The pen name Willow Spring

"Sir, this is Longchuan's pre-rain Longjing tea, brewed with spring water from Verdant Peak Mountain."

Zhi Mo turned out to be a girl of fifteen or sixteen, with delicate features, a blue robe, and her hair tied up, her figure graceful.

After serving tea to Zhou Yi and the shopkeeper, Zhi Mo walked away at an unhurried pace to help a newly arrived scholar choose some books.

Zhou Yi did not know what to make of Top Scholar Hall's proprietor. To take a business this far, with every detail striking straight at a scholar's weak spot, was probably unique even in Great Qian.

"Please, sir, sit down and we can talk," the shopkeeper said.

"Thank you."

Working alongside Zhang Cheng every day, Zhou Yi had gradually absorbed his influence and occasionally received a pointer or two from him. His knowledge of tea had improved considerably.

Zhang Cheng's favorite saying was that wine lifted the spirits and bolstered courage, while tea nurtured one's disposition and cultivated the self.

Zhou Yi was deeply puzzled. Did the man want to lift his spirits or nurture himself...?

The tea was a tender green, its fragrance pure and lofty, its taste sweet and mellow.

"Excellent tea!"

"Longchuan Longjing was personally designated an imperial tribute tea by the founding emperor. Unfortunately, the pre-Qingming tea is too much in demand. With so many high officials and nobles in the Capital, the fresh pre-Qingming tea sells out before the month ends."

The shopkeeper clearly adored calligraphy. Even while drinking tea and chatting, he did not forget to leaf through the manuscripts.

"Sir, your script has Lord Shiheng's flowing elegance without losing the upright precision of the Palace Pavilion Style. One could say it forms a school of its own."

"You flatter me, shopkeeper. I merely copied a colleague's calligraphy models."

Zhou Yi savored the tea carefully. He could faintly detect a trace of spiritual energy within it, but sadly, it was a hundredfold inferior to Drunken Spring Return.

Zhang Cheng truly was a reclusive master, so his calligraphy naturally possessed a flowing elegance. Because he needed to transcribe books, he had also incorporated the upright precision of the Palace Pavilion Style, forming his unique "Zhang Style."

"Even if you did not create it yourself, sir, your calligraphy can still be called masterful. Perfectly blending two styles is an extremely difficult feat in itself."

At the word "colleague," the shopkeeper's expression remained unchanged, but his tone grew a little more respectful.

After leafing through several scrolls of Daoist scriptures, the shopkeeper of Top Scholar Hall recognized them as orthodox texts from the Daoist Order's Daoist Canon, not spurious Outer Dao scriptures that borrowed the names of ancient sages to hoodwink ordinary people.

Taken together, these things suggested that this young gentleman's background was anything but simple.

"Shopkeeper, this spring water tastes extraordinary," Zhou Yi asked. "Would you mind telling me where it comes from?"

"Why would I mind? It isn't a private spring."

"The spring is on Verdant Peak Mountain outside the city," the shopkeeper said with a smile. "As for its exact location, sir, follow the stream feeding Jade Waves Pool upstream. You'll find it at the stream's end."

"So it's the spring that feeds Jade Waves Pool. No wonder the water has such spiritual vitality."

Zhou Yi remembered Jade Waves Pool vividly. An old dragon had once lived there in seclusion, only to die in the Punishment Office Prison.

The two chatted over tea. Having viewed the memories of countless members of the Demon Race, Zhou Yi was extraordinarily knowledgeable, while the shopkeeper, surrounded by ten thousand books, could be said to know the affairs of the world.

The more they talked, the better they got along. Before they knew it, over an hour had passed, and the tea had been refreshed several times.

Then, after turning past the twelve scrolls of Daoist scriptures, the shopkeeper came upon a stack of vernacular tales of ghosts, spirits, and strange happenings: Tales of the Executioner.

While transcribing the Daoist scriptures, Zhou Yi had also reorganized, reformatted, revised, and recopied the Tales of the Executioner he had written earlier.

The first draft of Tales of the Executioner had simply set down his own experiences and the stories told by other executioners in plain vernacular. Later, as fresh stories grew scarce and too many plots repeated themselves, Zhou Yi began revising the contents.

For stories to spread, they had to be novel and interesting. After organizing and reworking them, he produced a second edition.

This was now the third edition. Building on their entertainment value, he had embellished and polished the tales, making slight changes to their plots and adding more twists and turns than the original version had contained.

Zhou Yi knew his abilities were ordinary. After years of revisions, this was the limit of what he could currently achieve, so he finally decided to collect the manuscripts into a book.

"This story seems similar to Bewitching Ghost, Jiaoli."

After reading the first tale, the shopkeeper frowned slightly. "Bewitching Ghost, Jiaoli is a lowbrow banned book, but this story warns ordinary people that anyone who lives with a ghost will inevitably suffer harm. Still, the scholar Liu Xi and the female ghost Zhu Meiniang are clearly the same..."

*???*

Zhou Yi nearly choked on his tea. What sort of book was Bewitching Ghost, Jiaoli?

"Shopkeeper, have you seen this story before?"

"More than just this one."

The shopkeeper gave him a smile any man would understand. Seeing that Zhi Mo was making tea for the scholar, he discreetly took several books out from behind the counter.

Bewitching Ghost, Jiaoli, Ox-Headed Monk, Golden Rooster Repays Kindness...

