Old Ox

“Why wouldn’t I believe it?” Gouwa said, brimming with confidence. “That’s a full string of cash! If a beggar found it, they could turn their whole life around with that much money. You can bet they’ll be tearing through the city to find Brother Li!”

“Besides, here in Shangjing, those beggars know every alley and rat-hole better than we ever could. Way faster than stumbling around ourselves.”

He paused, then added, “Yang Xiaohai used to be one of ‘em. He’s the one who told me about this trick. Says a lot of people use it to find folks.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t even your idea.” Lü Xiucai’s face twisted with contempt.

“An idea I’m using is my idea.”

The two of them turned and started walking back. A look of uncertainty crossed Lü Xiucai’s face. “It’s been so long. I don’t even know if Master is still in Shangjing. But say we do find him... Then what? You got a plan?”

“After we find him?” Gouwa rubbed his chin, thinking. “If he’s fine, then great. We all head back to Niuxin Village happy as can be.”

“If he’s having another episode, we use the chains we brought to tie him up and wait for him to come out of it.”

“If he’s tangled up in some other kinda trouble, Xiaoman said to send word back to the village first thing. They’ll come help.”

“And if he’s dead,” Gouwa continued, “we bring him back and bury him on Niuxin Hill with full honors. I still have the funeral clothes we couldn’t return from the coffin shop. Kept ‘em.”

“My master cannot die!” Lü Xiucai’s voice was razor-sharp. “There’s no way!”

“Hey, I’m just saying ‘what if.’ It’s not like I want him dead. Oh, wait—Xiucai, isn’t that your family’s opera troupe up ahead?”

Gouwa’s words made Lü Xiucai look down the street. He spotted his family.

When they got closer, Gouwa saw that his father looked terrible. His face was dark with worry, and the three carts were stopped by the roadside, as if they didn’t know which way to go.

“What’s wrong with you, you old bastard?” Lü Xiucai asked his older brother, Lü Juren.

Lü Juren’s face was equally grim. He let out a deep sigh. “Father just heard from a storyteller that in the Great Liang Empire, opera performers are forbidden from studying for the imperial exams. Here, the children and grandchildren of opera singers can only ever be opera singers.”

“The imperial exams!” Lü Xiucai exploded. “Are you blind?! We have divine powers to learn, and you’re worried about that?”

“You’re a hairless little bastard, what the hell do you know!” Lü Zhuangyuan, red-faced and furious for once, jabbed three fingers in the air as he shouted at Lü Xiucai. “Our Lü family has three sons! Three eggs can’t go in one basket! Do you understand?!”

“If you, Xiucai, want to learn divine powers, I won’t stop you! But no matter how strong your powers get, it’s still a dangerous path! Look how many times that young Daoist has walked through death’s door, and he’s as strong as they come! Can you match that?!”

“If you walk that path, the other Lü men can’t follow it! Juren taking over the Lü Family Troupe and singing opera is the steady path! A boy studying for the imperial exams is our family’s way out!! That way, if one road closes, we’ve got others to fall back on!!”

The tirade left Lü Xiucai stunned. His father had never explained any of this to him before. He had only ever told him what to do and what not to do, never why.

He had always thought Lü Zhuangyuan looked down on him from the bottom of his heart, that he opposed him learning these powers. He never imagined that, in his father’s eyes, he was also one of the Lü family’s paths forward—even if it was a dangerous one.

For a moment, Lü Xiucai’s heart was a tangled mess.

“Huh? What’s this? An opera troupe wandering onto my turf? Think you can act tough here?”

A few louts with shoddy postures swaggered over, looking down their noses at them. “Paid your tribute yet? If not, hurry up and cough it up.”

“Get lost!” Lü Xiucai’s hand shot to his sword hilt. The copper coins in his robe flew up and coalesced into a blade.

Gouwa expected the louts to scatter in terror. Instead, they burst out laughing.

The leader swaggered up to Lü Xiucai, his face full of arrogance.

“I’ve seen plenty of country bumpkins like you. You think just because you learned a trick or two, you’re something special?”

“Do you know where you are? This is the imperial capital! The Supervisory Heavenly Office is just a few streets away! Dragons gotta coil, tigers gotta crouch! I’ve got a buddy who guards the gate there! You so much as twitch, and I’ll have him throw your whole lot in jail!”

At the mention of the Supervisory Heavenly Office, Gouwa’s expression changed. Brother Li had explained exactly what that bureau was.

Instinctively, he clutched his chest, where Brother Li’s ruyi was hidden. The last thing he needed was for the Office to find it.

Terrified, Gouwa edged closer to Lü Xiucai and whispered urgently, “Don’t do anything stupid! They’re just a bunch of street punks. Not worth it, really not worth it!”

Lü Xiucai stood frozen, his face a storm of conflicting emotions. He couldn’t strike, and he couldn’t back down.

“What? You wanna keep Grandpa waiting? Cough it up, and be quick about it!”

Just then, Lü Zhuangyuan stepped forward, a forced smile plastered on his face. He held out a few bits of silver, murmuring some pleasantries until the louts finally swaggered off.

Lü Xiucai gripped his copper-coin sword and slammed it hard against the ground. “Let’s go. This Shangjing place is too damn oppressive!”

He had trained so hard to learn these divine powers, and in the end, he had to be humiliated by a few street punks right here in the capital. It was infuriating.

“Go? Go where?” Lü Zhuangyuan, his face wrinkled, pulled out his pipe and began to smoke.

“Anywhere else! If we have to, we’ll go home! Back home, opera singers can take the imperial exams! And buying a theater is cheaper!”

“It’s gone… long gone.” Lü Zhuangyuan let out a long, heavy sigh. “Good thing we ran when we did. I heard the emperor back home was dragged out and beheaded. The whole of Siqi has fallen.”

“Fallen?” Lü Xiucai repeated the utterly foreign word, his face a mask of shock.

He had never cared which nation he belonged to, but the realization that the place he had called home for over a decade was suddenly unreachable left him stunned. “So we can never go back?”

“Not for ten years, I’d say. I hear the Later Shu is in chaos, too. Who knows when this godforsaken world will see peace again?” Lü Zhuangyuan tapped the spent ashes from his pipe against the webbing of his thumb, then tucked it back into the nape of his neck.

“Come on, boy. Let’s find an inn and get some rest. Things are expensive here. Hope we can find a cheap shared room.”

After everything they had been through, Lü Zhuangyuan still bore it all like an old ox, silently pulling the iron plow forward, step by step.