Chapter 49: Section 49: All in Readiness

Seeing him sink into confusion, the man in the chair gave a hehe laugh, rose to his full height, and the group filed out of the room one after another. As they left, they tossed down a single sentence: "Busy day today — still have several more households to visit. You're a blessed one. Go home and slowly figure it out. When the time comes and you still don't get it, we'll just kill you and be done with it!"

Hu Zhengqi, still clutching the silver ingot tightly in his hand, now slumped paralyzed on the muddy ground, mouth agape, tongue-tied, as if in a dream, utterly baffled no matter how he turned it over in his mind.

At the same moment, inside a private room of a gambling den in Hangzhou City, Liu Wang, the waiter from Mingxiang Residence, was kneeling on the floor, drenched in sweat, watching a silver ingot spin round and round on the floorboards before him. A middle-aged man dressed like a merchant and the gambling den's owner sat facing him together, smiling as they said: "Liu Wang, you're a blessed one. Do this job well, and your past debts are wiped clean in one stroke — and this ingot of silver is yours too."

Liu Wang: "......"

The next morning, Liu Wang, the waiter at Mingxiang Residence, came to the teahouse for work as usual. Today he was exceptionally diligent, boiling water and stoking the fire, bustling about with great relish.

Watching the time, just as the hour of Chen was about to strike squarely, the shopkeeper gave a shout. Liu Wang answered and went to the rear hall, taking down from the cupboard a full Jingde Town official-kiln white-porcelain tea set. After this, the shopkeeper personally carried the tea set up to the second floor.

Liu Wang immediately afterward opened a fine blue-and-white porcelain jar and began the task he could perform with practiced ease, so familiar it had become second nature — preparing tea for Old Master Zhu.

Zhu Zheng, Old Master Zhu, was the Criminal Division Clerk of Renhe County Yamen.

To a commoner of Liu Wang's sort, Old Master Zhu was one of the most formidable and influential figures in all of Hangzhou City. In his early years, Old Master Zhu still went to the county yamen to attend to his duties; in recent years he had long since stopped answering roll call. Every day he came punctually to Mingxiang Teahouse to drink a pot of morning tea and have some pastries, spending the entire morning receiving his disciples, litigation masters, and all manner of Edo characters who came to him for handling affairs. Once noon passed, he vanished without a trace — Old Master Zhu had no fewer than three outer residences for his concubines, and he had to look after each one thoroughly.

Just as Liu Wang opened Old Master Zhu's personal celadon tea jar, poured out pre-Qingming Longjing leaves, and began to steep them, the shopkeeper's booming greeting already sounded from outside. Liu Wang didn't need to look to know — Old Master Zhu had entered.

In the brief one-minute span of steeping the tea, Liu Wang, for reasons unknown even to himself, had already turned pale-faced and was drenched in sweat. Once the teapot was ready, Liu Wang first glanced left and right, then drew from his bosom a slender crystal vial.

Through this crystal vial, the length of a finger and as thin as a wheat stalk, Liu Wang could clearly see the single pill inside, the size of a grain of yellow millet.

The next moment, he gritted his teeth, pulled out the stopper, tilted it gently, and that pill slid straight into the teapot.

Having done all this, Liu Wang had intended to carry the pot upstairs, but at this moment his legs were shaking like a sieve and he truly could not take a step. Left with no choice, he gave a low shout and beckoned a waiter from outside to come over.

Liu Wang wiped his sweat with his neck cloth and said to that waiter with a bitter smile: "Little Liao, I must have eaten something bad yesterday. I've had the runs since I woke this morning, my legs are weak — you take this pot of tea up."

Little Liao, suspecting nothing, picked up the pot and went up to the second floor.

Liu Wang watched that waiter go upstairs, turned around, braced himself against the worktable, and gasped several deep breaths. After a while, when the shopkeeper came downstairs, Liu Wang, his face still pale, went over to request leave. Amid the shopkeeper's grumbling, he walked out the door.

He hadn't gone far after leaving before turning into an alley. Looking back, Liu Wang gave a bitter smile — sure enough, someone was following behind him. With no other choice, he could only lower his head and go over, reporting in detail to the person who had come.

The consequences of this matter began to slowly manifest a few hours later.

Old Master Zhu felt slightly unwell only after lunch. Today he did not go to his outer residence but returned home to rest. When he woke from his nap in the evening, he could not even get out of bed!

