Cui Jiuyang gave a rueful smile. "Sorry for troubling you to look after me again."
The Ninth Lady raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. "It's no trouble. You're very well behaved, anyway. I can do whatever I like with you."
Cui Jiuyang looked embarrassed. "Um... why am I naked?"
The Ninth Lady only smiled without answering.
Cui Jiuyang asked again.
She smiled even more happily.
But the brighter her smile grew, the more uneasy Cui Jiuyang felt.
She didn't see everything, did she?
What am I supposed to do now?
I've really lost out here.
Should I find a chance to see her naked too?
Then we'd be even.
After he had spent ages letting his imagination run wild, the Ninth Lady finally stopped laughing. "Your clothes were covered in blood, so of course they had to come off. I've washed them for you. They're folded on the chair beside the bed. Put them on yourself."
She stood and left.
Only after the door shut with a bang did Cui Jiuyang climb out of bed to get dressed.
But the door suddenly swung open again, startling him into hastily holding his robe in front of himself.
The Ninth Lady leaned halfway through the doorway, weighing a small string of copper coins in her hand. She deliberately craned her head this way and that, frightening Cui Jiuyang into hiding himself more carefully.
"What are you doing? I'm getting dressed!" he demanded.
"I'm going to buy pastries," she replied. "I'll use the copper coins you kept in your clothes for casting spells. Consider it your way of thanking me."
"Hey, who asks for their own thank-you gift?" Cui Jiuyang protested.
Bang... the door closed again.
Afraid she would double back once more, Cui Jiuyang checked several times before finally getting dressed.
Chapter 52: Funeral Couplets
"The food at the Fifth Master's place really is good."
Cui Jiuyang's cheeks bulged. Before he had even finished chewing, he took another bite of the beef-fat bun in his hand and a great gulp of soy milk.
The fat inside the bun was smooth and delicate, the filling rich with juices. As his teeth severed the beef fibers, he felt a little spring against them. Only the freshest beef, chopped into filling, could have produced that texture.
The filling was well seasoned too, using just three ingredients: salt, soy sauce, and ground Sichuan pepper.
The fresh meat's aroma was preserved to the fullest, while the salt and Sichuan pepper brought out the beef's distinctive flavor.
The soy milk took care to prepare as well. Good soybeans were fed into an old millstone, two small spoonfuls of water to one small spoonful of beans, and ground out turn by turn.
The milky-white soy milk was then strained through the finest steaming cloth, at least three times.
Finally, it was brought to a rolling boil and poured into beaten eggs, with the tiniest pinch of salt added. There must not be any detectable saltiness; its purpose was to give the soy milk a fuller body.
Prepared that way, the soy milk went down fragrant and silky, warming the stomach and brimming with the aroma of soybeans.
The Ninth Lady had long since finished eating. She sat beside him with her chin propped on her hand, watching Cui Jiuyang stuff buns into his mouth as though he were a starving ghost reborn, her eyes full of laughter.
Her gaze made Cui Jiuyang rather self-conscious, so he urged her to eat too. "Why aren't you eating? You're full after just one bun?"
The Ninth Lady shook her head. Perhaps noticing his embarrassment, she served herself another bowl of soy milk and sipped it slowly to keep him company.
This was the second day since Cui Jiuyang had awakened. Yesterday, the Ninth Lady had gone out to buy pastries and had not returned until evening.
When she came back, her eyes were red and swollen, as though she had been crying.
Cui Jiuyang had immediately wondered who had the sheer nerve to provoke the deputy general manager of the Jishui Water Palace in Jining City.
Only after asking her in detail did he learn that the Ninth Lady had gone to the Nuo Opera Troupe to bid farewell to its leader and the other performers.
Although the troupe leader had adopted her mainly to find an heir to his ancestral Nuo Mask, he had treated her well regardless.
At the very least, she had also gotten along fairly well with the others in the troupe. There had been clashes and heated arguments, but those were inevitable when people lived together every day.
At the troupe, the Ninth Lady had packed the personal belongings she needed and distributed everything else useful among the others as keepsakes.
The Ninth Lady was tenderhearted to begin with. As she handed out her belongings and reminisced with everyone, tears had begun to fall, and she had cried her heart out.
Cui Jiuyang was rather clueless about women and not much good at comforting people, so he had sat with her for a while on a sofa in the chamber of commerce's central hall.
After just a few words, however, he had made the Ninth Lady cry again.
Seeing that, Cui Jiuyang had hurried to console her. But some words of his must have been wrong, because the more he tried, the harder she cried. At his wits' end, he had simply sat beside her, staring blankly.
Finally, a maid from the chamber of commerce could not bear to watch any longer. She had come over to help and handed him a cup of tea. Only then did he remember that, after all that talking, he had not even poured her something to drink.
He had patted the Ninth Lady's shoulder and offered her the cup. "How about having some hot water first?"
The Ninth Lady had accepted it and sniffled a few times. Seeing the man staring helplessly at her, utterly at a loss, she had suddenly laughed through her tears.
Clueless though Cui Jiuyang was, he was not stupid. He had hastened to compliment her. "See? See? You look much prettier smiling than crying."
