The Storyteller Speaks of the Eight Sects of the Jianghu

That day, Wang Er accepted Lin Shou's Greed-Abstinence Silver.

When he got home that evening, he was overjoyed, eating two extra bowls of rice—his recent income had been quite generous.

He dug through the coal ash under the kang, fished out a small iron box, and opened it. Inside was still five taels of silver, the money he'd saved over years of hauling heavy loads at the dock as a porter.

"Fan Ge, it's not that I want to covet your silver, but I'm really strapped for cash, life's been rough. Your wife raising a kid on her own can't be easy either, and your five taels probably won't be enough to help her anyway. Better to help me first. She's bound to remarry sooner or later, and when she does, I'll find her a good man to take care of her. You can rest easy."

When a person does something shameful, their heart grows uneasy.

And when the heart is uneasy, they start talking nonsense.

Look at what Wang Er said—was that even human speech?

"Your money won't do any good, so I'll keep it safe for you. Your wife's definitely going to remarry, and when she does, I'll play matchmaker."

If the dead porter Fan Ge had known this from the underworld, he'd have dragged Wang Er down to hell and shoved him into the oil vat for frying ghosts.

The heart is hidden behind the belly. In life, they'd shared a bond thick as blood, and Fan Ge trusted him enough to entrust his silver. But Wang Er let money blind his eyes and greed blacken his heart.

Wang Er pocketed the silver, then twisted his thoughts every which way to soothe his conscience, deceiving himself.

He added the money he'd gotten from Lin Shou to the iron box, stashed it back under the kang in the coal ash.

But no sooner had he buried it than a worry crept into his heart: with so much silver, what if someone stole it?

He couldn't sit still, couldn't find peace. He dug the silver back out from under the kang and tucked it against his body.

That night, when the wind rustled the window paper with a sound no louder than a mosquito's buzz, Wang Er jolted awake, face pale, drenched in cold sweat.

He felt his chest—the silver was still there—but couldn't rest easy. He got up, slipped on his shoes, and checked the door bolt and window latch, paranoid that a thief might have sneaked in to steal his silver. This repeated several times through the night.

The next day on the street, one hand clutched the silver in his bosom like his very lifeblood, he glanced around nervously.

Every passerby he saw looked hostile; everyone seemed like a thief. Those two people whispering behind their hands—were they plotting to steal his silver?

All day long, clutching the silver, he couldn't eat or drink, his mind in a haze, his steps unsteady, dark circles under his eyes. He looked like an opium addict.

A sickness of the heart can kill. Wang Er, consumed by fear day and night, gradually lost his mind. He stopped eating and drinking, his body wasting away.

Within three days, his face had taken on a sickly pallor. Standing by the counter at the teahouse, a gust of wind nearly knocked him over. It was clear the man was done for.

"Wang Er, are you feeling unwell lately? The teahouse hasn't been busy these past two days. Why not take a couple of days off and rest at home?"

Shopkeeper Xia noticed Wang Er seemed ill and asked out of concern, but it only terrified Wang Er, who was already as jumpy as a startled bird, even more.

"Why is she telling me to go home? What's she plotting? Has she set thieves near my house to rob me of this silver?"

Mad. The man had gone mad.

Shopkeeper Xia was the teahouse's owner, from the famous Shu Merchant family. The tea leaves she sent annually to Kunning Palace—just a pinch of the dregs would be enough to keep a teahouse clerk fed and clothed for life.

Would she covet your few taels of silver?

On any normal day, the clerk Wang Er would have understood that logic. But not today.

In his madness, Wang Er never noticed that the two taels of Greed-Abstinence Silver Lin Shou had rewarded him with—the silver he clung to like his life—had turned black from the greed festering in his heart.

It was clear this cursed object was about to claim a life.

Inside the teahouse.

Lin Shou sat at a table, sipping cheap tea and cracking melon seeds, watching Wang Er, who was propped against the counter and nearly dead. He clicked his tongue and shook his head. This guy was in the late stages of paranoid delusion.

The power of the Greed-Abstinence Silver was no joke. A perfectly healthy man, eaten alive by greed, had turned into a ghost of himself.

