Chapter 78: The Thief

After refilling the empty coffin and burying it properly, Xu Qing acted as if nothing had happened. After wandering around for a bit, he returned to the foot of the mountain.

Wang Liang, who had been watching the carriage all along, could not help but ask:

"Mr., was there anything strange about that grave?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary." Xu Qing replied with a slightly disdainful look: "Perhaps some idle hermit who knew a bit of feng shui and geomancy took a fancy to this treasure spot as well, so he buried the coffins of his close ones here."

"That burial ground was originally part of the mountains and wild marshes, and had no owner to begin with. Since he wants to share the burial spot, let him be. In the future, if you come to pay respects at the graves, you only need to tend to your own family's graves; you don't need to care whether he gets offerings or not."

Xu Qing was unsure whether the Third Imperial Prince's people would still come to pay respects in the future.

For now, the safest course of action was to have Wang Liang do nothing and pretend nothing had happened.

Any other course—whether it be moving the graves of Wang Qiao and his wife, or shifting the Crown Prince's grave—would carry the suspicion of self-deception.

When it came down to it, the people handling the Crown Prince's posthumous affairs were simply too thick-skinned.

Not only had they set their sights on the feng shui treasure spot he had chosen for the Wang family, they also harbored thoughts of freeloading.

After all, the graves of Wang Qiao and his wife were also there. When relatives came to offer incense during festivals, seeing the neighboring grave with no one burning offerings, their hearts would soften, and they would inevitably lend a hand or two.

To put it lightly, this was taking advantage of others; to put it heavily, it was seizing someone else's incense and fortune.

If you happened to run into someone with a fierce temper, forget lending a hand—they might just push your grave mound over!

From this, one could see that although the people in charge of this matter held some respect for this Crown Prince, it wasn't much.

If the Third Imperial Prince Zhao Rong hadn't given specific instructions, these two might have just tossed Zhao You's corpse into the mountain forest for wild beasts to gnaw on.

"I'll listen to you, Mr." Wang Liang agreed, then promptly busied himself going to the front of the carriage to lead the horse and guide the way.

Xu Qing's gaze fell on the youth leading the horse, his nostrils flaring slightly.

Ever since he had run into Wang Liang on the road, he had smelled that lingering, never-dispersing scent of blood on the other.

As a jiangshi, his perception of food ingredients was sharper than anything.

It was the fresh, sweet scent unique to human blood.

"A-Liang, did you really go up the mountain today just to pay respects to your elders?"

Wang Liang's eyelids twitched. Without changing expression, he said: "What makes you say that, Mr.? Today is the memorial anniversary of my parents; of course a junior like me must come to pay respects."

"Memorial anniversary?" Xu Qing said with a half-smile: "I've only ever heard of the First Seventh and the Second Seventh. I've never heard of a Tenth-Day Memorial."

Funerals were his old trade; no one knew the ins and outs better than him. According to the old rules, on the seventh day after a person dies, the deceased's soul returns home to look around. At this time, relatives must prepare a meal for them, burn paper money, chant sutras, and pray.

This is the First Seventh. The specific date is counted from the day of death, with every seven days marking a memorial day.

Like the Second Seventh, Third Seventh... totaling forty-nine days, with the final day being the Last Seventh.

It had been exactly ten days since Wang Qiao and his wife died. Such a date, neither an anniversary nor a festival, required no special memorial visit.

If Wang Liang had simply said he missed his parents and wanted to pay respects, that would have been fine. But instead, the other insisted on making an unnecessary move, spouting some nonsense about a memorial anniversary.

When it came to knowledge of funeral rites, Xu Qing could write a whole academic treatise on the subject. How could the other possibly hide it from him?

Wang Liang's expression shifted several times upon hearing this. Finally, he gritted his teeth and said: "I won't hide it from you, Mr., I—"

"I just killed someone!"

"Mm." Xu Qing, seated at the front of the carriage, nodded, then closed his eyes to rest.

