Though it was already late at night, the Granary Full of Fortune, the rice shop the Lin Family ran in the south city, was still brightly lit.
In these troubled times, what business made the most money?
Not silk, not gold or silver, but grain.
Sometimes, a bowl of rice could save a life.
In the storeroom behind the rice shop, a plump, portly man in a silk robe sat at a small table, leisurely drinking wine with a dish of tofu boiled with pickled vegetables.
He was Wang Shun, the Granary Full of Fortune's head shopkeeper.
"Old Li, count carefully!" Wang Shun picked up a piece of tofu and blew on it, then spoke indistinctly to the bookkeeper hunched over his abacus beside him.
"In a few days, that ledger has to be sent to the residence for the master to inspect. You can't be wrong by a single copper, or neither of us will have a good end."
Without looking up, the bookkeeper worked the abacus with his skinny fingers, the beads clacking as fast as if he were playing a pipa.
"Don't worry, shopkeeper," he replied with a smile. "These hands have been working an abacus for thirty years. I wouldn't get a single account wrong with my eyes shut."
"You can't go wrong being careful." Wang Shun snorted and took another swig of wine, narrowing his eyes in comfort.
Outside, misery lay everywhere, but he lacked neither food nor wine. His life was practically that of an immortal.
And so this year of great disaster had instead become the best of years for him.
As the rice shop's manager, he didn't dare steal rice. After all, the Lin Family were no pushovers. If he were caught, death would be his only road.
But mixing old rice into polished rice and adding sand and stones to plump japonica rice were things he did with practiced ease.
A handful of sand mixed into every measure of rice, and by the end of the day, the rice he had "saved" was enough to keep his whole family's mouths dripping with grease.
As for whether the common folk who bought the rice would break their teeth on the sand, or starve to death in some corner because they couldn't get enough to eat, he didn't care in the slightest.
In his view, those wretches' lives were thinner than paper; if they died, they died. What mattered most was that he could live comfortably in these troubled times.
The more Wang Shun thought about it, the better he felt, and he even began humming a tuneless little song.
But just then, his tune cut off abruptly.
He had noticed something was wrong.
Outside... it was too quiet.
To prevent the refugees from storming the rice shop, he had deliberately divided the shop hands into two shifts to patrol the courtyard day and night.
The enforcers he had personally recruited were all crude fellows. Their patrols were usually marked by heavy, jumbled footsteps and frequent bursts of foul-mouthed cursing.
But now, all those sounds had vanished.
The drunkenness vanished from Wang Shun's face in an instant, replaced by a beastlike alertness.
He had climbed from a street thug to his present position not only through ruthlessness, but also through a sharpness far beyond that of ordinary people.
He realized at once that something had happened!
"Swish!"
Without the slightest hesitation, Wang Shun yanked a hand crossbow from under the table.
The Lin Family's chief steward had rewarded him with the crossbow. Its body was made of ironwood, and once cocked, it could pierce cowhide from twenty paces away.
It had therefore become his last-resort weapon for protecting his life.
"Old Li, go out and see why it's gone quiet," Wang Shun said in a very low voice, aiming the crossbow at the storeroom door.
The bookkeeper jumped at the sudden movement and stopped working his abacus. His whole body shook like a sieve.
"Sh... shopkeeper, I..."
"Cut the fucking nonsense! Go when I tell you to!" Wang Shun snarled, his eyes gleaming with menace.
The bookkeeper shuddered. He knew that if he disobeyed, the shopkeeper would absolutely dare put a bolt through him. His face crumpled, he shakily got to his feet, shuffled to the door one step at a time, and pulled back the bolt with trembling hands.
The door opened a crack with a creak.
The bookkeeper stuck his head out. The courtyard was empty, with only moonlight spilling across the ground, casting a cold, desolate light.
He breathed a sigh of relief and was just about to turn back and say everything was fine when, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed several figures sprawled in the shadows by the wall.
They were the very same shop hands who usually swaggered about throwing their weight around!
They lay motionless on the ground, whether dead or alive unknown.
"Ah..." Scared out of his wits, the bookkeeper let out a distorted cry and turned to duck back into the storeroom.
"Damn it, get out there and see what the hell is going on!" Wang Shun kicked him out from behind, keeping the crossbow bolt trained steadily on the middle of his back. "If you dare run, I'll send you on your way first!"
With no choice, the bookkeeper went out of the storeroom, his legs as limp as noodles, practically crawling.
He didn't dare look at the shop hands. He just kept inching forward, praying all the while.
But just then, a short, shrill sound suddenly came from behind him.
It didn't sound like a human scream. It was more like the final wail of a beast struggling desperately as its throat was cut.
The bookkeeper's whole body stiffened, and he turned his head mechanically.
Then he saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.
Shopkeeper Wang Shun, who had looked so fierce and menacing just moments ago, now stood rooted to the spot.
The crossbow had fallen from his hand, and his eyes were stretched wide, filled with utter terror and bewilderment.
And at some point, a fine line of blood had appeared on his neck.
At first, the line was very thin. Then it abruptly split open, and scalding blood spurted out like a fountain, rushing to escape!
Wang Shun opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but could only let out airy "huh... huh..." sounds. Then he fell straight backward, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Gh... ghost!"
The bookkeeper's mental defenses crumbled completely. He let out a heart-rending scream and tried to flee, scrambling and crawling.
But just as he turned around, he felt a pain in the back of his neck, and everything went black. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Immediately afterward, a masked man stepped out of the shadows.
It was Chen Ye.
He first looked down at Wang Shun, who was still twitching and had yet to breathe his last.
Wang Shun stared fixedly at him, his bulging eyes full of anger and unwillingness.
Chen Ye could even read the meaning in his gaze: Who are you? Why?
But Chen Ye couldn't be bothered with him. He turned and went into the storeroom, casually picked up the ledger on the table and leafed through it, then tossed it aside.
The thing might have been important to the Lin Family, but to Chen Ye it was no different from scrap paper. What concerned him was the storeroom full of grain.
He walked over to the mountain of rice sacks and casually slit one open with a small knife.
With a clatter, white grains of rice spilled across the floor.
Seeing this, Chen Ye narrowed his eyes slightly. Then he went outside, scooped up a dipper of cold water, and poured it over the bookkeeper lying on the ground.