Smiling Proud Wanderer Vol 01 Page 3

  “Only bumpkins from Sichuan speak that way. There are rustics everywhere, and of course they are not taught proper manners. Listen to our own henchmen talk when they gamble. They’re no better. Why do you ask?” Lin Zhennan chuckled.

  “Never mind,” Lin Pingzhi replied quickly.

  “When the four Qingcheng apprentices come, you should spend some good amount of time with them; watch and learn how students of prestigious schools act. Making friends with them will surely benefit you later on in life.”

  Both father and son continued chatting some more, but Lin Pingzhi couldn’t make up his mind if he should tell his father about the incident at the wine shop, and finally decided that he would tell his mother first. After dinner, the family of three remained in the Back Hall to converse. Lin Zhennan was having a discussion with his wife as to what gift to get for her brother’s birthday in June. It would be tricky to find something appropriate that the Golden-Blade Wang family in Luoyang14 would hold in high esteem.

  Suddenly, uproar came from outside, and moments later, several people rushed into the room.

  “Where are your manners?” Lin Zhennan frowned.

  Three henchmen had burst in. The man in front muttered in a disturbed tone, “Chief…Chief Master….”

  “What’s the matter?” Lin Zhennan snapped in annoyance.

  “Bai…Bai is dead,” Henchman Chen blurted out the words.

  Lin Zhennan was slightly astounded. “Who killed him? Gambling must’ve led to the quarrelling!” He became quite angry, thinking how hard it was to regulate the roughnecks of the Escort House. They would often fight and draw their knives for no reason. And, as the Escort House was headquartered in the capital of the province, it could be rather troublesome if someone was killed on their premise.

  “No, it is not like that,” Chen explained hastily. “Xiao Li was going to the outhouse just a minute ago and saw Bai lying in the garden nearby. His body was already cold, but there’s not a single wound on the body. No one knows how he died. Must’ve been some kind of a disease.”

  Lin Zhennan breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed immediately. “Let me go have a look.” He started walking toward the garden and Lin Pingzhi followed behind.

  When they arrived at the yard, a number of escorts and henchmen had already gathered around the body. Seeing the arrival of the Chief Master, the crowd moved back. Lin Zhennan took a close look at Bai’s corpse. Bai’s clothes had been unbuttoned, and clearly, there were no bloodstains.

  “No wounds at all?” Lin Zhennan asked Escort Zhu, who stood next to him.

  “I’ve examined the body carefully, and there’s not a single wound anywhere on the body. It does not look like poison either,” Escort Zhu replied, to which Lin Zhennan acknowledged with a nod.

  “Tell Dong the bookkeeper to arrange a funeral for Bai, and don’t forget to send a hundred taels of silver to his family,” Lin Zhennan directed.

  The death of a henchman due to illness was not something Lin Zhennan would pay much attention to. “Didn’t Bai go hunting with you today?” he asked Lin Pingzhi after walking back to the living room.

  “Yes, he did. He looked fine when we got back. Who’d think he would catch a deadly disease so unexpectedly,” Lin Pingzhi replied.

  “Many things in this world are like that,” Lin Zhennan commented. “Whether good or evil, they always happen in an unexpected manner. I’ve always wanted to open the escort trail through the province of Sichuan. I thought it would have taken at least another ten years. Who would have expected that Master Yu would somehow be prompted by some sudden impulse to not only accept my gifts, but to also send four apprentices such a long way to thank us?”

  “Father, although the Qingcheng Sword School is well-renowned, our Fortune Prestige Escort House is fairly famous too. We have been sending gifts to Sichuan year after year; it’s only natural for Master Yu to send people our way to show his gratitude as well.”

  “What do you know?” Lin Zhennan chuckled. “Qingcheng and Emei have been around for hundreds of years. They’ve had many outstanding disciples in their schools. Maybe they aren’t as famous as Shaolin or Wutang,15 but they certainly have enough fame to be placed next to Songshan, Taishan, Hengshan, Huashan, and Heng-Shan of the Five Mountains Sword Alliance.16 Your great grandfather, Sir Yuantu, founded the seventy-two moves of ‘Evil-Resisting Sword Art.’ This set of sword techniques shocked the entire Martial Arts Society and gained him great fame. You could say that he never met his match in swordplay. After this sword style was passed on to your grandfather, its eminence declined. It was then passed on to me, and I am afraid that it has declined even more in my hands. The Lin Family had only one child in each generation for the last three generations. We don’t even have any apprentices. With only you and me, we really don’t have the same kind of manpower that those other schools have.”

