Trouble Comes from the Mouth

The autumn air was crisp and fine—just the season when the river crabs were fat. Having entered the city of Xuzhou, Sun Yixie and Lei Buji first dropped off their luggage and carriage at an inn, and then decided to head out to eat crab. This was the second time Sun and Huang had come to Xuzhou. On their last visit, they'd watched a challenge-arena duel between the "Kaifeng Three-Armed Sword" and the "Scorpion-Tail Spear," and had even run a betting pool on the side; but because a masked man showed up to wreck things, it ended up a no-result, leaving the two of them with half a day's effort wasted. Now, having finished attending the Youth Heroes Assembly and revisited the old haunts, recalling that duel, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai couldn't help but feel—that Zheng Mukai and Ge Shi were simply hopeless. What sort of Three-Armed Sword, Scorpion-Tail Spear nonsense was that? They might not even have been as good as Liu Yikong. Among the final four of this Heroes Assembly, apart from Brother Sun... who was a bit, uh, you know how it is, right... the other three—which one of them couldn't have thrashed those two clowns, Zheng and Ge? So the moment they sat down to eat, the first thing they did was start bragging to Lei Buji about that duel from back then. Huang Donglai was a very talkative fellow. If Sun Yixie was beside him chiming in with quips and stirring things up, the two of them were like a comedy duo performing a two-man crosstalk routine; and when Brother Huang held forth on his own, it was more like a solo act. Listening to Huang Donglai's vivid description, Lei Buji was of course thoroughly entertained, and every so often he'd cut in with a question like a straight man feeding lines, which only got Huang Donglai more and more fired up. Once a man had a bit to drink, his voice would climb a few notches; and as his spirits rose higher, it climbed a few more. Before he knew it, Huang Donglai was perched up on a railing, one foot propped on a stool, a wine cup in one hand and chopsticks in the other, talking and gesturing all at once. And this performance of his, before he even realized it, had drawn a crowd of onlookers... The restaurant they'd gone to was neither great nor terrible—the kind of place with a fairly high occupancy rate, but not so cheap that just anyone could sit down and eat. This shop had undoubtedly been picked by Sun Yixie; someone like him, who'd come up through the fish market, knew perfectly well which class of establishment served the river crabs with the best value for money. Of those who gathered to watch Huang Donglai's "storytelling," some were still seated at their own tables, merely turning their heads to look; others had mostly finished eating and simply dragged their stools over to sit closer and listen; there were even a few busybodies who'd watched that arena duel back then, sitting off to one side and chiming in with him, echoing him line for line—you couldn't imagine how lively it was. A match that could have been told in a few words was spun by Huang Donglai into a great long-winded tale, rambling this way and that, and the content was actually quite interesting. A lot of it were things only jianghu folk knew, things ordinary people knew little about, so listening to it felt quite novel to them. But... as the saying goes, trouble comes from the mouth. There were those who loved listening to Huang Donglai's words—and naturally, there were those who didn't. Who didn't like hearing it? The parties involved... When Sun, Huang, and Lei Buji went up into the restaurant, they hadn't noticed that the "Kaifeng Three-Armed Sword," Zheng Mukai, was sitting in a corner of the second floor, drinking and dining with two young men a bit younger than himself. A coincidence? A coincidence it was—but a perfectly ordinary one. Zheng Mukai was the chief escort of the Guangxing Escort Agency in Kaifeng. Kaifeng wasn't far from Xuzhou, and whenever he took an escort job, so long as it headed south, he was bound to pass through Xuzhou. Right now he had just finished an escort run and was on his way back with two escort hands from the agency. The moment Huang Donglai began telling Lei Buji about that arena duel, Zheng Mukai heard it at once, and his two underlings soon heard it too... Even if they hadn't been martial artists, hearing someone nearby speak words like "Guangxing Escort Agency" and "Zheng Mukai" would have caught their attention—let alone that all of them were martial artists, with hearing keener than ordinary folk. Zheng Mukai hadn't really wanted to recall this affair in the first place; after all, the whole thing—from its cause and its outcome to the process of