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The next few days passed in consistent, if tense, peace. During the daytime, patients were fewer than they had been — it had still been more than he’d been expecting, given that he had been out for almost a month, but the doctor shortage was no joke — and near sunset, they dwindled gradually into non-existence.

On this very day, news came by courier of yet another kidnapping of a noble; the titled patriarch of a major family, no less. Marking the fifth important figure gone so far, it was causing a panicked uproar in civilian society.

Chu Ran chuckled at the information. He did so while the courier was still there, even, thus frightening the poor messenger into scurrying off as fast as his legs could carry him.

When the front gates were shut, he continued to giggle, holding a shut fan up to his lips.

“…Big brother, what’s so funny?” Chu Mei asked. She put on her ‘naive child’ voice for the question, but she was eyeing him suspiciously.

The giggling didn’t stop. Instead of answering, Chu Ran turn away to go back inside, his white robes twirling with the movement.

Zhu Li watched him go away blankly. That guy would think this was quite funny, wouldn’t he.

All three of them had been in the apothecary. It had happened to be the afternoon downtime period, where most people were done with lunch breaks and gone back to working and whatnot, leaving them with valued time to catch up, restock, and generally take it easy for a shichen or two.

Today, Zhu Li had been in the middle of teaching Chu Mei how to tell the difference between various flower roots when Chu Ran had burst in, bombastically presenting a thin novel he had scrounged out from his collection. Chu Mei had happily joined her brother in listening to Zhu Li read the latest pile of paper to haunt his hall.

(The bombastic presentation would have been best used on a much better book.)

Typically, when visitors came around, they would be first intercepted by the hired door guards, then heralded by Guhui’s neighing, then welcomed by Zhu Li and Chu Mei if no visit to the apothecary itself was needed, and Chu Ran would get his news brought to him after the fact. This was a rare day where Chu Ran was in the front of the house to get information first-hand, a day that clearly demonstrated why he typically got it second-hand. That courier was definitely never volunteering to stop by here again.

Chu Ran tittered back to his seat in the apothecary, sat in it, and downed his entire cup of tea, thus cutting off his laughing fit.

Meanwhile, Zhu Li and Chu Mei took their own seats back, both watching him with bemusement.

“Kidnapping is hilarious to you, huh,” the former commented, reaching for his own cup of tea. He would need to wake up a little more for this.

Still beaming, Chu Ran decided that this was the perfect excuse to rant. “Another from high society is taken from their homes in the night… how dreadful for them, truly, not hilarious at all. Honest,” he said, smiling dishonestly. “I suppose they’ll be requesting jianghu folk for help in righting this abysmal travesty soon, once their own forces turn up nothing.”

“You’re certain that they’ll turn up nothing?”

The dishonesty grew in his visage. “Of course. Never be surprised when the waters stop playing nice and sweep you away, as they say. Will jianghu even help? Who knows.”

What was that? A riddle? Zhu Li thought, watching him over his cup rim with eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Did he want to know whether this guy was involved in these kidnappings? Or why he was doing it? Or, if he was uninvolved, why he was so tickled?

Maybe Chu Ran was right, and he would be happier in his ignorance.

“Anyways… should I keep reading this one?” Zhu Li said, retrieving up the subpar novel.

“No.” “Yes.”

The givers of the simultaneous answers paused. One looked at the other, and one vaguely turned their head towards where his counterpart was.

“Far be it from a little girl to know what proper literature is. We should get a new book, Doctor,” Chu Ran said in a pompous tone, all but sticking his nose into the air.

“But we don’t know whether Chong Xue is going to get out of the Cave of Infinite Demons!” Chu Mei protested loudly.

“He can die in there for all I care, uncouth brute that he is. Who goes around murdering everyone that sneezes in their general direction?”

“You!”

Greatly offended, the scoff Chu Ran let out sounded like it hurt. “I do not, how dare you. Also, he flirts with every woman that meets his eye, an untamed beast in rut. What a joke of a man.”

“The women flirt with him first! And he hasn’t reciprocated, has he?!”

