A Towel and a Duck Egg for the Shrine

This towel — why did it look so familiar? Liu Yumei cast her mind back. Wasn't this the very one that Li family boy had been carrying over his shoulder just today? "Now what was this supposed to mean." She reached to take the towel down, but the moment her hand was about to touch it, she stopped. She turned to look toward the inner room. At its doorway stood the figure of the girl. "A-Li, didn't you already lie down? Why are you up again?" The girl said nothing. "A-Li, was it you who put this towel here?" The girl didn't answer. "A-Li, this is where the memorial tablets stand, the most precious place of offering. We can't leave just anything here. A towel belongs where a towel belongs. Let Grandma put it away and scrub it clean for you, all right?" The girl's eyelashes began to flutter. "Then we'll leave it. Leave it, leave it. It's fine right here. Heh. Perfectly fine." The girl settled back to calm. "A-Li, go back to sleep. Grandma won't touch it. Grandma promises: when you wake up tomorrow morning, it will still be right here." The girl turned and went inside. Liu Yumei sighed, and then a smile resurfaced on her face. She had just noticed that this time, when A-Li was on the verge of anger, only her eyelids had twitched — her body hadn't trembled along with them. That too was progress. All these years, they had done everything to keep A-Li from having an episode — not only because in that state of raging fury she would hurt herself and anyone near her, but because after every episode her illness grew worse. Right now, the most important thing was treating A-Li's illness. Everything else was secondary. Liu Yumei finally found her husband — tucked in behind the memorial tablets of her two elder brothers. "It really has been an imposition on you, squeezed in with my two brothers all this while. You haven't been fighting, have you?" Back then, that old thing had pursued her without a shred of shame, and her brothers had thrashed him more than once. Even after she married him, every time he drank with her brothers the shouting would start, nearly coming to blows. The difference was that before the wedding it was the brothers picking fights to put him in his place, while after the wedding it was him, every time, needling them under cover of drink, shamelessly hollering: "Come on, hit me! If you've got it in you, beat me to death — beat me to death, and your little sister will have to live out my widowhood!" Her brothers itched with hatred, scolding her over and over for being blind — to let herself be fooled into marriage by that man, of all things. Truth be told, apart from being a bit petty and one for holding grudges, the old thing really had been good to her. With her handkerchief she gently wiped her husband's memorial tablet. "Old thing, your granddaughter wants you to make room for her things. Just put up with it a little longer." With that, Liu Yumei shifted the tablets, leaning her husband's memorial tablet up against her father's. "Keep my father company, talk with him. A son-in-law counts as half a son." Though that dirty towel sitting square in the middle was a bit of an eyesore, Liu Yumei's voice still carried cheer: "And none of you should take it out on A-Li. She's ended up like this because of you, hasn't she? Who told you to die so briskly, so grandly, back in those years — without leaving your descendants so much as a wisp of incense protection. That Li family boy is called Li Zhuiyuan. A pleasant name, and an interesting person too — just frighteningly precocious. I've seen plenty of clever children, but one like him is a first in my whole life. The feeling this child gives me — apart from that last trace of childishness he hasn't shed, it's as if he's deliberately playing the part of a child. A pity. People like that seldom live long. Then again, who can say. He's living under Li Sanjiang's roof now, and he's Li Sanjiang's own kin — sharing in the blessed fortune must be far simpler for him than for us. But none of that matters anymore. I only hope he can slowly cure our A-Li. Our A-Li has suffered too much, endured too much — none of it was ever what she deserved. And all of you — drowned in the river shouting that it was for the new world. This world is too big. A woman like me sees only a shallow stretch of it; I can't hold it all. So I can only keep my eyes on my own granddaughter, hoping only that she can laugh as happily and speak as openly as other little girls do. If you have spirits in heaven..." At this point Liu Yumei couldn't help rolling her eyes at the memorial tablets, her tone turning to sullen reproach: "If even one of you had