The two of them walked up the mountain slowly. The temple was not big and there was no incense smell, the remaining monks were kneeling in front of the Buddha statue chanting a prayer for the spirit of the dead monks. Lu Yi prayed in front of the Buddha statue, then headed for the donation box. From inside his pocket he took out a silver paper, not bothering to look at the amount, and immediately put it in the box.
Shangguan Xi witnessed the whole thing. She was surprised. In her mind, Lu Yi was a son of a high-class official, and had been living in a circle with officials, therefore, he shouldn’t have cared about gods and ghosts. Praying to a buddha could be out of curiosity, but Lu Yi seemed sincere.
“Daren, is there something in your heart?” She asked.
Lu Yi smiled a little, but did not answer right away. He walked towards the main hall, going up to the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva*: under the giant bell, a small buddha statue stood upright*. All sentient beings were saved, when enlightenment was attained, if hell was not empty, swear not to become Buddha.
*[Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva’s promise, TN]
*[Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva = also referred to as Jizo Bodhisattva, a bronze or wood figure that usually place in a temple, TN]
He knelt on the prayer mat, returned to praying several times.
Shangguan Xi watched him on the side, and became more clueless to what he was doing.
Lu Yi rose to his feet, faced her and laughed, “Shangguan Bangzhu don’t come here often, right?”
Shangguan Xi nodded her head and said, “Usually when I go pray, I would only be accompanying The Great Master Bangzhu to the great Ming monastery. I don’t come here often, and the incense over there is more prosperous than here.”
“No matter how small a temple is, whoever prays is a true buddhist.” When Lu Yi was talking, in the corner of his eyes, there was a shadow. He continued, “Walking all day, you must be thirsty. I will go see if there is water in the well, you wait here.”
Before Shangguan Xi had the time to nod, she saw him walking out arrogantly. Her eyebrows tightened; this time, Lu Yi was a little strange, but she wasn’t sure where the strangeness was.
As soon as he walked behind a wall, Lu Yi flew, jumping several times, and cutting off A’Rui’s path, who had no time to hide.
A’Rui was standing under a ginkgo tree, his face was calm like water, and he was staring at Lu Yi; the wind continued to blow, his face remained the same.
Lu Yi didn’t talk to him at all, there was no smile on his face. He casually walked towards the well, fetched a bucket of water from it, then washed his hands. Afterward, he turned around and walked away, as if he hadn’t seen him.
A’Rui was a little stunned, not understanding what Lu Yi was doing. After Lu Yi left the place, he saw that, at the end of the well, there was a small object glowing. He walked over to see, his body immediately stiffened: at the end of the well laid a thin gold ornament in the shape of a leaf.
He recognized it, it was Zhai Lanye’s.
Returning to the main hall, Lu Yi went back to his smiling self. He turned to Shangguan Xi and said, “It’s already late afternoon, it looks like Shangguan Bangzhu still has a lot of work to take care of. Don’t let me delay you then, let’s go back to the city.”
Shangguan Xi was confused, but felt relieved that there was no need to aimlessly walk around with him anymore, hence they slowly walked down the mountain and back to the city.
***
All these lucks falling out of the sky, Jinxia never dared to dream about them… She only thought, ‘As long as the sky doesn’t rain down troubles, it’s already a blessing.’
When she finished washing Lu Yi’s clothes, she didn’t think too much when Liu Xiangzuo ordered her to go to Yamen.
*[Yamen = a place where the official work, TN]
A person in Yamen told her that in the recent household registration investigations, it was discovered that an unknown man had rented an unoccupied room in the north of the city for half a year. Based on his appearance, he was very similar to Zhou Xian. Since LiuShanmen was in charge of this case, he gave her the address of the place and told her to investigate.
So Jinxia went.
It was a very common and ordinary house. She walked into the small courtyard, which was empty, then into the main room, empty as well. Finally, she walked into the back room, empty too, furnished with only a small bed and curtains hanging down.
She had dealt with countless cases before. When she was about to open the bed curtains, Jinxia had prepared herself to see a corpse on the bed, but there were no corpses, instead there were eight sandalwood boxes.