being stopped midway—was nothing glorious for him. And now, right in front of two juniors, Huang Donglai was, in both word and implication, all but reducing him to something worthless—how could he not fly into a rage? Objectively speaking, Zheng Mukai was at least a second-rate expert, a man with a name in the jianghu. For a junior of seventeen or eighteen to openly criticize and pass judgment on an elder was already improper. Saying he couldn't beat that masked man was one thing—that was a fact everyone had seen with their own eyes—but as you went on... to actually claim he couldn't even beat a few greenhorns fresh out of your Youth Heroes Assembly—that, he could not stomach. Smack— Just as Huang Donglai was hitting his stride, a violent table-slap suddenly rang out from the corner of the second floor. When the crowd turned their heads at the sound, the table's leg had snapped, the food and wine on it had spilled, and three men shot up from their chairs, then came storming over. This scene... the common folk of this universe knew it all too well. The moment the "story-listening" crowd around them saw it, they scattered at once, retreating several yards away; the restaurant's waiter also hurried downstairs to inform the manager, so the manager could come handle it. Meanwhile, the three men from the Guangxing Escort Agency had already reached the table where Sun Yixie, Huang Donglai, and Lei Buji sat. Zheng Mukai stood at the front, his face full of fury, and bellowed, "What snot-nosed brat crawled out of some hole? You dare spout such wild drivel here, talking out of your ass?" By now Huang Donglai's wine had mostly worn off. Sun Yixie and Lei Buji hadn't stood up yet, but they both looked toward Zheng Mukai and were on their guard. "Oh~" Huang Donglai quickly recognized Zheng Mukai. "So it's Chief Escort Zheng of the Guangxing Escort Agency. Forgive my disrespect, forgive my disrespect..." How thick his skin was! One minute he'd been badmouthing the man, and the next he was all smiles, saying "forgive my disrespect." "Hmph." Zheng Mukai didn't take up his words, only gave a cold snort, his meaning plain—he had no intention of being polite with you. The escort hand on his left caught his drift and picked up the thread. "Our captain's asking who you are! Quit grinning like a fool and state your name, quick!" Huang Donglai wasn't afraid of them, so he merely gave a cold laugh. "Easily said—I am Huang Donglai, of the Huang Clan of Shu." The moment these words left his mouth, Zheng Mukai and the other two were visibly taken aback. Huang Donglai? Wasn't he that young master of the Huang Clan who, not long ago at the Youth Heroes Assembly, together with Sun Yixie, had smashed the Tianqi Gang's plot and saved several hundred of the martial world's righteous fighters? A man's name is like a tree's shadow. A month ago, when Huang Donglai announced his background, people would at most be a little wary of the Huang Clan behind him; but now... others had to regard him with a good deal more respect. "Oh... Young Hero Huang." Zheng Mukai's attitude shifted rather quickly too; his tone softened at once. But the anger in his heart hadn't faded, and besides, backing down now would leave him no face to stand on, so he went on: "This Zheng has no old grudge or new quarrel with Young Hero Huang—so why must Young Hero Huang publicly berate and slander me here today? Could it be... you have some score to settle with my Guangxing Escort Agency?" This set of lines of his counted as a standard routine. The meaning of "no old grudge or new quarrel" was: you're the one who started this, so the fault is yours. "Berate and slander" was a definition he'd imposed on his own, and the implication was that he took everything Huang Donglai had just said to be false—and if Huang Donglai disagreed, then Huang was the one picking a fight. As for that last line, "have a score to settle with my Guangxing Escort Agency"—that was more obvious, a kind of intimidation that bound his personal reputation to his agency, the implication being: offend me, and you offend our entire escort agency. Could Huang Donglai fail to discern all this? He simply didn't want to spell it out... Though he could have jumped up and insisted that everything he'd said was fact—at most with a touch of artistic exaggeration—people have their pride as trees have their bark, and to say such things to Zheng Mukai's face truly wasn't nice; he ought to give the man a way out. "Uh... hahahahaha..." As Huang Donglai let out that "uh," he shot a glance at Sun Yixie; the moment their eyes met, their wordless exchange was complete, and then Huang Donglai burst into loud laughter. "Hahahaha..." Sun Yixie laughed along too. Lei Buji