Zhou Yi flipped through a few pages at random and wished he could send their authors straight to heaven with the Purple Ying Sword.

The stories in these books were very familiar. Several cautionary tales from Tales of the Executioner had been forcibly rewritten into thoroughly pornographic banned books about illicit affairs with demons, monsters, and ghosts.

Most were credited to authors with names like Nameless, Anonymous, or Laughing Scholar...

"To tell you the truth, I am the author of Tales of the Executioner."

Zhou Yi's face flushed slightly as he explained, "I had seen so many demons harm people that I wrote these stories as a warning. I never imagined that, as they spread..."

"So that's how it happened."

The shopkeeper did not doubt him.

In the third edition of Tales of the Executioner, every story ended with a note explaining why people should not live with demons, listing simple methods for restraining the fox demons and lesser ghosts in the story, and using the tales to spread some basic knowledge of the Great Qian Code.

To the shopkeeper, the Great Qian Code was as commonplace as eating and drinking. To the common people at the bottom of society, however, it was obscure and difficult to understand. Often, they did not even know when they had broken the law.

The more the shopkeeper read, the more he liked it. The book contained one hundred and eight stories, all written in accessible language and carrying profound lessons.

This book will be a hit!

The shopkeeper had read widely and possessed excellent literary judgment, but unlike most scholars, he assessed things more from a business perspective.

He did not look down on vernacular writing in the slightest. Many bookshops in Chongren Ward survived by secretly printing banned vernacular books.

"Sir, would you like to have this printed and published? Top Scholar Hall is willing to offer five hundred taels as your author's fee."

Zhou Yi shook his head in refusal, and the shopkeeper assumed he found the price too low.

"That is already an extremely generous price. Even the bestselling literary collections on the market command no more than a thousand taels."

"There are things you may not know, sir," the shopkeeper explained. "Leaving aside printing costs and the risk of unsold stock, even if it sells exceptionally well, only the first batch will be profitable. Within a few days, other bookshops will be competing to print and sell it."

"I agree to have it printed and sold, and I don't want a fee."

Zhou Yi held up three fingers. "I want thirty percent of the net profit from sales."

"This kind of arrangement is unprecedented..."

The shopkeeper swiftly ran the numbers in his head.

The labor costs of printing were known. Each book would sell for two tenths of a tael, yielding a profit of one and a half tenths. After deducting thirty percent for labor, materials, and time along the way, they would have to sell roughly five thousand copies to cover an author's fee of five hundred taels.

For a new book from Top Scholar Hall, printing and selling five thousand copies already counted as a runaway success. That was why the shopkeeper had called the author's fee extremely generous.

With a thirty-percent share of net profits, however, the payout would remain below five hundred taels as long as sales did not exceed fifteen thousand copies.

This deal is worth making!

"Sir, shall we sign a contract now?"

The shopkeeper took out a standard contract. Top Scholar Hall enjoyed a far-reaching reputation and printed hundreds of new books each year. All he needed to do was replace the fixed author's fee with a share of net profits.

Zhou Yi read it through. The general terms posed no problem.

Compared with the thick stacks of contracts from his previous life, this one-page agreement of a few hundred words had a hundred loopholes he could pick out.

The method of calculating net profits alone would let Top Scholar Hall easily whittle all the profits down to nothing and obtain a book for free.

A contract, after all, guarded against gentlemen, not scoundrels.

Of course, Zhou Yi did not care much about the contract in the first place. Being steady and cautious did not mean being a turtle with its head tucked into its shell.

If Top Scholar Hall dared strike first, then, in keeping with his central principle of never letting vengeance wait overnight, an immortal sword would come slashing down that very evening.

The name signed at the end was the shopkeeper's: He Yongyan.

"That will do, but we need to add one clause."

"Divide the one hundred and eight stories into three volumes, first, middle, and last, and sell them separately," Zhou Yi said.

Shopkeeper He considered this privately. Selling them separately would not only yield greater profits but also effectively hinder piracy. Once the first volume became a hit, it would greatly enhance Top Scholar Hall's reputation as well.

"A brilliant idea, sir. May I ask your honored surname, so we can credit you in the book?"

"Just use Hermit Willow Spring," Zhou Yi said.

Shopkeeper He understood. Books of strange tales and supernatural events were not considered mainstream in Great Qian, and vernacular writing sat at the very bottom of the hierarchy of contempt. Their authors rarely used their real names.

"Excellent. Then let me wish your new book great success in advance, Hermit."

"Tomorrow, I'll find someone to proofread it," Shopkeeper He said. "They may remove certain passages or words to avoid taboos. I hope you won't mind, Hermit."

"That's fine."

From the moment he began writing Tales of the Executioner, Zhou Yi had taken care to avoid taboos.

During his second revision, he had also deleted several stories that exposed officialdom, alluded to the imperial court, or mocked the ways of the world.

The purpose of Tales of the Executioner had never been to leave his name in the annals of history, nor to pour out his heart and express his ideas.

Zhou Yi had seen countless demons, monsters, and ghosts in the Punishment Office Prison and grieved over the many hardships of ordinary people. He had written this book to prevent the same tragedies from happening again.

Ideals, worldviews, spiritual nourishment-all these were far too distant from the lives of Great Qian's poorest people. Better to put a few more meaningful stories into circulation.

Just as he had written at the beginning of Tales of the Executioner: if someone could take warning from it and escape disaster, then this book would not have been written in vain...