Looking at the top of the wooden crates, she noticed that not only were they locked but there was also a government seal on them.
She could faintly guess what was in the chest, therefore Jinxia tore the seal, used the key she always carried with her to open the lock, opened the lid and discovered that white silvers were filling the chest, piece by piece, tightly overlapping each other. She took a piece of silver and examined it: inspecting the bottom of it and judging from the printed pattern and shape, it was clearly part of the missing fund.
Coming to Yangzhou for about ten days, from the beginning until now, there was absolutely no clue on this. She didn’t know what she was even looking for. Jinxia took a deep breath, slowly closing the lid, and started to scan the room.
It was fine not investigating it further, yet now she started to explore the room, her eyebrows tightening. Finally, she put the box back and placed the curtain how they were before and walked out in silence. She started to wander around the streets of Yangzhou City aimlessly to in the end return to the post station.
***
When Lu Yi came back to the post station, he saw Jinxia sitting on the stone steps; her expression was tense, she was not even aware of his footsteps.
“You’ve been just washing clothes, no need to be this gloomy, right?” He laughed while saying this.
Hearing his voice, Jinxia snapped out of her thoughts, jumped to her feet, then tensely said, “Daren, you’re home! I have something….”
“Say it.”
“Here…” Although they were already in Lu Yi’s courtyard, Jinxia was still cautious, “Let’s talk inside.”
Lu Yi didn’t mind, and followed her into the room. Seeing her closing all doors and windows, he felt a bit funny.
Jinxia raised her head to look up at the roof, looked down under his bed, making sure there were no people, but she was still tense. “Talking like this, can other people hear us?”
Lu Yi thought for a moment, then pointed at the bed and said innocently, “You can say it under the blankets.”
Jinxia looked at the bed, fell silent for a moment, then pulled him to sit down at the table. She lowered her head and told Lu Yi the whole story.
“Silver has been found, that’s a good thing.” Lu Yi didn’t look surprised, he was extremely calm.
Jinxia looked at him from top to bottom with uncertainty. A few moments later, lowering back down near his ear, she told the story again.
“Wooden crates are locked neatly, there is a seal too.” Lu Yi while listening to her nodded his head, “The room was cleaned before, not more than a day…”
“Shhh…”
Jinxia looked at him while furrowing her eyebrows; feeling more uncertain, she lowered her head again and leaned close to his ear and told him the last part.
She thought Lu Yi would’ve been shocked to death, or at least stunned, yet he was looking extremely calm.
“I know all of this.” He said softly.
“You already knew?!?” Jinxia did not understand, her forehead creased. She watched him carefully, “I know this matter has something to do with Yan ShiFan, maybe he ordered people to hide it, but I did not expect this silver to be in the treasure storehouse, this silver was not lost at all! What do you think all of this means?”
“From the Prefect of Yangzhou to the official in charge of the silver, and the Yangzhou Yamen, the provincial court judge…” Lu Yi paused, still calm as before, “They all know the silver isn’t lost.”
“They worked together to play this game.”
Jinxia’s chest was puffing up and down, feeling intense hatred. She knew that Yan ShiFan had great power in the palace and with the people, but only now she was personally experiencing the extension of this great power.
Now, why did this silver suddenly appear?
She looked down at Lu Yi, remembering everything Lu Yi had said. In one moment she understood everything.
He’d said ‘the man wanted to step on him.’
He had written the word ‘show weakness’ on her palm.
Jinxia squatted in front of Lu Yi, thinking that he had to bow down in front of Yan ShiFan. It must’ve been more uncomfortable than her squatting right now. She raised her eyes to look at him, “So, on the boat, you…”
“Not only that…” Lu Yi said lightly, “I also gave Qiu Luan’s birthday gift to him.”
Regarding the matters surrounding the high-ranking officials, Jinxia half understood and half did not, “That…Um, make the best use of everything…So, is this case closed?”
Lu Yi smiled slightly: “It’s over.”
A huge and unnamed frustration rose over Jinxia. She said in a low voice: “I have never handled a case like this. The corpses of women in ‘Ai Bieli’, they just died in vain, no one remembers their name or even comes looking for them…”
“…One day…”
He didn’t say anything else, but suddenly thought of the Buddha statue he saw in the temple.