“He was thinking of it, surely. Men like him always do. Mei’r, my little radish, it’s very good that you left the Chu Estate before our bastard of a father could enact any marriage proposals. Concubinage proposals, more like, he never has had class.”

“…Why did the conversation turn to this, big brother?”

“Because you are a wee lass and men are big lugs. Make sure that when you go spelunking for one, you have a discerning eye. Even the most scholarly-looking of gents can hide wanton hearts. Oh, but even if you are duped, worry not, for I shall eviscerate anyone who does you wrong.”

Chu Mei stared at him for a bit, then turned to Zhu Li with a pleading look.

“Leave her alone, Yingliu. She’s too young to worry about marriage, anyways,” he obligingly mediated, skimming ahead in the book a bit. It wasn’t getting any better, unfortunately.

“Perhaps in your social circle, but in civilian society, they love to betroth babies and marry teens to adults, don’t you know? The common age for a girl to marry is fourteen, and boys sixteen, last I checked. They used to be higher, I believe. No points for guessing why they were lowered.”

Jianghu set the coming-of-age ceremony for all at twenty. The reasons behind this were many, but chiefly boiled down to cultivators’ increased longevity and fertile periods, higher quality of life, and the passed-down wisdom that putting teenagers in charge of anything important, let alone households, was just asking for trouble.

“What’s wrong, Doctor? Is there something in the book that you don’t like?” Chu Ran suddenly asked, evidently having forgotten to turn his qi sense off.

“I like nothing of this book,” Zhu Li flatly admitted, relieved as he was for the switch in subject. He would rather think about this terribly average book than marriages between idiot teenagers.

Chu Ran puffed up proudly. “Ah, see? The good Doctor agrees that we should reduce this book to kindling. There are so many better stories out there to peruse; why waste our time on this singular… Mei’r, try not to cry, I was only kidding.”

Unlike him, Chu Mei had been appreciating the story for what it was, and the comment that it should be burnt didn’t sit well with her. Speaking of teens not being mature enough to handle major things, this one was a prime example, getting teary-eyed over something she liked being dissed and threatened.

With a quick snap, the book was shut, and Zhu Li handed the novel over to Chu Mei herself. “Since he doesn’t like it, you can keep it to finish on your own.”

She perked up immediately, thanking him, hugging the thing to her chest, and running away from Chu Ran’s looming arson threat.

“Hm. I didn’t know that she liked that book so much. A poor side effect of not being able to read her feelings, I suppose,” Chu Ran mused, rapping his closed fan against his palm a few times in some sort of thinking tic.

Zhu Li rose to his feet, preparing to go fetch a book from Chu Ran’s collection himself. “Even if you can’t read those, try not randomly disparage what a teenager likes. They’re sensitive.”

Chu Ran also stood up, following after his lead as they went to the back rooms. “Are they? I was rather sensitive as a young boy, but I assumed that was a byproduct of having my nannies killed. Were you that emotionally sensitive, Doctor?”

I’m ignoring that one, Zhu Li decided. “There were a few months where laying face-down on my bed and crying over nothing was my favorite pastime. I don’t know what caused it or why it went away, but I was around fourteen.”

“The Heavens are cruel to new adults, it seems,” the other remarked with a shake of the head.

The rear building of the Pavilion was about as haphazard as he remembered it, more a segmented storage space for junk than anything anyone would actively use or live in. Most of the rooms were crowded full with scrolls, seemingly useless baubles, and, most pertinently, books.

“Have you been back here yet, Doctor? Forgive the clutter. I was told that this building was for meditation and the arts, but I would prefer to meditate in the grass and have no use for arts aside from the qin, so I deigned to use it for other purposes. Mind your feet, lest you trip.”

“I peeked in here that day you all vanished without a word,” Zhu Li admitted, examining the junk everywhere all the while. While he wouldn’t call himself a stickler for organization, this building could induce claustrophobia. Or a fire. Maybe both at the same time, if one was horrifically unlucky.

