat. Why would I want yours?

But before he could say anything, Rogue Wang had already whipped out a little knife, neatly sliced the meat, and put some on each gentleman's plate.

"Try it! Go on, have a taste! It's delicious!"

Now the meat was on their plates, and it was awkward to refuse. Master Chen thought, Well, we might as well try it.

After swallowing a slice, he was still wondering why it tasted just like the pig's head meat on his own table.

Of course it did. That rotten Rogue Wang had picked the meat off another table when he came in. For all he knew, it had been braised in the very same pot. How could it taste any different?

"Master, doesn't the meat taste good?" the shameless Rogue Wang asked.

"Good. Mm, it tastes fine." What else could Master Chen say? He had to be polite.

"Wonderful! I'm glad you like it, Master! Your humble servant is here to collect his reward!"

Rogue Wang bent over and stretched both hands above his head, asking for a tip.

Master Chen and the others looked at him, thinking, Do you have no shame at all? Did we say we wanted to eat it? You insisted we try it, and now you want a reward?

But there was no way around it. They had eaten the meat. If they refused to pay, the rogue would flop to the ground, roll around, and make a scene, accusing these millionaires of eating his meat without paying. What about the wedding going on next door? He might have no shame, but they did.

"Fine. How much are you asking for?"

"Heh, Master Chen, two hundred taels of silver."

A thief could bite once and leave a wound three inches deep.

Rogue Wang had no shame at all. He was asking two hundred taels for a few slices of pig's head meat. At the prices of the Great Jing Dynasty, that was enough to start ten pig farms.

"What, did you braise Marshal Tianpeng himself?"

"I haven't got the money on me. Let's report this to the authorities, then."

"Master Chen, don't say that. Come on, since it's such a joyous day for your son, I'll add to the good fortune. Give me twenty taels, and I'll count the rest as my wedding gift."

Anyone with even a shred of shame couldn't have said that: two hundred taels for a slice of pork, but give me twenty and I'll count the rest as my wedding gift.

If you tossed a man like that into a pack of hungry dogs, they'd tear him apart and chew every bone clean. Even then, his heart might be all that was left.

Why?

Dogs ate even shit. They wouldn't touch his heart because they'd think it was filthy.

Master Chen didn't want to argue with the scoundrel. Just looking at him was irritating. Twenty taels could keep an ordinary family scraping by for two or three years, but it was nothing to wealthy gentry like them.

"How about this? I don't have much silver on me. I'll write you a promissory note, and you can go collect it at the sauce shop."

As he spoke, Master Chen wrote out the note, eager to get the scoundrel out of there. Rogue Wang had landed his first shakedown and happily took the note to the sauce shop to collect his money.

But he hadn't counted on a new manager having just arrived at the shop that day. The man was a distant relative of Master Chen's, a former escort who knew martial arts, broad and burly, with a body full of fighting skills.

The manager didn't know Rogue Wang. Seeing such a scumbag swagger in with a promissory note, acting like he owned the place, he asked what was going on. Twenty taels for a slice of pork?

The manager thought, This is just extortion. I'm not paying.

When Rogue Wang heard that he wouldn't get his money, how could he accept it? They argued back and forth. When the other man tried to drive him out, Rogue Wang lunged at him and started grappling. But the manager knew martial arts. How could Rogue Wang possibly match him?

After a few shoves, the manager pushed him down, and Rogue Wang took a hard fall. That sent him into a rage. He pulled out the knife he'd used to slice the meat.

"I'll kill you!"

Rogue Wang hadn't really meant to hurt anyone. A rogue relied on changing tactics and shamelessly bullying people; he didn't have the guts to kill. He'd only brandished the knife to scare the manager into handing over the money.

But the man had spent his life among the martial world, and he was a lot more ruthless than Rogue Wang.

The moment he saw the knife come out, he knocked it aside with one hand and thrust forward with the other.

With a sharp crunch, the knife came back the way it had come, stabbing straight into Rogue Wang's chest.

The people around them were stunned. Rogue Wang was stunned too. As he stared at the knife embedded in his chest, his trembling hands shook as he managed to speak:

"That'll be five thousand taels!"

With a gurgle, the corpse fell to the ground.

Rogue Wang, the thoroughly wicked scoundrel of Shallow Water Pier, was dead. Even at the very end, he was still thinking about shaking someone down.

As the old saying went, make allowances for someone once, and there would always be a second time.

This greedy, insatiable rogue was not someone you could deal with by tolerating him or backing down. Take one step back, and he'd take ten steps forward. Evil men like that needed a harder man to grind them down.

Later, when the yamen runners arrived and saw that the dead man was Rogue Wang, they all clapped and cheered.

The constables and bailiffs knew how wicked the rogue was, but they'd never had an excuse to arrest him. Now someone had killed him, and the people had been rid of a menace.

Rogue Wang had drawn his knife first, and the manager had acted in self-defense. There were witnesses throughout the sauce shop. Under the law, the manager was acquitted.

The Lantern of Life finished playing. The life of the corpse Lin Shou had sewn up was recorded in full in the Record of Selling Corpses.

The Yin-Yang Abacus jingled: heaven, earth, black, yellow—each had its price.

The Record of Selling Corpses appraised the corpse as Yellow-Grade, third rank.

Lin Shou received a "corpse-selling" reward.

A paper ingot of silver, patterned like a honeycomb and shaped like a pig's kidney, with the character for "greed" in its center. It was heavy in his hand.

Greed-Abstinence Silver.

The Sutra of the Eight Great Awakenings said that Buddhism had three abstinences: greed, anger, and delusion. Excessive desire brought suffering; the toil of birth and death arose from craving. The mind was never satisfied and only sought more, thereby multiplying its sins.

This Greed-Abstinence Silver embodied the greed in the human heart.

Lin Shou rose and fetched a small incense burner for sandalwood. He lit the paper Greed-Abstinence Silver with a candle and used it as incense. Wisps of smoke drifted into his nose, and complicated, uncanny Buddhist teachings flooded his mind.

Greed, anger, and delusion; the seven emotions and six desires; the Buddha's precepts. The mortal world held three thousand splendors, all causes and conditions arose and fell, and all things were empty...

At dawn the next day, the eastern sky began to pale, and roosters crowed to herald the morning.

Lin Shou sat cross-legged all night like an old monk in meditation. Suddenly, he opened his eyes, and all worldly greed had vanished from his gaze.

He had attained enlightenment.

He casually picked up the rice paper on the table and began crafting paper offerings. Before long, ingots of solid gold and silver glittered all over the floor, clattering beneath his feet.

Turning stone to gold, turning paper into silver.