Willow Catkins in Flight, a Time of Trouble

As night deepened, the guests in the Luoyang tavern had all left, leaving behind only a mess of tables, bowls, and chopsticks.

The young lackey closed the doors and windows, then swiftly cleared away the leftover food.

The only guest left was the Green-Robed Youth. He casually grabbed a handful of melon seeds and cracked them one by one.

The storyteller at the tavern had asked the Green-Robed Youth to stay, so the lackey didn't dare say anything.

With some time left before the curfew, the lackey straightened the chairs, then slipped out through the tavern's side door and jogged down the empty street toward home.

The deserted tavern held only two people now: Gu Baishui and the storyteller.

The candle flame flickered gently. After the storyteller had asked Gu Baishui to stay, he packed up his storytelling props, stepped down from the stage, and sat across the table from him.

The storyteller looked to be past middle age, around forty, and wore a plain gray robe. He held a cup of warm tea in his hands.

The tavern fell quiet for a moment. The storyteller set down his teacup and looked at the young man across the table, knitting his brows in confusion.

"No one has mentioned her in a long time."

"Her?" Gu Baishui raised his eyes. "Li Xu?"

"Mm."

The storyteller nodded, then glanced out at the empty streets of Luoyang. "Most of the old folks in Luoyang City only remember Li Shiyi's story. The little girl who followed him has long since been forgotten."

Gu Baishui tilted his head. "Why?"

"Because she died young, like a star that flashed across the night sky and vanished. She only stayed in this world for a brief moment."

The storyteller took a sip of tea, then said to Gu Baishui, "Since you know their story, you must be from outside Luoyang City."

"I only heard it from someone else. I know a few parts, but not the whole story."

Gu Baishui set down the melon-seed shells and continued, "The story I heard stopped when Li Shiyi fell ill. After that, he went to Chang'an City and began a new chapter, one where a genius rose to prominence and shone brightly."

"I don't know what happened while he was sick, or what illness he had. Why did he suddenly begin to stand out? Why do the people of Luoyang City have so little memory of Li Xu?"

"And why... did these siblings, who had grown up together, kill each other outside Luoyang City?"

The tavern fell into utter silence. The storyteller's pupils contracted, and he stared at the Green-Robed Youth across the table with a deep, unfathomable gaze.

Gu Baishui paid him no heed. He even raised his brows thoughtfully.

"Something strange must have happened while Li Shiyi was sick. That's the story I most want to know."

At this, the storyteller fell silent for a long while, then shook his head woodenly. "I don't know. I don't know what happened while Li Shiyi was sick. I'm just a storyteller in Luoyang City. Aside from remembering a few old stories everyone else has forgotten, I don't have any other skills."

Gu Baishui nodded silently. After a quiet pause, he asked another question.

"Was Li Shiyi, who left Luoyang City, one of the Human Race's Great Emperors?"

The storyteller froze. After a long silence, he nodded without a word.

"Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn't. No one knows where Li Shiyi went in the end. But with his talent and aptitude, becoming an Emperor and proving the Dao wouldn't have been impossible."

"Li Shiyi lived a very, very long time ago. Aside from the Willow Catkins fluttering beyond Luoyang City, everything else has been submerged in the river of time."

Gu Baishui had faintly expected as much. Li Shiyi might have been someone from a distant past.

But what he couldn't understand was why the Little Beggar who had come to Luoyang looking for family knew Li Shiyi's story and seemed to know him so well.

If someone from that era had lived until now, then even if they weren't a Quasi-Emperor, they should at least be an old Saint, right?

The Linen-Clad Girl was a Saint? That was too absurd.

Or perhaps she didn't know someone like Li Shiyi at all. Maybe she had only heard his story and deliberately told it to deceive him.

Thinking of this, Gu Baishui vaguely recalled what the Little Beggar had said the night before last.

Outside the Abandoned Temple, wind and rain battered the world. The bedraggled Little Beggar hid under the temple's offering table, blinking her innocent eyes as she curiously watched the equally bedraggled Green-Robed Youth.

"I came to Luoyang to look for my family. I came from Xunyang."

Her father was that scholar who had left his home to seek an official degree. His surname was Ye, wasn't it?

Since this storyteller knew old stories about Luoyang City, perhaps he remembered that scholar surnamed Ye, too.

"Was there once a young scholar surnamed Ye in Luoyang City?"

Gu Baishui asked with particular seriousness, "He should have come from Chang'an City and married into a wealthy household."

The storyteller froze, then furrowed his brow and gave Gu Baishui several strange looks.

"Of course there was. The private tutor the Li Residence hired for Li Shiyi was a scholar who had married into the Ye Clan. Later, that scholar inherited the old generation of the Ye Clan's estate and became the head of the Ye Clan in Luoyang City."

"The Ye Clan and the Li Residence had always been close. Their families had been friends for two generations, so when Li Shiyi and Li Xu were young, they both studied at the Ye Clan head's private school."

Gu Baishui pressed his lips together without showing anything, feeling that he had caught the most important clue in this matter.

"Is the Ye Clan still in Luoyang City?"

The storyteller shook his head, then nodded oddly. "That old residence with high walls and a deep courtyard in the western part of Luoyang City used to belong to the Ye Clan. It's been abandoned for a long time, though. I don't know if anyone lives there now."

"Abandoned?"

Gu Baishui couldn't make sense of it. If the household surnamed Ye in the western part of the city was the family the Little Beggar had come to find, why had it been abandoned for so long?

Had the old head of the Ye Clan left Luoyang?

Had the Little Beggar come all this way for nothing?

Or had the Little Beggar never come to look for family at all? Had she been lying to him all along, and come to Luoyang for some other reason?

"Sir, do you know where the Old Ye Residence is? I'd like to take a look tomorrow."

The storyteller furrowed his brow, then pointed toward a part of the city. "In the western corner. It's the house with two Stone Lions at the entrance."

"But I don't recommend going to the Old Ye Residence these next few days."

Gu Baishui froze. "Why?"

The storyteller gathered the odds and ends on the table and let out a slow, leisurely sigh.

"Because many outsiders have come to Luoyang City these past few days. Some are old acquaintances of Luoyang, here only to bid farewell and pay their respects. Others have ill intentions and ulterior motives."

"When Willow Catkins fill the skies over Luoyang City, it's often a time of trouble..."