A Thin Coffin Laid to Earth
When Fang Yingjie returned to Zhou's Coffin Shop, the thin coffin by the door was still leaning there at an angle.
The morning mist had thinned since before, and there were more people in the street now. The cries from the fish market rose one over another. A few boatmen had gathered again around the porridge stall, and white steam drifted up from the pot. Yet the front of Zhou's Coffin Shop remained as bleak as ever, as though the place had been born with a veil between itself and the bustle of the living world.
Behind the counter, the shopkeeper was bent over his abacus.
At the sound of footsteps, he looked up, paused, and then recognized Fang Yingjie.
"Have you scraped the silver together?"
Fang Yingjie said nothing. He merely stepped up to the counter and slowly opened his hand.
A small lump of broken silver lay in his palm, its edges uneven, but solid and cold. Ever since leaving Baoque Tower, he had kept it clenched tight all the way back. The pressure had left a shallow red ring across his palm, and even now his fingers were stiff.
He set the silver on the counter.
"I want that one."
The shopkeeper followed his gaze to the thinnest coffin by the door, the cheapest one made of rough mixed wood. Then he looked down at the silver, picked it up, and weighed it lightly on the little scale.
"One tael. Exactly."
Something in Fang Yingjie's throat loosened, just a little.
But before that breath could truly fall away, the shopkeeper added, "The coffin is one tael. The nails and the hemp rope—I told you before—those are extra. And if you want it delivered, the carrying fee—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
Because Fang Yingjie stood there without reaching into his robe again.
The wind had dried the outside of his old wet clothes after half a day, but dampness still lingered beneath. Mud clung to the hem. The cuffs were filthy. On the back of his right hand, the cut he had taken in the dark tunnel had not fully closed; a crust of dark blood still sealed it over. Even so, he stood very straight.
Only there was a silence pressed into that straightness so heavy that he no longer had the strength even to bargain.
The shopkeeper had spent half his life in the coffin trade. He had seen people who howled to heaven in grief, and he had seen people with dry faces and eyes that looked as though some piece inside them had simply fallen away.
He tucked the silver into the drawer and said no more. Instead, he bent down behind the counter, rummaged for a moment, and came up with a few old coffin nails gone dull with age. Then he dragged over a short length of worn hemp rope, frayed white at the edges, and set both on the table.
"Used ones," he said. "Worth next to nothing."
After a pause, he added, "But I can't afford to have it carried for you."
Fang Yingjie looked at the old nails and the rope for a long moment before saying quietly, "Thank you."
The shopkeeper waved a hand as though he wanted no thanks for it. He rose, walked to the door, and set the coffin upright.
It truly was a thin coffin.
The rough wood had not been lacquered. Its grain ran wild and uneven, and the corners had only been planed smooth enough not to catch badly. It carried none of the faint sweet scent of good timber—only the raw smell of newly shaved wood. In an ordinary household, such a thing would have been hard to show to others.
But Fang Yingjie looked at it for a long time.
Never before had he imagined that one day he would study so carefully the cheapest coffin in a shop.
Still less had he imagined that this would be the last scrap of dignity his father could be given in this world.
The shopkeeper set the lid aside for the moment and steadied the coffin body.
"You can manage it alone?"
"I can."
The shopkeeper looked him up and down, plainly doubtful, but did not stop him. Fang Yingjie stepped forward, threaded the old rope under the coffin, and tried twice before managing to knot it into two crude loops that would barely take the strain. The coffin was not especially heavy, but its long awkward shape made it hard to shoulder. The first time he lifted it, the coffin tipped sideways and scraped the doorframe with a dry wooden rasp.
Fang Yingjie stopped at once.
In that instant, he frowned without meaning to.
As though he were afraid that even this empty coffin might be damaged.
He readjusted the knots, braced one end behind his shoulder, and supported the side with his other hand as he slowly bore the whole coffin onto his back. One corner pressed into the bone of his shoulder through cloth that had not yet dried, sending up a dull ache. He paid it no mind. He only bent slightly and steadied the coffin's weight.
The shopkeeper stood inside the doorway and watched him go.
People in the street turned to look.
A young man soaked through with mud and water, pale-faced, carrying an unlacquered coffin on his back all alone down the street from the coffin shop. It was not a sight unheard of in a little lakeside town, yet it still drew the eye.
Fang Yingjie seemed to notice nothing.
He did not look back.
He did not look at anyone else.
He only carried the coffin and made his way, step by step, out of town along the same road he had come by.
Gradually, the clamor of the street fell behind him.
The smell of fish faded. The smell of hot porridge faded. Human voices faded too. The stone-paved road gave way once more to wet earth, wheel ruts holding shallow pools of water. The eaves of Lujin Town retreated bit by bit into the pale morning light. Ahead, the lake wind found him again, carrying with it the smell of reeds and wet mud.
Last night, he had carried his father out of the dungeon of the Crimson Flame Palace.
This morning, he was carrying the last thing his father would ever lie in, back toward that ruined shrine of the Water God.
One man.
One coffin.
And not a word on the road.
The wooden corner bit deeper and deeper into his shoulder. The old hemp rope burned where it dragged across his palm. Fang Yingjie shifted hands twice, but he never once let the coffin rest on the ground.
Not because he could not.
Because he would not.
His father was still waiting.
