Along the way, Ding Songyan kept his silence, watching the streets with focused attention, absorbing every useful detail like parched earth drinking down a sudden rain.

As the seat of Dingjiang Prefecture’s administration, Linjiang County’s streets were all paved with gray-white stone slabs. Open channels ran along one or both sides of the road, with covered drains running beneath them. No smell of filth hung in the air.

The streets were busy. Vendors selling pearl ornaments and combs, embroidered silks, blades and throwing stones, paintings and folding fans. Preserved fruits and cool drinks were everywhere, yet wooden rails kept them from spilling into the flow of carts and horses.

Figures dressed as wandering heroes and martial artists were common, men and women, old and young alike. But Ding Songyan saw none of the physical abnormalities his sister had described. They were apparently not so common.

Among the crowd, several men and women moved through the lanes carrying pole loads: coal stoves and cookware up front, boxes of ingredients behind. When someone showed interest, they would stop, stir-fry a dish on the spot, and fill the air with the smell of it.

On the second and third floors of the buildings lining the street, windows would open from time to time. Women called down orders for dishes or preserved fruits or cold drinks, lowering ropes with bamboo baskets holding their coins.

Ding Songyan had initially taken this for strict propriety, ladies of a house too proper to step outside. Then he looked again at the women competing for attention on the street below, and at the men doing the same thing with their dangling baskets, and he understood.

It was laziness!

Pure and simple. Too lazy to come downstairs. Too lazy to go out!

“Wait outside the gate.” After the gatekeeper admitted them, Liu Yuzao told Bull to wait outside. She led Ding Songyan in through the side entrance, past the inner screen wall, and along a covered walkway into the compound, moving with easy familiarity.

Taking in the rockeries and ponds, the ornamental stones and pavilions along the way, Ding Songyan felt a quiet worry creep in.

A physician would likely be seeing him soon. Would the doctor notice that something was wrong? That he was, in some sense, a borrowed corpse returning to life?

It was a serious question that deserved careful thought, but set against the threat of someone still wanting him dead, it was the lesser of two dangers. He could only be grateful they were consulting a doctor and not a monk or a Daoist priest.

“Your cousin, Nuansheng, is only a concubine of the second master of the Zhen family,” Liu Yuzao said in a low voice as the independent courtyard where Qin Nuansheng lived came into view. She was still wearing her black gauze veil hat, her back straight as ever. “But she is greatly favored, and the second master is the eldest legitimate son, so she carries some weight in this household.”

Only a concubine? And this world cares about legitimate and illegitimate lines too? Ding Songyan noted the details with quiet amusement. Following a maidservant who had come out to receive them, he entered the courtyard with Liu Yuzao.

Water flowed in with a rush, driving a waterwheel at the side of the pond, whose motion carried through to a set of wooden connecting rods that extended into the building, pushing back and forth in a steady rhythm.

Stirred by the moving water, mist rose from the pond, its lotus leaves a vivid green, bringing a breath of coolness to the courtyard and cutting through the thick summer heat.

A faint fragrance wafted through the air. Not a mosquito in sight.

Inside the room, Ding Songyan saw at once a fan-like contraption of wooden blades spinning rapidly. Connecting rods drove the mechanism, sending out a steady stream of cool air.

Combined with four basins of ice set in the corners, the room felt nothing like mid-summer.

Quite advanced… He murmured to himself, surprised.

“Water-driven fan wheel. Have you forgotten it, Songyan?” A voice came from behind a folding screen, carrying a light smile and a touch of languid ease.

Ding Songyan turned. A graceful figure stepped around the edge of the screen.

Her hair was drawn into a drooping chignon, a floral ornament at her brow. A bright red silk skirt gathered high at the chest, a sheer half-sleeve of gauze draped over it. She was fair-skinned and full-figured, with vivid features and a bewitching disposition. In one hand she held a mirror with a glass face.

The women of the Liu line really do come in every circumstance, rich or poor, down or successful, but never ugly… No wonder she is so favored… And this world already has functional glassware. A luxury item, by the look of it… Ding Songyan did not answer Qin Nuansheng’s question. He had no need to. The family would explain for him.

Liu Yuzao, who had already removed her black gauze veil hat, spoke in a measured tone.

“Nuansheng, Songyan was attacked. He no longer remembers the past.”

