Just like that, Gan Feihong, muddle-headed as he was, took Sun Yixie as his sworn big brother.
Of course, Sun Yixie was well versed in human relations and knew how to keep people's loyalty, so right then he promised Gan Feihong some benefits. He told Gan Feihong, “As long as I get to see our big brother Hao Jingyu, I'll put in a good word for you, Brother Gan. Then not only will you be able to enter the Dao, but at the very least you'll be placed in the ‘Zhou’ generation of the ‘Cosmic Honghuang.’”
That promise was like a pie in the sky, and it made Gan Feihong overjoyed — he almost knelt to kowtow to Sun Brother.
He never considered that... even if Sun Yixie really was Hao Jingyu's brother, he might not see Hao Jingyu for a year and a half; who knew what things would be like after that? For all anyone knew, their band of river pirates might already have been wiped out by the court by then.
But at present, Sun Yixie was genuinely enjoying big-brother treatment.
These river pirates were truly loyal. After accepting Sun Yixie as their big brother, they not only did not rob him, they didn't lay a finger on the other passengers aboard the ship. They went straight back to their own small boat, escorting the large vessel all the way to the ferry landing on the opposite bank before dispersing.
After Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai went ashore, Gan Feihong still sent a few of the brothers assigned to keep them under surveillance — water pirates generally planted sharp-eyed, quick-footed underlings ashore to scout targets in advance; Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai had previously been marked because they looked like two pampered rich brats — to deliver “Sun Brother” two brown brocade signal tokens. This brocade was an agreed signal among river and land bandits along the Yangtze: tie it on your person, and it marks you as one of your own, so others in the trade along the route wouldn't lay a hand on you.
With this assurance, the journey ahead went much more smoothly. The two rode on horseback, heading north around Chao Lake, and after another two days they reached Luzhou City.
This place belonged to Luzhou Prefecture under the direct administration of Nanjing — a thousand-year-old city with many famous sights.
After checking into an inn, Huang Donglai suggested that, since they had come all this way, he might as well stop by Xiaoyao Ford. Sun Yixie didn't want to go. “If you want to go, then go,” he said.
“Is it because your old Sun family was previously done in by Zhang Wenyuan here that you refuse to go?” Huang asked him.
“Yes. I don't want to go to such a sorrowful place,” Sun Yixie answered.
But in reality, given Sun Brother's superficial knowledge of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and his topsy-turvy grasp of Chinese geography, he could neither recall the story of “Zhang Wenyuan Terrifies Xiaoyao Ford” nor know that Xiaoyao Ford is in Hefei — that is, Luzhou. He simply didn't want to go.
So Huang Donglai decided to go alone for a look, and while there, ask the local High-Speed Rail Gang if they had any suitable tickets for the two of them.
After Huang Donglai left, Sun Yixie waited a moment, then locked the door and went to the bronze mirror in the room, where he quietly took out a bottle of trauma medicine.
Huang Donglai did not know that the spot on Sun Yixie's back where Ma Si's saber had struck him still had not fully healed even to this day, leaving a bruise that had yet to fade.
Ma Si's ten years of saber technique were certainly not wasted. If it had not been for the fact that he had been living too comfortably in the stronghold these past years and had slackened in his training, that saber stroke would have broken several of Sun Yixie's bones.
Fortunately, Sun Yixie's injury now was not serious. Back when he was trading blows at the fish market, he had often organized or taken part in large-scale brawls, so he was long used to injuries like this.
For the past few days, Sun Yixie had been quietly applying medicine to himself in his room. It was also an old habit of his — sometimes he was overly concerned with saving face. Actually, if he had said a word to Huang Donglai and had him apply the Huang Clan's secret trauma medicine, he would have healed within three days at most. But he felt it was embarrassing to have been injured while wearing Body-Protecting Armor in a fight with a mountain bandit leader, so he never mentioned it.
That said, the Battle of Zouma Stronghold was, to some extent, a lesson for the jianghu newcomers Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai.
Their previous experience in the jianghu was nearly zero — needless to say for Sun Yixie. Huang Donglai had previously traveled from Shu to Jiangnan the whole way in High-Speed Rail Gang carriages, only fighting someone for the first time when he met Shen Youran outside Hangzhou, and then only small fries.
In their impression, a “mountain bandit leader” was not an opponent worth taking seriously... however, Ma Si used his actions to tell them that in the jianghu, when facing any opponent who seemed unimpressive, one could not afford to be careless.
After all, beyond the mountains are more mountains; beyond people are more people — you never know when you might be killed in a single move by a temple sweeper monk or a brothel runner.
Meanwhile, let's turn to Huang Donglai.
