Where Immortals Once Walked

Wu Qing almost choked. “My lady, I wouldn’t dare!”

“For all these years, my husband has never said it aloud, but I know he misses the days when he commanded thousands of troops,” A’Jin said softly. “It was hard enough for him to finally get another chance to soar like a dragon in the open sea. I’ve dragged him down long enough. I can’t keep doing it over and over. If you refuse me, I’ll come looking for you every single day.”

Wu Qing paced in place for a long time, hands half-lifted, dropping, lifting again. At last, he sagged in defeat. “Fine, fine. I’ll sort it out. Just... don’t let it slip.”

* * *

By the time the grain convoy reached Xinhuang, the setting sun had just kissed the mountain peaks, its last light clinging to the tips of the ridges. In the blink of an eye, it was about to slip away.

Their timing was perfect.

Xinhuang was no more than a little town of roughly a thousand people. When several hundred grain wagons rumbled in one after another, they filled all the open ground west of town. Counting both the laborers and the escort soldiers, the convoy’s headcount actually exceeded that of the locals.

After a full day on the road, every man and beast in the transport unit was exhausted. The moment they stopped, they needed water, food, and rest. The whole town was thrown into chaos. Chickens scattered, dogs barked, and people shouted over one another.

A small place like this had very limited capacity. That was why news of the convoy’s arrival was always sent ahead at least a day in advance, so the townsfolk could prepare as best they could, filling the troughs with fresh water, sifting the chaff from the fodder for the horses and oxen, and getting hot food ready for the laborers and soldiers.

When you were bone-tired and starving, nothing settled a man’s heart like a hot meal. The laborers’ rations might be nothing more than coarse steamed buns made from mixed grains, but at least they were piping hot, and they could be dipped into some bean paste for flavor.

The soldiers fared slightly better. Their bowls would have extra boiled beans, and some even got pickled cabbage to stuff into their buns.

In plain travel clothes, the He father and son dismounted and handed their reins to the personal guards. He Lingchuan wore only ordinary armor, nothing that marked him as anyone of importance.

Xinhuang had hosted grain convoys before, several times over, but there was only so much it could do. As he made his rounds among the campfires, He Chunhua saw the same familiar problems. People ran about in a panic, the distribution was uneven, and some sections were short on food or water.

The one thing that gave him any comfort was that the army medics were obeying orders. Food and water for both people and animals were all sampled and tested for poison. Nothing suspicious had surfaced so far.

Strictly speaking, the army had origin energy to protect them and could shrug off most common toxins; the ones truly at risk were the laborers and the beasts. However, He Chunhua was the worrying type. He was afraid the enemy might try something spiteful, so he had nagged them again and again to test the food and water, every time, without exception. Otherwise, all the enemy had to do was slip croton powder into the wells, and humans and animals alike would be squatting with diarrhea from here to the border.

After wandering the makeshift camp twice, He Lingchuan was holding his stomach and complaining. “Father, isn’t it our turn to eat yet?” Iron becomes steel only by going through the forge; people, meanwhile, ran on food. Any longer, and he would really be dizzy with hunger.

The medicine ape was happily chewing on his coarse bun with not a care in the world. The rock wolf had its own share of rations as well; no one ever dared shortchange it. During the journey, He Lingchuan had even learned that it could stomach apples and mixed grains. Its taste was broader than his.

He Chunhua pointed at the laborers’ basket of buns. “Want two of those?”

“We’ve been chewing those things all the way here. You’re not sick of them yet?” He Lingchuan’s eyes rolled once. “Didn’t you say you wanted to observe the people’s conditions? You won’t see anything hiding in the army camp. For that, you have to go into town, then eat and look around at the same time.”

He Chunhua gave a helpless chuckle. “Fine.”

Just then, the county magistrate arrived to invite the convoy’s commanding officer to a welcome banquet at the town’s only restaurant.

Xinhuang fell under the jurisdiction of Baiyun County, but the county yamen was elsewhere. Even so, grain convoys were a matter of top priority, and the magistrate had rushed over in person to play host.

This time, though, He Chunhua had come north in light disguise, travelling with only a slim escort. He wanted to see Xia Province with his own eyes and had not announced his presence. On paper, the convoy’s highest-ranking officer was Mozhe Jingxuan, his former aide, now serving as Xia Province’s assistant commissioner.

