The Hen That Lays Golden Eggs

He Lingchuan stared blankly at the slip of paper, a sudden warmth welling in his chest. Without needing Hu Min to explain, he understood at once: All these items were tokens of gratitude from the families of the soldiers under General Nan Ke. If He Lingchuan hadn't risked his life in the Ghost Needle Stone Forest to blow up the burrow spiders' nest and lure away the great monster Zhu Erniang, then even if General Nan Ke had managed to escape, no one knew how many men under his command would have been buried in that stone forest. Those lives weren't just numbers. Behind each one were wives and children, aging parents, a family's livelihood, and worldly happiness. How many households had his sacrifice spared from heart-wrenching grief? Human sentiment was sometimes just this simple and unvarnished: they simply had to give something to express their thanks. "Surprised? Didn't see that coming, did you?" Hu Min had kept quiet beforehand just to let him unwrap the surprise himself. "With so much stuff, let me help you carry it inside." The two carried the items into the yard one by one, filling half the courtyard. As He Lingchuan hauled the goods, a thought struck him as odd. "Why didn't the thieves take any of this and steal the firewood and fish from inside my house instead?" "How would I know?" Hu Min shrugged. "Maybe taking things right outside your door was too conspicuous. Things have been pretty lively in front of your house lately." Just then, a child of five or six peered cautiously around the doorframe. Hu Min asked him, "Hey, little imp, what do you need?" "I live over there." The boy pointed toward the east. "I know." He Lingchuan recognized him. This was the neighbor's kid from the east side. Last time, when the Emperor's Flowing Dew appeared and He Lingchuan had climbed onto the roof to remove tiles, he had seen the boy's father tie him to a table leg. "You're He..." The child couldn't remember the full name. "Yes, that's me." "Wait a minute, don't close the door!" The boy dashed off. He Lingchuan heard him open a door, close it, and the patter of hurried footsteps throughout. Then the boy reappeared at He Lingchuan's doorway, clutching a bouquet of flowers in his hands. "My dad told me that once your door opened, I should bring this to you and tell you thank you." It was a large bunch of flowers. He Lingchuan only recognized the amaryllis and red begonias, and what looked like white daisies; the rest were completely unfamiliar to him. Regardless, they were a vivid riot of colors, blooming at their peak, with some still glistening with water droplets. Under the biting chill of the outdoor wind, of course, the droplets soon froze into tiny beads of ice. He Lingchuan quickly took the bouquet and carried it inside to keep the fresh blossoms from turning into frozen flowers. "Is your father a patrol guard too?" He remembered this kid's siblings were all very young, making it impossible for any of them to have joined the military. "No." The boy shook his head like a rattle-drum. "But Mommy and Daddy said you saved a lot of people, so you're a good person." He Lingchuan couldn't resist patting his head. "All right. Tell your parents thank you for me." Hu Min, however, remarked, "In this freezing weather, where did your dad manage to get so many fresh flowers?" The child grinned, revealing a missing front tooth. "I don't know." "Where does he work?" "He often delivers things to the command post!" He Lingchuan and Hu Min exchanged a knowing smile. That explained it. The city had dedicated hothouses for cultivating flowers. Aside from supplying wealthy households, Commander Zhong's official residence and private estate also required them. It was said his late wife had loved flowers, so the Zhong residence had fresh arrangements rotated in every few days. He Lingchuan rummaged through the small mountain of gifts, pulled out a bag of chewy maltose candy, and handed it to the child. "This is for you. Take it home and enjoy it." The boy thanked him and skipped home in high spirits. Hu Min clapped He Lingchuan on the shoulder. "Didn't expect that, did you? You're already a celebrity around here. You could probably eat meals without paying a copper." He Lingchuan felt a strange mix of emotions. "I truly didn't expect it." Ever since his adventures began in the Panlong Ruins, He Lingchuan had been through life-and-death battles several times. He had saved the villagers of Xianling Village from the bandits of Woling Pass, and he had saved his entire family and Ke Jihai from the demon puppet master Dong Rui. Yet never had anyone thanked him so directly and warmly. This feeling of being liked and appreciated... seemed not bad at all. "How did the news spread so fast?" He Lingchuan rubbed his nose. "The battle in the Ghost Needle Stone Forest only ended a few days ago, didn't it?" "After every major campaign, the Department of Military Merit sends people across the city to lecture on the heroic deeds of the battle. The day after General Nan Ke returned to Panlong City, both you and Sun Jiayuan were posthumously honored as heroes. If the weather weren't so frigid, people probably would have been laying flowers at your doorstep. When you were rescued alive later, it caused quite a stir around here. Too bad you were unconscious then and couldn't come out to receive their adoration." He Lingchuan understood. Panlong City relied precisely on highlighting advanced examples and establishing role models to broadly mobilize everyone into the fight to defend their home. To think that one day, he would be held up as a model and an example. It was a peculiar feeling. After all, only he knew that his bravery was built on the premise that he "could not truly die." For anyone else here, death meant eternal rest; only for him did it simply mean waking from a dream. If he had only one life to live here, would he still have leapt into the spider's nest without looking back? He Lingchuan didn't know the answer himself. He sighed and dismissed those thoughts. "So around here, some people want to thank me, while others steal my things?" Hu Min threw his head back in laughter and