Cold Mountain Temple outside Gusu City
At daybreak the next morning, the clouds cleared and the rain stopped.
Nourished by a night of rain, the vegetation covering the mountain was lush, the scenery picturesque.
The bonfire in the ruined temple had long since gone out.
Before the altar of the Iron Spear General lay two neatly arranged corpses, stripped of every stitch of clothing.
Thud!
Thud!
The sounds came at a steady rhythm.
Half a broken wooden door lay slanted across the threshold, rattling under a weight it could not bear. As that large foot stepped inside, it crashed to the ground. With a thud, an iron staff punched a deep hole into the blue bricks.
Looking out from there, such deep holes formed a straight line.
The woman stood five feet tall, with a waist measuring three feet six inches, the very image of a ball of flesh. Fat covered her face, her nose turned skyward, and her eyes were buried in flesh, revealing only two mung-bean-sized specks. She held a solid iron staff topped with a snake's head, which gave off an icy chill.
"Greetings, Nanny Yan!"
Four tall, sturdy women carrying steel sabers stood inside the temple. Once the "great ball of flesh" entered, they all bowed their heads in greeting.
Thud!
Yan Ruhua came to a halt, and the once reasonably spacious ruined temple suddenly felt oppressive.
"What time did they leave?"
"In the middle of the night."
The sturdy woman with a half-circle of thick black beard answered.
"We only found these two bodies behind the temple."
Yan Ruhua lowered her eyelids, recognized one of them, and sneered.
"Soul-Chasing Whip Guo Yanzhi. Two years ago, on Madam's birthday, Ke Baisui got wind of it from somewhere. That old bastard actually dared send him to the manor with gifts. I taught him a thorough lesson."
The bearded woman laughed along. "Who doesn't know Madam loathes celebrating her birthday? Especially when outsiders..."
Before she could finish, a stern look silenced her. She hastily changed the subject, pointing at the two mangled bodies on the ground. "Their deaths are strange. We couldn't identify the martial arts used."
Yan Ruhua snorted coldly and stepped forward to examine them closely. After a long while, she spoke in a low voice.
"Both were killed with a single palm strike."
"A single palm strike?"
The bearded woman grew still more puzzled and looked down.
A large chunk of flesh had been sliced from Guo Yanzhi's left shoulder, but the fatal wound was clearly the sword cut across his neck, which had severed his windpipe and suffocated him.
The other man, a pockmarked fatty, had a mangled chest with at least seventeen or eighteen sword wounds...
The methods were so vicious that even she felt a chill, but no matter how she looked at it, this had nothing to do with death by a single palm strike.
All four were third-rate martial experts. Even the weakest among them could hold her own against Guo Yanzhi, but their knowledge of martial arts fell far short of Yan Ruhua's. She offered no further explanation, merely sneering.
"Those eyes of yours are wasted on you. I might as well dig them out for flower fertilizer!"
The bearded woman shuddered. She knew this was no mere joke and hastily flattered her. "Nanny Yan, you discern the finest autumn hair and see as clearly as a blazing fire. You devise strategies from within your command tent and calculate with divine precision. Madam values you greatly. We could never compare."
The other three spoke in unison.
"We could never compare!"
Yan Ruhua smiled, thoroughly pleased.
"Hmph. That fellow Guo wasn't much, but he was still a third-rate expert. To kill him like this would take someone at least at the very peak of the third rate... Rescuing that little demoness while keeping us from recognizing their origins leaves only one possibility..."
The bearded woman asked, "Who?"
"The little demoness's master. One of the people Madam hates most in this world!"
Yan Ruhua laughed. "Intercepting her would be a great achievement indeed. Which way did they go?"
"Judging by the hoofprints, north!"
"North? No, that's another trick to deceive our eyes... West! They headed toward Lake Tai! Could this be luring the tiger away from its mountain? This is bad. Hurry back and report to Madam..."
Yan Ruhua moved with extraordinary agility, bouncing out of the ruined temple like a ball of flesh in just a few bounds. Secretly alarmed, she felt as though she were matching wits at a distance with a meticulous old fox.
No wonder...
No wonder Madam was always calling that person a fox spirit!
"Go!"
