The White Bamboo courtyard.
In the quiet room, the candle flame danced soundlessly. The youth and the man sat at the same table.
Purple Bamboo rested his full weight against the chair back, his eyes fixed blankly on empty space. The tea before him had gone cold, yet dry skin clung to his lips.
"I love old paintings, Young Hero Pei," he murmured. "...It began on the eleventh of July."
July eleventh. Summer. Rain pattered down.
Deep night.
Purple Bamboo reclined on his couch, reading the Court Gazette by candlelight, when three wet knocks suddenly sounded at the door.
Xu Jianzheng rose and pulled it open. Candlelight spilled out onto an old friend beneath the steps, someone he had not been in touch with for a long time: Zhang Zijing, a renowned painter from the neighboring province.
His clothes and hair were soaked, his only raincloth covering the book chest on his back. His face was pale from the cold, but his eyes shone, and an excited smile played about his lips.
The moment he saw Purple Bamboo, before he could even enter, he eagerly caught the man's sleeve. "Jianzheng, I've found a lead on that Immortal Painting Scroll!"
"The 'immortal painting' was a legend from thirty years ago, its truth hard to distinguish from falsehood."
With a creak, Purple Bamboo pushed his chair back and rose. He scanned the bookshelf, took down a small booklet, and set it before Pei Ye. There was no telling how many times he had read it; it opened straight to that page.
"It is recorded in the Local Worthies Volume of the Yinyang County Gazetteer: 'Xifang Tian, a native of Yinyang, was the son of Zaiyu, an officer in the provincial army. Tian disliked warfare and loved painting from childhood, daubing dozens of