A Fist Fighter of Twenty-Four Days Encounters a Murder

The soil along the riverbank was damp and uneven. By evening, dew had begun to gather on the blades of grass, making it easy to slip.

Meng Shuangjiang had taken some care on his way over, planting each step firmly.

Chu Tianshu, however, had come striding out of the woods, his robes fluttering in the wind, as though the grassy riverbank on his side were a broad, level stretch of dry earth.

"Brother Chu, not only are your medical skills superb, but you're remarkably agile too."

Meng Shuangjiang spoke with a touch of envy. "I learned a little fighting from our guards when I was young, and later I even wanted to become a disciple of Master Zhong from the militia."

"Unfortunately, I couldn't bear the hardship, so I never amounted to anything. Later, when I saw how bulky I'd grown, I often thought it would be good to shed some of the extra flesh, but I never managed that either."

Chu Tianshu smiled. "If you only want to lose weight, you need to diet as well as exercise. You'd have even more trouble with the second part, wouldn't you?"

He had reached the bridge by then and noticed that Meng Shuangjiang had a child with him.

The boy wore a melon-rind cap and a thick jacket that looked very warm, making his fair little face seem all the more adorable. His hand, still plump with baby fat, clutched Meng Shuangjiang's trouser leg.

"This is my son. He's six. His proper name is Meng Huaiyu, but that's too bookish, so I usually call him Meng Xiaobao."

Meng Shuangjiang patted the boy's head. "My wife worries he'll grow fat like me, so she usually won't let him eat much. I brought him out today so he can have a good meal."

Chu Tianshu's fingers twitched. Whenever he saw a child, he wanted to hand out candy.

Unfortunately, candy wasn't as easy to buy here as it had been back home, and he'd forgotten to stock up and carry some lately.

The three of them headed into town. Xiaobao was a little shy at first, but he soon livened up.

Meng Shuangjiang was clearly the one who knew the way, yet Xiaobao kept running ahead of him, then running back whenever he felt he'd gone a little too far.

They had not gone far along the town's main road when Meng Shuangjiang turned onto a side lane.

These lanes between the houses were all dirt paths, somewhat pitted and naturally not as spacious as the main road.

Besides, every morning when the shops along the main road opened, someone came out to sweep and sprinkle water. Some vendors simply spread a piece of coarse cloth on the ground for their stalls, so there wasn't much rubbish discarded there.

The side lanes were different.

Outside the walls of many homes lay piles of broken earthenware pots, stools with missing legs, grass that hadn't dried, chipped cat bowls with a little soup left in them, and firewood that had been doused halfway through burning because the meal was already cooked.

These things might not even have been thrown away by their owners. There might simply have been no room in the house, so they had been piled outside for the time being.

Now and then, someone could be seen coming out of a door to rummage through the clutter for something.

Still, if it could be left outside, it was probably the sort of thing nobody would mind losing. It was bound to look shabby, adding considerably to the lanes' rundown appearance.

Chu Tianshu's senses were keen now, and he caught a number of strange smells, but none were so pungent as to bother him, so he took them in stride.

In fact, when he returned to the restaurant each evening, he often deliberately took detours to look around, so he was quite familiar with these sights.

Then the aroma of a red-braised meat dish reached his nose, instantly overpowering all the surrounding smells.

A small eatery appeared before them. The open space outside its door was better leveled and cleaner than elsewhere, and a hubbub of voices came from within.

Meng Shuangjiang knew the place well. Before he had even stepped all the way inside, he called out, "Auntie Zhou, three pots of dragon and phoenix stew for me today."

The atmosphere here was entirely different from that at Old Ma's Restaurant. Though people chatted over their meals there too, they generally kept their voices down.

Here, however, it was extremely noisy. Everyone seemed to be talking at the top of their lungs. There were five or six tables in all, occupied by men in short work clothes, every one of them eating with a flushed face.

Meng Shuangjiang's shout blended into their voices and became quite unremarkable.

One table had only two people, who had already finished eating. Seeing Chu Tianshu and the others come in, they got up of their own accord and moved beside another table, where they continued their animated conversation.

Chu Tianshu and the others had just sat down when the cloth curtain over a door to the inner room lifted.

A short, plump, gray-haired older woman came out carrying a clay pot.

"As the old saying goes, when the autumn wind rises, the snakes grow fat. I knew you'd be coming again one of these days.