left a spirit behind before dying, the way the old rules demand, would my granddaughter ever have come to this!" … Fresh from his bath, Li Zhuiyuan found himself another towel, scrubbed it carefully clean with soap, and hung it on the clothesline. Passing Li Sanjiang's bedroom door, he hesitated, then pushed the door open and went in after all. On the bed, Li Sanjiang lay with a cigarette between his fingers and his legs crossed, humming a little tune, brewing himself toward sleep. "Great-Grandpa, there's something I thought over. I still ought to tell you about it." "Oh? What is it? Go ahead." "Last night, Niu Fu's mother came to our house. Borrowing the tables, chairs, dishes, and chopsticks downstairs, and the paper effigies, she held a birthday banquet for herself. It was very lively, and I was pulled into it too." Li Sanjiang's brow creased slightly, and he instinctively propped himself up. "Go on." "Near the end of the banquet, a jiangshi appeared and fought Niu Fu's mother. She couldn't beat it, and at the last moment she sent me away." "Sent you away? Sent you where?" "I woke up." "Oh." Li Sanjiang nodded. Remembering how he himself had been chased through his dream by a pack of jiangshi, he understood: the boy must have had a dream with jiangshi in it, same as his. He consoled him, "Xiao Yuan Hou, just treat it as a dream. Rest assured, nothing will happen tonight." No fortune-transferring ritual tonight — he could get a proper night's sleep at last. "But, Great-Grandpa..." "It's nothing. Don't dwell on it. Your Great-Grandpa understands." Li Zhuiyuan nodded. As expected — Great-Grandpa understood. "Great-Grandpa, one more thing. Have you noticed the matter of Grandma Liu and her family living here and working for you?" "Of course I noticed long ago. Heh heh." Li Zhuiyuan nodded again. As expected — Great-Grandpa knew. Li Sanjiang chuckled inwardly: this family worked his fields for him, made paper effigies for him, carried tables, chairs, bowls, and plates to his banquets, and took on the cooking and the cleaning besides... yet asked for only that little bit of wages. Heh heh — if that wasn't something wrong with their heads, what was it? These days, a long-term hired hand who took little, did much, and had something wrong with her head was hard to find. He would have to cherish it. "Anything else, Xiao Yuan Hou? If not, go back to bed. Your Great-Grandpa is sleepy too." "One last thing. Actually, every time, it's me who's been tutoring Ying Zi in her schoolwork. Ying Zi's comprehension is rather average; she learns rather slowly." Li Zhuiyuan noticed that after he finished speaking, Li Sanjiang pressed his lips tight, and his cheeks bulged more and more, as if he were straining to hold something in. Ten seconds of silence — then, at last: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Li Sanjiang laughed so hard it tugged at his wounds, and he kept hissing in cold breaths of pain, yet he still couldn't help laughing and cursing: "You little slick thing — if you don't want to study, just say so! Cooking up a flimsy excuse like that — who do you take your Great-Grandpa for, a fool? All right, all right, enough nonsense. Off to bed with you. Tomorrow Ying Hou will surely come over — play all you like, there'll be no escaping your studies!" "Good night, Great-Grandpa." Li Zhuiyuan didn't argue. Even Great-Grandpa wasn't all-knowing and all-powerful; there were always one or two things he couldn't work out. That was normal. Back in his own bedroom, he lay down, pulled the covers over himself, closed his eyes, and slept. This sleep was deep and peaceful. He dreamed nothing. At first light, Li Zhuiyuan woke. He sat on the edge of the bed a while, taking stock, and found the sleep far poorer in quality than when he dreamed. He got up, picked up his washbasin, and was about to go wash — the moment he opened the door, he saw a girl standing in the doorway. It was Qin Liang. Today her hair was done up in a set style, pinned with a wooden hairpin; above she wore white, below a black horse-face skirt — exquisite and dignified. A beautiful person still needed beautiful clothes, so that each set the other off. Li Zhuiyuan knew that Qin Liang's daily clothes were nothing a shop could sell. For one thing, foreign, fashionable styles were all the rage now; traditional old-fashioned dress had fallen out of favor, dismissed as rustic, unfit for proper company. For another, Qin Liang's clothes, from design to stitchwork, were exquisitely fine — probably only one of those small garment workshops with a handed-down craft could make them to order, and not cheap. Then again, judging by how Grandma Liu had