was already quite familiar with this routine. The moment he saw his two big brothers start laughing wildly, he understood what was about to happen too... so he joined in with his own "haha." "Brother Zheng! Bro! I was wrong!" After a few laughs, Huang Donglai suddenly put on the look of a drunk man and snatched up a wine jug from the table. "I let my tongue slip after drinking, spouting nonsense! Big brother, you're a man of great magnanimity—spare your little brother this once. I've nothing else to offer... let me first punish myself with a whole jug!" Having said that, before Zheng Mukai could even reply, he "glug-glug-glug" downed the entire jug of wine, and once he'd finished... he flopped onto his back, arms and legs spread wide, and lay down right there on the spot. Seeing this, Zheng Mukai and the two escort hands beside him were also stunned, thinking, There's actually someone who "self-destructs" after just a couple of sentences? Still, this move of Huang Donglai's had already given Zheng Mukai a way out; all he had to do now was say "never mind," and the matter would be over. "Mm..." Zheng Mukai thought it over. Getting angry with such a shameless, thick-skinned fellow really was pointless; besides, the other had both apologized and penalized himself with wine, so his anger had mostly faded. If he kept hounding a junior relentlessly, it would only make him look petty and narrow-minded. So he prepared to speak and make peace. But then, unexpectedly... "I'll punish myself with a jug too!" Lei Buji—perhaps feeling that the time had come to put into real practice the "play the humble fool" skills his two big brothers had taught him earlier—saw Brother Huang self-destruct and did the same, imitating him, picked up a jug, "glug-glug-glug"... Another one down. Sun Yixie watched as both of them keeled over; if he didn't follow suit, he'd be the one left holding the bag—so he simply... ate and drank at once, putting on a show for Zheng Mukai and the others of a rare skill: finishing a bowl of crab broth and downing a whole jug of wine within ten seconds—and then he too slumped over. Zheng Mukai just stood there, utterly dumbfounded, thinking, What's the deal with these three clowns? What kind of routine is this? I've roamed the jianghu all these years—how come I've never seen this before? He was still there pondering the meaning of life when the restaurant's manager came poking his head over cautiously. "Uh... honored sir, has the... misunderstanding here been cleared up?" How shrewd this manager was! He'd been hiding off to the side watching just now, and seeing the scene, figured a fight wasn't going to break out after all—only then did he come forward. "Ah..." Zheng Mukai nodded awkwardly. "It's... it's nothing now." Hearing this, the manager shot a glance at the table Zheng Mukai and the others had just smashed and the food and wine spilled all over the floor. "Then how about... we move you to a different seat and set out fresh food and wine?" "No need." How could Zheng Mukai keep eating and drinking here? As he spoke, he reached into his robe for silver. "The bill—and I'll pay for what I broke." "Ah, ah! Good, good—the master is truly generous!" Seeing the silver, the manager beamed with delight and hurriedly tossed out a couple of compliments, lest the man change his mind. Having paid, Zheng Mukai and his two underlings left with looks of sheer exasperation, having eaten neither their fill of food nor their fill of wine, and could only find somewhere else to go—preferably a good distance from here. And before they'd even reached the mouth of the street, Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai—who'd just been slumped over the table and lying on the floor like two dead dogs—had both gotten up. Wine in those days really wasn't that easy to get drunk on. The two of them had merely used this trick to send Zheng Mukai on his way; thick-skinned as they were, after putting on this little show they could still sit there eating and drinking without the slightest shame. "Hey, Buji, wake up, it's fine now." Once Sun Yixie had sat up properly, he reached over and gave Lei Buji a nudge. Unexpectedly, what answered him was a snore. "Damn, he's really drunk?" Sun Yixie said. "He's still just a kid, after all—can't hold his liquor." Actually, there was a bit of wishful thinking in what he said; in this universe, physiologically he was only a year or two older than Lei Buji. The reason Lei Buji had truly passed out was simply that, from childhood on, he'd had few chances to drink and lacked experience and practice, so downing a whole jug in one go this time was too much of a shock—unlike him and Huang Donglai, who'd grown up in well-off families