Auntie Zhou was evidently very familiar with Meng Shuangjiang. She set down the pot and said, "You brought Xiaobao today too? Oh, this young man looks a little unfamiliar."

Meng Shuangjiang lowered his voice and said mysteriously, "This is Brother Chu, the divine physician who made the deworming medicine."

Auntie Zhou's face lit up. "So you're the divine physician! Please, have a seat, have a seat. That medicine is truly wonderful. Today I'll bring out my very best skills and get the cooking just right, as a way of repaying you."

She turned and went back into the kitchen.

Meng Shuangjiang explained, "Auntie Zhou raised two sons on her own. Thanks to her skill at stewing snake meat, she's quite famous in our town."

"Her business has flourished over the years, and the pots have grown more and more generously filled, but the whole place still serves just this one dish. It used to be called snake stew, then red-braised snake meat, and now it's dragon and phoenix stew."

Standing on his stool, Xiaobao was already poking at the clay pot's lid with his chopsticks.

"Don't rush, it's still hot. Wait till I serve you some."

Meng Shuangjiang hurried to lift the lid himself, then added, "Enough talk, Brother Chu. You'll know once you've tasted it."

Though the clay pot was off the fire, its contents would go on boiling for quite a while. Once the lid came off, the aroma in the eatery grew even richer.

The sauce bubbled, with thick pieces of snake meat soaking in the rich broth alongside chicken, pig lung, scallions, and slices of ginger.

There were many snakes in Yi Province, and snake catchers had been around since ancient times. Snake meat was relatively cheaper than other meats, making it an excellent choice for people doing hard labor who wanted a taste of meat.

Chu Tianshu had eaten snake before and had always found the meat too thin, but the snake here resembled thick-cut slabs of pork belly.

The resilient, springy texture of the snake skin was more like what one could get from native pork only after frying it until the skin took on a tiger-striped crust, then braising it.

Having grown used to the food at Old Ma's Restaurant, he found this first taste far more delicious than any of its dishes.

"Hey, that really is delicious."

Chu Tianshu couldn't help narrowing his eyes as he picked up another piece.

Meng Shuangjiang watched him pop the whole piece of snake meat into his mouth and chew it up in a few bites. He hurriedly said, "There are bones in that snake..."

Chu Tianshu said, "It's fine. I can chew through them and digest them."

Meng Shuangjiang continued, "No, even if you can chew them, eating it with the bones gives it one flavor, and eating it without them gives it another."

Chu Tianshu's chopsticks paused. On reflection, that made sense, so he controlled the force of his bite and stripped just the meat from the snake bones. Sure enough, it offered a different kind of fullness.

Over the past twenty-odd days, he had unwittingly developed the habit of chewing food bones and all, because swallowing the bones kept hunger at bay longer.

But since he had come to savor good food, he ought to enjoy the advice of a connoisseur.

His teeth no longer paid much heed to the hardness of snake bones, so eating only the meat did not feel much different from before. Yet only now did his tongue seem to recall a long-lost sweet, gentle comfort.

"That's not even the best part. Once you've eaten your fill and step outside, when the cold wind hits you under the moonlight, that's the most wonderful moment of eating from a clay pot at night."

Chewing on a piece of chicken skin, Meng Shuangjiang said, "Our town may be small, but for someone who really knows how to eat, there are at least dozens of delicacies to savor, if not hundreds."

"When the right occasion comes around, I'll take you out for more, Brother Chu. Sooner or later, we'll eat our way through everything here."

Chu Tianshu nodded and said admiringly, "I thought you'd been busy with the pills lately and would have to put good food aside, but it seems you've got a solid foundation after all."

Meng Shuangjiang smiled. "My old man is busy with the pills. He's got so much vigor anyway, so I only have to come up with ideas and leave the details for him to handle."

Chu Tianshu laughed. "You've got your father working for you."

Meng Shuangjiang grinned mischievously. "I'm afraid the old man will feel empty and lonely, so I'm giving him something fulfilling to do in his later years. That's called filial piety."

Meng Xiaobao had a piece of deboned snake meat speared on his chopsticks, and his dark, bright eyes were fixed on his father.

Chu Tianshu noticed. "Xiaobao, you'd better learn well. The way your father lives is called carefree."

Meng Xiaobao obediently nodded. "I'll be sure to learn."