tossed over a jade thumb ring worth a three-room flat in the capital as a mere first-meeting gift, her family certainly didn't lack money. Dew still moistened the ends of the girl's hair. Li Zhuiyuan couldn't help reaching out to touch it, and felt a faint dampness. "You've been waiting here a long time?" The girl said nothing, only watched him. "Next time, once I'm up, I'll go to the east room and call you to come read with me. That way you won't have to stand here waiting. All right?" The light in the girl's eyes dimmed a little. "Then from now on I'll try to wake early. If you come and I'm not up yet, come inside and sit on the chair to wait. The door isn't locked anyway." The brightness in the girl's eyes returned. Li Zhuiyuan went to the clothesline and took down the towel washed the night before. Hung out overnight, it wasn't fully dry, but it would do. He walked to the stool from yesterday, wiped it off, and laid the towel across the wooden seat. "Sit here first. I'll go wash up." Qin Liang sat down. Li Zhuiyuan went to wash up. Seated on the stool, Qin Liang's gaze fell on that still-clean towel. She reached out and gripped it — then, after a thought, drew her hand back. He had just finished brushing his teeth and was wiping his face; the moment he set down the face cloth, he saw Grandma Liu standing before him, and it gave Li Zhuiyuan a start. "Xiao Yuan, heh heh, I'm truly sorry for all the trouble we've caused you." This was the first time Li Zhuiyuan had seen Grandma Liu enter the main house, much less come up to the second floor. Presumably, for as long as Qin Liang had stood here waiting for him, Grandma Liu had stood here keeping her company for just as long. "Grandma, I like playing with A-Li." "Then you two play nicely, and if anything comes up, just call for me." Smiling, Grandma Liu went downstairs. Li Zhuiyuan carried his washbasin back inside. It was still too early; the sun hadn't risen, and he didn't feel like reading. His gaze roamed the room, and he picked up a small wooden box and carried it out. "A-Li, let me teach you weiqi?" Qin Liang said nothing, only stared at the small wooden box. Li Zhuiyuan opened it. It was something Uncle Qin had brought back along with the snacks and school supplies, when Great-Grandpa had sent him out to buy them. It was a weiqi set: the board was printed on a sheet of translucent oilpaper, and the pieces were little plastic discs the size of ladybugs. In short, tiny and crude. Its virtue was low cost and a cheap price. The stationery shop in Shinan Town would never stock a proper weiqi set — who would buy one? "First, let me explain the rules of weiqi..." Before Li Zhuiyuan could finish, A-Li pinched up a black stone and set it on the board. Li Zhuiyuan said no more, pinched up a white one, and placed his move. After a long string of moves, Li Zhuiyuan confirmed it: the girl knew how to play weiqi. A smile rose to his face unbidden, and he gave himself to the game. They played fast, neither thinking much. Gradually, Li Zhuiyuan began to falter, until at last... "I lost." Li Zhuiyuan hadn't gone easy — he had truly lost. Though he had never properly studied the game, his mind computed well, and weiqi leaned heavily on just that. Measured not against national masters but simply among amateur enthusiasts, his strength wasn't poor. But the girl was clearly stronger. She must once have studied formally: she played not only fast but with real method. Li Zhuiyuan felt no frustration over it. He knew he learned quickly, but there was no skipping the process of learning. In many fields, a good brain wasn't enough; it took vast accumulation and settling — and, more than anything, the backing of a platform. "A-Li is really good. Another game?" The girl twirled a stone between her fingertips and looked up at Li Zhuiyuan. The meaning was obvious: she wanted to keep playing. Li Zhuiyuan tidied the board. Seeing that a morning breeze seemed to be rising, he fetched four flaked-off chunks of cement from the west corner of the terrace and weighed down the game paper. The second game began. The stones came down as fast as before, and the more Li Zhuiyuan played, the more the corners of his mouth curled up despite himself. He could feel it: the girl was letting him win. He didn't feel humiliated — he was delighted. And then he began deliberately playing bad moves. At this, the girl's pace slowed, and her brows gradually knitted. Li Zhuiyuan didn't have the heart to keep teasing her, so he won after all. The girl raised her head and looked at him. At the corners of her mouth there was the faintest hint of a pout — barely visible. She must be angry. But her