In countless parallel universes, there is a place very like the world we know, and yet not quite the same.
Here there is a dynasty called "Ming." It is much like the "Ming dynasty" we are familiar with, though the fortunes of this "Ming" have plainly proven more enduring: since its founding, the Great Ming has lasted more than three hundred years, and the number of its emperors has long since passed twenty. By this generation, the throne had come into the hands of an emperor named Zhu Yi.
Emperor Zhu Yi's reign title was "Yongtai," and it is in the early years of Yongtai that our story begins.
Shortly after that year's Spring Festival, rain began to fall in Hangzhou Prefecture.
The rain fell for five days on end—from New Year's Day all the way to the fifth day of the first month, when the God of Wealth is welcomed—and it only grew heavier, so that the common folk could not even set foot out of doors. During that Spring Festival, not a single firecracker was heard in any of the streets and alleys of Hangzhou.
It was as if Heaven itself were commanding the people of Hangzhou to "shut up."
As the saying goes, an extraordinary child must have an extraordinary birth.
And as luck would have it, it was on that very New Year's Day that the wife of Master Sun of Hangzhou—who had been carrying her child for twelve months without giving birth—suddenly began to have pains.
The pain lasted five days, torturing the whole Sun household—and Lady Sun most of all—half to death.
Then, on the fifth day—after who knew how many midwives had been swapped in and out, and how many maids had been worked to the point of collapse—at last, in a moment when lightning flashed and thunder roared outside, a fierce wind howled, and torrential rain poured down, there came a "riiiip," and Lady Sun gave birth.
By the way, that "riiiip" was the sound of Lady Sun accidentally reaching out and tearing a length of silk beside the bed.
The moment Young Master Sun entered the world, the rain outside stopped, and the sky at once cleared—the dark clouds scattered, leaving a vast, cloudless blue.
More astonishing still, after five days and five nights of labor, Lady Sun suffered no harm at all. Far from collapsing in exhaustion, she worked up a mighty appetite, ate a great meal, nursed the child twice, and only then fell asleep together with her son—leaving the midwives and wet nurses Master Sun had summoned utterly dumbfounded.
Within a few days, the story had spread through all of Hangzhou.
Every street and alley buzzed with talk, and every sort of tale was told. Some said the Sun family's young master was a god come down to earth; some said he was the Monkey King reborn; and still others insisted he was actually Nezha—which was why, in the days around his birth, the Dragon King had tried to drown him with rain.
Of course, rumors like these never last long, and after a while they faded away.
To make a long story short, Young Master Sun grew up day by day, and outsiders could see nothing amiss in him—but he himself knew that something was off.
This Young Master Sun was none other than that "Mr. Sun" of our earlier tale, who had crossed over into this world.
His last memory was of driving through the fog; then he had drifted into a daze and lost consciousness. When he came to himself again, he had already become a newborn infant, wailing at the top of his lungs.
The moment he regained consciousness, Mr. Sun wanted to speak, but no matter what he said, all that came out of his mouth was crying. He tried to gesture with his hands, but his fingers were clenched tight and would not come apart... Only after half a day, when at last he managed to open his eyes, did he roughly understand his situation.
Mr. Sun knew a thing or two about how transmigration stories are supposed to go, so he gradually gave up resisting and accepted the fact that he had transmigrated into the body of an "ancient newborn."
As the saying goes, since you have come, make yourself at home. Once the shock had passed and he calmed down and thought it over... well, he had no idea whether he would ever make it back to his original world anyway, so "starting life over" here was not such a bad thing. All things considered, it was a blessing.
* * *
In the blink of an eye, Mr. Sun had grown to three or four years old.
In this world, his name was Sun Yixie. He once asked his father, Master Sun, "Why did you name me Sun Yixie? Do I have an older brother named Sun Yizhuang?"
Master Sun told him he did not, but said that if he ever had a younger brother or a son of his own, he might well consider the name Sun Yizhuang, since a great household like theirs went by generational naming characters.
Sun Yixie asked again, "Generational characters are all very well, but have you ever heard of them running in reverse?"
Master Sun did not answer him, saying only that when the time came, he would tell him in due course.
A few more years passed, and Sun Yixie reached the age to begin his schooling.
But he felt he already knew how to read (the simplified characters, that is), and that all those "this-and-that" literary flourishes were worth nothing at all. So when his tutors tried to teach him, he never applied himself, and was forever playing tricks on them.
And because he was the young master of a great household, the tutors did not dare to beat him in earnest. He dragged on like this for two years, driving away more than a dozen tutors.
Master Sun grew furious and called his son in for a talk. "Our Sun family may be merchants," he said, "but we are a household with a scholarly tradition passed down through the generations. If you don't study hard and win yourself an official rank or degree—never mind that it would shame the Sun family—do you understand that without any rank or degree, you won't even be able to get anyone to serve you?"
Sun Yixie answered him: "Why not just marry a few more wives? What would I need servants for?"
Then he got a thrashing, went hungry for a few days, and was finally sent off to the "Shuren Academy."
This Shuren Academy was a rather famous private school in Hangzhou, renowned for one thing in particular: handling spoiled young masters like Sun Yixie. Its tuition was steep, and it ran on prison-style discipline.