Leaving the inn, the first place he went was the pharmacy. A few days earlier, when he had taught the villagers in Nanyuan Village how to mix “poison bombs,” most of the materials had come from the village pharmacy, but he had still used some of his own stock — otherwise, the supplies of a small village could not have produced effective poison. Later, in Xuancheng, his stay had been too short, so he had not had time to replenish.
Now that he had reached Luzhou City, he naturally went to prepare more medicinal ingredients, then return to the inn that evening to mix up more of his concoctions against future need.
After placing his order at the pharmacy and leaving a deposit, he told the shopkeeper to have everything ready and that he would come pick it up in a few hours. Then Huang Donglai strolled leisurely over to Xiaoyao Ford.
Xiaoyao Ford had been seized and privatized over a hundred years earlier by an official surnamed Dou, who renamed it “Dou Family Pool.” It passed down through several generations; when the Dou family's power waned, it changed hands a few more times, and in the Yongtai era fell into the hands of a wealthy man surnamed Zeng, whose manor stood beside Xiaoyao Ford, nestled among trees beside the water.
Of course, Huang Donglai knew none of this. He had thought the area around Xiaoyao Ford was a public park, like in his previous world, but this visit was blocked by a wall.
Although he could easily get in with his lightness skill, it was broad daylight, and he did not know whose land lay within the wall — vaulting over would be trespassing on a private home. Helpless, he walked a stretch along the wall to check the situation.
Before long, Huang Donglai reached the gate of the Zeng Residence.
Coincidentally, a crowd of commoners had gathered before the Zeng Residence gate, all talking at once.
Huang Donglai squeezed through the crowd to the front and saw several bailiffs carrying a corpse wrapped in a straw mat out of the gate.
By rights, when someone died in a wealthy household, the body should not be brought out like this...
In a wealthy household, when someone passed away, they would first mourn, then hold the funeral and notify the authorities; the corpse would first be placed in the ancestral hall and kept for at least three days (with preservation measures, especially in summer), waiting for relatives and friends to come pay their respects, while quickly commissioning a coffin shop and a tailor who made shrouds to prepare them. Only after three days, once they confirmed the person was truly dead — in ancient times, people in shock were often mistaken for dead and woke up during burial — would they dress the deceased in the shroud, place them in the coffin, and carry them out through the back door.
After the burial, when the eldest son or eldest grandson held the spirit tablet and led the funeral procession back to the mansion for the tofu meal, they had to take a different route from the way they had come, and at this point they had to enter through the front gate. There were many such rules, and they were very strict.
In those days, especially among wealthy families, people were very particular about these things; a single mistake in ritual was a major ill omen and a grave sign of disrespect.
But if a servant died, there were not so many formalities: they would simply wrap the body in a straw mat and carry it out through the back door the same day.
If the master was benevolent, he might have the body taken to the shrine at the village entrance, at least buy a cheap coffin for the burial, and set up a simple gravestone. But if the master was rich and heartless, he would simply order someone to wrap the body in a straw mat, take it to the graveyard, and bury it shallowly. If buried like that and luck was bad, wild dogs would dig up the grave that very night and chew the corpse to nothing.
But today's scene was unusual.
First, the authorities had come to collect the corpse, which indicated a homicide — but that was another matter.
Second, the bailiffs had carried the corpse out through the front gate — was the local magistrate deliberately refusing to give Master Zeng any face?
Huang Donglai listened a bit to the villagers' conversation nearby and found that this should be impossible.
According to the commoners, Magistrate Wang here treated Master Zeng as if he were his own father, leaving aside how many benefits he extorted from the Zeng family each year; the fact that Master Zeng's in-law was a minister at the imperial court was enough to make Magistrate Wang obsequious and obedient.
Then what was going on?
Just as Huang Donglai was puzzled, the bailiffs had already shouted at the onlookers to disperse and cleared a path. Then they carried the straw-wrapped corpse straight to Mingjiao Temple — also called Mingjiao Court or Mingjiao Terrace — only two streets away from the Zeng Residence.
“Sir, may I ask what's going on here?” Huang Donglai was a curious man; besides, he had come out for a stroll today anyway. Seeing a show, he casually stopped an old man and asked.
“Young man, you're not from around here, are you?” Such old men, standing around watching the fun in broad daylight, actually hoped someone would come by to gossip with them. Huang asked, and the old man's face lit up as he replied, “Oh... this business is strange.”
“Oh?” Huang Donglai showed an even more curious expression. “What exactly is the matter?”
“Let me tell you...” The old man deliberately lowered his voice and spoke with a mysterious expression: “This is already the third one carried out this month...” He glanced left and right, as if someone were really trying to eavesdrop on him: “...Rumor has it there's something unclean inside the Zeng Residence.”
“Something unclean?” Huang Donglai frowned slightly and asked tentatively, “You mean…”
“Tsk, what else do you want me to say?” the old man said in a low voice. “It's a haunting.”",
Chapter 12