The mist had not fully lifted. Every so often a waterbird burst up from the reeds with a rush of wings. At last the gray-tiled eaves behind the old dike came back into view. The ruined shrine still stood there all alone, one door hanging crooked, the armful of reeds he had dragged there earlier still masking the entrance, swaying faintly whenever the wind passed through.
When Fang Yingjie reached the shrine, he stopped for a single breath.
He lowered the coffin to the ground with the utmost care, then turned his head and listened.
No footsteps.
No voices.
Only the lake wind passing through the reeds with a low, rustling hiss.
Only then did he push aside the reeds by the door and go in.
Inside, it was even stiller than outside.
The broken image of the god remained half-submerged in the dimness. The shattered incense burner still lay tipped beside the altar. On the door planks, Fang Tieshan lay exactly as before, covered with that old tattered reed mat. It was as if, from the moment Fang Yingjie had left until the moment he returned, nothing in this place had moved at all.
Fang Yingjie stood just inside the doorway for a long time without going forward.
Only when the ache in his shoulders from the coffin's weight began to rise again did he seem to stir from himself. He walked to the planks and said softly, "Father."
The word fell into the ruined shrine and received no answer.
After a moment he said, "I bought the coffin."
He said it very quietly.
Quietly, as though he were only telling a sleeping man that the errand he had gone out to do had been done.
He crouched beside the planks and lifted the reed mat little by little.
Fang Tieshan still looked much as he had before. Fang Yingjie had cleaned his face and straightened his hair. Slanting morning light entered through the shrine door and fell across that gaunt, bloodless profile. The guard's outer robe that had been draped over him had half dried by now, wrinkling against his body. Beneath it, the outline of the torn prison clothes could still faintly be seen. In a few places, the marks of iron that could not be fully hidden pressed beneath the cloth, as though the suffering of his old life refused to release him even in death.
Fang Yingjie reached out and drew the robe more closely over his father's chest.
Halfway through the motion, he stopped.
This robe could not go into the coffin.
It was a prison guard's robe. His father had been caged by those men for more than twenty years. Even if the garment had only been used to cover his wounds, he should not be buried wearing their clothes.
Fang Yingjie was silent for a long time. At last he bent down and began, very slowly, to undo the robe.
The front had been stiffened by dried blood and water. Every tug raised a dry whisper of cloth. He did not dare use force. Instead he loosened it bit by bit, first easing it off one shoulder, then drawing it from beneath the arms. Fang Tieshan's body had already gone stiff; if Fang Yingjie moved too roughly, the cloth would catch. So he would stop, change the angle, and try again.
As though, if he only moved slowly enough, he might still somehow make up a little of the filial duty that had come too late.
At last the robe came away.
Beneath it were the tattered prison clothes.
The fabric had long since lost its original color. It was ripped in many places—across the chest, at the sleeves, over the shoulders and back—and through those tears the scars and the deep pressure marks left by shackles could be seen. It was not clothing any man should wear into the light of day.
Still less was it clothing a father should wear into the earth.
Fang Yingjie's hand stopped in midair.
He wanted to change his father into clean clothes.
Even if they were only coarse homespun.
Even if it were only some old robe without rips, without bloodstains, without the chill of the dungeon clinging to it.
But there was nothing of the kind in the shrine.
And there was nothing on him.
That one tael of silver had only bought the thinnest coffin in the shop. When he had stood in Zhou's Coffin Shop, he had not even been able to speak the words burial clothes above a murmur before saying, "Not for now."
Now the coffin was here.
But beyond that, there was nothing else he could give.
The silence in the ruined shrine pressed against the chest until it was hard to breathe.
Fang Yingjie lowered his eyes, folded the guard's robe carefully, and set it to one side. Then he turned back to the prison rags on Fang Tieshan's body and stood there a long while without moving.
At last he said in a low voice, "Father, forgive this indignity."
Once the four words had left him, something seemed to lodge in his throat, and no more sound would come.
He did not cry.
He said nothing else.
He only turned and dragged the coffin into the shrine, setting it beside the planks and laying the lid gently to one side. The inside of the rough-wood coffin was empty and cold in color, and tiny splinters still stood in places where the corners had not been fully smoothed. Fang Yingjie ran his hand over every inch of it. Wherever he found a rough place that might catch, he rubbed at it again and again with his sleeve, as though that might somehow make it gentler within.
Then he returned to the planks.
He first raised Fang Tieshan by the shoulders.
The body felt heavier than it had at dawn.
Not because it truly weighed more, but because the desperate strength that had carried him through escape was gone now. It was only when he tried to move his father from the planks into the coffin that he realized how hard every inch of it would be. One hand under the shoulder, the other beneath the knees, he slowly lifted him.
He had carried his father on his back through dark water, through rock clefts, through the reeds.
But this, somehow, was harder.
Because this was no longer flight.
This was the last laying to rest.
Fang Tieshan's head tipped lightly to one side, his gray-white hair slipping down. Fang Yingjie stopped at once, lowered his head, and pressed his temple for a moment against that cold hair in a wordless apology. Only then did he steady his arms again and lower him, inch by inch, into the coffin.
The coffin bottom gave a faint wooden knock.
Fang Yingjie did not pull his hands away at once.
He adjusted his father's arms, placed them as naturally as he could, and straightened the cloth over him, trying his best to cover the most obvious tears. At last he picked up the old reed mat. After hesitating for a moment, he did not spread it back over his father's body. Instead, he folded it several times and tucked it into the empty spaces within the coffin so that the body would not rest too directly against the raw, cold wood.