Meng Shuangjiang's expression stiffened. "Hey, now..."

He puffed out his cheeks and put a section of scallion in Xiaobao's bowl. "Just eat your food, kid. Don't go learning everything."

Chu Tianshu burst out laughing.

It was a good thing the eatery was so noisy. Even laughing out loud was perfectly normal here, and there was no need to hold back.

Chu Tianshu appreciated the charm of the little eatery and ate with even greater relish.

They had originally planned on three pots, but in the end they ate a full five, only a pot and a half of which had been finished by Meng Shuangjiang and his son.

By the time they finished, there were few people left in the eatery, and Xiaobao had fallen asleep with his head on the table.

Chu Tianshu seized the chance to carry the child, gathering him into his arms and rising to bid Auntie Zhou farewell.

When they stepped outside, the moonlight was indeed lovely, and a cool breeze was blowing.

Meng Shuangjiang shook his head. "This boy's usually like a little monkey and never seems to tire, but when it's time to sleep, he can fall asleep in an instant. I suppose children just don't have worries on their minds. What a comfortable life."

It wasn't just because children had fewer worries.

Chu Tianshu was a shaman physician and also liked to read miscellaneous books on modern medicine.

Children's metabolic rates were nearly thirty percent higher than adults', and they secreted thirty percent more dopamine. Their fast-twitch muscle fibers and rate of muscle glycogen synthesis, among other things, were also superior to adults'.

Thus, children could convert food into energy more efficiently, dispel fatigue, restore their strength, harden their bones, and strengthen their muscles.

In a sense, once martial artists opened their apertures, they adjusted certain aspects of their physical condition toward those of children, adopting their advantages.

With an adult's basic physical capabilities, once they gained those advantages and developed them further, their performance would be far beyond what a child could match.

An old boxing manual said, "A heart like an innocent child's, fists like lead shot." That was the principle it described.

They had only gone a short way down the lane when they saw a horse-drawn carriage approaching.

A windproof lantern hung beneath the horse's neck, its light swaying as the wheels rolled over the uneven lane.

The driver was a lean, muscular man. "Young Master Meng, the young mistress was worried about the child and sent me to fetch you."

Chu Tianshu handed the child to Meng Shuangjiang.

Meng Shuangjiang said, "Brother Chu, come aboard. We can drop you at the restaurant on the way."

"No need. I really do love this moonlight and breeze."

Chu Tianshu chuckled. "Take care on your way. I'll walk back to the restaurant myself."

Meng Shuangjiang had no choice but to say goodbye and climb into the carriage with the child in his arms.

The lane was too narrow for the carriage to turn around, but the driver was experienced and knew the area. He headed forward and to the right, evidently intending to take a wide loop.

Chu Tianshu watched the carriage recede, then turned and walked slowly by the light of the moon.

Moonlight fell on the hollows and bumps in the dirt road, making them look like patches of varying light and shadow.

Chu Tianshu walked with his hands behind his back and his steps unhurried, yet every footfall landed on one of the raised spots.

He walked this way for what he reckoned was more than a quarter of an hour, but still had not reached the restaurant.

His playfulness gradually faded. He raised his head and quickened his pace a little.

The front entrance of Old Ma's Restaurant faced the main street, while the back door opened onto a small street.

He turned a corner and entered that small street, only to hear a sudden, grating clamor of a bronze gong.

With his sharp hearing, he also seemed to hear someone faintly shouting that a person was dead.

Thinking of the carriage that had just left, Chu Tianshu felt his heart leap and broke into a run in that direction.

In less than a hundred meters, he rounded a street corner and saw the night watchman standing in the lane, beating his gong.

Men from several nearby households had also come outside, carrying rakes and shovels. They looked around in apparent fear.

A figure suddenly darted toward them, giving them all a fright. They scattered, pressing their backs against their own doors.

The corpse they had been blocking from view on the road was exposed to the moonlight.

Chu Tianshu stopped and looked closely. It was neither Meng Shuangjiang nor his son.

But the man looked somewhat familiar too. He seemed to be a vendor who set up a stall not far from the restaurant, selling straw rain capes, bamboo hats, baskets, and winnowing trays.

Several bamboo hats lay in a pool of blood.

The man who sold them could never pick them up again.

The corpse's face was frozen in terror, its eyes still open in death. Ghastly wounds covered his neck, chest, legs, and feet, too dreadful to look at directly.