His household hurriedly sent someone to fetch a physician from Xiuhé Hall. After taking his pulse, the physician wrote down the two characters "acute dysentery," and the Zhu household instantly exploded into chaos.

Just as Old Master Zhu fell ill and the Zhu household descended into turmoil, in a teahouse not far from Xiuhé Hall, Chu Jianli and Master Miaoshu were seated by the window, sipping tea and conversing.

Before long, the person sent to inquire at the physician's had returned. After hearing the scout's report, the Great Master let out a long laugh: "The bill — settle the bill."

Third Master Chu was still somewhat uneasy. After stepping out of the shop, he couldn't help asking: "The man is still being treated — shouldn't we watch a little longer?"

Master Miaoshu, these past two days nourished by yin and replenished by yang, was glowing with health and in high spirits for conversation: "What is there to wait for? Zhu Zheng today coughs phlegm, has chest tightness, and breaks out in heavy sweats. Tomorrow he will certainly have diarrhea and pass blood in his urine. Every symptom matches dysentery perfectly. He won't last past the day after tomorrow."

At this, the Great Master gave a hehe smile: "Even if I personally intervened to neutralize this poison, it would take great effort and roundabout methods. What damn use are a few physicians? Even if you brought in the imperial physicians, they couldn't extend Zhu Zheng's life!"

"The Great Master's methods are exquisite — my admiration, my admiration. Might I ask, does such a wondrous poison have a name?"

"Castor Toxin."

"Oh, castor? That's so unremarkable — great skill appears clumsy. Good name!"

At this point, the transmigrators' preliminary preparations were all complete.

Zhu Zheng, Old Master Zhu, had to be eliminated — whether as the largest political backer of Huang Qi, the Beggar Sect's Group Head, or for his years of cultivating Huang Qi's conduct, he had to die.

The transmigrators could not possibly pin all their hopes for quelling the situation on Liu Yaozu alone. The political revenge stirred up in the shadows by a veteran old official was extremely troublesome. Rather than going to great lengths after the fact, it was better to cut the tangled mess with a sharp knife beforehand. The medieval era was an era where matters were accomplished through individuals; the power vacuum and period of chaos left behind by a key figure's death were more than enough for everyone to handle affairs.

August 11, 1627 AD, high noon on the first day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar.

Due east of Hangzhou, inside Wuxian Temple, which lay behind a patch of scrub woods outside Qingtai Gate, all was bustle and commotion.

The temple name Wuxian Temple could be found both inside and outside the city. From this name one could guess that inside, neither the Buddha nor the Three Pure Ones would be worshipped — during the Ming-Qing transition, the Five Manifestations Deities brothers, who swept across the lands south of the Yangtze, whom even the authorities could do nothing about, spontaneously worshipped by the common folk, the top group among illicit cults, were the true masters of this temple.

This Wuxian Temple outside Qingtai Gate was rather dilapidated. The three-courtyard hall complex was old, dark, and worn; the clay statues of the Five Manifestations Deities brothers had been shoved into the front hall.

The main hall was rather bizarre: inside there was no divine image niche, but on the hall wall hung a large-scale colored figure painting — a high official dressed in a red robe, wearing a black gauze cap, black boots on his feet, a jade belt around his waist, holding a silver bowl in his left hand and gold chopsticks in his right, yet tilting his face skyward in a sigh of lament because his stomach was empty — Yan Song.

Yan Song, who rose to the pinnacle of officialdom yet ultimately starved to death — because of a rumor that when his property was confiscated, the Emperor appointed him "Lower Capital Group Head," with overall command of the beggars below — thus, after the Jiajing reign of the Ming, beggars in some places gradually began worshipping Yan Song as the God of Beggars, the same routine as the rooftop gentlemen worshipping Shi Qian.

A Wuxian Temple bearing Yan Song's portrait was naturally connected to beggars.

In fact, no one knew since when, but this Wuxian Temple outside Qingtai Gate had become the Head Hall of the Hangzhou Beggar Sect. The main hall served as the public office of the Beggar Sect's Group Head. On ordinary days, the Group Head would open court here to adjudicate cases, carry out punishments, and handle the sect's major public affairs. On the first of every month, the Hall Masters and Incense Masters from all routes inside and outside the city had to come to Wuxian Temple to pay respects to the Group Head and hand over the Monthly Dues.