When all that was done, he knelt beside the coffin and looked for a very long time.
The coffin was too thin.
His father was too thin.
So thin that once he lay inside, the space around him still looked empty.
Fang Yingjie had always known that Fang Tieshan had been imprisoned for more than twenty years and had suffered beyond measure. Only now, looking at his father in the coffin that used the least wood in the shop, did he truly understand how much flesh and bone those twenty years had worn away from a man who had once seemed able to hold up heaven itself.
He lowered his head and set both hands on the coffin's edge.
His fingers tightened inch by inch.
But in the end, he said nothing.
After a long while, he finally lifted the lid.
As the board came down, the morning light was slanting through the shrine door, falling one last time across Fang Tieshan's face. Fang Yingjie stopped mid-motion, as though suddenly unwilling to lose even that little patch of light.
But the coffin had to be closed.
He shut his eyes once, and then lowered the lid the rest of the way.
That face was covered little by little by wood.
The brow.
The eyes.
The bridge of the nose.
At the very end, only a narrow line of pale jaw remained—and then that too vanished behind the lid.
The ruined shrine fell silent.
So silent that only Fang Yingjie's own breathing remained.
He picked up the old coffin nails. When he set the first one at the corner of the lid, his fingers had gone stiff. It was not as though he had never held a blade, nor as though he had never seen blood. Yet this small dull nail felt heavier between his fingers than any weapon.
He found a broken brick in the shrine that would do for a hammer.
The first blow fell.
The nail only sank a little.
The second blow brought out a low, muffled sound from the wood.
At the third, the old nail finally began to bite its way in.
After each strike, Fang Yingjie paused for a breath.
As though he were not sealing a coffin.
As though he were nailing shut with his own hands the last crack through which he could still have seen his father.
By the time he had used all the nails, a film of sweat had risen at his temples. Not from exertion, but as though something in his chest had been drawn tight for too long, so tight that even breathing hurt.
The coffin was sealed.
Next, it had to go into the ground.
He went out first and looked for a place behind the shrine.
The reeds were thicker there. The ground nearer the lake was too wet; if heavy rain came and the water rose, the earth would collapse easily. Fang Yingjie circled once and at last stopped a little west of the shrine. That patch stood slightly higher than the ground around it, screened by several clumps of old reeds, and from the old dike it was hard to notice. The soil was still damp, but firmer than the low ground.
Here.
He had no shovel.
All he could do was find a broken length of wood and half a shard of old roof tile, then kneel in the mud and dig little by little.
Wet earth clung to his hands at once, filling every gap between his fingers. The broken wood was poor for the task and would not bite deep. Each clod he pried loose cost him effort. The red welts the hemp rope had rubbed across his palm broke open, mingling with the wound on his hand that had not yet healed from the tunnel. Blood seeped out a little at a time and was swallowed at once by mud until no color could be seen.
He seemed not to feel it.
He only dug.
An inch.
Then another.
The sun climbed slowly higher. The mist thinned further. Now and then the sound of a boat drifted faintly across the lake, only to be snatched away again by the wind. Around the shrine, front and back, no one came.
By the time the pit was barely large enough to take the coffin, Fang Yingjie finally stopped.
He sat in the mud for a moment to catch his breath, his chest rising and falling in slow hard waves. Then he stood, returned to the shrine, tied the coffin once more with the old hemp rope, and dragged it out to the grave behind the temple.
The wooden coffin knocked lightly against the threshold.
Fang Yingjie steadied it at once, as though afraid of waking the one inside.
From the shrine door to the pit was no more than a few dozen paces, yet he moved painfully slowly. The coffin left two faint tracks across the wet ground. At the edge of the grave, he lowered one end first, then bent and supported the other with both arms, almost using his own back and shoulders as a cushion so that the coffin would settle as gently as possible into the earth.
There was no spirit money.
No incense.
No candles.
No family or friends to see the dead off.
No public mourning for others to hear.
Only the reeds behind the shrine whispering in the wind, as though lending this ceremony—too cold, too meager by far—the one sound the world should not have denied it.
Fang Yingjie stood at the edge of the grave and looked down at the coffin.
Some damp earth had smeared across the lid. In the shadowed soil, the rough wood looked darker still. He looked for a long time before bending down and scooping up the first handful of dirt.
It struck the coffin lid.
Softly.
So softly it was almost soundless.
But Fang Yingjie's hand stayed suspended there for a long while before he reached for a second handful.
Only when the wind bent the reeds in a long sweep did he stoop again.
One handful.
Then another.
Slowly covering it over.
The earth rose little by little above the lid, burying the corners, and at last the entire thin coffin disappeared beneath the ground. Fang Yingjie used his hands to press the mound firm. Then he scattered loose reeds and dead grass over it so that the newly turned soil would not stand out too sharply.
By the time he had finished, both hands were caked in mud.
Soil was packed under every nail.
Blood had dried at the edges of his fingers.
Even then, he did not leave at once.
A little way from the shrine, he found a flat stone. It was not large, gray-white in color, its edges worn blunt by lake water and weather, but it could serve as a grave marker.
He carried it back and set it upright before the mound.
Then he bent and picked up a sharp shard of broken tile.
He placed the point against the stone.
Fang Tieshan.
The three characters were already almost in his wrist.
All it would take was the smallest exertion, and the first cut would score the stone.
