Chapter 46: Kindness (I)
Jiang Shining stared in shock at the slammed door for a while, then suddenly realised what had happened.
As it occurred to him, his face was a complex one: there was some disappointment, but there was a bit more sad laughter as well.
Seeing Jiang Shining's expression, Xue Xian pointed at Stone Zhang and said, "Old man, weren't you afraid of ghosts before? Now that you've seen such an idiotic ghost, are you still afraid? Don't you think all the trembling you did was quite embarrassing?"
Old man...
Stone Zhang touched his face and gloomily thought, I may not be young anymore but I'm not old either. I can walk, I can run, I can carry things. Isn't 'old man' a bit much?
But he didn't dare protest, lest he pissed off the beast.
Jiang Shining had just been feeling a bit better, but Xue Xian's mockery turned his face dark again. He rolled his eyes and snapped, "Even if I am dumb, it's because I've just been spending too much time with you."
He picked up his robe and stood aside, sweeping an inviting arm toward the door: "I won't try to haunt this place in the middle of the day. Why don't one of you come to knock?"
Everyone looked at Stone Zhang.
"Me... me?" Confused, Stone Zhang pointed at himself. On the whole journey so far, he'd just been jostled along –– this was the first time anyone had called on him to do something.
Xue Xian pointed at Twenty-Seven and said, "Fortune-teller."
Then he pointed at himself: "Cripple."
Then he pointed at Xuanmin: "Alms beggar."
He spread his hands and shrugged. "Which one of us is normal?"
Tragically, there was only one normal person in the whole group.
Stone Zhang had no choice but to shuffle to the door and knock again.
There was another scream –– the girl was becoming even more frightened.
Stone Zhang looked back at the group helplessly. "Those who are bitten by a snake spend the next ten years terrified of ropes," he said. "Not my fault."
Then he injected a casual tone into his voice and said, "Little girl, open the door! I'm not a ghost. I'm a good person!"
Xue Xian glared at the stonemason, then finally reached out and yanked him back. "Stop being so creepy. If you keep going like this, Zhong Kui is going to come chase you away."*
"Xingzi, what are you yelling for?" came the voice of an old woman. "Don't frighten the patients in the front."
The little girl's trembling voice rose in response –– she seemed about to cry. "Auntie Chen, there's a ghost!"
"Nonsense, how could there be a ghost?" Auntie Chen laughed. "In our compound we only save people. We've never harmed anyone. Why would a ghost want to haunt us?"
"It's true. I just saw Young Master Jiang, right there behind the door," Xingzi said.
"Young Master... Jiang?" Auntie Chen said, shocked. "You don't mean..."
"Yes! Just now... just now I heard a knock on the door, and when I opened it, he was there. He smiled at me and called me by my name! Who else could it be?"
The girl was sobbing now, scared to her wit's end.
"Knocking on the door?" Auntie Chen asked.
"Yes, and there was another knock just now. I was too scared to listen..."
At this point, Xue Xian decided to knock again.
Du du du...
Now both the old woman and the young girl screamed and began to cry.
Exasperated, Xuanmin pried the dragon's claw away from the door.
Jiang Shining sighed.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the door opened again. The person behind it was a grey-haired, kindly-looking old man.
Peeking out from behind the old man were two others: one was Xingzi, and the other, a short old woman, would be Auntie Chen.
In order not to scare them again, Jiang Shining had turned back into a small paper man and tucked himself into Xue Xian's pocket. But he couldn't help but stick his head out again to observe what was happening –– after all, he'd gotten them into this mess.
Seeing the grey-haired old man, he muttered, "Uncle Chen..."
He knew everyone at Fang's Pharmacy, and could even say he knew some of them quite well. The Fang and Jiang families had always been very close: one side were doctors, and the other were pharmacists, so after having met once, they'd developed a good relationship.
Ever since he was small, Jiang Shining would often be brought along to call upon the Fang family, and later, his sister had ended up marrying into the Fangs.
When he was young, Auntie and Uncle Chen had even made him sweet buns.
Now, old friends were reunited, but they were separated by life and death. Even to greet each other face to face was difficult.