‘One day’, he didn’t know when it would come.
He didn’t know if he could wait until that day.
***
Midnight. Lu Yi was in the room alone grinding inkstone and writing documents.
The wind blew in from the window, making the candles’ flames dim down.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” said Lu Yi, not lifting his head while writing.
Outside, the sky was calm, apart from the sound of the wind hitting the tree leaves, there was no other sound. After a long while, a black shadow leaped out of the room like a leaf lightly falling to the ground; his eyes stared coldly at Lu Yi.
“Come in and sit for a while, on the table there is tea. Wait for me to finish writing this document first.” Lu Yi dipped his brush in ink, kept his head down and continued writing.
A’Rui was still standing still. After a while, he pushed open the door and sat down beside the table.
Inside the quiet room, after a moment of silence, Lu Yi finally lowered his brush, blew the words that had just been written on the paper, laughed and said, “The missing fund case is over, are you going back to the Capital?”
A’Rui looked at him coldly, “I don’t understand your words.”
“If you didn’t understand, you wouldn’t have come here.” Lu Yi folded the document, then stood up, “Based on your level of kung fu, three years at Wu’An Gang, don’t you feel any loss? Or are you just not willing to go?”
A’Rui continued to stare at him.
Lu Yi added, “Even though I am not a member of the gang, at least I understand the rules in the gang world. Traitors would receive three knives and six holes as their punishment. But in your case, you are a JinYiWei hiding in Wu’An Gang, don’t you want to know how Shangguan Bangzhu would handle you?”
A’Rui eyes lit with a murderous intent.
“But don’t worry, if I wanted to say it, I would’ve said it today. The reason I am waiting for you is to negotiate a deal with you.” Lu Yi turned a blind eye, ignoring his murderous eyes, lifted his skirt and sat on the chair quietly, then poured two cups of tea, one for him and one was pushed towards A’Rui.
“I never make deals with people.” A’Rui said.
“Very well, today is a good day to start.”
Lu Yi smiled gently.
The two of them walked up the mountain slowly. The temple was not big and there was no incense smell, the remaining monks were kneeling in front of the Buddha statue chanting a prayer for the spirit of the dead monks. Lu Yi prayed in front of the Buddha statue, then headed for the donation box. From inside his pocket he took out a silver paper, not bothering to look at the amount, and immediately put it in the box.
Shangguan Xi witnessed the whole thing. She was surprised. In her mind, Lu Yi was a son of a high-class official, and had been living in a circle with officials, therefore, he shouldn’t have cared about gods and ghosts. Praying to a buddha could be out of curiosity, but Lu Yi seemed sincere.
“Daren, is there something in your heart?” She asked.
Lu Yi smiled a little, but did not answer right away. He walked towards the main hall, going up to the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva*: under the giant bell, a small buddha statue stood upright*. All sentient beings were saved, when enlightenment was attained, if hell was not empty, swear not to become Buddha.
*[Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva’s promise, TN]
*[Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva = also referred to as Jizo Bodhisattva, a bronze or wood figure that usually place in a temple, TN]
He knelt on the prayer mat, returned to praying several times.
Shangguan Xi watched him on the side, and became more clueless to what he was doing.
Lu Yi rose to his feet, faced her and laughed, “Shangguan Bangzhu don’t come here often, right?”
Shangguan Xi nodded her head and said, “Usually when I go pray, I would only be accompanying The Great Master Bangzhu to the great Ming monastery. I don’t come here often, and the incense over there is more prosperous than here.”
“No matter how small a temple is, whoever prays is a true buddhist.” When Lu Yi was talking, in the corner of his eyes, there was a shadow. He continued, “Walking all day, you must be thirsty. I will go see if there is water in the well, you wait here.”
Before Shangguan Xi had the time to nod, she saw him walking out arrogantly. Her eyebrows tightened; this time, Lu Yi was a little strange, but she wasn’t sure where the strangeness was.
As soon as he walked behind a wall, Lu Yi flew, jumping several times, and cutting off A’Rui’s path, who had no time to hide.