Leading the way through, Chu Ran felt for a door’s handle and opened it, then disappeared into a room untouched by the sun’s light. The sound of small objects being moved echoed out from the dark depths.

“I failed to ask before, Doctor: what types of books do you like? I prefer adventure and properly-done romances, none of this badly-done romance stuff. Anyone that believes harems are romantic as opposed to a political battlefield is a delusional idiot… and the authors that keep killing the main leads, what’s the point? If I wanted a tragedy, I would look at my own life, thank you…”

Zhu Li looked down to observe his very interesting sleeve, trying his best not to laugh.

Chu Ran’s head popped out again. He was wearing the most impish of grins. “My, have I amused you out here? The ever-stoic Doctor Zhu? I can hardly believe it.”

“How would you know I’m stoic, when you can’t see my face?” Zhu Li shot back.

“Ah, Doctor, it’s all in the heart. When you say something does not bother you, it doesn’t, and I can tell that it doesn’t. Not much at all seems to bother you, actually, aside from select few understandable things. Anyone can control their facial muscles, but only the truly stoic can be so genuinely unaffected. In any case, what’s your favorite type of leisure book? And please don’t say a medical textbook or classic, I may just cry from the indignity.”

Zhu Li raised a brow. “You’ll probably be happy to know that I like canguai, then.”

Chu Ran’s grin faded. He would be staring at him blankly if he could see. “Is that so?”

“Mn.”

“…Why?”

His stoic facade cracking a little into incredulity, Zhu Li thought back, What do you mean, why? People wouldn’t tell bloody revenge stories if so many people didn’t like being scared.

“Oh, I don’t mean to offend… is that anger? I can’t quite tell. Anyways, I simply hadn’t pegged you for the type to like ghost stories. You’re more like someone that would, ah… read those records of strange occurrences, I suppose.”

“So, you think I’m boring.”

“No, no, not at all. Canguai books are mostly monsters and murder, is all. Blood, mysteries, horrifying creatures, and a lot of nightmares. Some people have burned them out of fear, I’ve heard; do they not scare you?”

“No. A lot of them aren’t anatomically or medically accurate, so I like to make fun of them.”

“You make fun of…? Hah. I suppose that’s on-brand for you. I haven’t a clue if anything in here fits that, but perhaps I can find something similar.”

Good luck with that, Zhu Li internally snarked. Romantic horror stories were few and far between.

Eventually, Chu Ran procured something called Tales from the Swamp Fog, which was fairly foreboding. It had tactile ‘ink’ that he couldn’t see along its cover, which denoted its title.

Zhu Li weighed the book in his hands, the hefty thing. “This definitely won’t be done by the time your rest time is up today.”

“That’s fine,” Chu Ran said, waving him off while they walked back out. “For one reason or another, I’m getting the feeling that I will only be able to take so many swamp tales a day. Never have I personally been to a swamp, but I’ve heard that they are basically vast stretches of goop. Nothing that humankind is meant to know comes out of swamps — I’m positive that there’s an idiom out there pertaining to that, something like ‘swamp miasma and billowing smoke’ as a metaphor for a social cesspool.”

They passed by the weird wooden construction on their way to the apothecary. The irony weighed itself on Zhu Li’s shoulders. “You don’t like scary stories?”

“Real life is already a series of horrors. Need I have more in my life?”

Couldn’t argue with that.

“Time is no issue for now, at least. The next steps we take will not have us taking a foot outside of Zhongling this time around, which means that we will have all the time in the world.”

“Really?” Zhu Li asked, taking his seat for the third time. “Are we breaking and entering again?”

“While that is a possibility, hopefully not. We will likely be humiliating the enemy out in the open, this time around.”

Chu Ran plopped into his seat, then leaned forward conspiratorially, his fan raised to his lips and dull eyes narrowed in mischief. “Jianghu flows no matter what. On our end, we are uncovering a mystery, but other people still act as they will, unaffected. Perhaps too unaffected for their own good, even. Two gangs of wolves, some members having white eyes, are coming to Zhongling for a very important discussion over their perilous alliance, and they’re bringing everyone important they have over. Alongside them is yet another fox. Can you guess their identities?”