eyelashes didn't flutter, and her body didn't tremble. "All right, all right — my fault, I was wrong." He looked up: the sky was already bright, and from below came Auntie Liu's voice calling them to breakfast. Li Zhuiyuan packed up the board and brought Qin Liang down to eat. With an unspoken understanding, what had been a solitary breakfast became a little table set between two wooden stools. As usual, Li Zhuiyuan served the pickled vegetables into a small dish for the girl, and once she had begun eating, he followed his own habit: pried at a duck egg's shell, peeled back the crown, and dug in with his chopsticks. Suddenly, sensing that the girl beside him had stopped eating, Li Zhuiyuan looked over and found her staring at the duck egg in his hand. "Want me to open one for you? Though then it's harder to keep track of the portion, you know." Qin Liang kept staring. Li Zhuiyuan had no choice but to crack a duck egg for her too, carefully peeling back a bit of shell before handing it over. Qin Liang took it in both hands, cradled it to her chest, and looked down earnestly at the duck egg with its broken crown. Just then Li Sanjiang came shuffling downstairs. He looked at Xiao Yuan Hou's and the girl's table for two, then at the family table of Liu Yumei, Qin Li, and Liu Ting, and silently made his way to his own little table for a lonely old man. He was just about to start when he spied figures appearing on the path before the courtyard. A boy of about fourteen or fifteen, dark-skinned, was pushing a wheelbarrow with an old man seated in it. The boy wore nothing but a pair of patched blue shorts, bare from the waist up, his feet in plastic liberation shoes obviously too big for him. The old man's scalp was bald and scabby, his frame visibly shrunken with age; he wore plastic slippers and carried a water pipe in his hand. Seeing this, Li Sanjiang set down his chopsticks, resigned. "Welp. Here come the beggars." But once the grandfather and grandson had come up onto the courtyard, Li Sanjiang stepped forward and greeted them warmly: "Aiyo, I knew you'd come today — I just never expected you this early." The old man took a pull on his pipe. "We made a point of traveling through the dark. Getting to your place saves us a breakfast." "Ting Hou, is there still congee in the pot?" Li Sanjiang asked. The old man snorted coldly, disdainful. "Coming all the way to your place and still drinking thin gruel? Then I'd have come for nothing. We want solid food." "Fine, fine, fine. Ting Hou, go cook." "Right away." Auntie Liu went to the kitchen to cook. "Xiao Yuan Hou, come here." Li Sanjiang called Li Zhuiyuan over and pointed at the old man. "This is your Old Shan Uncle." "Bullshit! Why should I have to sit a generation below you!" "Fine then. Call him Grandpa Shan." "Hello, Grandpa Shan." "Ai, good. Such a handsome little child — fair skin, tender flesh. Such a good boy." Li Sanjiang smiled, ruffled Li Zhuiyuan's hair, and said: "Xiao Yuan Hou." "Great-Grandpa?" At those words the old man's face flushed red at once, and he sputtered in fury: "Well played, Li Sanjiang — you were set on taking advantage of me all along!" "Heh, I couldn't be bothered to take advantage of you. Aren't you about the same age as the boy's grandfather, Han Hou?" Li Zhuiyuan was a little surprised. So this old man was that much younger than Great-Grandpa — and yet, to look at them, his own Great-Grandpa seemed the younger of the two. Off at a distance, Liu Yumei, mid-congee, set down her bowl and chopsticks and lifted her handkerchief lightly over her nose. That old man carried the stench of corpses fresh from the water. Truly sickening. And his whole appearance was exactly what a corpse retriever ought to look like. Li Sanjiang, by contrast — fed well, living well, kept well — was the exception among exceptions. To put it plainly, anyone with a respectable background and an honest trade — who would ever choose corpse retrieval? That alone fixed a corpse retriever's economic standing in the village from the start, and with all the trade's taboos clinging to him besides... a peaceful old age was rare indeed. Liu Yumei no longer felt like eating. She saw her granddaughter had left the table too — probably because Xiao Yuan had been called over to be introduced. But the girl didn't go up to the second floor to wait and read with him; she walked straight back to the east room. Hm? Curious, Liu Yumei made her way slowly back to the east room. Just as she was about to step over the threshold, she saw her granddaughter coming back out. "Going back to find Xiao Yuan after all?" The girl said nothing. She crossed the courtyard, went up to the