On the morning of the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month.
Qin Tiexin lifted the lid of the rice jar and peered inside. Only a thin layer of brown rice remained at the bottom, not enough to cover an area the size of his palm. He reached in, carefully scraped it together, scooped it out, and weighed it in his hand. Two taels at most.
The bamboo basket beside it that held charcoal was empty too, with nothing left but fragments and ash.
He stood in the chilly kitchen, listening to the faint rumbling in his stomach, then looked toward the Heavenly Craft Workshop across the way-the clanging over there had not stopped all morning.
After standing there for a while, he turned and returned to the front shop. He took his thickest old padded jacket off the wall and put it on, then fetched a sturdy hemp rope from behind the door and wound it around his waist. At the doorway, he paused and glanced back at the cold, deserted shop, and at the forge fire that had long since gone out, leaving only pale gray embers.
Then he put up the door planks, one, two... temporarily shutting the sign reading "Qin Household Blacksmith Shop," and all the desolation and perseverance within, behind him.
After locking the door, he brushed nonexistent dust off his shoulders and strode toward the eastern docks.
Ink City had been built along a tributary of the Ink River, and the eastern docks, where goods were gathered and distributed, bustled all year round. Laborers, porters, merchants, and brokers crowded together, while the smells of sweat, fish, dust, and the distinctive odors of cargo mingled in the icy air.
Qin Tiexin's tall figure stood out in the crowd. He approached a group of laborers squatting out of the wind as they waited for work and squatted down as they did. Several older laborers beside him glanced at him, but seeing that he was young and unfamiliar, none spoke to him.
Before long, a foreman in a sheepskin coat walked over with a pipe in his mouth. He swept his gaze over the crowd and pointed at a batch of sacks piled on the bank. "Thirty sacks of polished rice. Carry them to the grain shop's back courtyard over there. Two copper coins a sack. Who's going?"
Several laborers immediately stood and gathered around him. Qin Tiexin rose too and silently followed behind.
The foreman looked him over. "New face? How strong are you? Each sack weighs eighty jin."
Qin Tiexin said nothing. He walked to the pile of rice, bent down, and swept his arms around, gripping the tied mouths of two sacks, one in each hand. Exerting his back and waist with a low shout, he actually lifted both sacks at once and settled them securely on his broad shoulders. With a hundred and sixty jin weighing on him, his footing did not falter in the slightest. He looked at the foreman. "Can I carry them like this?"
The laborers around him stared, their eyes fixed. The foreman nearly dropped his pipe and nodded hastily. "Yes! Yes! Lad... you've got some strength! We'll pay by the sack. Get moving!"
Without another word, Qin Tiexin carried the two sacks toward the grain shop. His strides were steady and swift, and a round trip took him half as long as anyone else. Others carried one sack at a time; he carried two throughout. In half a day, the thirty sacks were moved. Sweat had appeared on his forehead, but his breathing remained even.
The foreman counted out sixty copper coins for him, clicking his tongue in wonder. "Young fellow, with that build, you were born to earn your rice this way! Coming back tomorrow?"
"Yes." Qin Tiexin took the copper coins, counted them carefully, and tucked them into the deepest pocket inside his jacket. The sacks had rubbed his rough palms a little red, but this pain was not even a tenth of what he suffered when sparks burned him while forging.
At noon, he bought fifteen mixed-grain flatbreads from the cheapest stall beside the docks and squatted in a corner by a wall to finish them with the pickled-vegetable soup the stallholder provided free. The flatbreads were hard and scraped his throat, and the soup was watery, but they filled his stomach. That afternoon, he moved two loads of timber and one load of earthenware vats. By the end of the day, he had a hundred and twenty copper coins tucked inside his jacket, several new calluses on his palms, and shoulders worn pale on his padded jacket.
When work ended at dusk, he did not return directly to Soot Alley. Instead, he made a detour to a more distant rice shop in the western part of the city, bought twenty jin of the cheapest brown rice, then gritted his teeth and bought a small jar of lard and a small packet of salt. Passing the firewood market, he checked the prices, but in the end bought nothing. With the rice on his shoulder, he left the city and headed straight up Emerald Cloud Mountain.