  “We could gather all the people from our Escort Houses in the ten provinces, and then we could take on any of them – Shaolin, Wutang, Emei, Qingcheng, or the Five Mountains Sword Alliance,” Lin Pingzhi declared.

  Lin Zhennan was amused. “Son, it’s alright to say something like that when you are talking to me. But if you had said those words to an outsider, you’d get into a lot of trouble. The eighty-four escorts we have at our ten Escort Houses, each has his own specialty. Of course, when we all gather together, we aren’t afraid of anyone, but what do we gain by beating other people? It is well said that manners and amicability make great fortunes; this is especially true for us in the escort business. What are we going to lose by being humble? Let the others go around showing off.”

  “Oh no! Escort Zheng is dead too!” somebody suddenly yelled out from outside. Lin Zhennan and Lin Pingzhi were both dumbstruck.

  Lin Pingzhi jumped out of his chair and muttered, “They’re back for re…!” It took him great effort to finally swallow the word “revenge” back down his throat. Lin Zhennan was already on his way out and didn’t catch what Lin Pingzhi had just said.

  Henchman Chen rushed in and yelled incoherently, “Chief…Chief Master! Trouble! Escort Zheng…Escort Zheng’s spirit is possessed by the Sichuan demon too.”

  “Stop this nonsense! What Sichuan demon?” Lin Zhennan roared with a stern face.

  “Sir! The demon…the man from Sichuan was already very ferocious when he was alive; naturally he would be more terrifying after death…,” Chen said lamely. Seeing the Chief Master’s hard countenance, he dared not continue, and only looked to Lin Pingzhi with a mixed expression of fear and grief.

  “Did you say Escort Zheng was dead? Where’s the body? How did he die?” Lin Zhennan asked impatiently.

  Several more escorts and henchmen rushed into the hall. “Brother Zheng died in the stable,” one escort answered with a frown. “He died in exactly the same way as Henchman Bai. There wasn’t a single wound on his body, and no bleeding could be found from any aperture. No swelling on his face either. Maybe…maybe they became haunted by some kind of demon when they…when they went hunting with the Young Master.”

  Lin Zhennan snorted. “I’ve lived all my life without ever seeing either a ghost or a demon. Let’s go take a look.” He walked out of the hall and into the stable.

  Escort Zheng’s body lay on the ground, his hands still holding onto a saddle. Apparently, he had been taking the saddle off before his sudden demise. There was no sign of any struggle.

  As it was already dark outside, Lin Zhennan asked a henchman to hold a lantern while he examined Escort Zheng. He carefully checked all parts of the corpse, including all the major bones, but failed to find any sign of injury – not even a broken finger. Lin Zhennan was not superstitious. When Bai had died suddenly, it was just a strange occurrence. Now, that Escort Zheng died in the exact same way, it had to be more than a coincidence. If they died of plague or some kind of disease, why were there no red or black spots on the bodies? Could the two deaths have been related to something that happened during his son’s hunting trip?

 
He turned around and asked Lin Pingzhi, “Besides Escort Zheng and Henchman Bai, it was just Escort Shi and him who went hunting with you, right?” He indicated Henchman Chen.

  Lin Pingzhi nodded.

  “You two come with me,” Lin Zhennan said firmly. Turning to another henchman, he instructed, “Go ask Escort Shi to report to the East Hall immediately. I want to have a word with him.”

  Soon, the three arrived at the East Hall. “What really happened?” Lin Zhennan asked his son. Lin Pingzhi hastily confessed and told his father all about the trouble he had at the wine shop: how they went in for some drinks; how the two men from Sichuan accosted the girl, which resulted in the fight; how the fight broke out and the man attempted to push Lin’s head down to kowtow; how he pulled out a dagger and killed that person; and how they buried the body in the back garden and gave old man Sa some silver to keep him quiet. He told everything there was to tell, without leaving anything out.