"Mr., I mean I killed someone today." Wang Liang led the horse while turning his head back, his young face grave.

Xu Qing opened his eyes and glanced at the country boy who kept repeating himself.

He thought: I'm not deaf, do I still need to give you an award?

Wang Liang did not receive the questioning and admonishment he had expected—the kind a teacher gives a student after they do something wrong.

Are teachers really this tolerant nowadays?

Faced with Xu Qing's bland reaction, Wang Liang felt a tightness in his chest, a breath he simply had to release.

"Mr., this was not my wish. If the other party hadn't pushed me too far, I would never have done such a thing."

The usually steady and silent Wang Liang was, for the first time, actively wanting to confide in someone.

"The one I killed was the village ruffian Zheng Erhu. Just because his uncle by marriage is the village's Lord Tian, he often ran amok in the village. Yesterday that bastard came to my house, loudly demanding to borrow my family's house as a wedding chamber.

My uncle and aunt vouched in between, saying once I came of age, they would return the fields and house.

"These fields and house were left by my parents. If they were taken by someone else, my being homeless would be a small matter; I just feared my grandmother and little sister would suffer with me.

"My uncle and aunt relayed this to Zheng Erhu. Who would have thought that the very next day, that bastard brought a matchmaker, saying she would find a good family for my little sister and me, to serve as maids and servants in a wealthy household.

"Today Zheng Erhu brought two henchmen up the mountain to hunt. I was simply too angry to bear it, so I beat them all to death."

"Whoa—" Xu Qing gave a soft command. Without needing him to pull the reins, the horse obediently stopped at the side of the road.

Wang Liang's heart leaped with joy at the sight. He quickly turned around and stood obediently before the carriage, quietly waiting for the Mr. to speak and offer guidance.

"You—" Xu Qing paused slightly, his expression somewhat solemn.

"After you killed them, where did you hide the bodies?"

"Huh?"

Wang Liang said blankly: "I dismembered them into several pieces and threw them in the forest. By now they've probably been completely devoured by wild beasts."

"..."

What a waste.

Xu Qing's gaze was dark and intent, making Wang Liang uncomfortable all over.

"A-Liang, whether you kill people or save them, you don't need to tell me about it."

Driving the carriage on again, Xu Qing shook his head with some regret and said: "You only need to remember: chivalry does not depend on birth, and good and evil do not distinguish between the living and the dead. As long as you can hold fast to your original heart, you will naturally feel no guilt."

"Your student will keep the Mr.'s teachings firmly in mind."

Wang Liang led the horse all the way to the village entrance.

On the country dirt road, Xu Qing urged the carriage on, speeding toward Linhe.

At the boundary marker of Wanshou Township, Wang Liang bowed deeply. Only when the distant carriage, trailing a cloud of dust, disappeared at the end of the road did he turn and head back.

Ten li from Linhe, there was a relay station.

According to the Yong Dynasty's regulations, between the official roads of important commanderies and counties, a relay station was set up every ten li.

Because of this, the common folk of the Great Yong often referred to ten li as one "pu," which fit perfectly with the regulation of one station per pu.

The relay station was open only to those with scholarly honors or official rank; those with official status could exchange mules and horses for free with official documents, or stay and rest at the station.

For someone like Xu Qing, who had no official status but did have a scholar's certificate of merit, he could still pay a certain amount of silver for the station's conveniences.

As for other commoners and merchants, no matter how much money they had, the station would not open its doors to them.

Arriving at the Linhe relay station, Xu Qing hopped off the carriage and grinned as he looked at the bay-red horse that had accompanied him on his journey to the imperial examination.

He observed it for a while using his horse-appraising art, and before long reached a conclusion—

This was a fine steed; though not as precious as a thousand-li horse, among ordinary horses it could still be called excellent.

Only now this fine steed did not look as spirited as when it had first left the horse broker's yard; instead, it had a kind of listlessness, as if it had often been startled and disturbed by wild beasts.