second floor, and sat in the northeast corner, waiting for Li Zhuiyuan to finish so they could read. However delighted she was by her granddaughter's change and improvement, once the surprise of yesterday had gradually worn off, a sourness had slowly begun to rise in Liu Yumei's heart. This was the little girl she had raised with such painstaking care — and now those eyes held no one but that Xiao Yuan. Thank goodness the two of them were still young; no need for worries on that score. But then again — if it was like this already as children, what would it be like once they were grown? Fortunately, this Xiao Yuan was going back to the capital after summer vacation. But what if her granddaughter's illness wasn't cured by then, and he had to leave all the same? Walking into the east room, Liu Yumei meant to light a few sticks of scented incense to drive off the smell and steady her cluttered mind, and her gaze swept naturally over the memorial-tablet table. Then she immediately turned back to look again. "This..." There, where her father's tablet had always stood, the tablet was gone. In its place was... a salted duck egg with its shell cracked open. … The old man's surname was Lu; his name, Lu Shan. He was from Xiting Town — and the village's corpse retriever. The boy was called Lu Runsheng, a child Lu Shan had picked up by the riverside. An adopted son, yes, but the gap in their ages was simply too great, so he had the boy call him Grandpa. "Xiao Yuan Hou, your Great-Grandpa — me — and your Grandpa Shan go back a friendship sealed with our very lives." Lu Shan gave a cold laugh. "Heh. That we do. Every time it's me wading into danger and selling my life, while you just pass the money through your hands." "Hey, isn't it that I trust your skill? Besides, that little bit of work is nothing to you — it never needs me lifting a finger." "You old thing — the older you get, the thicker your hide." Some jobs were more complicated; no ordinary corpse retriever could manage them alone, so men would call their friends together to work as a team. Lu Shan was the seasoned partner Li Sanjiang had long since worn smooth. The two were on excellent terms; whenever a dangerous job came up, Li Sanjiang thought of him first. Like this Niu family posthumous birthday rite. Li Zhuiyuan could sense it too: Grandpa Shan harbored considerable resentment toward his own family's elder. But that was only natural — one look at Grandpa Shan's and his grandson's clothing made clear how tight their days were, while at his own family's elder's place... even the village head's everyday meals probably weren't as good as his. Men of the same trade, living lives as far apart as heaven and earth — of course the heart would grow unbalanced. Auntie Liu brought the dishes out. Time was short; she had only managed two stir-fries — sausage with garlic scapes, and eggplant braised with salted pork — the portions generous, more meat than vegetable. The freshly steamed rice came in an aluminum basin, steaming. At the sight of meat, Runsheng's throat began working on its own. What surprised Li Zhuiyuan a little was that Auntie Liu, bringing out the dishes, had also brought a bundle of incense sticks. "Little sister, fetch me another rice basin." "Right — my mistake, I forgot." Clearly this wasn't the pair's first visit to Great-Grandpa's house; Auntie Liu had hosted them before. She brought out another large bowl basin; Grandpa Shan ladled rice into it, then piled dishes over the top. Then he lit the incense sticks and planted them in the rice and dishes on the table. With that done, he set to his own basin of rice smothered in dishes, eating in great mouthfuls. Li Sanjiang brought out the baijiu and poured Grandpa Shan a cup; the old man drained it in one gulp in a pause between bites, then glanced at the table, signaling Li Sanjiang to keep pouring. As for Runsheng, he sat there the whole time, watching the still-burning incense, not touching his chopsticks. And yet he was clearly starving, and clearly couldn't wait. Auntie Liu brought the soup over — tomato and egg-drop, with plenty of vinegar stirred in. Grandpa Shan lifted the soup bowl, poured it straight into his basin, and went on shoveling. Li Sanjiang took out his cigarette case, drew two, flicked one over and lit his own, cursing: "Damn it all — did you skip eating yesterday too, and come here on an empty stomach?" Grandpa Shan went on gulping, glug glug, until finally he raised the whole basin and drank down every last drop of the juices; only then, satisfied, did he wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, set it down, pick up his cigarette, and tap it on the tabletop. "When