No wonder they said a man must cultivate his character.

Lin Shou knew this experiment had gone far enough. If he let it continue, the man would really die, and that would be a sin.

Wang Er had only betrayed his conscience and stolen someone else's money—a flaw in private virtue, but not a capital crime. This punishment was enough; there was no need to take his life.

Besides, Lin Shou wasn't some righteous hero or moral saint. Everything he did was on a whim, following his mood.

This time, he'd used the Paper-to-Silver Art mainly to test the Greed-Abstinence Silver's power, with punishing Wang Er and standing up for the porter's wife and daughter as secondary concerns.

Lin Shou snapped his fingers.

The Greed-Abstinence Silver burst into flames, turning to green smoke in an instant. And with that fire, Wang Er's bloated greed burned away as well.

"Ah!" Wang Er suddenly yelped, pulling the silver from his chest. Somehow, two taels had gone missing! His vision spun at first, but then his mind cleared, and he saw things clearly.

"Good riddance! I was blinded by greed!"

Ill-gotten gains burn the hands. Losing the silver broke the spell, letting him let go of his obsession.

"Shopkeeper, I just remembered a matter my brother entrusted to me. Please grant me a day off—I'll be back soon."

Shopkeeper Xia was reasonable. Seeing that Wang Er had been distracted these past two days, she figured something was up and nodded her approval.

With permission granted, Wang Er left the teahouse and walked straight out of the city without stopping. He found his brother's wife and daughter and returned the silver.

Once the silver was returned, Wang Er's heart was completely at ease. His appetite returned, and he could eat and sleep again.

So, a man must not do evil just because others won't know.

A moment of greed, a lifetime of living like a ghost.

But later, when Wang Er tried to recall those hazy days, he could no longer remember what had caused them.

Who gave the silver, how it was lost, how his eyes had gone blind with greed at the time—none of it could be recalled. It was as if the memories tied to it had been burned clean away by a single fire.

All he remembered was that on the day he returned the silver, his heart had been open and clear, utterly at peace.

Wang Er's greed for silver had run its course. The wife and daughter of the dead porter had received the silver that was rightfully theirs.

Lin Shou, the mastermind behind it all, was now sitting leisurely in a teahouse, listening to a storyteller.

Although the Qingcheng Teahouse was backed by a major tea merchant from the Shu Region, the branch they'd opened in the Capital City wasn't a high-end establishment. Common folk could walk right in, and the tables were mostly set with affordable snacks and coarse tea.

Lin Shou couldn't tell whether they ran it as a hobby or if it was a deliberate business strategy to avoid competing head-on with the other big tea merchants who ran upscale teahouses in the Capital—sidestepping the race entirely by going for a commoner-friendly tier.

Either way, the teahouse's decor and atmosphere were pretty decent for a commoner like him.

The only weak point was the storyteller they'd hired.

Now, it's true that older storytellers are more valuable—the old master's life experience and breadth of tales were vast, and his skill with narrative hooks and twists was polished.

But you still couldn't let him get too old.

The old master the Qingcheng Teahouse had brought in, as one spiteful heckler put it, was "surfing with one foot in the coffin." When he lifted a cup of tea, his hand shook so badly half of it spilled out—he was just here to earn his coffin money.

The old master would tell a passage, and half of it would be mumbled, his voice lacking strength. It really wasn't pleasant to listen to. So even though the Qingcheng Teahouse was cheap, it was often half-empty.

Lin Shou could understand that, though. He saw himself as a lowly commoner scraping by at the bottom of society—not one to be picky.

Today, the storyteller was reciting The Eight Sects of the Jianghu.

Lin Shou had been in this world for a while now and had picked up some knowledge of the local customs. He knew that The Eight Sects of the Jianghu was the most common and versatile template in the storyteller's trade.

A foundational script for beginners.

The whole thing was a long, sprawling serial. Most storytellers only picked out the segments they knew. The book wound around its narrative hooks, and no one really knew how long it was—no one had ever been heard telling it from start to finish.

In simple terms, it was about the strange people and extraordinary tales of the eight trades of the Jianghu: "Gold, Skin, Color, Hanging, Flat, Willow, Tune, and Group."