But Fang Yingjie did not move.
The wind came out of the reeds with a trace of water in it and brushed across the backs of his hands, streaked with mud and blood. He looked at the stone, and his gaze slowly darkened.
He could not carve it.
His father could not be exposed.
If this grave bore a name—if even one pair of eyes that should not see it came upon that name—then everything he had risked his life to hide today might be dragged back into the light.
His father had not been able to return openly and honorably while he lived.
And in death, he could not openly and honorably leave his name behind either.
Fang Yingjie's grip tightened inch by inch around the broken tile.
Its sharp edge cut a shallow line into his palm.
He did not seem to notice.
After a long while, he finally let it go.
It dropped into the dirt with a small, hard click.
And so the stone remained standing before the new grave.
Blank.
If anyone passed this place, they would see no more than a lonely grave behind a ruined shrine. Perhaps they would not even give it a second look. In a few days, when the reeds grew taller, even the stone might be hidden from sight.
No one would know that Fang Tieshan lay beneath it.
The Stronghold Lord of Fang Stronghold.
The thirty-fourth Sect Leader of the Mount Hua Sect.
The Dragoncloud Divine Hand who had vanished for more than twenty years.
Fang Yingjie stood before the grave for a long time without speaking.
Only when the sun had climbed another inch did he slowly bend his knees and kneel.
His forehead touched the cold wet earth.
There was no altar for this bow.
No cushion.
Not even a stone that could bear a name.
Yet he knelt as steadily as though the whole world were witness.
A long while later, he lifted his head and looked at the blank stone. His voice was hoarse enough that the wind nearly scattered it.
"Father."
He paused for a breath.
"Your son will come back."
Not today.
He did not know on what day.
But he would come back.
He would come back and bring his father out of this nameless lonely grave openly, honorably.
He would come back and let the world know that Fang Tieshan had not vanished, had not cut himself off from the martial world of his own will.
He had only been shut away in darkness.
Shut away for more than twenty years.
Fang Yingjie did not speak any of those words aloud.
He only looked once more at the fresh grave, as if committing everything to memory—the place where it stood, the height of the reeds beside it, the gap in the broken wall behind the shrine.
Then he slowly rose to his feet.
Before dusk, he had to return to Baoque Tower.
That one tael of silver had already become his father's coffin.
And the contract had already left "Mu Qi" behind there.
Fang Yingjie gave the blank stone one last look. Then he turned and followed the same narrow path back through the reeds, heading once more toward Lujin Town.
Return at Dusk to the Red Tower
By the time Fang Yingjie left the ruined Water God shrine, the sun was already slanting west.
The mist over the lake had long since burned away, yet the sky remained dim. Great banks of cloud lay heavy along the far reaches of the water, their undersides stained with a dull yellow by the lowering sun. Where that light touched the reed beds, it broke into shifting flecks of dark gold. The wind was a little warmer than it had been at dawn, but whenever it brushed his lapels it still carried the damp breath of Poyang Lake, a chill that never quite left.
He followed the old dike back the way he had come.
Behind him lay the grave he had just covered over.
It was a low, small grave, hidden among the reeds behind the ruined shrine. If he had not filled it in with his own hands, if the shape of that nameless stone were not still pressed so clearly into his mind, Fang Yingjie might almost have believed that the burial—coffin and earth and all—had been nothing more than a fever dream born of exhaustion and pain.
But it had not been a dream.
There was still mud between his fingers.
The skin he had worn raw across his palms still throbbed.
And the dull numb ache left by the thin coffin against his shoulder kept rising, again and again, from the gaps in his bones.
His father was in the ground now.
Laid to rest in a coffin that had cost one tael of silver.
Marked by a stone that could bear no name.
Fang Yingjie did not stop walking.
He knew he could not turn back. If he looked over his shoulder now, even once, he feared he would go straight back to that grave and stand before it without moving until he no longer knew how much time had passed.
But he had given his word.
Before dusk, he was to return to Baoque Tower.
His thumbprint was still on the contract.
That one-tael advance had already been turned into his father's coffin.
What he owed now was not silver alone.
He also owed the rest of a life that he would have to live through as Mu Qi.
At the end of the old dike the reeds thinned. Beyond them, the rooftops and hanging shop-banners of Luzhen could already be seen from afar along the waterside. The cooking smoke that had drifted up in the daytime had all but faded; in its place rose waves of steam from behind inns and eating houses. More boats were moored by the landing now than there had been in the morning—cargo boats, passenger craft, and long, slender skiffs like painted pleasure barges, packed side by side along the posts, their black-wet ropes tightening and easing with the water.
He paused by a patch of shallow water at the edge of the dike.
Not to rest.
To wash his hands.
When he lowered them into the lake, mud and dried blood drifted away in slow threads, quickly blurred and thinned by the moving ripples. Fang Yingjie washed carefully, rubbing at the wet earth caught in the creases of his fingers, then wiping away the smear of mud that had found its way to his cheek at some point without his noticing.
But some things did not come clean just because water touched them.
There was still dark grime under his nails.
When the cuts across his palms met the water, a fine, sharp pain rose at once.
And the half-dried mud on his cuffs and hem would not vanish with a few careless slaps.
He did not linger. He wiped his hands as dry as he could against his clothes and went on toward town.
Luzhen no longer looked the way it had at dawn.