“No.”

The other pouted at the blunt answer. “Come now, Doctor. Humor me.”

“Branches of your family that you don’t like?”

“Pah, no, not those idiots. The Yin and Dong families are coming. Quite some bad blood between them, there is.”

Zhu Li’s heart leapt. Them?

He’d had decent connections with the Dong family (the status of that was unfortunately up in the air due to recent events), and no connections at all to the Yin family. Never had he known the jovial Dong Yongming to have enemies.

A lot of surprises were coming to light, here.

“Faux Fox is coming, too, upon special request by me,” Chu Ran continued. “I convinced her to come, since all we need is her testimony. And who knows? Perhaps the imposter and the forger of the fake Dusha will be amongst those attending.”

“How do you know they’ll be there?”

“I don’t at all, of course. If I did, I would have let Faux Fox continue to hole up in her den forevermore.”

Zhu Li knitted his brows, thinking. “The impostor could literally be anyone. Some random person off the street, one of Masked Wasp’s thugs. We might never know.”

“Untrue. Faux Fox is very particular with who she imparts her skills to, too particular to give them out willy-nilly, and she binds them with an oath so that they can never impart the wisdom to another, on pain of death. She has to know who of her students was close enough in looks to you to fake it — and because she needed the same reference to you as everyone else did, we may be discovering who forged Dusha soon.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

And he would have to, wouldn’t he? He was just along for this wild ride on a crazed steed, after all.

“My word is very true. Have I ever lied to you, Doctor Zhu?”

Narrowing his eyes, Zhu Li gave a blunt, “By omission, maybe.”

“Oh, but lies of omission are ones we never learn are lies, hm?”

Chu Ran gave his signature ‘I’m being a little shit’ smile, so bright it was blinding. Zhu Li looked away due to having no desire to join him in the blind gang.

Then, the other quit smiling, clearing his throat. “In all seriousness, Doctor, there are things I must tell you now about the Yin and Dong families, which all came to me through messenger birds and much research, if you will. I understand that you had a decent relationship with the Dong family, but will you hear me out?”

Zhu Li sighed, shutting the book. Looks like they weren’t getting back to that anytime soon. “We aren’t that close. I won’t be offended.”

“Good, because the Dong family forges its own non-spiritual swords, and one of its head blacksmiths is known for being both incredibly gifted and iffy on the morals. Not only is he likely the culprit, but he’s probably going to be in the trip; he loves to fight the Yins.”

Huh. He’d had no idea. That bit about them not being too close had only been to comfort Chu Ran, but maybe he genuinely wasn’t close enough to them to not know that they forged their own swords, of all things. Even the massive Blue Orchid Sect didn’t forge anything other than supplemental weapons, never swords — there wasn’t much of a point in non-spiritual swords, when the Heavens granted all cultivators their own superpowered cheater blade once it deemed them worthy.

Unless there was a honed civilian blacksmith willing to risk getting caught up in jianghu nonsense, this Dong one was likely their best bet.

“As for the Yin family, they likely harbor the one that faked your looks. That hypothesis stems from them having sent eight full members of their family to learn the tricks of Faux Fox’s trade over the years, likely for nefarious purposes. Some are old, some are men, some are women, and at least a few will be similar enough to you in build to be it. Perhaps there was even more than one at work, if the conspiracy goes beyond one bought-off member.

“We are very close to pulling some of this rooted rot out, Doctor. When it becomes known that Masked Wasp’s and the Chu’s fingers have stuck themselves into more things than they ought to, the rest will be eager to cleanse themselves of toxins, much like how we saw the Hans deal with the traitor in their midst. A good development, I would say.”

Turning that over in his head, Zhu Li nodded slowly. “When is the meeting happening?”

“In two months.”

“That long?”

“Yes. Organizing things between massive quantities of foes is often a timely ordeal.”

“Right… do you know why they’re enemies?”