The four sturdy women hurried outside.
Five people, four horses.
"You two share a horse."
Whoosh!
Yan Ruhua pushed off with both legs, clamping the iron staff under her arm. Her body bounced high into the air and landed like a ball on a horse's back. It neighed in agony, its legs nearly buckling. She took up the reins, planted her right foot on another horse's back, and vigorously swung both whips. Soon, a cloud of dust rose along the main road below the mountain, heading southwest.
"What a pity..." A trace of pity flashed through the eyes of the bearded woman whose mount had been taken.
Everyone at Mantuo Manor knew that no horse ridden by Nanny Yan of the "flower fertilizer room" ever lived to see the next day.
Almost at the same time, a twin-shafted carriage slowly headed southeast along the broad, level main road.
"Hyah!"
The driver was a young man with loose hair and a large medicinal plaster on his left cheek. It barely concealed his striking looks, instead adding a touch of rakish abandon to his bearing. Fortunately, his carriage-driving skills were clearly a family-taught craft.
Two main roads branched off.
The southwestern road led to Lake Tai, while the southeastern road headed toward Gusu City. With the Cao River nearby, merchants and travelers streamed north and south in an endless weave. This little stretch of Wild Boar Grove at the fork alone had twenty-seven or twenty-eight establishments-inns, taverns, pleasure houses, carriage businesses... From this, one could glimpse the splendid prosperity of Jiangnan.
"Hyah!"
The tip of the whip brushed gently over the mare's hindquarters, driving away mosquitoes.
Inside the blue-canopied carriage, a finger like a tender white scallion gently lifted a corner of the curtain. The woman in black gauze looked at the man seated on the carriage shaft, her willow-leaf brows drawing together slightly in concern.
With looks like his, once he enters Gusu, he'll probably be just like the poem: astride a horse by a slanting bridge, red sleeves beckoning all along the street. He draws far too much attention...
Remembering the misunderstanding she had caused the previous night, Qin Xiu felt the tips of her ears grow warm. After a while, however, her guilt turned to indignation.
Master was right. Not a single man is any good!
Dong...
Dong...
The temple bells drifted across the water. As though receiving a signal, boats traveling north and south along the Cao River began to move slowly.
"Whoa!"
Li Yu looked up. On the opposite bank stood a great Buddhist monastery thronged with worshippers.
Its main gate faced west from the east, right beside the Cao River.
Before the gate, white sails gathered like clouds above surging waters, a vast and magnificent sight.
Monks are no exception!
Qin Xiu lowered the curtain and added that thought to herself.
"Whoa, whoa!"
Li Yu drew the reins to the left. The carriage reached the Cao River bank, then turned north. Maple trees lined the shore, their deep-green foliage casting shade. Four or five hundred paces upstream, he found a stone arch bridge crossing the river.
"Miss Qin, Gusu City is just across the water."
"My enemy has quite a few eyes and ears in Gusu City. Be extremely careful when you buy the medicine."
Li Yu smiled. "Don't worry. This is my line of work."
"What did you say?"
"I said, let's find an inn and get you settled first."
Qin Xiu remembered how deftly he had laid a bewildering trail in the ruined temple, his methods practiced and seasoned. Growing still more curious about his identity, she lifted a slit in the curtain and looked out again.
The carriage had already rolled onto the stone bridge.
Merchant boats and pleasure barges passed beneath its arch. On the distant opposite bank, a fisherman was untying a fishing boat moored to a maple tree.
"The moon sets, crows cry, frost fills the sky; riverside maples and fishing lights face my troubled sleep. From Cold Mountain Temple outside Gusu City, midnight bells reach the traveler's bed."
"You can recite poetry, Miss Qin?"
Qin Xiu said helplessly, "First you took me for a mute. Now are you planning to take me for an illiterate?"
"Hahaha, nothing of the sort."
Once across the bridge, they could see Gusu's western gate, also known as Chang Gate.
Shops crowded the stretch between the two places, streets and alleys crisscrossed, and people thronged in a dense weave. It was already among the foremost places of wealth and luxury under heaven. The two finally found a small inn called Fortune and Peace on Ten-Li Street outside the city and settled in.