Most of the fish market had broken up. The damp flagstones had been sluiced once over, though the faint smell of fish still clung to them. Only a few empty baskets remained, turned upside down by the roadside, and now and then some little fish overlooked in the rush still twitched feebly in the gutter. The porridge stalls had put away their cauldrons and been replaced by sellers of spirits and braised meat. The boatmen who had huddled along the road in the morning with their necks tucked in now sat in twos and threes on low stools, gulping noodles and soup, their voices carrying much more loudly than before.
People kept entering from the town gate.
Well-dressed merchants stepped ashore and were ushered inward by eager attendants. Two young scholars came strolling side by side, one with a rolled paper scroll in hand, both wearing the pleased look of men who expected to be admired. Men of the martial world came up from the docks as well, sabers or swords at their waists, their gaze sweeping over the streets as if they meant only to spend a single night in a small waterside town before moving on.
On both sides of the street, shops were beginning to light their lamps.
Wine banners swayed low in the evening wind.
Outside a little shop selling rouge and scented powder, colored lanterns had been hung, and several young women stood beneath the eaves laughing together. Their laughter, lifted by the breeze, drifted half the length of the street.
Farther ahead, the noise thickened.
Music carried faintly through it.
First came two or three testing notes from a pipa, then the curl of a flute rising after it, only to break off again after a brief phrase. The sounds were blurred by the streets and voices in between, yet still distinct enough to tell anyone listening that the place Luzhen meant to set ablaze tonight lay further on.
Fang Yingjie lifted his eyes.
Baoque Tower had awakened with dusk.
In the morning, that three-story tower above the water had already shown its splendor, but there had still been something weary about it, the languor left behind by a night of revelry not yet fully spent. Wine had been unloaded at the side door, kitchen supplies carried in; the lamps by the front entrance had not yet gone out, and the strings and voices drifting from within had sounded like the after-echo of guests only recently departed.
Now it was different.
Beneath the eaves of the main entrance, a row of red lanterns had already been lit. Their shades stirred in the evening wind, and the fire inside them flickered behind gauze, bathing the vermilion pillars in a glow both warm and vivid. On the second floor, painted windows stood half open, and a deeper, richer gold spilled through from within. Now and then a figure passed behind a gauze curtain—one flash of a sleeve was enough to make several men crossing below glance up despite themselves.
More sedan chairs and horses were arriving before the door.
Two soft sedan chairs had only just come to a halt when one of the house runners hurried up wearing a smile broad enough for an old friend, bowing as he lifted the curtain.
"Ah, Second Master Xu, you've finally come. Another half-quarter-hour and every private room in the house would have been snapped up."
"Young Master Zhou, have you brought fresh poems again tonight? If Miss Yan Ji takes a liking to them, I daresay all Luzhen will be repeating your name by tomorrow."
"This honored gentleman looks unfamiliar—is it your first visit? If it's excitement you're after, you've chosen the right night."
Laughter, greetings, the creak of wheels and the clatter of hooves—all of it mixed with the powder-sweet fragrance and rich smells of wine and meat drifting out from the tower until this little stretch of street by the water seemed brighter than the rest of the town.
A girl leaned against the railing on the second floor, a round fan half hiding her lips, and smiled lightly at a familiar guest below. The man looked up at once as though his soul had been hooked clean out of him, and his companions burst into laughter at the sight. Elsewhere, a servant carrying an elegant lacquered food box hurried inside and nearly collided with a runner coming out to greet someone, earning a muttered curse about growing eyes.
This was the true opening of Baoque Tower's night.
And it was the first time Fang Yingjie had stood outside and seen it in full blaze.
He still carried the damp earth from behind the ruined shrine on his clothes.
There were still traces of mud across his palms from lowering the coffin.
A few miles behind him stood a fresh grave with no name on it.
Before him now were red lanterns, perfumed air, laughter, and the steady stream of the living passing inside.
The two scenes lay so close together that the contrast felt unreal.
Fang Yingjie watched for a moment, then drew his gaze away.
He did not go toward the front entrance.
The front entrance was for guests.
Not for him.
He followed the stone path along the water, circled past the glittering face of the main tower, and came to the side entrance he had used that morning. Compared to the red lanterns and smiling faces at the front, this side still showed another world entirely: baskets of newly delivered vegetables stacked against the wall, several jars of wine only just unloaded from the cart and still cool from the road, two laborers carrying a newly added low table inside at a trot while someone behind them shouted for room.
Even so, unlike in the morning, the side entrance was now several times busier.
The kitchens were blazing. Heat rolled out from within, wrapped in the smell of hot oil. A coarse old serving woman strode in and out with a wooden bucket, swearing at whoever had mixed clean cups back in with the dirty ones. Several young servants ran back and forth carrying lampstands, censers, and flower vases, every face taut with the urgency of the hours before the performance began.
The man standing guard by the door was still the same black-faced fellow from that morning.
He had his hands on his hips and was shouting instructions at two men hauling cases of wine inside. Catching sight of someone stopped at the entrance, he frowned first—then, when he recognized Fang Yingjie, his expression shifted.
"Mu Qi?"
Fang Yingjie halted.
"It's me."
The black-faced man looked him up and down.
The youth before him was even quieter than when he had left that morning. There was more mud on his clothes now. His fingers looked freshly washed, yet not truly clean. His face was still pale, but there was a deeper weight pressed into his eyes, as though before the day had even ended, something else had already come along and stripped another layer from him.