  The more Lin Zhennan heard, the more concerned he became. But still, getting into a fight with an outsider and having it result in his death was not the end of the world. He listened to the whole story from his son without turning a hair. When Lin Pingzhi finished, he pondered in silence for a moment and then asked, “Did these two fellows ever mention which clan or gang they belonged to?”

  “Not a word,” Lin Pingzhi answered quickly.

  “When they spoke or did things, did you notice anything unusual?” Lin Zhennan inquired further.

  “I didn’t see anything unusual. The fellow Yu….”

  “Did you say the man’s name was Yu?” Lin Zhennan interrupted.

  “Yes. I heard the other guy calling him Brother Yu. But it might have been something else. They had accents, so I couldn’t understand them too well.”

  “It can’t be! It can’t be a coincidence. Master Yu said he was going to send someone over; how could they have arrived at Fuzhou so quickly? They don’t have wings,” Lin Zhennan shook his head and muttered to himself.

  “Father, you don’t think those two were from the Qingcheng Sword School, do you?” Lin Pingzhi’s voice quivered.

  Lin Zhennan did not answer; instead, he performed a move and asked, “When you attacked him using this move from the Universe Hands, how did he fend it off?”

  “He couldn’t fend off that move, so I slapped him hard on the face,” Lin Pingzhi replied.

  “Good! Very good! Excellent!” Lin Zhennan smiled.

  The room had been filled with foreboding, but now that Lin Zhennan showed a smile, Lin Pingzhi felt quite relieved and could not help smiling himself.

  “When you hit him with this move, how did he respond?” Lin Zhennan asked again, performing more different moves as he spoke.

  “I was infuriated at the time, and can’t remember too well. I think I punched him in the chest,” Lin Pingzhi replied.

  Hearing that, Lin Zhennan became even more relaxed. “Very good! Your move should have hit him that way. If he couldn’t even block a simple move like that, he couldn’t be a close relative to the famous Master Yu of the Qingcheng Sword School, Pine-Wind Temple.”

  He kept saying “very good,” but he wasn’t complementing his son’s fighting skills; he was just relieved. There must be many people named Yu in the province of Sichuan; if this particular Yu could not even beat his son, he must have been a terrible fighter. Such a rotten fighter definitely had nothing to do with the Qingcheng Sword School. He kept tapping on the table with his right middle finger as he pondered upon the situation.

  “How did he grab hold of your head?” he asked, and Lin Pingzhi demonstrated how he couldn’t move when his head was held.

  Henchman Chen also felt much encouraged. “Bai was trying to poke him with a hunting fork,” he interrupted, “but the fork was knocked out by the guy’s back kick and then Bai was also kicked down.”

  Lin Zhennan felt a shock run through his spine. He asked immediately, “He kicked Bai with a back kick and then kicked the fork out of his hands? How…how did he perform those kicks?”

  “It was something like this.” Chen grabbed the back of a chair and threw a reverse kick with his right foot, then jumped and threw another back kick with his left foot. These two kicks looked very clumsy, almost like a horse kicking back its hind legs. Lin Pingzhi watched the two clumsy kicks and could not help laughing. “Dad, see….” But then seeing the fearful expression on his father’s face, he stopped abruptly.

  “These two kicks seem to be the unique “Shadowless Kick” maneuver of Qingcheng. Son, how did he perform the kicks exactly?” Lin Zhennan inquired.

  “My head was held at that moment. I couldn’t see how he kicked,” Lin Pingzhi said.

  “Of course! I’d better ask Escort Shi.” Lin Zhennan exited the room and yelled, “Where is Escort Shi? Why isn’t he here yet?”

  Two henchmen came over and reported that nobody had yet to be able to find Escort Shi. Feeling the uneasiness growing inside him rapidly, Lin Zhennan paced up and down in the garden hall, thinking, “If the two kicks were indeed the “Shadowless Kick” technique, then even if the fellow was not a close relative of Master Yu, he must’ve had some kind of connection with the Qingcheng Sword School. If that’s the case, then who was he?” He finally decided to check it out himself. So he ordered the henchmen, “Go get Escort Cui and Escort Ji.”

  Escorts Cui and Ji were the careful types, both experienced and prudent, and well trusted by Lin Zhennan. Having heard about the sudden death of Escort Zheng and the disappearance of Escort Shi, they were already waiting outside the hall. As soon as they heard their names called, both walked into the room.