The academy's proprietor was named De Luyi. He was already past seventy, his hair and beard white as snow. It was said that when he went to the capital for the examinations in his youth, he had easily placed first; but at the palace examination, someone worked against him behind the scenes, whispering poison into the emperor's ear, and so he was not named top scholar. The man chosen in his place was a wealthy young man with deep connections. In a fit of indignation, Master De simply gave up the post the court had assigned him, returned to his hometown, and opened this private school. And what he hated most in all the world were those wealthy young masters.
And so Sun Yixie was packed off to Shuren Academy and "locked up" for a year.
Unexpectedly, after that year, he "graduated."
It was not because he was any sort of genius. It was because, after a full year, he still could not write (the traditional characters)—no matter how he was taught, it would not take. In terms we are familiar with, he most likely had something like a "reading disorder"... And on top of that, the fellow was thick-skinned and impervious to either coaxing or force, and he took special delight in stirring up trouble between the teachers and his classmates. He was nothing like other children his age—he was even more worldly and slippery than some of the tutors—and he threw the whole academy into such an uproar that Master De could do nothing with him. To preserve the school's good name, all he could do was leave the words "I have taught him everything that can be taught," and turn him out the door.
Watching his son turn out so "promisingly," Master Sun grew anxious. He thought to himself: Forget it. This must be Heaven's will. If he's no good at letters, let him take up the martial arts. If he has any talent for the martial arts, then at least the Sun family's "secret treasure" will have an heir after all.
So Master Sun found boxing masters to teach Sun Yixie the martial arts.
Unfortunately, because the Sun family had long kept clear of the martial world, they had all but severed their connections with any real "men of the martial world." Even though Master Sun was on nodding terms with a few genuine masters, he could not find them for now; and even if he found them, it would be awkward to ask them to come teach his own child. So all he could do was find some ordinary locals who knew a bit of martial arts to teach Sun Yixie.
That little bit of half-baked kung fu could barely qualify even as a foundation. Even if a man trained in it for ten years, right up to the end, at best it would amount to nothing more than street-corner performing.
What was worse... Sun Yixie was not the sort to buckle down and learn anything properly.
When his master had him practice the horse stance, he found every excuse to slack off. When he was made to learn a routine, he would watch it once, announce such things as "I've already got it" or "I'm invincible," and then turn right around and run off to the street to brawl with the other children—and more often than not, he wouldn't even win... Just like that, he drove away more than a dozen boxing masters.
Seeing that his son was hopeless at both letters and martial arts, Master Sun thought: Never mind. I'll teach him to do business, then. I won't ask him to make a name for himself—at least he ought to be able to hold on to the family's little estate.
* * *
In the eighteenth year of Yongtai, summer.
All in all, these were peaceful times. The frontiers had seen no great war for over a decade; in recent years no especially severe natural disaster had struck within the borders of the Great Ming; and no villain had risen in the court to be reviled for ten thousand years. So the common folk got by well enough.
After that year's Spring Festival, Sun Yixie had turned seventeen.
As the song goes, in the springtime of youth everything comes up roses—only it's over too soon.
This seventeen-year-old Sun Yixie had features just like the "four eyebrows" of his life before transmigration, but he was a good twenty years younger than he had been then, and he was on the lean side, too. He wasn't exactly handsome and dashing, but walking down the street, he was at least worth a glance.
The key thing was the air about him, wholly unlike that of his peers.
Young men his age—whether brilliant talents or outstanding in martial skill—were, the great majority of them, still muddle-headed, brash young fools who knew little of the ways of the world: easy to dupe, easy to goad into rash mistakes, easy to use.
Sun Yixie, though, only put on the act of a brash greenhorn "when it suited him." In truth he was shrewd and calculating, measured in advance and retreat, meekness laced with ruthlessness and ruthlessness laced with humor... He was plainly the sort who could sell a man out and still talk him into counting out the money for him.
Never mind his own peers—even among those older than himself, no small number had to call him "big brother."
Of course, though the knowledge and social sense of a modern man gave him no small advantage, his personal abilities in this world were, in the end, only at the level of "can barely read a word" and "poor at the martial arts." Add to that his great fondness for saving face, and the way he would sometimes fly into a rage over some trifling slight, and he had never quite risen to the level of a Long Aotian—that invincible, overpowered hero.
Over these years, Sun Yixie had mainly been helping his father, Master Sun, look after the fish market business. He did remarkably well at it—even better than his father had managed it himself—to the point that he could fairly be said to have monopolized the entire seafood trade of Hangzhou.
Of course, the road there had been anything but easy. There had been no shortage of flashing blades, deceit, and double-dealing along the way—but in the end, Sun Yixie had seen it through.
And so he earned himself a nickname: the "Fish Market Tycoon."
Everyone in all of Hangzhou knew it: so long as you were on Hangzhou's turf, even that "Ma Half-the-City," if he wanted to eat a single fish, had to ask whether the Sun family approved—otherwise he simply wouldn't get one.
Seeing that his son had at least a bit of a head for business, Master Sun was reassured. He reckoned that in a few more years he would gradually hand over the silk shop, the pawnshop, and the restaurant, along with all the farmland he rented out to tenants, for his son to manage—and then he could enjoy a peaceful retirement at home ahead of schedule.
And yet, in the summer of that very year, several guests arrived at the Sun residence.
They had come all the way from Shu, thousands of miles away.
And it was this visit that would forever change the fates of Sun Yixie, and of many others besides...
Chapter 2