The black-faced man had no interest in any of that.
No shortage of people with stories passed through Baoque Tower's side gate.
All he asked was, "Back already?"
"I'm back."
The words were neither loud nor heavy.
Yet the moment he spoke them, Fang Yingjie knew with perfect clarity that only now, from this instant onward, had the contract he signed that morning truly taken hold of him.
His father was buried.
Mu Qi had returned to the tower.
The black-faced man nodded and jerked his head toward the interior.
"You're on time, at least. Steward Wang said that once you got back, you were to report to Old Zhao in the outer court."
Then, as if remembering something, he added with a trace of impatience, "And of all nights, it has to be the night Miss Yan Ji chooses her guest. The whole place has been mad since noon—hauling in wine, carrying gifts, lighting lamps, running trays—there isn't a corner that doesn't need hands. If you'd come half a quarter-hour later, Old Zhao would have flayed you alive with curses before you'd even opened your mouth."
Yan Ji.
That name Fang Yingjie had not heard that morning behind the gauze-shadow upstairs. He only knew that someone in Baoque Tower had spoken a word on his behalf and made it possible for him to draw the full advance. As for who that person was, he had had no leisure even to think about it.
Now, hearing the name tossed out so casually, he merely lifted his eyes a fraction.
"Choose her guest?"
The black-faced man snorted, as if surprised he did not know even that much.
"Country boy. No wonder."
He was just about to say more when someone inside yelled, "Zhou San! Are those two jars of Shaoxing wine by the door going to carry themselves in for you?"
The black-faced man spun around at once and barked back, "What are you shouting for? Your hands broken?"
Then he turned back to Fang Yingjie and spoke faster than before.
"You'll find out soon enough once you're inside. Tonight isn't an ordinary night, so don't stand here blocking the way. Go find Old Zhao and do as he tells you. If he tells you to carry something, you carry it. If he tells you to go somewhere, you go. First night on the job—keep your eyes down and your questions to yourself."
Fang Yingjie nodded.
"I understand."
The black-faced man stepped aside.
Fang Yingjie crossed the threshold.
Outside the side gate lay Luzhen in the dusk, its waterside lights just beginning to bloom.
Inside was Baoque Tower, all wine fumes, heat, powder, and tangled human voices.
He had barely stepped through when laborers carrying in wine jostled past behind him and the noise closed up at once, sealing off the stone path by the water outside.
Fang Yingjie did not turn around.
The wooden token marked Baoque Outer Court still rested against his chest.
And farther back still, beyond anything his eyes could reach now, that nameless new grave was already gone from sight.
Mu Qi of the Outer Court
Fang Yingjie had passed through the corridor behind the side gate once already that morning.
Then, though people had also been hurrying about, the whole tower had still retained the lassitude of a long night only just dispersed. Jars of wine were being carried inward, vegetables sent toward the kitchens; a few rough-handed old women grumbled their way through the wreckage of cups and dishes left behind from the night before. Baoque Tower had seemed like some splendid beast only just waking from a drunken dream, its eyes half open, not yet ready to bare its teeth and swallow men whole.
Now, coming in again, everything was different.
Darkness had not even fully fallen, yet the whole place already looked as though it had caught fire.
At the far end of the side corridor someone rushed past hugging a stack of newly washed and pressed brocade cushions. Elsewhere, two boys came in single file carrying a copper-inlaid lampstand, calling out "Make way, make way!" The kitchens roared with heat; the fragrance of oil, meat, and steaming fish rolled outward in waves, mingling with the rich incense and drifting powder-scent elsewhere in the tower until the air itself felt thick enough to press against the chest.
From the distant main hall came the faint sound of a woman trying her voice.
The note had scarcely finished before it was drowned by one of the runners outside calling greetings at the top of his lungs.
"Mu Qi?"
Fang Yingjie had only gone a few steps down the corridor when someone called to him from the side.
He turned and saw a young servant of fourteen or fifteen hurrying over from the wine cellar with a bamboo basket half as tall as himself in his arms. The boy was sharp-eyed enough to recognize the corner of the Outer Court token peeking out from Fang Yingjie's robe, and without slowing, he tipped his chin inward.
"Old Zhao's in the back court. You're the new one?"
"Yes."
"Then move. Nobody's allowed to stand idle tonight."
He brushed past with the basket still in his arms. Inside it were rows of washed celadon wine ewers clinking softly together.
Fang Yingjie headed deeper in the direction indicated.
The farther he went, the more the red lanterns and laughter of the front entrance were screened away, replaced by another kind of frenzy entirely—rougher, harsher, more urgent. Baoque Tower's back court was not small. Buildings enclosed it on all four sides, leaving a broad stretch of stone in the middle. To the east lay the kitchens, with baskets of vegetables waiting to be washed and empty jars piled outside the door. To the west stood the storeroom and wine cellar, their wooden doors opening and shutting without pause. Deeper inside was a line of low old rooms with yellowing window paper and rough cotton clothes hanging outside to dry—surely the sleeping quarters for the Outer Court hands.
More than a dozen people were moving constantly through the yard.
Some were hauling firewood.
Some carried charcoal.
Others crouched on the ground sorting through strings of newly delivered lanterns.
Two laborers were heaving a long ebony table toward the front, hurrying so hard that one corner nearly struck a pillar, when a hoarse voice cracked through the yard on the spot.