Uncle Chen's ears weren't as good as they used to be, so he didn't hear Jiang Shining call to him.
He squinted his slightly cloudy eyes and took in the ragtag "demons, ghosts, and monsters of all shades" gathered by the door. He said, "Do you... need anything?"
Behind him, Auntie Chen glared at Xingzi. "Didn't you say you saw Young Master Jiang? Where? These people are alive and well," she said in a loud whisper.
Confused, Xingzi shook her head. She didn't know what was going on either.
Again, it was Stone Zhang that the group shoved forward to explain things.
"Thank you for having us," Stone Zhang said. Indeed, he was used to speaking to wealthy patrons, so, although he was always paralysed by terror when with Xue Xian and the others, he did in fact know how to be polite in the right situations.
He saluted and added, "We come from Ningyang, Huizhou. We are here to look for––"
Suddenly, he stopped and frowned back at Xue Xian. "Who are we looking for?"
Before Xue Xian could reply, Auntie Chen said, "Looking for... Young Mistress?"
"Yes," Jiang Shining said in a low voice.
"Yes!" Stone Zhang repeated, nodding.
"Indeed!" Xingzi said. "I knew it couldn't be a coincidence. I just saw Young Master Jiang, and now people from Ningyang have arrived! So did I really see what I saw? And Young Master Jiang..."
Uncle Chen shushed her, then turned back to Stone Zhang and returned the salute. "Sir, if I may ask, do you have some kind of token?"
Panicked, Stone Zhang looked back at the group again and mouthed, Token?
Xue Xian was about to say they didn't, but suddenly remembered and slapped his knee. "Of course!"
Then, without any sense of hesitation nor shame, he reached into Xuanmin's pouch and began to dig.
Xuanmin grasped his wrist. "What are you ––"
"Found it!" Xue Xian wiggled his arm. "Let go."
Xuanmin did so, and Xue Xian triumphantly took out his claw, which clutched a silver medical bell.
When Jiang Shining hadn't been able to carry it, Xue Xian had tossed it into the pouch for him –– and now he was taking it back out, as though it was his own pocket.
"Can this medical bell count as a token?" Xue Xian asked, showing Uncle Chen the bell.
He was still sitting on the statue by the door, half-hidden by Stone Zhang, so it was only upon hearing his voice that Uncle Chen and the others looked over at him.
Xingzi looked him up and down, then suddenly flushed red and shyly hid behind Uncle Chen again.
Uncle Chen took the bell into his hands. He only needed to glance at it before he said, "I've seen this. This was Dr Jiang's."
He flipped the bell over and saw that it had Jiang etched onto the side, then handed it back to Xue Xian.
But Dr Jiang had not died of old age –– his family had been victims of arson, and now there was a complete stranger showing up with a family heirloom. Anyone would be suspicious.
"That's the Jiang family's..." Uncle Chen muttered nervously.
"Close neighbors," Stone Zhang offered. He couldn't say distant family, so he had to go for the next best option. "The Young Master of the Jiang family, Jiang Shining, requested us to bring the medical bell that has been in his family for generations to his sister. There are also unresolved things that he needs us to discuss with her."
"So that's why..." Xingzi said. "But Young Mistress isn't in at the moment. Would you like to come in for tea?"
Her attitude was so completely different to earlier that Auntie Chen and Uncle Chen stared at her, surprised.
Wasn't she supposed to be even more terrified now?
But Xingzi didn't notice the strange looks. Her gaze still rested on Xue Xian.
"Thank you," Stone Zhang said, without even trying to decline out of politeness. After all, in the past few days he'd both flown in the air and dived into the water. All he wanted was to sit down for a while and have some hot tea. He was overjoyed.
Seeing as Xingzi had already invited them, and Stone Zhang had accepted, Uncle Chen had to ignore the doubts he still held and let the group in.
Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen went ahead to show them the way, and Xingzi silently held the door open ––
Stone Zhang entered first, then Twenty-Seven, who was able to step over the threshold but who did so slowly and while feeling around the doorframe. Uncle Chen noticed this.