and had had plenty of chances to drink. "Ah~ leave him be, let's eat." Huang Donglai also brushed the dust off his clothes and settled back down. "Waiter, bring a few more steamed ones, and two more bowls of ginger vinegar." Seeing how shameless these two were, the other patrons and the waiter could only smile wryly; but since all three were just young men of seventeen or eighteen, no one said much about it. Today's affair at the restaurant wasn't much of a big deal to begin with; by rights, it should have been let go just like that, and no one would bring it up again. But who'd have thought... that very night, less than three shichen later, something happened. As the hour of Hai was drawing to a close, the night watchman responsible for East Street found a corpse—Zheng Mukai's corpse. His body had fallen in the back alley of an inn in the east of the city, covered almost head to toe in wounds, his very face battered out of shape. Here the story quietly notes: this inn was the very one where Sun Yixie, Huang Donglai, and Lei Buji were staying. If you think that in ancient times a night watchman who found a corpse would panic and scream, you'd be utterly mistaken—for those in this line of work, any who could last long in it had seen more corpses than you've had love affairs. In a society based on an agrarian economy, even in the most peaceful years, there were always people who starved or died of illness by the roadside through all four seasons; come winter, those who froze or starved to death grew even more numerous. So in those days, when a night watchman, walking his route, came upon a breathless dead body lying in a street or alley, it was a perfectly ordinary thing. An old hand, on seeing one, would usually just step up for a brief look, check roughly how the person had died and whether it looked like some contagious disease, and then calmly go notify the dibao, who would decide whether to alert the yamen. The state of Zheng Mukai's corpse made it plain to anyone that it was a homicide, so the yamen would certainly have to be called out, with constables, a coroner, and the like all coming; even a rather perfunctory and incompetent constable head would at least have to make a token appearance. The constable head of Xuzhou was named Dong Wan—a fairly typical Da Ming constable head. He knew a bit of martial arts, but only enough to deal with local thugs and hooligans and keep his own constables in line; against a jianghu master or a greenwood-way man he was no match. He had a bit of a head on him too, but only at an ordinary person's level—nothing special. Note that the "ordinary person" I speak of here is measured by modern standards. People of that era, because of the backwardness of education and of common knowledge in the natural sciences, would mostly be considered dull by today's people. Though they and we are almost no different physiologically, the age we live in has placed us, from the very moment of our birth, upon the shoulders of giants—so it's a fact that people today are generally "smarter." Dong Wan hurried to the scene and took a look, and from the "Guangxing Escort Agency" waist token on Zheng Mukai's body he figured out his identity; a bit of asking around told him that, while alive, Zheng Mukai had been lodging at another inn in the west of the city. So he led his men in a great rush over to that inn, only to find that the two escort hands traveling with him were also dead—dead in their guest room, and likewise covered in wounds all over, looking as though they'd been beaten to death by a barrage of fists. Three lives lost in a single night, all dead by unnatural causes—the authorities could hardly fail to take it seriously. Since the personal belongings of these three victims hadn't been taken, the matter plainly looked more like a jianghu vendetta than a killing for money. In such a case, following the customary rules between the jianghu and the authorities, they should notify the wronged party of the Guangxing Escort Agency as quickly as possible and let them pursue the investigation themselves; the authorities, for their part, would do nothing beyond preserving the corpses for them and providing some information about the scene—if you want revenge, you go get it yourselves. Carrier-pigeon messages were fast, and the death of a chief escort was a major matter. And so, the head of the Guangxing Escort Agency—who was also Zheng Mukai's master, the "Tongbi Divine Sword" Zhu Jiaduan—the very next day personally led more than twenty escort captains and escort guards, racing through the night to Xuzhou. And so this sets up the tale of—Lei Buji wrongfully accused and thrown behind bars; Sun Yixie, all smiles, probing the Qiliu Youran.