"Are those claws you've got at the ends of your arms? If you scratch one corner of that table, selling the two of you won't cover it!"
The speaker stood beneath the back corridor.
He was around fifty, not tall, but all lean sinew and bone. There was white in his hair already, though it was bound back without a single strand out of place. He wore a dark brown short jacket gone soft from years of washing, sleeves rolled to the elbow, showing forearms roped with tendon. A ring of keys hung from one side of his waist, a wooden tally-board from the other, and in his right hand he still held a sharpened stick of charcoal—he had clearly been checking stock just a moment before.
At his bark, the two laborers immediately slowed and babbled their assent.
The man did not waste more curses on them. He merely bent his head and marked something on the wooden board.
Fang Yingjie stepped forward and stopped below the corridor.
"Steward Zhao?"
The man raised his eyes.
His gaze was not fierce, but it was quick. It moved from Fang Yingjie's face to his clothes, then to his shoulders, his hands, and at last lingered briefly in the not-yet-clean seams of his fingers.
"Mu Qi?"
"Yes."
"Steward Wang already put you on the books." Old Zhao drew a folded slip of paper from his breast, glanced at it once, then tucked it away again. "From today on, you belong to the Outer Court. One tael advanced, contract filed with the accounts office. Food and lodging are on the Outer Court. Your monthly wages go straight against the debt. You understand all that?"
"I understand."
Old Zhao nodded.
He did not ask what that one tael had been spent on.
He did not ask why there was more mud on the boy's clothes now, or why there were fresh cuts across his hands.
As if none of that mattered.
Or perhaps he had spent so many years in Baoque Tower's Outer Court that he already knew any man willing to sign himself into such a contract usually carried a story behind him that was better left untold.
All he said was, "Good. Baoque Tower keeps no idlers, and it keeps no fools. Now that you're in the Outer Court, remember three things first."
Fang Yingjie lifted his eyes.
Old Zhao raised one finger.
"Keep your eyes low."
A second finger.
"Keep your ears deaf."
A third.
"Keep your hands quick."
He spoke without haste. Each sentence was short, but each landed with the weight of something hammered long ago into rule.
"If one of the girls in the house hasn't called for you, don't go hovering near her."
"If a guest gets drunk and throws curses at you, step back first. If one lays hands on you, find a steward first. You do not play the hero yourself."
"Wine carried out, gifts carried in, anything entered in the books at the front—if it passes through your hands and a single coin goes missing, it lands on your head first."
"And one more thing."
Old Zhao looked at him again, his voice dropping a shade lower.
"If you hear something you shouldn't hear, forget it the moment you turn away. If you see something you shouldn't see, then you saw nothing."
Something in Fang Yingjie's expression shifted slightly.
But Old Zhao had already looked away again, as if this were merely the most ordinary warning in a pleasure house back court.
"All kinds come and go here every day. Rich men, salt merchants, shipping-house bosses, scholars, men of the martial world—every sort. Some come to drink and listen to songs. Some come to throw money around and buy themselves face. Some come under the cover of lamplight and noise to say things no outsider ought to remember afterward. An Outer Court man with a loose mouth may not lose his life for it—but he'll lose his livelihood soon enough."
He paused.
"Understood?"
"Understood."
Old Zhao grunted and pointed toward the corner of the yard.
"Go wash your hands and face at the well first. If all you were doing tonight was hauling wood in the back, that look of yours might pass. But you may not be staying in the back tonight. There'll be guests everywhere in the front. Don't carry half the graveyard in on your clothes."
Fang Yingjie lowered his eyes to his hands.
He had washed them in haste by the dike, but the work had been hurried. Now that they were dry again, faint traces of mud still remained. There was a half-dark stain at one cuff too, either earth or old blood from when he had wiped at one of his wounds.
He made no excuse for himself. He only answered, then went toward the well in the corner.
A wooden basin and several rough dippers sat nearby, clearly for the yard hands to use as they pleased. Fang Yingjie ladled water up and washed his face, then washed both hands again slowly, fingertip by fingertip. Cold water struck the cuts across his palms and made them sting so sharply that his fingers trembled once, but he did not stop. Only when the basin no longer clouded with mud did he flick the water from his hands and wipe his face dry with his sleeve.
He had just straightened when a few low voices drifted over from the side.
"Miss Yan Ji's choosing her guest again tonight. We'll be at it till well after midnight."
The speaker was a laborer in his twenties, crouched beside a bronze censer and polishing soot from it. The thinner young man beside him flicked a glance toward the main hall and gave a knowing snort.
"Busy's one thing. The tips are better too. If those gentlemen get carried away competing, a few stray copper coins from their sleeves would be enough to buy us each a couple bowls of hot soup."
"You dream too much," the first man muttered. "It won't just be the usual local big names tonight. I heard a salt merchant from west of the lake took an upstairs suite before dawn. Brought four whole gift chests with him. And there's some young master from the south—sent in his card last night already, saying he was presenting some small-script calligraphy by a famous hand from a former dynasty."
"You think calligraphy alone gets a man admitted to her rooms?"
"That depends on whether Miss Yan Ji likes it."
"The scholar from Jiangnan last time got in on a single poem, didn't he?"
"He got in," the man polishing the censer said with a sniff. "Whether he did anything more than listen to music all night is another matter."
The thin one smiled crookedly.
"Spend the night together and only listen to music? Surely they don't just sit there drinking tea."