stepped out the door first. "Is this your first day in Panlong City?" *** An hour later, He Lingchuan and Hu Min stood inside the Pengcheng Office. Merit Officer Liu had taken half a day off, so the one receiving them today was Merit Officer Xu, a scrawny, diminutive man with a deadpan expression. "You're alive?" Merit Officer Xu said after hearing He Lingchuan give his name, flipping through the ledger before concluding, "We'll restore you to the military registry, and your merit will have to be recalculated." "Everything else can wait, but give me that tin-grade house first," He Lingchuan said. He had never imagined his base in a dream would get burglarized. "My run-down shack was just robbed." "Only the families of fallen heroes receive a tin-grade house as compensation." Merit Officer Xu peered up at him sideways. "Are you a fallen hero?" He Lingchuan stood his ground. "Whether I died or not, I'm the one who burned down the burrow spiders' nest. Why does the merit have to be recalculated?" "What we give to the living is a commendation; what we give to the dead is a death benefit. Death benefits are generous—understand?" Merit Officer Xu retorted stiffly. "Since you're alive, you're not eligible for death benefits. The tin-grade house is downgraded to a water-grade house." Hu Min stepped in to smooth things over. "A water-grade house isn't bad either. I've been to the water-grade houses on Miss Zeng Lane; they're spacious and bright. The residents are either merchants, soldiers, or officials of Panlong City—completely different from the neighborhood around your old wood-grade house." Wasn't choosing a house all about location? Wasn't choosing a house all about amenities and neighbors? Could anyone be choosing just a pile of timber and a few roof tiles? Merit Officer Xu added, "I live in a water-grade house myself." He Lingchuan had no choice but to concede. Because his major achievement this time had been recorded as a solo exploit, the rewards were more generous than all his past achievements combined. The silver bounty alone came to five hundred taels, along with ten mu of prime paddy fields and thirty mu of medium-grade land, not to mention various other miscellaneous rewards that He Lingchuan didn't even listen to closely. His landholdings had leapt from two mu of medium land to a total of forty mu? Had he just made the leap from poor peasant to landlord? Going out to fight really was the fastest way to amass military merit. And naturally, the most dangerous. "I can't manage the land myself. Help me lease it out." He remembered Hu Min mentioning that the Pengcheng Office handled such services as well. Soldiers spent their days either drilling or on patrol; who had time to tend fields? By leasing out their land, tenant farmers could cultivate crops to earn money, giving them a means of livelihood. Tenant farming was an essential component of Panlong City's economy. "Alternatively—" Merit Officer Xu suddenly produced a land deed. "You can choose to surrender all the rewards from this military exploit in exchange for a storefront on Wanglin Boulevard, on a ten-year lease." "A storefront?" This was the first He Lingchuan had heard of military merit being used to obtain commercial property. Hu Min shouted from the side, "Trade! Trade, of course we're trading!" "Do you know how hard it is to get a storefront in Panlong City? Let alone on Wanglin Boulevard, a place where gold rolls in daily!" Hu Min thumped his chest. "Why don't I ever run into such luck? Merit Officer Xu, can you trade me a storefront too?" "There's only one storefront, reclaimed only because its twenty-year lease just expired. It's public property; you can operate it yourself or lease it out, but you cannot sell it." "When you say all the merit, that includes the water-grade house?" A water-grade house was at least two tiers above a wood-grade house. "Naturally. If you trade it for the storefront, you'll walk out of the Pengcheng Office with nothing on you but a single deed." Merit Officer Xu was gratingly blunt. "Decide quickly. If you don't want it, plenty of people do—the line would stretch from here all the way to Wanglin Boulevard." The military merit rewards He Lingchuan had received this time—the paddy fields, the miscellaneous perks, the five hundred taels of silver bounty, plus a water-grade house that money couldn't buy—were already enough for him to live a comfortable, respectable middle-class life in Panlong City. Was he supposed to give all that up for a storefront of unknown size and location, with a lease of only ten years? Heh. "Fine, I'll trade." He Lingchuan pushed everything forward, trusting Hu Min's judgment. He could only watch helplessly as the deed to the water-grade house, which had just been brought out, was taken right back. His dream of upgrading to a bigger, better house had bid him farewell for now. Only when Merit Officer Xu completed the final procedure did a faint smile appear on his stern face. "Congratulations. You earned this." "Huh?" Could Merit Officer Xu also have a nephew or cousin among General Nan Ke's troops? He Lingchuan thought the man's next words would be along the lines of "let me say thank you," but Merit Officer Xu was exceedingly concise: "All done. Next!" And so, when He Lingchuan walked out of the Pengcheng Office, he carried only a commercial lease light enough to be blown away by a gust of wind. "If this shop doesn't earn me back a thousand taels of silver plus ten years of interest on that thousand taels, I'm taking over your house to live in!" Hu Min paid no heed to his threats and threw an arm around his neck. "Hurry up and treat me to drinks! No, wait—you picked up a hen that lays golden eggs this time. You've got to invite Boss Xiao and A'luo along for drinks too!" "We don't even know its exact location. Is that storefront really that good?" "Have you ever strolled down Wanglin Street?" Hu Min looked at him with disdain. "Right, a pauper like you never had the right to stroll there in the first place. Wanglin Street only sells the finest goods and novelties brought in from other lands. High-ranking commanders and their families frequent the place!"