Li Diudiu felt as if he’d been struck by lightning—not just once, but as if one great thunderbolt had decided it had no other place to be and settled in specifically to target his brain… one-two-three-four, two-two-three-four, switch positions, strike again……

Just in the brain.

It hurt.

Madame Sun left with a radiant smile. In this early autumn, her husband had planted a seed in her belly—and that seed had quickly earned itself a godfather.

Even the corners of Yan Qingzhi’s mouth were twitching. If he hadn’t felt he needed to maintain the dignity befitting a teacher at all times, he would probably have been flat on the ground, pounding the floor laughing.

“In the Zhou period, there was a child prodigy who rose to prime minister at twelve. Today we have Li Chi—at twelve, he becomes a father.”

Li Diudiu glared at Yan Qingzhi. “A godfather—godfather!”

Yan Qingzhi said, “Mm. A godfather.”

Li Diudiu sat down sulkily on the front steps, staring blankly at a cloud in the sky overhead. For no particular reason, that thick, white, fluffy cloud suddenly began to look like a baby’s face—grinning at him with the most adorable smile, and then calling out one word: *Father.*

Li Diudiu nearly jumped out of his skin.

He looked toward Yan Qingzhi and said, “Master Sun must be around forty by now, right? And Madame Sun, though younger, must be well into her late thirties…… that’s roughly the same age my parents would be, if they were still alive.”

Yan Qingzhi said, “I suspect your father would be younger than Master Sun.”

Li Diudiu: “……”

Yan Qingzhi patted Li Diudiu on the shoulder, like a warm and genuinely kind elder offering counsel. “Now that you’re a father—of sorts—the weight on your shoulders will only grow heavier. You are a man with a family above and below, so stop acting so childishly from here on out. All right?”

Li Diudiu: “Would a student get expelled for hitting a teacher?”

Yan Qingzhi said, “No. They’d be beaten first, then expelled.”

Li Diudiu sighed. “I feel like I’ve inexplicably lost my innocence all at once.”

Yan Qingzhi said, “That thing—did you ever have it to begin with?”

Li Diudiu said, “Teacher, can you act like a proper teacher for once?”

Yan Qingzhi said, “If you want me to be a proper teacher, you first need to be a proper student. Before you entered this Academy, I was always a very strict and proper teacher. Don’t you feel even a trace of guilt for what I’ve become?”

Li Diudiu said, “Shall I punish myself with three cups of wine?”

Yan Qingzhi let out a long sigh. “I should never have come to the First Hall to try my hand at teaching.”

Li Diudiu gave a small laugh. “Teacher—I’d like to ask for a day off.”

“You’ve just been absent without leave for so many days, and neither I nor the Academy’s rules have forgiven you yet—and now you have the nerve to ask for another day off?”

“Not during class hours. During the evening training time.”

“That’s not allowed either!”

“I……my master says today is my birthday.”

Yan Qingzhi paused.

Neither of them spoke. After a long silence, Li Diudiu lowered his head and said quietly, “It’s not that I think birthdays are particularly important. It’s just that every year on this day, no matter where he is, no matter how hard things are, my master always finds a way to make sure I have a bowl of noodles. He doesn’t actually know my exact birthday—he just uses the day he found me as my birthday and wrote it down.”

Li Diudiu raised his head to look at Yan Qingzhi. “Whether it’s a birthday or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I need to be with my master today. Otherwise he’d feel off, wouldn’t he?”

Yan Qingzhi said, “Don’t tell me these things. How many days of lessons have you already missed? It’s easy to slip from diligence to laziness, but hard to claw your way back. Once you break the habit, there will be a second time, and then countless more.”

He stood up, looked down at Li Diudiu for a moment, seemingly quite disappointed, and turned to leave. After a few steps he murmured, almost to himself, “Though I genuinely have no time to supervise your practice tonight—Gao Yuanzhang asked me to come by and give Gao Xining a lesson.”

Li Diudiu let out a sound of acknowledgment, then exhaled a long, slow breath.

When he returned to his quarters, Li Diudiu tidied himself up somewhat. He’d brought home a tidy sum of silver from Laihuxian, and had already handed all of it over to his master. He figured his master had probably been very busy these past few days—full of hope, trotting around the streets and alleys of Jizhou City looking for the right house.

To have a home—a real, proper home—was something that, for both Li Diudiu and the elderly Daoist Changmei, was a happiness too beautiful to fully imagine, and yet impossible to stop imagining.

And now, that happiness was almost within reach.

Li Diudiu finished getting ready and left the Academy. He knew today’s conversation had displeased Teacher Yan, but he was even less willing to make his master sad.

Every year on this day, no matter the circumstances, no matter how difficult life was, his master would do everything in his power to procure a bowl of noodles. And no matter how much Li Diudiu tried to persuade him, his master would never eat a single bite himself.

*Master says: these are your longevity noodles—eat them yourself, every last strand. Leave none behind, and you’ll live to a hundred.*

As Li Diudiu walked out of the Academy, he looked at the setting sun and took a deep breath. He didn’t want to let down anyone who placed their trust and faith in him—but a person can’t always look after everyone at once.

He walked along the main road, watching his own shadow stretch out before him, leading the way. The shadow was so long, so very long—like a great black giant clearing the path through mountains and bridging rivers ahead.

That was no giant. That was himself.

He asked around at the inn where his master was staying and was told that the elderly Daoist Changmei had gone out early that morning and hadn’t returned. Li Diudiu felt something wasn’t quite right. No matter how busy his master was—even if he’d gone to look at houses—he would have timed things carefully. After Li Diudiu finished his lessons, he would certainly be waiting at the inn.

