"Only three taels of silver?"
After counting all the money on them, Zhang Junbao found it unbelievable.
Seven or eight grown men, and their leader Zheng Shan had such good martial arts and decent swordsmanship. How could he have only two taels of silver in his pocket?
Even more infuriatingly, the others had only one tael between them.
Zhang Junbao could not figure it out. He sat on the ground, puzzling over it to no avail.
"How could there be so little?"
He looked toward Zhang Qingyuan. Whenever he did not understand something, he asked Brother Yuan.
Zhang Junbao had grown used to doing this, and he increasingly liked getting to the bottom of things. Unless he thought something through, he could not sleep, or else he would be restless and distracted all day.
Seeing him look over, Zhang Qingyuan shrugged, then lay on the ground and played dead. With his eyes closed and his breath held, he made a very convincing corpse.
"What are you doing?" Zhang Junbao asked, puzzled.
Zhang Qingyuan remained motionless, playing dead, but said, "Come on, search this corpse of mine. See how much money it has."
"That's different."
"How is it different?"
"We're poor. We didn't have much money to begin with, and we're out traveling on foot without any income," he argued.
Zhang Qingyuan rolled over and sat up cross-legged. "What's different? They're poor too."
"But..."
"You think that people like them, who've practiced martial arts for years and achieved some proficiency, should be able to make money doing just about anything in the jianghu with those skills, don't you?"
Zhang Junbao nodded. "Like Brother Ju. Even working as an escort guard, he made two taels a month, and going on an escort job earned him a bonus of at least ten taels. How much could food, drink, and everything else possibly cost each month?"
"You're right." Zhang Qingyuan first affirmed what he had said, then continued, "The way you see it, saving a little money seems easy.
But for jianghu people like them, saving money is harder than anything."
"Why?"
Zhang Qingyuan stood and walked over to Zheng Shan's corpse, with Zhang Junbao's gaze following him.
"Zheng Shan was a skilled swordsman who practiced a killing sword style.
His swordsmanship had a clear structure, which suggests he was probably a disciple of some sect. After completing his training, he came down the mountain to roam the jianghu and took this bunch as his underlings.
When he first entered the jianghu, he was like you: he had ideals, ambitions, aspirations, and plans.
He wanted to be an upright, honorable hero who punished evil and upheld good too."
Zhang Qingyuan closed his eyes, as though interpreting Zheng Shan's entire life.
"But within days of entering the jianghu, society's brutal lash had whipped him until not an inch of skin remained intact.
He wanted to work as a guard at a prince's estate or a wealthy merchant's home, but with his level of martial arts, neither wanted him. They had money and could pay for someone better.
He wanted to join a decent organization, but once inside, he discovered that the work was endless and tedious. He had to take orders, flatter his superiors, serve them tea and water, and even put up with their abuse, all for a meager wage at the end of the month.
In a fit of anger, he left that organization to find another job.
But after going around in circles, he discovered that there seemed to be nothing he could do.
His martial arts weren't good enough to get him into a major organization or sect.
In a middling organization or sect, he'd have to start at the bottom, endure what ordinary people couldn't, and still have no freedom.
Small sects and organizations were beneath him.
Performing on the streets would insult his dignity and his martial arts.
After society gave him a brutal beating, he had no choice but to become an ordinary jianghu man.
He took on a few underlings and made a living collecting debts for others, gathering information, committing murder and arson, and catching major jianghu bandits for the Six Doors.
Why do this?
Because, all things considered, this line of work meant starting his own business. He was his own boss, earned more, and had freedom."
"Exactly. So he should have money." The more Zhang Junbao listened, the more confused he became.
Zhang Qingyuan nodded. "True, but you don't understand the traits of human nature.
Daoists speak of governing through nonaction, following nature's way, and following your own heart.
Confucians say that food and sex are human nature.
Even Buddhists have a Buddha of Bliss.
Once people have no restraints, pleasure and freedom await them.
After risking their lives on a job and finally making some money, why wouldn't they seize the day?
After working themselves to death, surely buying a few catties of meat to eat when they get home isn't excessive?"
"No."
"Then buying some good wine for a drink isn't excessive either, right?"
"No, it isn't."
"Visiting an entertainment house or a brothel isn't excessive either, right?"
"It is..." He had wanted to say it was excessive, but after thinking it over, he felt that perhaps it was not.
Jianghu people like them never knew which day might be their last. Seizing pleasure while they could and enjoying life in the moment seemed to be how they thought.
"I understand, Brother Yuan. They earn money to indulge themselves and enjoy life, so they don't save. When they have money, they spend it. When they don't, they keep earning."
"Exactly. After society beats them black and blue, being numbed by alcohol and surrounded by sensual delights is their only paradise.