Simply put, it wasn't very lively.

Xu Qing wondered—he hadn't encountered any fearsome wild beasts along the way, so why had the horse's spirits fallen to such a state?

He stepped forward, wanting to reach out and stroke the mane, but sensed a strong wave of fear emanating from the horse.

"..."

Xu Qing silently withdrew his hand.

After all that fuss, the wild beast turned out to be himself?

Entrusting the carriage to the relay station, Xu Qing traveled light and hurried straight toward his residence at Shuimen Bridge.

At this moment, inside the relay station's carriage and horse pavilion.

A gust of wind blew past, and the crepe gauze covering the window swayed slightly.

Behind the heavy wooden carriage compartment, a lithe-bodied cat darted out from a corner nook.

It leapt onto the carriage, crouched on the roof of the compartment, and licked its forepaw with a barbed, slender tongue.

Along the way, when it encountered a black mouse stealing horse feed, it swallowed the creature whole.

Once its belly was full, the black cat leapt onto the front section of the carriage compartment and sniffed again at that lingering scent of cosmetics.

Then it sprang onto the walltop, sat there quietly, and watched with deep blue eyes the official runners passing to and fro outside the relay station.

The black cat's tail, drooping from the walltop, swung back and forth, until it saw someone driving a carriage toward Linhe—only then did it leap down.

When it appeared again, this black cat had already landed on the roof of the moving carriage compartment.

The moon was faint, the stars sparse, the night deep and still.

Xu Qing's figure appeared outside his residence at Shuimen Bridge.

The two newly planted small jujube trees at the gate still looked the same, except that they had sprouted new buds, appearing a touch livelier than before.

Vaulting over the wall into the courtyard, Xu Qing's figure had barely steadied itself when he let out a surprised exclamation.

When had visitors come to his courtyard?

Xu Qing stared in astonishment at the trap triggered beneath the courtyard wall—on the cold-gleaming poisoned spikes within, a masked corpse was strung up.

He hauled the corpse out and tossed it into the center of the courtyard.

Xu Qing patrolled back and forth, and discovered many more novel sights.

For instance, the shady scholar tree in the back garden had become a bare pole—only the trunk remained, with no crown at all.

Xu Qing reflected briefly, and immediately connected it to the palm strike Bai Luo had landed on his head during their magical duel at the Long Pavilion Wang Fu.

The shady scholar tree before him was precisely the substitute he had stored through his Stake-Planting Art; only this tree, after taking Bai Luo's palm strike for him, had its crown destroyed, while the trunk still lived on—and so his Stake-Planting Art had not been completely broken.

After pondering for a moment, Xu Qing took out his talisman brush and carving knife once more, and on top of the tree stump that had sprouted new buds, he inscribed the missing talisman script.

The stake-body is stillness; the original-body is movement.

Xu Qing still used stiffened blood as his medium, inscribing talisman script onto the shady scholar tree.

Qian is the head, Kun is the belly, Zhen is the foot, Xun is the thigh.

This time only the Qian position was damaged; Xu Qing left a section at the top of the stump empty to serve as the head, and the entire planted stake was once again complete.

Besides tending to the greenery in the courtyard, when Xu Qing inspected the back garden he also discovered that the door of his east wing room had been taken off—bolt and all—in one piece.

He stepped inside to take a look.

Well then! Another "gentleman on the beam."

Only this fellow had never even made it onto the beam before falling into the pit he had dug behind the threshold.

He hauled this corpse out as well and dumped it in the front courtyard.

To guard against any oversights, Xu Qing took another stroll around the residence, and only after confirming there were no other anomalies did he turn his attention back to examining the corpses before him.

Only the horse broker who did business with him knew of this private residence; he had told no one else.

Now, the two black-clad, masked corpses in his courtyard were clearly not acquaintances of his.