your message reached me, I stopped eating. Been starving near three days now." "I say, you might as well starve to death, roll yourself in a straw mat, and be done with it — but the boy has to suffer along with you. It's a sin, truly." Grandpa Shan lit his cigarette and said, flatly: "I picked him up; suffering along with me is what he's owed. I've told Runsheng Hou too: when I die, he's to come find you. He works for you, you feed him." "Cut out that bullshit. I'm older than you — I'll surely go first." Grandpa Shan blew out a smoke ring, ran his tongue once around his teeth, spat beneath the table, and said: "Forget it — a scourge like you lives a thousand years. I've no confidence I'll outlast you. Even comparing allotted years with you feels like tempting taboo." At last the incense in the food burned out; a fair dusting of ash had settled over the dishes and the rice. But Runsheng couldn't have cared less. He drew the aluminum basin of rice to himself and began to eat. Li Zhuiyuan was puzzled, but felt too awkward to ask. Grandpa Shan, seated across, saw it and said with a laugh: "Runsheng Hou ate dirty meat as a child. Now clean food of the living makes him vomit going down — these days even to drink a bowl of cornmeal porridge he has to plant an incense stick in it first." Then, as if bent on mischief, Grandpa Shan leaned his body toward Li Zhuiyuan and asked, teasing: "Xiao Yuan Hou, is it? Do you know what dirty meat is?" Li Zhuiyuan: "Dead men's flesh?" Grandpa Shan's face froze. He truly hadn't expected this little child to ask back so calmly. He'd meant to tease the boy by withholding the answer — and now the child's return tease had left him, of all people, flustered. Li Sanjiang said, displeased: "Old thing, what rot are you feeding the child?" Grandpa Shan pointed at Li Zhuiyuan. "Sanjiang, this great-grandson of yours is something — fine material for our trade." "Bullshit. This great-grandson of mine is going back to the capital to test into university. There's no way he walks our broken road." "Li Sanjiang, what I despise most is the sight of you looking down on our trade while still fishing corpses for money. Heaven must be blind — why not drop a dead-flipper down for you to swallow!" "Heh. Not convinced? Then hold it in." "Great-Grandpa, I'm going to read now." "Go on, go." Li Zhuiyuan left the table and went up to the second floor. The morning sunlight was splendid, falling on Qin Liang's hair and her horse-face skirt — she looked like a finely wrought sculpture. He took out the book and sat down. "We had guests; I kept them company a while. Sorry to have kept you waiting so long." Qin Liang said nothing. Li Zhuiyuan spread the book open and settled into today's fine stretch of reading. When he finished the volume in hand and was about to switch books, Qin Liang suddenly rose to her feet, looking behind them. Li Zhuiyuan looked too, and found Runsheng standing there, a little bashful. He was ill at ease, because he wore nothing but a pair of shorts. By rights such dress was perfectly normal in the village — in high summer, bare-chested boys and men were everywhere in the fields and on the courtyard. But worn before the boy and girl in front of him now, the contrast was simply too stark. Li Zhuiyuan's clothes and shoes had all been mailed from the capital together. Though he wasn't picky about food or dress, he hadn't yet taken to going bare-chested — and as for Qin Liang, she needed no saying. Though Runsheng was older than they were, facing them he felt both inferior and eager to come over and join in. Li Zhuiyuan took Qin Liang's hand. "Brother Runsheng is a guest of the family. It's all right." At his words, Qin Liang stopped looking at him. Li Zhuiyuan, for his part, wasn't surprised that Qin Liang had looked at Runsheng of her own accord. The girl seemed able to see unclean things, and the way Runsheng had eaten earlier... it would have been stranger if there were nothing odd clinging to him. "Brother Runsheng, we're reading. Come sit with us." "Ah — is that all right?" He wanted to come sit, but only smiled and scratched his head. Li Zhuiyuan walked over and took hold of his wrist. His body was so cool. It was the height of summer, and he had just eaten all that food — by rights he should be sweating and warm. Instead he was dry and cool to the touch. Runsheng followed him over and sat down on the small stool. Qin Liang's eyelashes began to flutter, and her body began, little by little, to tremble. Li Zhuiyuan had no choice but to take her hand again and see whether he could calm her. If not, Runsheng would simply have to sit farther off. Luckily, once he held her hand