In the mountain woods, he found a patch of withered shrubs and fallen trees. He pulled the hemp rope from his waist and bound his axe tightly to a thick branch he had picked up, making a crude, makeshift woodcutting blade. Chopping sounds rang through the woods, startling several jackdaws into flight. He selected only thoroughly dried hardwood branches and chopped two solid, large bundles. After tying them with the hemp rope, he slung them over his shoulder, one in front and one behind, and carried them down the mountain along with the twenty jin of rice.
By the time he returned to the shop, it was completely dark. The red glow from the Heavenly Craft Workshop across the way shone on his sweat-covered face and the worn cotton padding at his shoulders. He opened the door, unloaded the firewood and rice, and first carefully poured the rice into the jar. That bit of fresh rice finally stopped the bottom from looking so glaringly empty. Then he lit the stove-not the forge, but the small clay stove in the kitchen at the back. He broke a few dry branches to kindle it, and warmth gradually filled the room.
He scooped out several bowls of rice, added water, and cooked a pot of thick porridge. When it was nearly ready, he picked up a small lump of solidified lard with his chopsticks and dropped it in, then sprinkled in a few grains of salt. The fat melted across the surface, spreading its fragrance. Simple though it was, it was a warm meal such as he had not had in a long time.
He sat on a small stool, cradling a coarse earthenware bowl, and ate by the light of the stove, mouthful by mouthful, very slowly and carefully.
"Father, that brat... went to haul sacks at the docks."
In a secret room at the Heavenly Craft Workshop, Zhao Ming delivered his report with some excitement and some disdain. The bruising on his wrist had not entirely faded, and when he mentioned Qin Tiexin, a trace of wariness still lingered in his eyes.
Zhao Xuan was frowning over a ledger that flickered with a faint spiritual glow. At those words, he raised his head, a keen glint flashing in his eyes. "Oh? Truly?"
"Absolutely! Wang Ermazi saw it with his own eyes. He was carrying sacks of rice at the docks, two at a time! Hmph, all that brute strength, and he still ended up selling his labor!" Zhao Ming sneered.
Zhao Xuan set down the ledger and tapped his fingers lightly against the ironwood tabletop, a hint of satisfaction appearing on his face. "It seems he really has reached the end of the mountains and rivers. He can't even earn the money for charcoal to forge with, so he has to do such menial work." He paused and looked at Zhao Ming. "Our strategy of stockpiling iron and squeezing the market has worked. However..."
His brows knitted again, and he pointed at the ledger. "Our own funds are tight as well. Buying iron, paying deposits to the mines, and the wear and consumption of this Divine Forging Furnace running day and night... our ready silver flows out like water, but because we drove prices too low earlier, the weapons and farming tools we forge bring in meager profits. And quite a few 'defective products' from our Heavenly Craft Workshop have suddenly appeared on the market-hmph, they must be imitations made by those jealous fellows! Funds are coming back too slowly. At this rate, we can hold out for a little over a month at most."
The excitement faded from Zhao Ming's face. "Father, what do we do, then? What if..."
"There is no 'what if,'" Zhao Xuan said with iron finality. "A month is enough to crush him. A sixteen-year-old boy, deprived of his livelihood, cut off from materials, tormented by furnace fires day and night, and forced to do the lowest labor at the docks... he won't last long. Right now, his mind is at its most exhausted, his will at its weakest."
He looked at Zhao Ming, a calculating gleam flashing through his eyes. "Ming'er, go there again tonight."
"Again?" Zhao Ming instinctively covered his wrist, his face paling. "Father, that brat is a brute of an ox! Neither oil nor salt gets through to him!"
"This time is different." Zhao Xuan took a heavy cloth bag from beneath the desk and pushed it over, then pointed at a food box already prepared beside it. "Take six hundred taels of ready silver, and... fine wine and meat, and steaming white rice. Doesn't he have a huge appetite? Let him eat his fill. Tell him that as long as he agrees, the silver is his, he can have all the wine and meat he wants, and he can even become a steward at my Heavenly Craft Workshop, with a generous monthly wage. A residence... can be arranged for him too. A young man on the verge of being driven mad by hunger and broken by exhaustion, faced with temptation like this-I refuse to believe he won't waver."
Zhao Ming looked at the bag of silver and the food box wafting its fragrance. He hesitated, but in the end, his longing for an "immortal opportunity" overcame his fear of Qin Tiexin's fists. "...All right. Your son will try again."