“Attacked?” Qin Nuansheng’s expression fell. She handed her mirror to a maidservant and circled halfway around Ding Songyan. “Aunt, what do you mean?”

Liu Yuzao glanced at the personal maidservant standing beside Qin Nuansheng. Seeing that her niece had not dismissed the girl, she calmly told the whole story from beginning to end, leaving nothing out.

Qin Nuansheng listened with a slight frown, then turned to Ding Songyan.

“Songyan, you truly remember nothing?”

“Nothing.” Ding Songyan kept it brief.

Qin Nuansheng paced a step or two, brow still furrowed, and spoke to her maidservant.

“Cuihe, go and find out whether Physician Shao is at the clinic or here in the household. If he is here, invite him over. And Master Yu as well.”

The maidservant Cuihe acknowledged this and moved toward the door.

“Wait.” Qin Nuansheng called her back and pondered a moment. “Invite Physician Shao first. After a quarter hour, then go for Master Yu.”

“Yes.” Cuihe asked no questions.

In less time than it took to drink a cup of tea, the physician surnamed Shao arrived at the courtyard.

He was close to fifty, with a long five-strand beard, an unremarkable face, and a lean, tall build. He listened to Qin Nuansheng’s account and then, without ceremony, took Ding Songyan’s pulse.

Ding Songyan watched Physician Shao’s expression from the corner of his eye, uneasy about what conclusion the man might reach.

After a moment, the physician withdrew his hand and had Ding Songyan lie back on a rattan cooling couch. He worked his way across the body, pressing here, pinching there, tapping elsewhere.

In a half-conscious way, Ding Songyan felt as though he were back in his old world, lying on an examination table for a health screening.

Would just the four diagnostic methods not be enough? In a world where martial arts flourish like this, injuries must be common, so the medicine has probably developed to match. He was still turning the thought over when Physician Shao finished his examination.

He cupped his hands to Qin Nuansheng.

“No injuries. No illness.”

“Then why has he forgotten everything that came before?” Qin Nuansheng’s expression grew serious.

Liu Yuzao, who had withdrawn behind the folding screen, took two involuntary steps forward.

Ding Songyan was equally puzzled.

Not a single injury anywhere on the body.

So how did the original Ding Songyan die?

Or did the act of inhabiting this body heal the wounds? Or does this world have martial techniques that attack the soul without marking the flesh?

Did the original Ding Songyan’s soul simply… shatter?

Physician Shao gave a rueful smile.

“In decades of practice, and in all I encountered during my training with the Medicine King Sect, I have never come across a case of Soul Departure Sickness with no outward sign whatsoever.”

He weighed his words.

“It is possible that Songyan’s condition stems from the mind rather than the body. Extreme fright can do this. He may recover gradually over time.”

Then he turned to Ding Songyan directly.

“If you feel unwell in the coming days, or begin to recall something, come and find me at Life Extending Clinic on Longxing Street.”

Seeing a hesitation in Ding Songyan’s expression, he smiled.

“I will charge nothing. My interest is in understanding how a case of Soul Departure Sickness this unusual comes about. If I gain any insights, I will have something worth sharing when I next visit friends and colleagues at my sect.”

Your Medicine King Sect has quite an academic spirit… Ding Songyan understood the physician’s intention well enough and agreed.

Qin Nuansheng did not take the physician at his word about charging nothing. She had Cuihe bring out several silver ingots and pressed them on him. Physician Shao declined twice, then accepted.

After the physician left, a short while passed, and then a figure entered the room without a sound.

It was a middle-aged man with a somber expression, wearing black fitted short clothes and a small cap. His arms and legs were somewhat long, and the outer edges of his ears showed a faint ridge of white.

Does that count as a physical abnormality? Ding Songyan looked away and did not stare.

Qin Nuansheng gave a brief account of the whole affair, then spoke in a serious tone.

“Master Yu, Songyan is my cousin. He has been in Dingjiang Prefecture for less than a year. He earned his place telling stories outside Dangkang Temple with the guild head’s blessing, and he has always kept to the rules. He has not offended anyone. I suspect this matter is aimed at our Zhen household.

“Someone may have tried to use his connection to me to move against us. When he refused to cooperate, they tried to have him killed. By the grace of our ancestors, he survived. But if this goes unresolved, there will be no end to the trouble.”