When the magistrate extended his invitation, Mozhe Jingxuan happily accepted it. Backwater or not, whatever the local restaurant could scrape together tonight would be the best they had. At the very least, there should be plenty of meat dishes. While he feasted on wine and meat at the magistrate’s table, Governor-General He would be fending for himself.

Father and son slipped out of the camp quietly, leaving the two creatures behind. They took only Mao Tao, Shan Youjun, and Jiao Tai with them.

The town was tiny. Counting houses, sheds, and shops, there were only a little over two hundred structures in all. The main street ran for barely a hundred meters. You could walk from one end to the other in a minute. Dust hung everywhere, and the buildings all wore the same dull gray coat of age.

There was only one restaurant in town, and the county magistrate had already claimed it for Mozhe Jingxuan’s banquet. The He father and son had no desire to wander in and risk being recognized.

They made a circuit of the streets and found only a handful of shops open. There were not many pedestrians either, but queues had formed at every well.

Noticing that his father’s face had gone dark, He Lingchuan asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Look around. It’s barely evening, and hardly any houses have lamps lit.”

Lamp oil and candles cost money. Poor folk hoarded every copper they could. In Dunyu, even the poorer residents would at least leave the lamps on until after supper; here, families seemed to eat before dark, then go to bed as soon as the sun dipped.

“These people are really too poor.”

He Chunhua sighed, his expression clouded with worry. “The farther north we go, the worse it gets.”

On this journey, he had finally seen with his own eyes how wealthy Dunyu truly was. It was dozens of times better than other places, not just twice or thrice. With every day they pushed north, the people grew poorer, households fewer, fields more barren, officials more corrupt, and commoners’ lives more broken.

He had seen parents at market stalls literally plant signs by their children and try to sell them. At every passerby, they boasted that their sons or daughters ate little and worked hard, begging them to buy the child and take them away. Every member of the family was skin and bone, and even when their children were led off by strangers, none of them cried.

He had also heard, from the mouths of commoners, stories of soldiers “killing innocents to pad their head counts.” It was the same wherever they went—rot, cruelty, and neglect.

Poverty bred chaos.

If he truly meant to govern Xia Province properly, there was no question that his work would be long and heavy.

“Father, eat first, worry about the fate of the realm after,” He Lingchuan said, pointing ahead. “What about there?”

A faint glow seeped out of the doorway of a small eatery. The smell of food wafted from within—it was simple, but real.

Three horses were tied up outside.

Only then did He Chunhua notice that his own stomach was growling. “Let’s go in.”

They pushed aside the fabric curtain hanging over the entrance. Inside, the shop was as plain as they came. The tables and stools were worn, some of them held together with makeshift pegs, but the space was at least spacious enough for seven or eight square tables. One was currently occupied; the other patrons had their heads down over their bowls, slurping away at their food.

The five of them chose a corner table to sit at. Mao Tao called out, “Shopkeeper! Bring us something to eat!”

The shopkeeper came over with a gloomy face. “All we’ve got are sour noodles and mixed-grain steamed buns.”

He Lingchuan had already noticed that everyone in the shop was eating the same thing—thick noodles in clear broth, chopped cabbage piled on top. The sour scent made him swallow unconsciously. “We’ll take everything you’ve got. And if there are toppings, add extra.”

Everything was ready to hand, so the wait was short. In about the time it took half an incense stick to burn, five big bowls thumped down onto the table.

Each portion of sour noodles consisted of just three ingredients: thick-cut noodles, pickled cabbage, and toasted peanuts.

The local beans were green mung beans, so these were mung-bean noodles. The cabbage had been pickled for most of winter and was sour enough that it made vinegar unnecessary; when tossed into hot broth with the noodles, its sharpness balanced the starch perfectly.

As for the peanuts, they were not fried in oil. Nobody in this town could afford that luxury. They were simply dry-toasted in a pan over the fire until their skins blistered and their aroma released.

There was not a speck of meat in the bowls, not a single glimmer of oil.

But everyone at the table was starving. The moment they lifted their chopsticks and sucked in the first mouthful, they all felt a fierce, bracing satisfaction.

Mao Tao glanced at the other table, then copied a customer there and asked for a few heads of raw garlic.

One mouthful of noodles, one bite of garlic—sour, spicy, and pungent. The combination hit like a jolt.

He felt life return to his limbs on the spot.