Stripping away the cloth wrapped around their faces, one was a man with stubbly whiskers and a knife scar on his face; the other had sunken cheeks, looking like a malnourished skinny monkey.

Xu Qing silently recited his scripture, and the page of the Crossing-People Sutra turned.

These two had been habitual thieves—the skinny monkey was in charge of casing houses and scouting targets, while the stubble-whiskered man handled the cleanup.

If it was a technical job like slipping through doors or picking locks, the skinny monkey did it. If the homeowner noticed and came out to catch the thief, the stubble-whiskered man would intimidate them with force.

These two also had nicknames in the jianghu—the skinny one was called "Swallow Before the House," the stout one "Daytime Burglar."

On this day, Swallow Before the House went about his scouting as usual.

He first came to Shuimen Bridge, going door to door, stuffing paper money for the dead into people's door cracks.

Dead-man money carried its own inauspicious aura; no matter whose household saw it, they would surely rush to sweep it out.

After two or three days of this, when Swallow Before the House came back to check, any house whose door crack still had dead-man money in it became their target.

This period happened to coincide with Xu Qing's departure from Linhe—his residence was empty, so the two brothers had naturally set their sights on his feng shui treasure of a house.

In front of the house, Fang Qianyan, a thin and small man, had learned a Wall-Climbing Art when he was a martial monk at a temple.

At this moment, outside the courtyard, he pressed his toes against the wall, scurried up the wallhead in a few steps, and walked as if on flat ground.

"You go around to the front; I'll open the door for you!"

Following the custom of giving Bai Richuang a brief instruction, Fang Qianyan then performed a graceful hawk somersault and jumped neatly into the trap Xu Qing had dug!

The pit was four feet deep, filled with two-foot-long poison spikes.

Fang Qianyan only let out two wails of agony before falling completely silent.

Outside the courtyard wall, Bai Richuang sensed something was wrong; he called out several times inside, but no one answered.

Bai Richuang, growing anxious, circled the house and spotted a thick locust tree branch hanging over the back courtyard wall.

After a moment's thought, he simply grabbed that locust branch, pulled and climbed, and hoisted himself onto the wallhead.

Beneath the wallhead, in several pits created by falling tree branches, poison spikes glinted with cold light.

Seeing this, Bai Richuang felt a chill in his heart; what decent family would dig pits in their own yard to harm people!

Avoiding the pits, he arrived at the pitch-black back courtyard.

Whether it was an illusion or not, as soon as Bai Richuang entered the courtyard, he felt everywhere was gloomy and chilly, as if he had stepped into a well cellar.

He took out a fire starter; just as he blew it to life, an unexplained cold wind swept through, and the flame instantly went out!

Bai Richuang swallowed hard, cursed under his breath, and approached the door of a side room, thinking to find an oil lamp for light.

Unlike Fang Qianyan, he did not possess such fancy skills for prying doors and picking locks.

Adhering to the principle that great strength produces miracles, Bai Richuang mustered all his strength and simply pried the door open, tossing it aside.

"It's damn dark."

Gazing at the side room where one could not see a hand in front of one's face, Bai Richuang muttered a phrase and stepped over the threshold.

"Splash—Ouch!"

Once again, two short cries of agony rang out, and then the entire courtyard fell silent once more.

Xu Qing watched, his heart filled with amusement.

After expiating the two corpses that had delivered themselves, the Sutra of Saving People granted a reward: a human-grade, lower-tier skill named Gecko Wall-Climbing Art, which, once practiced, would allow one to walk on walls and cliffs as if on flat ground, moving with complete freedom.

The other was the Lamp-Lighting Method; as long as there were lamps or candles around the caster, one could use this method to control the extinguishing and lighting of the lamps and candles.

The Gecko Wall-Climbing Art counted as a movement technique and had some use, but this Lamp-Lighting Method...

Xu Qing stood in the courtyard, formed a hand seal, and silently recited the incantation.

In the next moment, lamps and candles in every room and every house lit up with light.

(End of this chapter)