Following the Nine-Bend Guest-Greeting Corridor Ning Tian had mentioned, he walked along the Glazed Stone Path beneath his feet. It wound and twisted, leaving the interior hidden from view, quite in keeping with the principle that water brought wealth through nine bends, while a straight course carried it away.
Even if villains did manage to break in, they would probably have to circle these twisting corridors over and over, perhaps still without finding a single occupied pavilion by the time they were caught.
After Chen Ping had wandered along, stopping here and there for at least the time it took to drink a cup of tea, a tiny figure appeared between two screens in the corridor ahead.
Chen Ping rubbed his eyes and looked closely. That tiny figure was actually a little girl, eleven or twelve at the very most. Her small face was round, fair, and soft, with a faint, healthy pink flush that made one want to give it a gentle poke.
At that moment, the little girl was red in the face as she struggled to... wriggle through a gap so narrow that even a slightly larger dog would have trouble squeezing through.
The corridor Chen Ping stood in divided the eastern and western residences. The gaps between the screen-like partitions, each decorated with intricate glazed patterns, were twenty centimeters wide at most. No adult could possibly squeeze through.
"Heave-ho!"
With that childish little cry, the girl finally pulled herself out of the gap like a radish being uprooted.
"Y-you're Chen Ping, right?"
Having laboriously wriggled through the partition, the little girl scrambled up from the ground.
She first patted the nonexistent dust off her bottom, then tidied the two little buns at the back of her head before pointing at Chen Ping and speaking.
"Yes, I'm