"This young master..." Uncle Chen asked.
"Half-blind," Twenty-Seven replied coldly.
Uncle Chen said nothing.
Xingzi waited for Twenty-Seven to enter, then went behind him, expecting Xue Xian to get up from the statue and follow her.
But she turned and watched as Xuanmin picked him up in his arms.
Uncle Chen saw this surreal scene, too, and couldn't help but ask, "And this gentleman..."
"Half-paralysed," Xue Xian replied, equally coldly.
Uncle Chen said nothing again, but thought, What kind of people are these...
One half-blind, one half-paralysed, one short and fat middle-aged man, one aloof monk...
None of them seemed capable of any violence.
So Uncle Chen put his suspicions away and decided to greet the group with genuine kindness.
"What time will your Young Mistress be back?" Xue Xian asked Xingzi. He had seen the little girl blush, and found her funny, so had decided to casually ask her a question.
When the beast wasn't actively looking to make trouble, he could use his charisma on people and speak with politeness, yet his tone retained that sense of laziness, which made him appear absent-minded and nonchalant.
Struck that Xue Xian had spoken to her, Xingzi blushed even redder. Warmly, she said, "Young Mistress went to feel Master Zhao's wife's pulse, and Young Master went along. They left before the pre-dawn bell, and will probably be back in an hour or so."
"Feel her pulse?"
"Our Young Mistress is extremely skilled!" Xingzi said. "All the wives in the county who don't feel well ask Young Mistress to check on them. Her pulse study is always accurate, and the medication she recommends always successfully treats the illness. But it's hard work..."
Jiang Shining's sister really was worthy of her upbringing in a medical family, the group thought. But they also began to feel worried –– the plague seemed to be wreaking havoc across Qingping County, and it was too easy for doctors to become infected...
They settled into a back courtyard and sipped tea. They had expected to wait a very long time, but before they'd even finished their first cups, a boy around the age of ten burst in, panicked, and shouted, "Help! Help! Help! Something's happened to Young Master and Young Mistress!"
Chapter 46: Kindness (I)
Jiang Shining stared in shock at the slammed door for a while, then suddenly realised what had happened.
As it occurred to him, his face was a complex one: there was some disappointment, but there was a bit more sad laughter as well.
Seeing Jiang Shining's expression, Xue Xian pointed at Stone Zhang and said, "Old man, weren't you afraid of ghosts before? Now that you've seen such an idiotic ghost, are you still afraid? Don't you think all the trembling you did was quite embarrassing?"
Old man...
Stone Zhang touched his face and gloomily thought, I may not be young anymore but I'm not old either. I can walk, I can run, I can carry things. Isn't 'old man' a bit much?
But he didn't dare protest, lest he pissed off the beast.
Jiang Shining had just been feeling a bit better, but Xue Xian's mockery turned his face dark again. He rolled his eyes and snapped, "Even if I am dumb, it's because I've just been spending too much time with you."
He picked up his robe and stood aside, sweeping an inviting arm toward the door: "I won't try to haunt this place in the middle of the day. Why don't one of you come to knock?"
Everyone looked at Stone Zhang.
"Me... me?" Confused, Stone Zhang pointed at himself. On the whole journey so far, he'd just been jostled along –– this was the first time anyone had called on him to do something.
Xue Xian pointed at Twenty-Seven and said, "Fortune-teller."
Then he pointed at himself: "Cripple."
Then he pointed at Xuanmin: "Alms beggar."
He spread his hands and shrugged. "Which one of us is normal?"
Tragically, there was only one normal person in the whole group.
Stone Zhang had no choice but to shuffle to the door and knock again.
There was another scream –– the girl was becoming even more frightened.
Stone Zhang looked back at the group helplessly. "Those who are bitten by a snake spend the next ten years terrified of ropes," he said. "Not my fault."
Then he injected a casual tone into his voice and said, "Little girl, open the door! I'm not a ghost. I'm a good person!"