She is sharp. Tying my situation to the Zhen household is the only way the household’s retainer would act on behalf of a concubine’s young cousin. I would have said exactly the same thing. You have to frame it at the highest possible stakes to make a case… Ding Songyan approved silently.

Master Yu listened in silence, then looked at Qin Nuansheng.

“I will inform the Patriarch.”

He turned to Ding Songyan.

“Ding Songyan, after you leave the Zhen household, go about your business as usual. Show no sign that anything has changed. Go to Dangkang Temple tomorrow as you normally would. I will be watching from the shadows.”

Dangle the bait and see what surfaces. A kind of fishing, in its own way… Ding Songyan agreed at once.

Whatever else, having a skilled fighter watching from the shadows was far better than having none. There was nowhere to hide in any case.

After Master Yu left, Qin Nuansheng took out several more silver ingots, placed them in a coin pouch, and handed it to Liu Yuzao, who had come out from behind the screen.

“Aunt, take this. Use it to nourish Songyan and Qingyan.

“It is for the two of them. Do not decline on their behalf.”

Liu Yuzao could not refuse and took it.

Cousin Nuansheng really is a capable woman… Though, since the money is for me and Little Sister, she could have given it directly to me rather than asking Mother to hold it… Ding Songyan watched from the side with barely concealed longing.

Everything he was going to need from here on out would require starting capital!

……

By the time they returned to the house on Chengyu Lane, the sky had gone dark.

The matter was unresolved, and it was unwise to discuss it for fear of the walls having ears. The family of five could not let themselves grieve, or feel the weight of it, or give way to anger. They ate dinner quietly, exchanged a few words of nothing in particular, then each washed hands and feet and face from the water vat, and cleaned their teeth with bristle brushes made from pig hair.

Bull shifted the storage boxes in the main room and assembled a simple sleeping surface for himself, laid out his bedding, and lay down.

Catching Ding Songyan’s look, he scratched the back of his head and gave a foolish grin.

“Early start tomorrow. You should get some rest too, Songyan.”

You really did draw the shortest straw… Ding Songyan thought without saying it, and turned into the west wing.

A screen of wooden strips and hempen cloth divided the room in two. Ding Qingyan slept on the inner side.

He blew out the candle, lay down on the somewhat hard wooden bed, and stared up at the ceiling in the dark.

Shadows drifted across it, shifting with the moonlight from outside.

Some time passed. Then, from the inner room, Ding Qingyan said in a low voice, “Second Brother. Be careful tomorrow.”

“I will.” A small warmth moved through Ding Songyan’s chest.

This unearned sister of his was a good person.

He turned the thought over, then spoke quietly.

“Little Sister, why do I get the feeling Eldest Brother looks nothing like the rest of us?”

Behind the screen, Ding Qingyan was silent for a long while before she answered.

“In the way you storytellers would tell it: Mother was known as a great beauty back in Yuejiang Prefecture. A predator took notice of her. He found his moment and abducted her.

“After some years, the man was slain by righteous heroes of the jianghu, and Mother was rescued. But by then, there was already… a child.”

“…” Ding Songyan did not know what to say.

Ding Qingyan’s voice came through the screen with a quiet, self-deprecating note.

“Sometimes you can only try to find the good in it. If not for what happened, how would a down-and-out scholar like Father ever have married someone like Mother? How would any of us be here?”

“So that is why Mother makes you wear a veil whenever you go out.” Ding Songyan understood all at once.

“Yes.” Ding Qingyan let out a long breath. “Tell me, Yuejiang Prefecture has watch towers too. It has famous sects and great clans. So how did something like that still happen?”

Ding Songyan pressed his lips together.

“Any measure can solve most problems. None can solve all of them.”

The siblings fell into silence together.

Watching the drifting shadows on the ceiling above him, Ding Songyan felt, for the first time, the weight of how dangerous this world truly was.

And the reckless lunatics here were probably more numerous and more dangerous than anything he had known before. People who carried lethal weapons had lethal impulses to match. And on top of that, martial arts.

He had to find a way to learn some form of self-defense. He could not afford to die again at the hands of some lunatic without warning. Could not afford to be caught helpless when it mattered.

Amid the tumble of these thoughts, Ding Songyan’s mind gradually grew still and clear.