Where to Fish

"Done!"

Huang Shang pricked up his ears and listened closely to the commotion. The moment he heard the words "Lord Bao," his mind settled.

The burly man, however, turned pale. Bending at the waist, he said respectfully, "Could you be Lord Bao's son?"

The man looked utterly confused. "What are you talking about? I just came to pay my respects and mourn Lord Bao."

The burly man glared at him. "If you're not Lord Bao's son, why call him 'Lord'?"

The people around them nodded, their faces full of scorn.

The man was baffled.

Many people thought that commoners in ancient times were supposed to address officials as "Lord So-and-so."

In fact, before the Qing Dynasty, "lord" was generally used to address one's father or ancestors.

Calling someone "lord" was like calling him "Dad."

It was only in the Qing Dynasty that people began groveling and addressing their superiors as "lords."

In many later television dramas, people called everyone "lord," no matter the dynasty. Think of Book and Sword Gratitude and Revenge: Zhan Zhao went around saying "Lord Bao, Lord Bao" all day long. He was basically calling Bao Gong "Daddy Bao."

What a sight.

Some kids might be wondering: Uncle Huang Shang, why is everything in TV dramas wrong?

Actually, that's normal. Film and television are entertainment, not educational documentaries. Plenty of them are obviously fictionalized and shouldn't be taken as fact.

A few do respect history and meticulously recreate forms of address, etiquette, costumes, and props. The Longest Day in Chang'an is one example.

And it's not just television. Plenty of "common knowledge" circulating in real life is wrong, like the idea that frogs can be boiled alive in water warmed gradually, or that fish only have a seven-second memory.

The key is not to believe everything you hear.

Take the rumor in Dearest, for example: if your child goes missing, you have to wait twenty-four hours before you can file a police report.

That's a textbook falsehood, and a dangerous one.

In fact, six years before the film came out, the Ministry of Public Security had already decreed that whenever the police received a report of a missing or abducted child, they had to immediately open a criminal investigation and search for the child.

If someone who had seen the film really had a child go missing, but believed what it said and searched on their own before reporting it to the police a day later, they might truly lose their last chance.

But that was a digression. Back to the point: this Reincarnator had clearly picked up the television-drama habit of calling him "Lord Bao."

Under the crowd's scornful, contemptuous gazes, the man grew angry and clenched his fists.

But just then, a tender, pale hand rested on his shoulder.

A beautiful woman with snow-white skin appeared and gave him a slight shake of her head.

"Two Reincarnators!"

Huang Shang etched their appearances firmly into his memory.

Now he wasn't worried about drawing attention, because the pair had become the center of attention.

Everyone was watching them. No one would notice Huang Shang in the crowd.

After the woman stopped him, the man thought it over and let his anger subside. In a flash, the two vanished.

"So they're martial artists from the jianghu. No wonder they're so uncouth!"

"Move along! Move along!"

The pair had moved like ghosts and vanished in an instant, startling the crowd that had been glaring at them.

Just then, patrolmen came out of Kaifeng Prefecture to disperse the throng. The crowd broke up and went back to weeping and wailing.

Huang Shang alone turned and left at once. As soon as he got home, he spread out a sheet of paper and sketched the pair's faces.

Not every spy was skilled at drawing portraits. But in this age, when literary culture flourished, playing the qin, chess, calligraphy, painting, wine, and tea were all basic accomplishments for a scholar.

One article had described Song-dynasty aesthetics with the phrase "a thousand years ahead of the world."

That was no exaggeration.

Whether it was painting, calligraphy, tea ceremony, literature, or porcelain, the finest works of the Song Dynasty were unquestionably world-class—and even today, they were hard to surpass.

The scholars of this age were the elite of the elite.

They couldn't get by on rote learning alone; their studies ranged far and wide.

Zhang Zai, for instance, studied astronomy and the stars, and pondered how the heavenly bodies moved.

The original Huang Shang had been skilled at painting, too.

Drawing on the memory of what he'd just seen, he soon brought the man and woman to life on the page.

The paper, brush, and ink were limited, so the result wasn't especially polished, much less lifelike, but it was enough to recognize them.

Huang Shang let out a breath and smiled, invigorated.

His luck was good.

He'd found his targets.