Xue Xian glared at the stonemason, then finally reached out and yanked him back. "Stop being so creepy. If you keep going like this, Zhong Kui is going to come chase you away."*
"Xingzi, what are you yelling for?" came the voice of an old woman. "Don't frighten the patients in the front."
The little girl's trembling voice rose in response –– she seemed about to cry. "Auntie Chen, there's a ghost!"
"Nonsense, how could there be a ghost?" Auntie Chen laughed. "In our compound we only save people. We've never harmed anyone. Why would a ghost want to haunt us?"
"It's true. I just saw Young Master Jiang, right there behind the door," Xingzi said.
"Young Master... Jiang?" Auntie Chen said, shocked. "You don't mean..."
"Yes! Just now... just now I heard a knock on the door, and when I opened it, he was there. He smiled at me and called me by my name! Who else could it be?"
The girl was sobbing now, scared to her wit's end.
"Knocking on the door?" Auntie Chen asked.
"Yes, and there was another knock just now. I was too scared to listen..."
At this point, Xue Xian decided to knock again.
Du du du...
Now both the old woman and the young girl screamed and began to cry.
Exasperated, Xuanmin pried the dragon's claw away from the door.
Jiang Shining sighed.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the door opened again. The person behind it was a grey-haired, kindly-looking old man.
Peeking out from behind the old man were two others: one was Xingzi, and the other, a short old woman, would be Auntie Chen.
In order not to scare them again, Jiang Shining had turned back into a small paper man and tucked himself into Xue Xian's pocket. But he couldn't help but stick his head out again to observe what was happening –– after all, he'd gotten them into this mess.
Seeing the grey-haired old man, he muttered, "Uncle Chen..."
He knew everyone at Fang's Pharmacy, and could even say he knew some of them quite well. The Fang and Jiang families had always been very close: one side were doctors, and the other were pharmacists, so after having met once, they'd developed a good relationship.
Ever since he was small, Jiang Shining would often be brought along to call upon the Fang family, and later, his sister had ended up marrying into the Fangs.
When he was young, Auntie and Uncle Chen had even made him sweet buns.
Now, old friends were reunited, but they were separated by life and death. Even to greet each other face to face was difficult.
Uncle Chen's ears weren't as good as they used to be, so he didn't hear Jiang Shining call to him.
He squinted his slightly cloudy eyes and took in the ragtag "demons, ghosts, and monsters of all shades" gathered by the door. He said, "Do you... need anything?"
Behind him, Auntie Chen glared at Xingzi. "Didn't you say you saw Young Master Jiang? Where? These people are alive and well," she said in a loud whisper.
Confused, Xingzi shook her head. She didn't know what was going on either.
Again, it was Stone Zhang that the group shoved forward to explain things.
"Thank you for having us," Stone Zhang said. Indeed, he was used to speaking to wealthy patrons, so, although he was always paralysed by terror when with Xue Xian and the others, he did in fact know how to be polite in the right situations.
He saluted and added, "We come from Ningyang, Huizhou. We are here to look for––"
Suddenly, he stopped and frowned back at Xue Xian. "Who are we looking for?"
Before Xue Xian could reply, Auntie Chen said, "Looking for... Young Mistress?"
"Yes," Jiang Shining said in a low voice.
"Yes!" Stone Zhang repeated, nodding.
"Indeed!" Xingzi said. "I knew it couldn't be a coincidence. I just saw Young Master Jiang, and now people from Ningyang have arrived! So did I really see what I saw? And Young Master Jiang..."
Uncle Chen shushed her, then turned back to Stone Zhang and returned the salute. "Sir, if I may ask, do you have some kind of token?"
Panicked, Stone Zhang looked back at the group again and mouthed, Token?
Xue Xian was about to say they didn't, but suddenly remembered and slapped his knee. "Of course!"
Then, without any sense of hesitation nor shame, he reached into Xuanmin's pouch and began to dig.
Xuanmin grasped his wrist. "What are you ––"
"Found it!" Xue Xian wiggled his arm. "Let go."
Xuanmin did so, and Xue Xian triumphantly took out his claw, which clutched a silver medical bell.
