Pitch-pot

Why was everyone afraid of social death? It had to do with a rule in the inner city. Unlike the inner city, the outer city had no curfew.

The inner city, however, was home to respectable people. For the safety of its high officials and nobles, no one was allowed on the streets after the drums sounded at dusk.

As everyone knew, the Imperial Academy of Music operated at night.

That meant going there was more than just a matter of gathering information. You had to spend the night.

That was why Xu Pingzhi opposed Xu Qi'an going to the Imperial Academy of Music. He was a young man in the prime of his vigor. If he stayed the night and a girl teased him, who could resist?

So whoever went to the Imperial Academy of Music would have to sleep with a courtesan.

And the three men present all had reputations to maintain:

Xu Cijiu, the upright gentleman.

Xu Qi'an, who never visited courtesan houses.

Xu Pingzhi, the devoted family man who loved his wife.

All three knew perfectly well that even if they had a good reason, sleeping with a courtesan was still sleeping with a courtesan. Nothing could change that.

I never slept with a prostitute in my last life, but I can imagine how embarrassing it would be if I did and the nice police uncle called my parents. I'd want to die. Xu Qi'an sat upright, his expression solemn and respectable.

Some amusing tales about brothels surfaced in his mind. Once, while listening to music at a courtesan house, Head Constable Wang had brought up a story: a court official had gone to the Imperial Academy of Music to sleep with a girl, only to run into his own son while having tea with the courtesans.

The scene had been most awkward.

By the next day, the story had spread through the capital's official circles and become a laughingstock. Even Head Constable Wang had heard about it from County Magistrate Zhu.

In an era that valued the Three Cardinal Guides, the Five Constant Virtues, and one's reputation, such an incident was more than a man's face could bear.

Xu Qi'an looked at Second Uncle Xu and Xu Erlang, and a scene involuntarily surfaced in his mind:

Xu Xinnian: "Oh, Father, you're here too? Let me have this girl today, and she's yours tomorrow."

Second Uncle Xu: "Get lost. Which one of us is your father? I'll sleep with her first."

Xu Qi'an: "Both of you, stand aside. I'm going to get on top of her alone."

The thought sent a chill down his spine. Xu Qi'an coughed. "Let's put the Imperial Academy of Music aside for now and keep gathering information. After all, we don't absolutely have to go there, and we don't know whether we can really get any useful information from the courtesan queen Fuxiang.

"Let's sit down again the day after tomorrow and pool what we've learned. If we haven't found anything else, we'll consider going to the Imperial Academy of Music."

At his words, Xu Erlang and Second Uncle Xu immediately brightened and nodded.

Xu Qi'an thought, I'd better make the sacrifice and go to the Imperial Academy of Music tomorrow night.

At noon the next day, Xu Qi'an took leave and returned to the Xu residence. The normally lively residence was much quieter than usual.

Half the maids and older female servants had been taken away, leaving Old Zhang the gatekeeper and a few servants to look after the place. Second Uncle Xu and Xu Erlang were still out.

Xu Qi'an made his way to the inner courtyard with practiced ease and pushed open the door to Xu Erlang's room. He rummaged through the chests and cupboards until he found the moon-white Confucian robe, made of fine fabric and embroidered with cloud patterns in the same color.

He took off his constable's uniform and changed into his little brother's most presentable outfit, hanging a jade pendant of decent quality from his belt.

Xu Qi'an stood before the bronze mirror, looking at himself.

Not bad. It's just that this body of mine is too masculine to pull off that pretty little puppy look. If I had the breathtaking good looks from my last life, I could wear this perfectly. I still can't quite see myself in this body. Xu Qi'an smoothed the creases on his chest and left, satisfied.

The layout of Great Feng's capital could be summed up in two words: nesting dolls. There was the palace city, the imperial city, the inner city, and the outer city.

Compared with the densely populated outer city, where fish and dragons mingled, Xu Qi'an thought of the inner city as the central business district from his previous life. Everyone who could live there was wealthy.

In this era, anyone who could live in the inner city had status and standing.

It was worth mentioning that Auntie had always wanted to sell their property in the outer city and move into the inner city.

Unfortunately, she had a gold-devouring beast of a nephew, leaving her longing for the inner city but unable to live there.

Even at Xu Qi'an's current pace, walking from the Xu residence to the inner city gate would take three or four hours.

He hired a carriage and reached the nearest inner city gate an hour later. He produced the pass he had prepared in advance and got through without trouble.

The guards examined the carriage carefully. When they saw that Xu Qi'an had no large luggage, they could hardly hide their disappointment.

That meant Xu Qi'an was not entering the inner city to do business, so they could not collect a gate tax.

The inner city's broad streets crisscrossed one another. Pretty houses surrounded by green trees stood along the main roads, while courtyards of all kinds dotted the smaller streets.

Whether it was the city planning, the way pedestrians dressed, or the number of carriages on the streets, everything far surpassed the outer city.

"I must bring Lingyue here for a visit when I have time. The outer city can't even begin to compare with how prosperous it is here." Xu Qi'an lifted the carriage curtain and gazed at the bustling scene, Xu Lingyue's delicately pointed, breathtakingly beautiful face appearing in his mind.

He did not go straight to the Imperial Academy of Music. It was still early, and seafood merchants did not work during the day.

After paying for the carriage, Xu Qi'an wandered aimlessly through the streets.