"You really are new to this, aren't you?" the other man shot back. "If Miss Yan Ji isn't willing, nobody in this house dares force her. Being admitted is one thing. Being allowed to touch her is another."
At that, a young servant nearby who was untangling lantern strings chimed in as well.
"If you really want her to nod, silver alone may not do it. Last year some rich merchant from Huguang laid pearls and jade all across a table and Miss Yan Ji didn't bother to give them a second glance. But a month ago a guest who played the xiao sat with her deep into the night, and the next morning when he came out he looked like half his soul had stayed behind."
They might have gone on chewing the subject to pieces if Old Zhao had not lifted his head at some point without anyone noticing.
"Your mouths that idle?"
The yard fell quiet at once.
The man with the censer bent back over it and scrubbed furiously. The one handling lanterns handled lanterns. The thin one abruptly found great interest in shifting empty boxes from one place to another.
Old Zhao did not pursue the scolding. He only said flatly, "Miss Yan Ji's affairs are not for you to guess at on behalf of the guests. If the front falls behind by half a step tonight, don't blame me if someone's supper gets docked."
The men chorused acknowledgment at once, and their hands quickened accordingly.
Standing by the well, Fang Yingjie showed little reaction.
Yan Ji.
Choosing a guest.
Once a month.
These words came from other people's mouths trailing Baoque Tower's own kind of glittering heat. To him, they were still only the reason tonight's work had become so feverish.
He did not know that the woman who had softly said Keep him from behind the curtain that morning was the very same Yan Ji whose name now stirred half the town.
Seeing he had finished washing, Old Zhao crooked a finger at him.
"Mu Qi. Come here."
Fang Yingjie returned beneath the corridor.
Old Zhao took a rough square cloth from a nearby rack and tossed it over.
"Dry yourself. No time to change your clothes tonight, so make do. If by tomorrow you've still got the use of your hands and feet, you can go collect an Outer Court jacket then."
The words were not exactly kind.
But they were not cruel either.
Fang Yingjie caught the cloth.
"Thank you."
Old Zhao ignored the thanks, turned, and headed toward the storeroom on the west side.
"Come along. Learn the place first."
Fang Yingjie followed.
The two of them went along the west corridor of the back court. Old Zhao did not walk fast, but he wasted not a single word.
"That side is the kitchen. If no one sends you in, don't go poking around there yourself. Vegetables, hot water, braziers—everything will be coming out through there tonight."
"This side is the wine cellar. Jars of wine, warming pots, spare porcelain cups—they all come from here. If you're told to move wine, don't chip the clay seal around the mouth of the jar."
"The room ahead is the storeroom. Some gifts sent by the guests are taken into storage first. Some have to be moved at once to the registry desk. Anything not yet entered in the books—don't touch it unless you're told."
"The common bunkroom for the Outer Court is at the very back. If you're not on errands at night, that's where you sleep. But tonight, don't expect to sleep early."
As he spoke, they came to the mouth of a narrower passage.
At the far end of it, the warm brightness of the front hall spilled faintly through, and the laughter and string music from up ahead sounded much clearer than they had in the yard. Now and then a figure crossed the opening at the end of the corridor, leaving behind a brush of perfume that quickly faded.
Old Zhao lifted his chin.
"This back passage is the one Outer Court men use most. It takes you around to the side of the main hall, and it's also where things come down from the second floor. If no one tells you to go upstairs, then you do not put a foot on the staircase to the second floor. If the front calls for tables carried, gifts delivered, or calling cards brought in, you use this passage. Don't shove your way through the guests at the main entrance."
Fang Yingjie committed each word to memory.
Old Zhao glanced over at him.
"How's your memory?"
"Good enough."
"We'll know by tonight."
At that moment, a middle-aged laborer stuck his head out of the storeroom and shouted, "Old Zhao! The registry desk's asking again. Those three gift chests that just came in still haven't been taken over!"
Old Zhao's brow twitched.
"What are you shouting for? Haven't I just sent you a man?"
He turned to Fang Yingjie.
"Mu Qi. First run."
Inside the storeroom, several gift chests of different sizes had indeed been set down side by side. They were covered in dark brocade, the corners reinforced with copper; even from the outside one could tell they were not light. Slips had been pasted to them noting the giver's surname and the item presented, but Fang Yingjie did not look closely.
Old Zhao pointed to the smallest of them.
"That one goes to the gift registry. Hold it steady. Don't drop it. If anyone asks on the way, say it's for the registry desk. Nothing more."
Fang Yingjie bent and slid both hands beneath the chest.
It was heavier than it looked, though not so heavy as to strain him badly. He steadied his footing and lifted it against his chest.
Old Zhao watched him and, finding his movements acceptable, gave a curt nod.
"Take the side passage. Once you're by the main hall, someone will take it from you."
Fang Yingjie answered and turned to go.
Behind him, the smell of firewood and kitchen smoke from the back court gradually fell away.
Ahead, red light and golden shadow were already spreading layer after layer through the corridors. The sound of voices swelled as well, like a tide that had not yet reached its full height but was already gathering force inside the tower.
Carrying the gift chest in his arms, Fang Yingjie walked down the passage one step at a time.
He had only just buried his father beneath nameless earth.
And now, in the next breath, he was carrying pearls and gold and jade for strangers into the depths of red lantern light.
As for Baoque Tower tonight, it had already begun to burn hot for the sake of a woman who had not yet even appeared.