“Yes, though it’s hardly interesting. Bog-standard rivalry between fathers that ended up getting passed down to their children, and then some marriage proposal fell through, and so on, so forth. You could honestly go out on the street and trip on family rivalries that have that exact basis.”

Their conversation came to a pause. Zhu Li looked outside the windows to see Chu Mei, who was sitting and reading between the tall fronds of a flower bushes. Guhui was nearby, too, nibbling on the already-abused grass.

“Did you find anything out about Dong Wanqiu?” he asked, absent in tone as he watched the peaceful scene.

Chu Ran let out a hum behind him. “I did, though investigations are still underway, and I cannot tell you anything new yet. She was a popular and inoffensive person, and even forty years later, she is deeply mourned within the Dong family. As for her husband, Ji Misheng, he was the only one left of his original family. Their children were given the Ji name so that the name wouldn’t completely die, to the chagrin of the Dong higher-ups. They felt it to be slap in the face to their honor, which was why they don’t honor him in their hall at all.

“The incident with Ji Misheng was, for all that I have heard, nothing but a freak accident. No sabotage that led him to qi deviate or anything like that. The truth may be different, but I’ve heard of nothing that denotes otherwise. Him turning into a devil was legitimate, not an excuse or anything, given the accounts of his ‘warped appearance’, they said. His and his wife’s unfortunate slaying was an inevitability, really; had it not been our elders, it would have been someone else’s elders. In brief, there is no real foundation for doubting that the incident had been anything other than what has been described about it.

“Now, Ji Misheng himself had quite a bit of friends. Most have since died or fallen into obscurity, but there is one man that was regarded as Ji Misheng’s closest friend, who you may be somewhat familiar with: Zheng Enyuan.”

Surprise hit Zhu Li’s stomach. Zheng Tonghao’s father?

“Yes, clearly you do know of him. The patriarch of the Zheng family, husband to Ji Yaoyi. He’s sixteen years older than her, did you know? Just a few years shy of her own father’s age. Quite gross, if you ask me, but it explains how they met. Forty years is such a long time, so many things happen…”

Creasing his brow, Zhu Li looked to the side, thinking back hard. His prior lack of communication with Zheng Tonghao’s family was really biting him in the ass, here.

“You said children, plural. Are there more?” he asked.

“Yes, Ji Yaoyi has — or perhaps had, if accounts are to be believed — a little brother, named Ji Zhan. After their parents’ death, the siblings were raised by their maternal relatives. Zheng Enyuan apparently kept in touch with Ji Yaoyi, suspect as that was, but Ji Zhan reportedly fell ill and died at the age of twelve around four years after.”

“Are you… sure that Masked Wasp is a man?”

Chu Ran grinned at him. “Quite sure. I’ve heard his voice once. Either age or opium smoke has damaged his throat into a pitch that a woman would be hard-pressed to reach. Furthermore, one of my ‘friends’ witnessed him with me, and described him as a ‘tall, broad-shoulder jackass’. His words, not mine. If you don’t mind my saying, he isn’t the type to shy away from strong words for women, so I trust his judgement in that Masked Wasp is not a woman.”

Well, that put everything back at square one. They weren’t any closer to finding Masked Wasp’s identity.

“Maybe Masked Wasp is of the Dong family, and enlisted Zheng Enyuan’s help in taking revenge for Dong Wanqiu?” Zhu Li guessed.

“That is quite a high possibility, as well as my own assumption.”

Then, Zheng Tonghao… had she been in on it?

It was a good thing he had already tossed the possibility of that relationship in the compost, else he’d be feeling even worse.

Something warm suddenly touched his hand that was rested on top of the book. He looked up at it, only to see that it was Chu Ran’s hand placed so gingerly on his own.

Before Zhu Li could really react, the hand patted him awkwardly, then retracted back to its owners side, whose lips were quirked strangely.

“I will be the first to admit that sensing emotions comes with its pitfalls. What others feel, as well as the triggers for those emotions, is generally known to me, but as to the cause of those emotions, all I can do is infer… while I am unsure what upsets you most times, I figured that you might be thinking of the Zhengs. Zheng Tonghao, specifically,” was the other’s explanation.