A’Rui was standing under a ginkgo tree, his face was calm like water, and he was staring at Lu Yi; the wind continued to blow, his face remained the same.
Lu Yi didn’t talk to him at all, there was no smile on his face. He casually walked towards the well, fetched a bucket of water from it, then washed his hands. Afterward, he turned around and walked away, as if he hadn’t seen him.
A’Rui was a little stunned, not understanding what Lu Yi was doing. After Lu Yi left the place, he saw that, at the end of the well, there was a small object glowing. He walked over to see, his body immediately stiffened: at the end of the well laid a thin gold ornament in the shape of a leaf.
He recognized it, it was Zhai Lanye’s.
Returning to the main hall, Lu Yi went back to his smiling self. He turned to Shangguan Xi and said, “It’s already late afternoon, it looks like Shangguan Bangzhu still has a lot of work to take care of. Don’t let me delay you then, let’s go back to the city.”
Shangguan Xi was confused, but felt relieved that there was no need to aimlessly walk around with him anymore, hence they slowly walked down the mountain and back to the city.
***
All these lucks falling out of the sky, Jinxia never dared to dream about them… She only thought, ‘As long as the sky doesn’t rain down troubles, it’s already a blessing.’
When she finished washing Lu Yi’s clothes, she didn’t think too much when Liu Xiangzuo ordered her to go to Yamen.
*[Yamen = a place where the official work, TN]
A person in Yamen told her that in the recent household registration investigations, it was discovered that an unknown man had rented an unoccupied room in the north of the city for half a year. Based on his appearance, he was very similar to Zhou Xian. Since LiuShanmen was in charge of this case, he gave her the address of the place and told her to investigate.
So Jinxia went.
It was a very common and ordinary house. She walked into the small courtyard, which was empty, then into the main room, empty as well. Finally, she walked into the back room, empty too, furnished with only a small bed and curtains hanging down.
She had dealt with countless cases before. When she was about to open the bed curtains, Jinxia had prepared herself to see a corpse on the bed, but there were no corpses, instead there were eight sandalwood boxes.
Looking at the top of the wooden crates, she noticed that not only were they locked but there was also a government seal on them.
She could faintly guess what was in the chest, therefore Jinxia tore the seal, used the key she always carried with her to open the lock, opened the lid and discovered that white silvers were filling the chest, piece by piece, tightly overlapping each other. She took a piece of silver and examined it: inspecting the bottom of it and judging from the printed pattern and shape, it was clearly part of the missing fund.
Coming to Yangzhou for about ten days, from the beginning until now, there was absolutely no clue on this. She didn’t know what she was even looking for. Jinxia took a deep breath, slowly closing the lid, and started to scan the room.
It was fine not investigating it further, yet now she started to explore the room, her eyebrows tightening. Finally, she put the box back and placed the curtain how they were before and walked out in silence. She started to wander around the streets of Yangzhou City aimlessly to in the end return to the post station.
***
When Lu Yi came back to the post station, he saw Jinxia sitting on the stone steps; her expression was tense, she was not even aware of his footsteps.
“You’ve been just washing clothes, no need to be this gloomy, right?” He laughed while saying this.
Hearing his voice, Jinxia snapped out of her thoughts, jumped to her feet, then tensely said, “Daren, you’re home! I have something….”
“Say it.”
“Here…” Although they were already in Lu Yi’s courtyard, Jinxia was still cautious, “Let’s talk inside.”
Lu Yi didn’t mind, and followed her into the room. Seeing her closing all doors and windows, he felt a bit funny.
Jinxia raised her head to look up at the roof, looked down under his bed, making sure there were no people, but she was still tense. “Talking like this, can other people hear us?”
Lu Yi thought for a moment, then pointed at the bed and said innocently, “You can say it under the blankets.”
Jinxia looked at the bed, fell silent for a moment, then pulled him to sit down at the table. She lowered her head and told Lu Yi the whole story.
“Silver has been found, that’s a good thing.” Lu Yi didn’t look surprised, he was extremely calm.
Jinxia looked at him from top to bottom with uncertainty. A few moments later, lowering back down near his ear, she told the story again.