When Jiang Shining hadn't been able to carry it, Xue Xian had tossed it into the pouch for him –– and now he was taking it back out, as though it was his own pocket.
"Can this medical bell count as a token?" Xue Xian asked, showing Uncle Chen the bell.
He was still sitting on the statue by the door, half-hidden by Stone Zhang, so it was only upon hearing his voice that Uncle Chen and the others looked over at him.
Xingzi looked him up and down, then suddenly flushed red and shyly hid behind Uncle Chen again.
Uncle Chen took the bell into his hands. He only needed to glance at it before he said, "I've seen this. This was Dr Jiang's."
He flipped the bell over and saw that it had Jiang etched onto the side, then handed it back to Xue Xian.
But Dr Jiang had not died of old age –– his family had been victims of arson, and now there was a complete stranger showing up with a family heirloom. Anyone would be suspicious.
"That's the Jiang family's..." Uncle Chen muttered nervously.
"Close neighbors," Stone Zhang offered. He couldn't say distant family, so he had to go for the next best option. "The Young Master of the Jiang family, Jiang Shining, requested us to bring the medical bell that has been in his family for generations to his sister. There are also unresolved things that he needs us to discuss with her."
"So that's why..." Xingzi said. "But Young Mistress isn't in at the moment. Would you like to come in for tea?"
Her attitude was so completely different to earlier that Auntie Chen and Uncle Chen stared at her, surprised.
Wasn't she supposed to be even more terrified now?
But Xingzi didn't notice the strange looks. Her gaze still rested on Xue Xian.
"Thank you," Stone Zhang said, without even trying to decline out of politeness. After all, in the past few days he'd both flown in the air and dived into the water. All he wanted was to sit down for a while and have some hot tea. He was overjoyed.
Seeing as Xingzi had already invited them, and Stone Zhang had accepted, Uncle Chen had to ignore the doubts he still held and let the group in.
Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen went ahead to show them the way, and Xingzi silently held the door open ––
Stone Zhang entered first, then Twenty-Seven, who was able to step over the threshold but who did so slowly and while feeling around the doorframe. Uncle Chen noticed this.
"This young master..." Uncle Chen asked.
"Half-blind," Twenty-Seven replied coldly.
Uncle Chen said nothing.
Xingzi waited for Twenty-Seven to enter, then went behind him, expecting Xue Xian to get up from the statue and follow her.
But she turned and watched as Xuanmin picked him up in his arms.
Uncle Chen saw this surreal scene, too, and couldn't help but ask, "And this gentleman..."
"Half-paralysed," Xue Xian replied, equally coldly.
Uncle Chen said nothing again, but thought, What kind of people are these...
One half-blind, one half-paralysed, one short and fat middle-aged man, one aloof monk...
None of them seemed capable of any violence.
So Uncle Chen put his suspicions away and decided to greet the group with genuine kindness.
"What time will your Young Mistress be back?" Xue Xian asked Xingzi. He had seen the little girl blush, and found her funny, so had decided to casually ask her a question.
When the beast wasn't actively looking to make trouble, he could use his charisma on people and speak with politeness, yet his tone retained that sense of laziness, which made him appear absent-minded and nonchalant.
Struck that Xue Xian had spoken to her, Xingzi blushed even redder. Warmly, she said, "Young Mistress went to feel Master Zhao's wife's pulse, and Young Master went along. They left before the pre-dawn bell, and will probably be back in an hour or so."
"Feel her pulse?"
"Our Young Mistress is extremely skilled!" Xingzi said. "All the wives in the county who don't feel well ask Young Mistress to check on them. Her pulse study is always accurate, and the medication she recommends always successfully treats the illness. But it's hard work..."
Jiang Shining's sister really was worthy of her upbringing in a medical family, the group thought. But they also began to feel worried –– the plague seemed to be wreaking havoc across Qingping County, and it was too easy for doctors to become infected...
They settled into a back courtyard and sipped tea. They had expected to wait a very long time, but before they'd even finished their first cups, a boy around the age of ten burst in, panicked, and shouted, "Help! Help! Help! Something's happened to Young Master and Young Mistress!"