In other words, isn't that mouthful of wine a courtesan feeds me mouth-to-mouth the whole reason I work myself to death?" Zhang Qingyuan raised an eyebrow and teased him.
"But..."
Zhang Junbao still felt that something was wrong, but could not put it into words.
Understanding what he meant, Zhang Qingyuan explained, "Not everyone is like you. You wake up every morning with a pillar holding up the heavens, but you can restrain yourself, regulate your mood, and stay true to your heart without falling into depravity.
But not everyone is you. Other people have very little resistance to desire.
In fact, people like you, who can hold fast to their true hearts, are extremely rare in this world.
Most people are ordinary mortals.
For a few scraps of silver, for soup with three meals a day, for a name that shakes the jianghu, for a hall full of children and grandchildren. And even more so, to become officials or kings, or even the emperor.
Even virtuous practitioners of Buddhism and Daoism occasionally have vulgar thoughts. I don't believe you've never had any."
Zhang Junbao instantly blushed and lowered his head as though searching for something.
"So,
if you can hold fast, you're someone who has attained the Dao.
If you can't, you're someone who has fallen."
Zhang Junbao became docile. "I understand. You really do know more, Brother Yuan. Your analysis of Zheng Shan was especially insightful."
Insightful?
That was exactly how I was in my last life.
I wasn't analyzing him. I was just analyzing myself, or rather, putting the way most ordinary people think into his shoes.
He glanced at Zhang Junbao and sighed. Had he not met him, he might well have become another Zheng Shan.
When I first graduated in my last life, I was full of ambition. I even drew up a plan for myself.
Find a job paying ten thousand yuan a month, rent a small room for eight hundred, keep food and transportation down to two thousand, and allow another thousand for clothes, utilities, and miscellaneous expenses. Surely I could save five thousand a month.
Five thousand a month meant sixty thousand a year. After saving for three years, wouldn't a down payment in my home county town be a piece of cake?
But only after entering society did I discover how cruel it was.
Jobs paying over ten thousand a month thought my qualifications were too low, while I didn't want jobs paying three or four thousand.
Delivering food or parcels would be hard work, but if I did well, earning over ten thousand a month wouldn't be a dream.
But I was a university graduate. Why should I work in such a lowly service job?
People who hadn't gone to university did that work. If I still had to do it after university, hadn't I fucking gone for nothing?
In the end, I went around in circles and accomplished nothing.
After taking a brutal beating, I slunk back home with my backpack and joined an agency to sell houses.
I worked myself to death for a month to sell two homes, only to have senior employees hold up my deals. When management made mistakes, I had to take the blame too.
I endured and endured, forcing myself to change, training my speaking skills, then becoming utterly shameless. After all those forced changes, I gradually gained more clients and became a seasoned operator myself.
I sold seven or eight homes a month, sometimes even a dozen or more. Even the boss had to speak humbly to me and show his top salesperson a little respect.
After a month of hard work, surely treating friends to dinner and drinks, going to a hostess karaoke club, and calling over a couple of girls wasn't excessive.
Bathhouses, pool halls, card rooms, even a little traveling and the like.
Riding high, seizing pleasure while I could.
That old idea of saving five thousand out of ten thousand had long since vanished. All I did was sweet-talk old ladies by day and let young girls sweet-talk me at night...
Once, I posted my story online.
The comments were full of refined gentlemen declaring that they never went to bathhouses, never got foot massages, never drank, smoked, played pool, or went to bars or karaoke places.
Like Liu Xiahui, they kept themselves pure as jade for their future wives and remained chaste for their current wives. All they did was earn money and devote themselves to their jobs, then stand on the moral high ground and condemn me.
Fuck!
You're all good people.
So all those entertainment venues across the country were opened just for me, then? I generated all their revenue?
Zhang Qingyuan thought of many things, then bent down and picked up Zheng Shan's sword.
He wiped the sword clean, found its scabbard, and sheathed it, only to see writing on the back of the scabbard: Yinghui Sword-Forging Manor. Suggested retail price: five taels of silver.
"Heh."
He lowered his head and glanced at Zheng Shan. This really had given him a laugh.
He drew the sword. Its white blade had a fine luster.
This Yinghui Sword-Forging Manor was an honest business.
Meanwhile, Zhang Junbao put away the silver, still reflecting on it all.
"Brother Yuan, thankfully we're both refined men who can hold true to our hearts, untouched by drink, lust, greed, and temper."
"Don't!"
Zhang Qingyuan hurriedly said, "Don't raise a flag for me. Drink, lust, greed, and temper? At most, I can avoid drinking and being greedy. I can't manage the other two."
"Lust... and temper?"
"I don't want to stay a bachelor. Do you?"
Zhang Junbao hurriedly shook his head. He did not want that either.
"Then temper..."
"We're both petty, so why pretend?"
"Hehe, true."