Before long, he came to a marketplace and looked up at the archway at the entrance: Yongkang Street!

The street was wider than anything Xu Qi'an had ever seen. Two hundred meters across, it was paved with slabs of bluestone that stretched evenly to the end of his sight.

Shops and houses stood in close-packed rows on either side. Ten carriages could travel abreast with room to spare, and pedestrians thronged the street.

This was no street. It was a vast plaza.

Standing beneath the archway, Xu Qi'an gazed at the scene in genuine astonishment.

Yongkang Street is one of the capital's main roads. Second Uncle said it was big, but I never imagined it was this big, Xu Qi'an thought.

There was a reason the main road was so wide. Whenever the emperor or a noble of the imperial clan traveled, guards would clear the way in advance.

A width of two hundred meters put most military crossbows and firearms of the day out of effective range.

Even if an assassin wanted to hide in a building on either side and shoot a covert arrow, the distance would leave him no choice but to helplessly take his hands off the keyboard and type 666.

Xu Qi'an raced around Yongkang Street like a dog off its leash, but his limited budget kept his urge to shop in check.

Suddenly, a luxurious carriage caught Xu Qi'an's attention, dazzling his titanium-alloy dog eyes.

Four strong, handsome horses pulled the carriage. Its curved roof was crowned with silver and coated in gold, bright yellow silk curtains hung over the windows, and the panels below, meant to keep out dust, were covered in translucent white jade.

A ring of neatly arranged gold studs lined the sides of the wheels, and even the hubs were wrapped in jade.

But the real substance lay in the wood of the carriage itself: golden-thread nanmu, reserved for the imperial family and its clansmen.

I doubt I could afford one of its wheels even if I worked my whole life, Xu Qi'an thought sadly, as if he had rediscovered how he felt as a corporate drone in his previous life.

The luxurious carriage was parked by the roadside, with a line of soldiers in black armor standing guard beside it, spears in hand. Interestingly, another line of soldiers was playing a game of pitch-pot.

The stall owner was an old Daoist priest in a tattered robe. His graying hair was held up with a wooden hairpin, with untidy strands hanging loose.

Copper coins, silver ingots, gold ingots, Daoist scriptures, a bodhi-bead bracelet, a jade mirror, and all manner of odds and ends were laid out on his stall.

Never mind the other things. The fact that he could leave gold and silver ingots on his stall without anyone snatching them meant this old Daoist was no ordinary man. Xu Qi'an stopped to watch.

After a while, he understood the rules. The player stood thirty paces from a porcelain pot, blindfolded and facing away from it, and threw three arrows.

Anyone who landed one arrow could claim an item from the third tier: gold, silver, or jade. Anyone who landed all three could choose any item from the first tier.

There were only two items in the first tier: the bodhi-bead bracelet and the jade mirror.

"Missed again! Damn it!"

"Move aside, it's my turn."

The armored soldiers took turns throwing, but every one of them came away defeated. The pile of silver fragments in front of the old Daoist grew higher and higher.

After the fifteen soldiers had suffered another round of failures, Xu Qi'an noticed the carriage curtain move. A soldier waiting by the window lowered his head to listen, then walked over to the stall owner.

"Old Daoist, my master says he'll pay sixty taels of gold for everything on your stall," the soldier announced when he reached him.

They couldn't win at pitch-pot, so they're paying to win instead? Xu Qi'an watched from a short distance away.

Faced with the temptation of sixty taels of gold, the old Daoist shook his head. "Rules are rules."

The soldier's body stiffened. He glared hard at the old Daoist for a moment, then spun around and returned to the carriage to report.

A few seconds later, the carriage's master recalled the soldiers and prepared to leave.

Xu Qi'an took the opportunity to step forward. He came up to the old Daoist and asked, "Old Daoist, how much for one game?"

The old Daoist, sitting cross-legged on the ground, looked up and gave him a glance. He handed over three arrows. "One mace of silver."

Xu Qi'an took the arrows and smiled, feeling certain that victory was in his grasp.

For a martial artist in the Essence Refining Realm, throwing arrows into a pot from thirty paces was not very difficult. But facing away and wearing a blindfold, it was almost impossible to hit.

Sight was the most important of the five senses. Losing it would diminish a martial artist's feel for the throw and make hitting the target harder.

Whether one hit or not depended entirely on luck.

Xu Qi'an wasn't good-looking, but he was absolutely confident, because he had gone several days without picking up any silver.

Is it because I was going to come to the inner city and run into this pitch-pot game that my luck automatically built up?

If I hit the pot, the gold and silver ingots will all be mine. Sigh, the life of a luck emperor is just this plain and boring. Xu Qi'an walked thirty paces away, turned around, covered his eyes with a black cloth, and casually tossed the arrows behind him.

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

All three arrows landed in the pot at nearly the same instant.

Passersby exclaimed in amazement. The commotion caught the attention of the carriage that was just about to leave, and a sweet, alluring voice drifted out of its window:

"Stop the carriage!"

P.S. I have to go on a business trip tomorrow. Sigh, I don't really want to go out, since the epidemic isn't completely over, and I'm a little scared. But to put food on the table, I can only grit my teeth and fly.

That means I won't have a computer with me tomorrow and might not be able to update during the day, so I'm posting tomorrow's noon chapter early. This isn't an extra chapter; it's tomorrow's update in advance!