she quieted — which meant he simply had to keep holding it. Seeing this, Runsheng awkwardly seemed on the verge of standing. He could tell how much this girl, pretty beyond reason, shrank from him. "Brother Runsheng, don't take it to heart. A-Li was born afraid of strangers — it's nothing against you. In this family, only Grandma Liu and I can get close to her. She's fine now, so keep your seat. Oh, right — Brother Runsheng, do you and Grandpa Shan often go out together to fish up dead-flippers?" As expected, the moment dead-flipper fishing came up, Runsheng turned far more natural and confident. "That's right. These days it's mostly my grandpa setting up the offering table onshore while I do the fishing. And I tell you — just three months back I fished up a dead-flipper. A dead infant. That thing was uncanny, really it was. You'd better believe me." "Did you run into a whirlpool?" Runsheng blinked. "What's a whirlpool?" "A river leak — the kind of stretch where the ground caves in or eddy holes open up." Runsheng slapped his thigh in excitement and demanded loudly: "How do you know that?" Then, as if the realization struck him, he smiled. "Your Great-Grandpa told you?" "I read it in a book." "A book?" Runsheng looked at the book resting on the wooden stool before him and reached out to open its pages. "These characters give me a headache. It's written in this book?" "Mm, that's right. This set has many volumes." Jianghu Zhiguai Lu treated infant dead-flippers at length, because from ancient times many places kept the foul custom of drowning infants, and so infant dead-flippers arose without end. These dead-flippers had one trait in common: they carried a malice of extremely pointed purpose. With other dead-flippers, so long as you didn't happen to run straight into one — or you rowed back hard the moment you spotted it — most of the time you'd be fine. But an infant dead-flipper would deliberately circle in a given stretch of river, seeking people out. Its most common method was to lure people to a dangerous spot in the river and kill them by turning the terrain against them. Even an ordinary small river had its dangerous places; things going wrong, even an old fisherman could lose his life. And they had special tricks besides — while you swam, say, they would bind your feet in waterweed and let you drown, strength spent. Many of these infant dead-flippers had died before birth or just after — carrying a fierce unwillingness and rage, yet with strength too slight. Unlike those other dead-flippers with their host of special methods, all they could do was take their revenge on the living through the terrain. Runsheng was much amazed: "Our trade can actually get written up in books?" Li Zhuiyuan nodded. "It certainly has." Runsheng: "And who's got that much time on their hands, writing about our corpse-fishing?" Li Zhuiyuan didn't know how to answer. He had no idea who the author was — though he harbored a vague guess. Every entry ended with the dead-flipper "destroyed by the righteous path." Surely the author's name didn't actually contain the words "righteous path"? Runsheng went on: "Stranger still — books are written for people to read, and there are actually people who'll read stories about corpse-fishing?" Li Zhuiyuan: "..." As things stood, Jianghu Zhiguai Lu was stuffed with hard substance. "Brother Runsheng, tell me about that time in detail." "Oh, right. That day I ran straight into an eddy. The boat capsized, and I sank into the mud and sand myself. Only because I held one breath and clawed upward with everything I had did I outlast the thing — otherwise I'd have been buried alive in the river." "Truly dangerous." Li Zhuiyuan added, "Brother Runsheng, you're really something." Thank goodness Little Oriole, back then, had only wanted him to lead the way. If it had been an infant dead-flipper — counting the days — by now he would just about be due his own touqi, the seventh-day rite for the dead. "Heh heh, well enough. Mostly it was that Grandpa and I figured we'd eat a proper meal at the host's place once the job was done, so we deliberately went without lunch. If there'd been food in my belly, that dead-flipper couldn't have made such a sorry show of me." "Then this time, we'd better go with our bellies good and full." "Of course. I like your Great-Grandpa's house. Every time I come to your Great-Grandpa's house, I eat my fill and eat well!" "So that infant dead-flipper — did you finally get it up?" "Of course I got it up. It was a cunning one. Seeing it couldn't kill me, it tried to worm into the waterweed to hide, so I followed the weed along the river bottom, clawing after it. When