Li Diudiu sat on the inn’s front steps, the peach shortcakes he’d bought for his master along the way clutched in his arms. The sunlight shifted little by little away from him—what had once bathed his whole face in light had now retreated to one side: half his face in light, half in shadow.

Li Diudiu desperately wanted to go look for his master, but he didn’t know where his master had gone, didn’t even know in which direction, and he was afraid that if he left, his master would come back to find him gone—both of them anxious and missing each other.

He sat, and sat, and sat……

Li Diudiu raised his head and looked at the sky. The stars were already faintly visible.

The night watchman passed by in front of him, calling out the hour as he went, lighting the lamps along the street one by one. As the glow beneath each lantern’s cover flickered to life, the night became a little less frightening.

At the Yunzhai Teahouse, playing music and telling stories to a sea of people—the crowd, the liveliness, all of it—Li Diudiu had never felt like he was in the same world as those people.

Right now, with his master not yet back, he felt entirely removed from everything his eyes could see.

With his head bowed, Li Diudiu saw a pair of worn cloth shoes appear on the ground before him—patched and repatched, too many times to count. The dust caked onto them added a weathered, timeworn quality to all that mending. It suited, somehow.

A new pair of shoes coated in dust would just look wrong.

“Little one……have you been waiting long?”

Li Diudiu heard his master’s voice.

He raised his head, and didn’t know why his eyes were a little wet.

His master bent down and tousled his hair—just as he always had since he was small. That hand was rough and calloused, and yet incomparably gentle.

“I went to find you a birthday gift.”

His master crouched down in front of him. The sun had already left; the stars had taken over the world. But his master’s face was radiant.

“A gift.”

Daoist Changmei opened the wooden box he had been holding tightly to his chest the whole way home, as carefully as if he were opening the door to a once-in-a-lifetime treasure.

“Look.”

Daoist Changmei held out the open box to Li Diudiu.

Li Diudiu harrumphed and turned up his nose.

Daoist Changmei coaxed him, “Come on—look, just look. From the day you got back to Jizhou City, your master has been searching everywhere for the right gift for you. I finally found it—just look once, quickly.”

Li Diudiu put on a great show of reluctance as he accepted the box. Inside was a single piece of cowhide paper. He took it out and unfolded it—and then his eyes flew wide open.

“A house?!”

Daoist Changmei chuckled, his face beaming with the pride of someone saying: *well? Isn’t your master impressive?*

“The county office moved rather slowly. I’d agreed with the seller to go there first thing in the morning, but when we arrived, nobody paid us any attention. They told us to wait—and by afternoon, still nobody had lifted a finger. The officials just sat there drinking tea and chatting. I asked when they’d get to us, and they gave me a white-eyed stare and said couldn’t I see they were busy?”

Changmei continued, “That’s when it dawned on me. I slipped ten taels of silver across—painful as that was—but it worked like magic. The moment that silver changed hands, they processed everything immediately……I ran all the way back after getting the deed. Hurried as fast as I could and still ended up late.”

He tousled Li Diudiu’s hair again. “Are you upset with your master?”

Li Diudiu looked at the deed, pointed to the name on it and asked, “Why is this in my name?”

Daoist Changmei said, of course, “Naturally it’s yours. Everything I have is yours.”

Li Diudiu bit his lip.

Daoist Changmei pulled Li Diudiu to his feet. “Come—master will take you out for noodles. I spent the last two days finding out which noodle shop around here was best. About a li down the road there’s one run by someone from the Western Frontier—I’m told their oil-splashed noodles are the finest in Jizhou.”

Li Diudiu raised a hand and wiped his eyes, still doing his best to look indifferent.

“Oil-splashed noodles—will they have meat in them?”

“I don’t know.”

Daoist Changmei shook his head. “Haven’t eaten there yet.”

Li Diudiu asked, “You’ve been telling me it’s the best in Jizhou, and you’ve never even tried it?”

Daoist Changmei let out a small sound. “It’s not cheap—why would I go eat noodles on my own? Two steamed buns are enough to fill me up. A bowl of noodles costs enough to buy twenty steamed buns……”

He trailed off at that, seeming to catch himself, and quickly added, “We’ve been eating well every day lately—lots of fish and meat, actually getting a bit tired of the richness.”

Li Diudiu let out a long, slow breath. He kept that look of indifference—it was the most he could do for comfort. With him acting this nonchalant, his master’s heart would feel a little easier.

As they walked, he said, “If the oil-splashed noodles don’t come with meat, we’re not eating there.”

Daoist Changmei nodded. “Naturally—with people of our wealth and status, eating noodles without meat would be beneath our dignity.”

The two of them fell into a swaggering sort of gait, this old man and this young one, swinging along with the exact same rhythm.

“Master.”

“Mm?”

“Now that we’re people of wealth and status—can’t we just force them to add meat? You have to own that energy.”

“Good point—but what if they refuse?”

“Throw money at them.”

“Literally throw it?”

Li Diudiu said, “Just talk big for the fun of it—do you not know what kind of household we are? Why are you asking if we’d literally throw money……”

His master thought about it, then said, “If you really want some, we could actually throw it. Your master still has quite a bit of silver left.”

Li Diudiu turned up his nose.

His master raised a hand and rested it on top of Li Diudiu’s head. Back when they used to walk side by side, his hand had dropped naturally to reach his head. Now, walking side by side, his arm had to lift slightly to reach it.

But it wasn’t awkward in the slightest.

Never had been. Never would be.

His master’s hand didn’t move. Li Diudiu nuzzled his head against his master’s palm.

That feeling was something truly, deeply good.

—