Whenever a Reincarnator entered a Heavens Consciousness world, the Main God Temple issued them a main quest.

In the novice world of Book and Sword Gratitude and Revenge, Huang Shang's main quest involved the Red Flower Society, and his starting point was near Chen Jialuo.

The Main God Temple hadn't said so, but that was a perk reserved for beginners.

The Main God Temple was bent on plundering the Heavens Consciousness; it had no reason to make life difficult for its own subordinates.

So the man and woman had appeared at Kaifeng Prefecture and hadn't left right away. They also didn't seem eager to cause trouble. That meant their main quest was almost certainly somewhere within the Capital City.

"As long as they haven't completed their main quest yet, there's still a chance."

Huang Shang nodded.

Reincarnators had main quests, and he was sure to receive a mission of his own someday as he lay low in a world of fiction.

But since this was his first time infiltrating one, the Heavens Consciousness hadn't given him any orders.

Keeping his cover intact was already a great victory.

He could coast to an easy win, but that would be no better than a slow death. Only by making a name for himself in this world would he be able to face the storms ahead.

So after identifying the Reincarnators, the next step was to get close to them.

After thinking it over, Huang Shang took a scroll from under the table and spread it out.

It was a hand-drawn map of Kaifeng, with every street and alley clearly marked.

His finger moved across it, soon tapping several licensed inns.

Licensed inns were establishments approved by the authorities to brew their own wine, like star-rated hotels.

Then there were the lesser foot inns, low-end little lodgings along the street.

The Reincarnators weren't short on money, so they wouldn't go suffer in a foot inn.

Huang Shang had prepared in advance. There were seventy-two licensed inns in Eastern Capital Kaifeng Prefecture. He'd already made inquiries and marked down several of the finest, most popular ones.

There was a good chance the two Reincarnators were staying at one of them.

"If I happen to run into them there..."

Huang Shang closed his eyes. The scene took shape in his mind as he began to devise the shots, activating his Simulated Theater.

When he'd worked as an extra at Hengdian on Earth, there had been a period when anti-Japanese war dramas were all the rage, and he'd rushed from set to set every day.

He'd been torn apart in one scene in the morning, torn apart in another that afternoon, and torn apart again working overtime at night.

An old man had once told him that his name was too grand, since it sounded like "Emperor." An ordinary person couldn't live up to it.

Huang Shang hadn't believed him. He'd insisted on making his own way.

But things had been truly bleak back then. He'd lie under the covers and cry in silence.

How had they become stars? How many beatings had they taken? When would he become a star?

Reality wasn't Farewell My Concubine, so he'd once thought about changing careers, leaving the stage for the backstage.

But Huang Shang soon discovered that competition behind the scenes was even fiercer. He'd learned plenty of skills, but he couldn't specialize in any one of them, and in the end, he could only join a makeshift troupe.

Still, during that time, Huang Shang had found a way to amuse himself: he developed an ability called Simulated Theater.

In his imagination, he took on every role at once: director, lighting technician, cameraman, musician, artist, lead actor, supporting actor, and extra, staging a grand production all by himself.

And that was what he was doing now. He'd built a stage in his mind, added the two Reincarnators, and started simulating shot after shot.

Doctor Strange, Time Stone, ultra-low-budget edition.

Again and again.

At first, everything went smoothly.

But after a quarter of an hour, Huang Shang's brow suddenly furrowed.

His finger slowly traced two diagonal lines across the inns on the map, forming an ×.

He'd simulated one possible scenario.

The man was one thing. His emotions showed plainly on his face; he seemed like the sort who preferred to solve problems with his fists.

Most Reincarnators were like that.

But the woman was an unknown variable.

Women were naturally more perceptive and attentive to details. She was also beautiful, so people would treat her with special consideration. Inns were crowded places where all sorts of people came and went, and the servants there were sharp-eyed and shrewd. If he showed up nearby too many times, one of them might notice and mention it to the woman, revealing that he was deliberately trying to approach them.

No good.

He couldn't take that risk.

Huang Shang opened his eyes and continued moving his finger across the map, ruling out one place after another.

At last, his gaze sharpened. His finger stopped and tapped one spot.

That place was...

Great Xiangguo Temple!