The door hinges gave a faint, dry creak.
The scent of medicine mingled with the steam from the congee and spread through the side room, yet could not mask the smell that had settled there over so many years-the staleness of old wounds, the dampness of old wood, and the indescribable scent left behind by the slow oxidation of time itself.
Qin Tiexin set the wooden tray on the low stool beside the bed. He bent down first, supporting Old Qin's back with one hand while steadily slipping two pillows behind him with the other, their fabric washed stiff and their corners worn ragged. The old man was shockingly thin. Arms that had once bent iron rods single-handedly were now nothing but loose skin barely covering the jutting bones beneath. Qin Tiexin's movements were gentle and steady, but when his fingertips touched those bony shoulder blades, his heart still felt as though cold iron pincers had suddenly clamped around it, aching dully.
"Medicine first, or congee?" he asked, his voice deeper than usual, held low in his throat.
Old Qin struggled through several breaths, his chest rising and falling faintly. His cloudy eyes turned toward the bowl of thick, inky medicine, and he shook his head, his cracked lips moving. "Leave it... let's talk first."
Qin Tiexin did not urge him again. He silently moved the medicine half a foot farther away and picked up the minced-meat congee. It had been cooked just right, the grains of rice almost dissolving into the broth, the minced meat and finely chopped greens blending into a smooth, warm paste. He scooped up a spoonful, carefully blew it cool, and brought it to those withered lips.
The old man swallowed slowly, his Adam's apple laboring up and down. After barely managing a little under half a bowl, he turned his head away from the spoon.
"Enough." His voice was hoarse, as though forced through the cracks of a broken bellows.
Qin Tiexin put down the bowl, picked up the clean cloth he had prepared, and gently wiped the residue from the corners of his mouth. The room abruptly fell quiet, leaving only the ceaseless bubbling of the medicine pot on the little clay stove and Old Qin's heavy, labored breathing, like the pumping of a bellows.
"Tiexin," Old Qin suddenly said, his eyes fixed on an old cobweb somewhere among the rafters, his gaze a little vacant. "You're... sixteen now, aren't you?"
"Mm. Turned sixteen last month."
"Sixteen..." An exceedingly faint, almost imperceptible gleam flashed through Old Qin's eyes, like one last spark bursting from deep within dying embers. "The year I turned sixteen, I went on my first escort job with the escort agency. North, three hundred li, to Cangzhou Prefecture. We were guarding silk... ran into mountain bandits on the way."
Qin Tiexin listened quietly, his hands never stopping as he wiped the old man's twiglike fingers with the cloth, very gently, very carefully. The old man had mentioned fragments of these stories before, when drunk or idle, but never as he did today, solemnly and calmly telling them from the beginning.
"Back then, I was a reckless greenhorn, didn't know whether I'd live or die... with nothing but brute strength and our family's body-tempering method, I managed to take down three of them." The corner of Old Qin's mouth twitched with effort, as though he wanted to smile, but it only tugged at the deep, knife-carved lines across his face. "The escort chief said I was cut out for the jianghu. Gave me a nickname... 'Iron Hand Sword.'"
"Iron Hand Sword..." Qin Tiexin repeated softly. Those words carried the rough dust of the jianghu, impossible to reconcile with the old man in his memories, who would secretly tuck two extra pieces of rock sugar beneath his braised pork and bristle his mustache and glare when he refused to drink his medicine.
"That name had some standing around Northern Ji for a dozen years or more." Old Qin closed his eyes, as though dredging something from the depths of those faded memories. "Upholding justice, settling gratitude and grudges to my heart's content... heh. Looking back now, I was just a greenhorn who didn't know how high the heavens were or how deep the earth."
He stopped and remained silent for a long time. Time stretched and congealed amid the bubbling of the medicine. So long passed that Qin Tiexin thought he had fallen asleep and was about to tuck in his quilt when that hoarse voice sounded again, drier and more labored than before:
"When I was twenty-eight, I married. Your master's wife... was the daughter of a scholar in Cangzhou City. Gentle, could read, could play a little zither too. At first, her father looked down on a rough fellow like me who swung swords and staves... but she'd made up her mind." The faint curve at the corner of Old Qin's mouth vanished entirely, leaving nothing on his face but weary blankness. "The second year of our marriage, we had a boy. Sturdy little fellow... had a fine loud cry, a little like you when you were small."
Qin Tiexin's wiping hand went still.
"That autumn, I took a long-distance job, escorting a merchant caravan beyond the pass. Two months there and back." Old Qin's voice was flat, like a river sealed beneath thick ice, yet beneath that ice, terrible cracks were plainly spreading. "Before I left, your master's wife stayed up all night making twenty flatbreads. Insisted on stuffing them into my bundle, said they'd keep hunger at bay on the road. The boy... clung to my leg, crying as though his heart and lungs were being torn apart, his face smeared with tears and snot."
At that moment, the bubbling of the medicine pot suddenly grew extraordinarily loud, filling every inch of silence.
"When I came back..." Old Qin's Adam's apple bobbed violently, as though he had swallowed a sharp-edged stone. "My home was gone."
Those few words. So light, yet so heavy, like old nails coated in rust, driven one by one, hard into the heavy air.
"A gang of notorious bandits who'd drifted up from the south. Seven of them. Heard I had some savings and slipped in at midnight while I was away." Old Qin opened his eyes. Those once-cloudy eyes were now dark beyond fathoming, empty, swallowing all the light. "Your master's wife... was forced to tell them where the money was hidden. They... took the money, but still left no one alive."
Qin Tiexin's knuckles turned deathly white around the cloth, veins bulging on the back of his hand.
"By the time I rushed back, the people from the yamen... had already collected the bodies. The woman next door secretly slipped me something-" With immense difficulty, Old Qin turned his head little by little, directing his gaze toward the bottom drawer of the old wooden cabinet beside the bed. "...There. Open it."
Qin Tiexin rose and walked to the cabinet. The drawer scraped dryly as he pulled it open. It was empty save for an old brocade pouch, its color faded and its edges worn fuzzy, its dark red almost turned to brown. He picked it up. It was light, so light that it seemed to hold nothing at all.
"Open it." A faint tremor ran through Old Qin's voice, leaving no room for doubt.
Qin Tiexin loosened the drawstring, which had long since lost its elasticity. A small lock of fine, soft, pale-yellow hair, carefully bound with red thread, slipped out. There was also a tiny, fragile flower petal, long since dried and curled, its color impossible to distinguish.
"The baby hair we shaved off when the boy turned one. Your master's wife kept it. That petal... she picked it from the China rose in the courtyard on her last night. Wanted to press it in a book. Never got the chance."
Qin Tiexin spread his palm and looked at the two keepsakes resting there, so insignificant yet weighing a thousand jun. His whole arm felt heavy, so heavy he could barely hold it up.
"I knelt before their graves for an entire day." Old Qin continued, and at last a crack opened in that icebound voice. Beneath it surged scalding magma that had burned for thirty years. "Then I went looking for those seven men."