The Ninth Lady had thought she could hardly look pretty while laughing and crying at once. She had given Cui Jiuyang a smack, then turned and returned to her room.
Cui Jiuyang had been a little bewildered, unsure what that meant. Still, since the Ninth Lady had at least stopped crying, he had decided he was quite good at comforting people and gone back to his room to sleep.
Early the next morning, the Ninth Lady had knocked on his door and called him out for breakfast.
Once Cui Jiuyang had eaten six beef buns and drained two enormous bowls of soy milk, the Ninth Lady stopped him from eating any more.
"Oh, you've eaten so much already. You'll hurt yourself." She reached out and caught Cui Jiuyang's offending hand as it stretched toward a seventh bun.
Only then did Cui Jiuyang sheepishly withdraw his hand, even sucking the beef fat off his finger...
The Ninth Lady stood with a helpless air. "We still have to go see Mr. Xiang off. No more eating."
Only then did Cui Jiuyang remember that today was the day of Old Man Xiang's funeral procession, after his body had lain in state for three days.
Rickshaws were already waiting outside the chamber of commerce. The Ninth Lady declined to take a separate one and instead climbed into Cui Jiuyang's.
Cui Jiuyang thought nothing of it. His thinking was still shaped by habit: a hundred years later, a man and woman sharing a vehicle was perfectly normal.
But in this era, a man and woman who were not close blood relatives sharing a vehicle... well, even a couple whose match had been arranged and whose engagement was settled could hardly do that. Only a married woman, her hair wound into a wife's coiled bun, would ride together with her husband.
Otherwise, there was simply no way an unmarried man and woman would sit in the same vehicle.
Rickshaws had canopies, but those were only put up when it rained. Ordinarily, they were open on all sides.
With the two of them sharing a rickshaw, they inevitably drew pointing fingers and gossip from idlers along the way.
Why was that girl, with an unmarried maiden's fringe, riding with a man? They did not look like brother and sister.
Cui Jiuyang did not understand such things, but how could the Ninth Lady fail to?
She paid those looks no mind, however. Throughout the ride, she merely listened quietly as Cui Jiuyang chatted with the puller about anything and everything.
Old Man Xiang had lived in a poor alley on the west side of the city. The rickshaw could not reach his door and had to stop at the entrance to the alley.
Once they got out, Cui Jiuyang did not have a single coin on him, so the Ninth Lady took ten copper coins from her purse to pay the fare.
The puller knew how to sweet-talk people. "Thank you, ma'am."
Cui Jiuyang was just about to explain that they were not husband and wife when the Ninth Lady tugged his sleeve and led him into the alley.
As soon as they entered, they saw a great many funeral wreaths lined up against the wall. There apparently was not enough room for them all, for many were stacked against one another.
"Old Man Xiang was well liked," Cui Jiuyang said. "So many friends sent wreaths that they stretch all the way to the alley entrance."
The Ninth Lady slowed her steps and softly read the funeral couplets on the wreaths aloud.
"Flowing waters and the setting sun bear eternal sorrow; bitter winds and mournful rains carry a lifetime's grief."
The next read:
"His noble spirit has become a guest of Penglai; his virtuous example still graces the people of his hometown."
Reading those funeral couplets naturally stirred a sense of sorrow.
Both were from Jining City, and both earned their living on its streets. The Ninth Lady had crossed paths with Old Man Xiang a few times before and had heard stories about him.
Now, thinking that he was gone, and that he had met his end with such resolve and courage, she could not help feeling a trace of admiration amid her grief.
Cui Jiuyang evidently felt the same as the Ninth Lady. "Old Man Xiang... I thought he was all right. He was a little crafty, but anyone without a bit of cunning is a fool."
"Now that I think about what he said when he died, and that Heart-Removal Divination of his... I think I admire him a little."
The Ninth Lady nodded. "When he pulled open his chest and there was nothing inside, I was so shocked I didn't even know what I was thinking."
It was the same for everyone. Once the coffin was closed, those who had known you would pass their final judgment, and it would usually be a little kinder than the truth.
Perhaps that was the final warmth this cruel world offered a person at the end of a lifetime.
The two entered Old Man Xiang's home. A funeral couplet, written in bold, vigorous calligraphy, was pasted on the gate of his old residence.
The first line read: "Divining every secret of heaven, he knew fate in the realms of yin and yang."
The second line read: "Calculating worldly affairs to their end, one divination of life and death severed his earthly ties."
The horizontal inscription read: "A star returns to the Purple Mansion."
Chapter 53: Father
Old Man Xiang had no family.
There was not even anyone to inherit his old house.
Naturally, there was no family member to keep vigil for him either.
For the past three days, some of Old Man Xiang's friends, along with monks and elderly Daoist priests invited by Fifth Master Yang, had sat on either side, accompanying him through his final days at home.
Cui Jiuyang and the Ninth Lady went inside to pay their respects.
The Ninth Lady stood to one side while Cui Jiuyang crouched down. He drew three sheets from the thick stack of joss paper nearby, lit them from the eternal lamp at the head of the coffin, and placed them in the brazier before the bier.
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