Little White's Calamity

Ginger Mountain.

Along a tributary fifty li from Coiling Dragon Lake stood a small town, with sizable docks, restaurants, teahouses, and cloth shops. Ginger Mountain, however, was relatively remote.

A residence stood at the foot of the mountain. There were villages nearby, not too far away, but its owners were clearly the family of a country gentleman living in seclusion. Though springtime visitors occasionally gathered at the mountain pavilion with wine and courtesans to compose poems and exchange matching lines, ordinary people did not dare disturb them.

The residence had a small garden, blue-brick walls, red-tiled roofs, and three successive courtyards. Elsewhere, it might not have amounted to much, but here it counted as a grand estate.

Dusk had fallen. Evening smoke curled upward through the drizzling rain, and the branches of the few trees near the residence swayed gently. The old trees had actually withered during the locust plague; those now swaying in the autumn wind were young trees transplanted here.

The young trees had slender branches. The autumn wind was gentle yet merciless, stripping away leaves and snapping twigs, a sight that filled anyone watching with a faint sense of desolation.

Here at the mountain's foot, even in the autumn rain, a dull-gray wild rabbit hopped through the grass about half a li from the residence, searching for food. It stopped upon finding a clump of sweet, tasty grass.

It had only quietly eaten a few mouthfuls when it suddenly startled, its ears pricking upright.

A band of government soldiers was approaching from that direction. Their leader raised a hand, and their already softened footsteps stopped. Now not even a breath could be heard. There were over a hundred men, yet they maintained utter silence.

Stranger still, a thin glow enveloped every one of them. It not only