“Wooden crates are locked neatly, there is a seal too.” Lu Yi while listening to her nodded his head, “The room was cleaned before, not more than a day…”
“Shhh…”
Jinxia looked at him while furrowing her eyebrows; feeling more uncertain, she lowered her head again and leaned close to his ear and told him the last part.
She thought Lu Yi would’ve been shocked to death, or at least stunned, yet he was looking extremely calm.
“I know all of this.” He said softly.
“You already knew?!?” Jinxia did not understand, her forehead creased. She watched him carefully, “I know this matter has something to do with Yan ShiFan, maybe he ordered people to hide it, but I did not expect this silver to be in the treasure storehouse, this silver was not lost at all! What do you think all of this means?”
“From the Prefect of Yangzhou to the official in charge of the silver, and the Yangzhou Yamen, the provincial court judge…” Lu Yi paused, still calm as before, “They all know the silver isn’t lost.”
“They worked together to play this game.”
Jinxia’s chest was puffing up and down, feeling intense hatred. She knew that Yan ShiFan had great power in the palace and with the people, but only now she was personally experiencing the extension of this great power.
Now, why did this silver suddenly appear?
She looked down at Lu Yi, remembering everything Lu Yi had said. In one moment she understood everything.
He’d said ‘the man wanted to step on him.’
He had written the word ‘show weakness’ on her palm.
Jinxia squatted in front of Lu Yi, thinking that he had to bow down in front of Yan ShiFan. It must’ve been more uncomfortable than her squatting right now. She raised her eyes to look at him, “So, on the boat, you…”
“Not only that…” Lu Yi said lightly, “I also gave Qiu Luan’s birthday gift to him.”
Regarding the matters surrounding the high-ranking officials, Jinxia half understood and half did not, “That…Um, make the best use of everything…So, is this case closed?”
Lu Yi smiled slightly: “It’s over.”
A huge and unnamed frustration rose over Jinxia. She said in a low voice: “I have never handled a case like this. The corpses of women in ‘Ai Bieli’, they just died in vain, no one remembers their name or even comes looking for them…”
“…One day…”
He didn’t say anything else, but suddenly thought of the Buddha statue he saw in the temple.
‘One day’, he didn’t know when it would come.
He didn’t know if he could wait until that day.
***
Midnight. Lu Yi was in the room alone grinding inkstone and writing documents.
The wind blew in from the window, making the candles’ flames dim down.
“I’ve been waiting for you.” said Lu Yi, not lifting his head while writing.
Outside, the sky was calm, apart from the sound of the wind hitting the tree leaves, there was no other sound. After a long while, a black shadow leaped out of the room like a leaf lightly falling to the ground; his eyes stared coldly at Lu Yi.
“Come in and sit for a while, on the table there is tea. Wait for me to finish writing this document first.” Lu Yi dipped his brush in ink, kept his head down and continued writing.
A’Rui was still standing still. After a while, he pushed open the door and sat down beside the table.
Inside the quiet room, after a moment of silence, Lu Yi finally lowered his brush, blew the words that had just been written on the paper, laughed and said, “The missing fund case is over, are you going back to the Capital?”
A’Rui looked at him coldly, “I don’t understand your words.”
“If you didn’t understand, you wouldn’t have come here.” Lu Yi folded the document, then stood up, “Based on your level of kung fu, three years at Wu’An Gang, don’t you feel any loss? Or are you just not willing to go?”
A’Rui continued to stare at him.
Lu Yi added, “Even though I am not a member of the gang, at least I understand the rules in the gang world. Traitors would receive three knives and six holes as their punishment. But in your case, you are a JinYiWei hiding in Wu’An Gang, don’t you want to know how Shangguan Bangzhu would handle you?”
A’Rui eyes lit with a murderous intent.
“But don’t worry, if I wanted to say it, I would’ve said it today. The reason I am waiting for you is to negotiate a deal with you.” Lu Yi turned a blind eye, ignoring his murderous eyes, lifted his skirt and sat on the chair quietly, then poured two cups of tea, one for him and one was pushed towards A’Rui.
“I never make deals with people.” A’Rui said.
“Very well, today is a good day to start.”
Lu Yi smiled gently.