The shop also offered noodle soup with dough slices, which was essentially dough slices boiled in plain water, accompanied by a few strands of pickled cabbage and a handful of beans. Add a saucer of thick bean paste on the side, and it becomes a dip for the mixed-grain steamed buns.

Because there was no meat at all, the food sat lightly in the stomach. After one big bowl of sour noodles, He Lingchuan still felt hollow inside and ordered two more bowls of the noodle soup and four large buns on top.

The prices were cheap—cheaper than he was used to in Dunyu—but they still did not look like something the locals could afford to eat every day.

As they ate, He Chunhua asked the shopkeeper, “Do you get much business like this?”

The shopkeeper flicked his hand in frustration. “Can’t make money. Nothing but scraps!”

Mao Tao interjected, “But this is on the main route between south and north. I saw a few merchant caravans on the way here. That’s still better than the poor villages back inland.” Those truly remote places had nothing at all. They had no shops, no stalls, just people eating dirt and calling it a meal.

The shopkeeper snorted. “The taxes and rent are too high. The money goes into other people’s pockets, to the officials!”

He Chunhua asked, “How much do you have to pay?” Taxes and rental fees—anyone trying to run a business here had to wrestle with both.

“If I earn ten coppers, I have to hand over eight.” The man stirred a pot of soup as he spoke, his tone half-bitter, half-mocking. “Tell me, what profit is there in that? I scrape by, that’s all, just enough so I don’t have to sell my little girl.”

A nearby customer suddenly spoke up. “Don’t listen to him complain so much. Others couldn’t even open this shop if they wanted to. Today, the big army came, and every water cart in town went to their camp. The rest of us don’t have a drop to spare; that’s why there are queues at every well. Him? He’s got a well in the yard out back, and no one’s fighting him for it.”

If selling noodles at least made something, why did others not try?

The logic was simple enough, but it still left a sour taste.

There were three men at that table, all of them dressed as travelling merchants. He Chunhua asked them, “What do you fellows trade?”

“Cloth and lamp oil. On the return trip, we’ll pick up some local products to resell.”

Daily necessities, the sort of thing people could not do without. “How’s business?”

All three of them sighed together. “Bad. Very bad. Not even forty percent of what it used to be. We’re not coming back next year.”

They eyed the group at He Chunhua’s table. “You lot are soldiers too, aren’t you?”

He Chunhua denied it outright, “We’re just heading north. It’s safer to travel behind the army.”

“What’s north of here?”

He Chunhua said without thinking, “Going to buy sugar.”

At that, the shopkeeper cut in, “You’re going for nothing, then. You won’t find anything good.”

“Why is that?”

“Thirty, forty years ago, Xinhuang was famous across Xia Province for its brown sugar. The hills all around here grew nothing but sugar beets, a sea of leaves as far as you could see. The old folks in town still talk about those days. They say the brown sugar we made never sat on the shelves. As soon as a batch came out, people from kilometers away would rush to buy it. The sugar from here could be sold all the way to Dunyu.”

“Oh?” He Chunhua made a noncommittal sound. “We didn’t see any beet fields on the road.”

“Of course not. Those are long gone.” The shopkeeper shook his head. “Most of Xia Province now uses yellow sugar from the northern monster state. I heard that’s one of the terms written into the treaty between Great Yuan and the northern monster state. We have to buy hundreds of thousands of kilograms of sugar from them every year. Hah!”

He Lingchuan said, “I’ve had some. It tastes good and keeps well.”

Strictly speaking, Young Master He had never eaten old-style brown sugar. In both Shihuan and Dunyu, the pastries and sweets he had eaten were all made with yellow sugar. Back in Heishui City, what he had eaten had been made with rough local sugar at best.

“Exactly. Yellow sugar tastes good and doesn’t cost much. Once that came in, no one bought Xinhuang’s brown sugar anymore. Bit by bit, the sugar mills shut down. People went back to planting grain, but the land here isn’t much good for that either.”

One of the merchants chimed in, “You don’t even know how powerful the northern monster state is. The amount of sugar they put out every year runs into the tens of millions of kilograms!”

The shopkeeper muttered, “It’s infuriating!”

Just then, Shan Youjun slammed his palm onto He Lingchuan’s shoulder—not too hard, but not too gentle either. “Hey, I’m full. I’m going to find a place to take a dump. You coming?”

He almost never spoke so crudely in front of elders. He Lingchuan blinked once, then caught on. “Sure, let’s go.”