it saw there was no hiding there, it tried to burrow under the riverbed, and I dug it out by main force, like digging taro. And I'll say — that pale, tender, water-bloated swelling of it really did look like a taro boiled and skinned. All it lacked was a bowl of soy sauce poured over and a sprinkle of minced garlic." Li Zhuiyuan noticed that, saying this, Runsheng's tongue flicked across his lips. As for the rest, Li Zhuiyuan preferred not to think on it. He could only assume that, at the time, the man had truly been hungry. "Runsheng Hou! Runsheng Hou!" Grandpa Shan's shout came up from downstairs. "Come down and make your grandpa's bed. Your grandpa wants a nap before lunch." "Coming, Grandpa." Runsheng got up and ran down. Qin Liang, for her part, opened the book on the wooden stool of her own accord. Li Zhuiyuan understood her meaning: she wanted to read with him. She didn't want to be disturbed. "Brother Runsheng is a guest — and tomorrow, Great-Grandpa and the others will be counting on him." Just think of tomorrow's lineup for the Niu family posthumous birthday rites: one walking wounded, one too old to move, one blind... Runsheng was the only one who could be counted on. Qin Liang raised her head and looked at Li Zhuiyuan, her eyes dimming slightly. She seemed to be expressing an injured feeling. Li Zhuiyuan squeezed her hand. "There, there. We'll keep reading." But after Runsheng made the bed that afternoon, he didn't come up again. At lunch, Li Zhuiyuan brought Qin Liang downstairs and saw the two of them — grandfather and grandson — sleeping on the first floor on a bed made of the round table. They got up for lunch as well. Breakfast's quantity truly had been breakfast only; and lunch, prepared with care by Auntie Liu, counted as a modest banquet. The pair ate until their bellies were perfectly round, then went back to lie on the round-table bed for their afternoon nap, sleeping straight through to dinnertime. After dinner, they went directly into a full night's sleep, snores shaking the rafters. One couldn't help suspecting they had some special method of banking up their energy in advance, saved for tomorrow's use. Li Zhuiyuan got to read nearly a whole day through, same as yesterday — and today more efficiently, reaching Volume 24. With the grounding and accumulation behind him, the dead-flippers further on needed only their names and traits committed to memory. Li Zhuiyuan reckoned one more full day would see Jianghu Zhiguai Lu finished, and he looked forward eagerly to the next set. The one mildly odd thing was that Ying Zi hadn't come today. Li Sanjiang grumbled a line about it, but with business tomorrow there was nothing to do but wait until after the day's affairs to go find Han Hou and have a word. That night, again, no dream. In the morning, Li Zhuiyuan deliberately woke earlier than the day before. He lay in bed a while, taking stock. Mm — he was starting to miss the brisk vigor of waking from a dream. Sitting up in bed, Li Zhuiyuan's spirit jolted — and then he found it was Qin Liang seated on the chair in his bedroom. The girl seemed to sense she had startled someone; she stood and lowered her head. He could feel her restlessness and unease. Li Zhuiyuan got off the bed, walked to her, and took her hand. "How nice — open my eyes and there you are." The girl raised her head, and her eyes brightened. Today she wore a white qipao, her hair dressed with flowers, elegant and noble, and about her drifted a fragrance of iris and orchid. Li Zhuiyuan washed up first, then played three more games of weiqi with her — losing all three, happily. Coming down for breakfast, he found Auntie Liu pointing at the double wooden stools nearby: "Xiao Yuan, you and A-Li eat over here." Li Zhuiyuan saw another table set beside them, covered with wine and meat from early morning; and to look after Runsheng, incense had even been thoughtfully planted in ahead of time. At this moment the incense was burning; it looked for all the world like a table of food laid for the dead. Li Juxiang brought Liu Jinxia over on a three-wheeler. Seeing Li Sanjiang wrapped in bandages from head to foot, Liu Jinxia nearly burst into frightened tears, pointing at him and cursing: "Li Sanjiang, you old beast — you're not human! Not human!" Liu Jinxia cried and carried on for a long while, but in the end couldn't bring herself to throw down the job; instead she talked her own daughter into heading back first. Li Zhuiyuan and Qin Liang took their seats and started on breakfast. After a while, Li Sanjiang called Grandpa Shan, Runsheng, and Liu Jinxia to the meal: "Come, come, come — everyone's here! Up to the offering table!"