Zhu Li sighed at that. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“You never seem to like speaking of her. Did you get into a fight before all of this?”

“No, not really. She just didn’t try to get me out of jail, or step up for me.”

She didn’t, even though she knew I wouldn’t ever have done that. I don’t have much to say to cowards right now, he said only in his head, thoughts bitter.

Chu Ran nodded quietly at that. “Understandable. Say, on that subject, has she always been persistent? I did inform her that you would contact her when you were ready, but she keeps trying to get into contact. Increasingly urgently, even.”

“What?” Zhu Li straightened up some, some weird sensation similar to indignance burgeoning within him. “She’s still sending letters?”

“Yes. One every, oh, eight or so days. She really wants to talk, it seems.”

Darkness threatened to cast down upon Zhu Li’s mood. “If she’s bothering you…”

He trailed off, implying that he would send her a letter telling her to piss off, if need be.

Waving the notion off lazily, Chu Ran replied, “Hardly. The desperation is kind of entertaining, if you don’t mind my saying. Actually…”

His eyes narrowed into slits, making him resemble an eagle of prey, ready to strike. “This is a very good opportunity to seize, if you’re up for a little shady business, Doctor.”

Zhu Li watched him suspiciously. “Don’t kidnap her.”

That predatory expression crumbled into an unamused scrunch of the nose. “It may be difficult to believe, but I do perform actions beyond kidnapping? My thoughts were more along the lines of benevolent manipulation, as some may call it.”

“Manipulation,” Zhu Li repeated. “You want me to manipulate her into getting more information for this?”

“If possible, yes. Knowing the Zheng family’s exact involvement in this would put us at an advantage, yet that is at some odds with our inability to successfully confront them directly. My sources have also indicated that there has been some internal strife between the two Zheng siblings and the rest of their family, in recent times. Much fighting and yelling, I’m told. Maybe she is already amenable to poking around in her parents’ business.”

After a moment of silence, Zhu Li said, “I’m not great at manipulation. Or being diplomatic, really. If you need a letter drafted in my handwriting, tell me what to write, and if you don’t want me to be blunt with her, tell me what to say.”

Chu Ran smiled brightly at him, an unfitting action for this theme of conversation. “No need to fret so much, Doctor. Being genuine about your feelings and concerns may just be the most effective manipulation tactic of all.”

Giving your own tactics away? Zhu Li wondered inwardly.

“Well, then. What a productive conversation!” Chu Ran chirped, abruptly standing up from his chair, thus forcing Zhu Li to look up at him. “I should go make preparations for—“

“Hold it,” Zhu Li commanded, peering reproachfully at him.

Obedient as anything, Chu Ran stopped talking, tilting his head in confusion. “What’s wrong, Doctor?”

“Your qi sense has been up ever since we opened the door. That means your rest period isn’t even close to done. You’re maybe a quarter-shichen done, and you need a full one.”

The man’s face pinched up. Slowly — ever so slowly — he sank back down into his seat. “You are very correct, Doctor,” he awkwardly conceded.

With a huff out of his nose, Zhu Li opened the book again, then skimmed its summary of contents for something suitable. When his eyes hit a certain section, he looked up to gauge Chu Ran’s reaction. “How about the tale of the ghost wedding on Qihuan River?”

Those eyes quirked in mirth. “Although I highly doubt there will be any actual romance in that, it will be enough to pass the time, I’m sure.”

“We’ll see,” Zhu Li said, turning to the passage in question.

Chu Ran did end up shedding some tears before the story was done, an event that Zhu Li was going to very compassionately keep quiet about.

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The author says: It’s the ‘wedding’ of a betrothed couple that drowned in Qihuan River before they could marry. They begin haunting the shores with a ghostly wedding procession until the nearest townsfolk complete their rites for them, allowing them to be married in death.
Canguai is 惨怪, ‘literature of the strange and the tragic’. In other words, it’s old school murder/monster mystery, except I made it up and it was never an official ancient story genere.

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