  “We need to go check something out,” Lin Zhennan explained. “Escort Cui, Escort Ji, my son, and Chen, come with me.”

  With Lin Pingzhi leading the way, the group of five rode out of town, and headed north. Soon, they arrived at the small wine shop. The door of the shop was shut.

  “Old man Sa, old man Sa! Open the door,” Lin Pingzhi pounded on the door and called out. He knocked and knocked, but there was no response.

  Escort Cui signaled to Lin Zhennan if they should bash down the door. After getting a nod from Lin Zhennan, he struck the door with both hands. With a resounding crack, the door’s bolt snapped, and the swinging doors squeaked back and forth on the rusty hinges.

  Escort Cui pulled Lin Pingzhi to the side as soon as he forced the door open. They waited until they were sure that there was no sound coming from within. Lighting a fire, they entered, and then lit an oil lamp sitting on the table along with two lanterns. They searched both the interior and exterior of the shop, yet found no one. However, blankets, trunks, and other everyday accessories were still in the shop.

  “The old fellow got scared. There was a murder here and the body was even buried right in the back garden. He was afraid of getting into trouble, so he just ran off,” Lin Zhennan said with a nod. Walking into the garden and pointing to a hoe that was leaning against the wall, he commanded, “Chen, dig the body up.”

  Chen was nearly convinced that the whole crisis had been caused by demons, so after digging only a short while, he felt his limbs getting stiffer and stiffer. He felt so weak that his legs started to give out.

  “Utterly useless! How can you even call yourself a henchman?” Escort Ji yelled at him sternly.

  He handed his lantern to Chen, took the hoe from him, and then began digging. Not long after, the clothes of the dead body appeared. He dug a little deeper and then levering the hoe beneath the corpse, he gave a strong tug, and lifted the body out of the hole.

  Chen turned his head away, afraid to look. But gasps of shock suddenly came from the other four. Scared to death, Chen dropped the lantern. The light was extinguished and the garden was enveloped in complete darkness.

  Lin Pingzhi’s voice quavered when he muttered uneasily, “We definitely buried the Sichuan guy’s body, how come…how come….”

  “Light the lantern!” Lin Zhennan ordered. He had been keeping calm since the strange ev
ents started, but now there was fear in his voice.

  Escort Cui lit the lantern, and Lin Zhennan bent down to check on the body. Minutes later, he declared, “Same kind of death, not a single wound at all.”

  Chen finally gathered enough courage to glance at the body, and then he screamed, “Escort Shi! It’s Escort Shi!” The body they had dug out was that of Escort Shi, and the corpse of the man from Sichuan had vanished.

  “Something seems strange about this old man Sa,” Lin Zhennan said. He grabbed the lantern and hurried back into the room, looking over everything very carefully. But he couldn’t find anything unusual, even after inspecting everything in the room – in the wine jugs, underneath the stoves, in the iron pot, and under the table and chairs. Escorts Cui and Ji, and Lin Pingzhi also began examining the different rooms.

  “Father, come here and look at this,” Lin Pingzhi shouted out suddenly.

  Following the sound of his son’s voice, Lin Zhennan found Lin Pingzhi in the girl’s bedroom holding a green handkerchief in his hand.

  “Father, how could a poor girl have a handkerchief like this?” Lin Pingzhi asked, his voice quavering with excitement.

  Lin Zhennan took the handkerchief from Lin Pingzhi’s hands and examined it carefully. A trace of some kind of light, but sweet, scent soon caught his attention. The handkerchief was very soft and smooth, yet also quite heavy. It was obviously made from high-quality silk. When he looked at it more carefully, he found three levels of green thread sealing the edges of the handkerchief. In one corner, a small red coral branch was embroidered in great detail.

  “Where did you find this?” Lin Zhennan asked.

  “It fell underneath the corner of the bed. Maybe they didn’t see it when they packed and left in such a hurry,” Lin Pingzhi suggested.

  Lin Zhennan put his lantern close to the bed and searched, but found nothing else. He muttered, “You said that the girl was very ugly. I suppose she wasn’t wearing very expensive clothing, but was she dressed very neatly?”