Zhang Zhixu was startled into a moment of stillness.

Xie Lanting, though unsteady in matters of the heart, was a formidable hand at investigation. He almost never turned that searching look on someone who had nothing to do with a case.

Yet what was there to suspect about Chen Baoxiang? Zhang Zhixu understood her emotions and thoughts as clearly as anyone could — and if not for his own deliberate guidance, she would never have gotten tangled up in this mess at all.

“Me?”

She pointed a finger at the tip of her own nose and was still grinning, half-stupidly: “I was already tangled up in it ages ago. Back then, they falsely accused me of plotting to assassinate Cheng Huaili and threw me in prison. If I hadn’t known Zhang Zhixu, I would’ve lost my life.”

She bent her index finger and pointed it downward in a gesture of contempt: “Compared to that, a little pushing of rumors is the least I could do.”

Zhang Zhixu nodded along — yes, this person was exactly that petty and unforgiving, that quick to repay any wrong. Rather than say she had some larger scheme, it was truer to say she simply acted as a small person acts.

Xie Lanting studied Chen Baoxiang for a moment longer, then laughed lightly: “Miss has done me no small service today — I’ll call on you another day to thank you properly.”

“Go thank Zhang Zhixu another day.” Her tongue was thick and heavy. “He helped me too.”

It sounded as though she meant the business of lending her the house.

Xie Lanting thought about it — yes, Fengqing was far more cautious than he was. If this Chen Baoxiang were truly suspect in some way, how would Fengqing ever have been willing to associate with her?

“Agreed.” He set aside his suspicion and nodded with a smile.

Xie Lanting bid his farewells and left. Chen Baoxiang stood at the gate watching his retreating figure and sighed: “If in my next life I could be born a man like Sir Xie, how wonderful that would be. Women truly are to be pitied.”

Zhang Zhixu gave a dismissive hum: “In the Great Sheng dynasty, men and women alike may serve as officials. Men can attract women; women can choose their own husbands. What is there to pity?”

“You’re an Immortal — you don’t understand.” Chen Baoxiang shook her head with a long sigh. “Even when the Female Emperor sat the throne a hundred years ago, women still suffered. Things are worse now that Neo-Confucian doctrine has been reviving and old institutions are being revisited.”

“Women can still sit the examinations and join the military.” He shook his head. “You simply lack ambition.”

“Hmph.”

She waved her sleeve in irritation and plopped down on the steps in a sulk: “You understand nothing!”

He was quite entrenched in the world of court and officialdom — what was there that he didn’t know?

Still, this person, drunk on wine, was truly incorrigible — one moment fumbling at her clothing as if to undress, the next clutching a pillar and sobbing softly.

Such dreadful behavior when drunk — and she had dared to throw back three cups in rapid succession?

Zhang Zhixu shook his head repeatedly, straining to manage her movements, yet still being dragged along in a stumbling sway — nearly tumbling into the pond.

“Next time you drink that fast, I’ll throw you in myself!” he fumed.

A drunk person was in no state to hear such threats. She was muttering and mumbling, calling out “Grandma Ye” one moment and “Grandpa Liu” the next, her heart surging with a sorrow like the crashing of great waves — so overwhelming it nearly stole the breath from him too.

He waited with difficulty until she sobered up. By then, the banquet inside had long since broken up.

Chen Baoxiang, yawning, walked to the gate and saw off the equally ruined guests, then went to settle accounts with the hired servants.

Counting out the silver and paying each of them, she felt like she was dying: “How can it possibly cost this much!”

The wages were tolerable — she’d only hired them for one day. But the final bill for the ingredients cut her deeply. She looked at the table — the food and wine barely touched — and shoved the remaining silver into the steward’s hands before heading over to collect what was left.

“What are you doing?” Zhang Zhixu was visibly put out. “They’ll handle the clearing up.”

“The lamb is completely untouched, and there’s the spiced beef, the spiced duck, and the braised pig’s head.” Chen Baoxiang pulled out the remaining meats and heaped them on the cutting board. “I can’t just throw this away.”

With that, she took up a cleaver and made short work of it all — hacking through bones and meat alike and tossing it into the large pot of congee that had been simmering nearby, then shaving off some leftover vegetable greens to boil in with it.

Zhang Zhixu covered his nose: “What on earth is this.”

“Mixed meat congee.” Chen Baoxiang looked it over. “There’s also congee made with polished rice — none of those people touched it.”

“The meal hours are already past — why are you cooking this now?”

“Meal hours.” Chen Baoxiang let out a short, sardonic laugh. “That’s a rule for wealthy families. Poor people are just glad there’s something to eat — they don’t keep track of what hour it is.”

The servants had taken their pay and left. She handed the cook an extra two hundred coins: “Let me borrow this pot, the two big wooden tubs beside it, and the handcart and bowls outside — I’ll have everything sent back once I’m done.”

“Sure thing.”

Zhang Zhixu watched as she busied herself back and forth, cooking up two great tubs of mixed meat congee, then loading the tubs onto the handcart. She changed back into her plain everyday clothes and pushed the cart toward the street.

“You’re usually such a greedy person — and yet you have your moments of genuine kindness.” He was rather moved. “Going to such lengths to personally distribute char—”

“Come one, come all! Fresh off the stove — mixed meat congee, five coins a bowl!” Two steps from the Heyue Market, she set down her cart and opened her mouth to call out.

Zhang Zhixu swallowed back the “ity” that hadn’t made it out, staring in genuine shock.

“These are people’s leftovers, and you’re selling them?!”

“What’s wrong with that?” She began ladling congee into bowls. “Today’s expenses were enormous — this is to make back some of it.”

“You—”

His upbringing was too refined to produce anything crude, but Chen Baoxiang could sense his shame and indignation radiating outward.

She collected her five coins and laughed lightly: “Immortal — think about it. If the two of us, fresh out of that black workshop, had come across a stall like this, would we feel insulted by being offered leftovers? Or would we think, today really is our lucky day?”

Zhang Zhixu went still. The tension eased, very slightly, from his spine.

It was true. The version of Chen Baoxiang who’d had only a hundred coins left and hadn’t even been able to buy a bun — if she had come across a great bowl of meat congee selling for only five coins, she would have been delirious with joy.

He looked toward the crowd ahead. Before the calls had gone out more than a few times, over twenty people had already lined up by the wooden tubs. They wore ragged clothes, their faces grey with grime, every one of them staring with fixed desperation at the ladle in Chen Baoxiang’s hand — terrified that by the time it reached them, there would be nothing left.

And those who did manage to get a bowl: one sip, and exclamations broke out.

“There are lamb bones in this — and actual meat!”

“Really? Get me a bowl.”

“Five bowls for me!”

Two great wooden tubs, and in less than half an hour, every last drop was sold.

Zhang Zhixu looked out into the distance. The Great Sheng dynasty was in a time of peace and prosperity — the streets of Shangjing were bustling, and every person he could see seemed well-fed and well-clothed.

Yet looking at the scene before him now — raw and harrowing as an open wound — he suddenly felt that his earlier notions of “the ordinary person’s life” were laughable.

“Where did those people go?” He watched the empty bowls on the ground and said with some bewilderment, gesturing for Chen Baoxiang to look: “They were right here just a moment ago — I glanced away for an instant and they simply vanished.”

Chen Baoxiang was tidying up the wooden tubs and didn’t look up: “Went home.”

“Every door and shutter on the surrounding buildings has been tightly closed the whole time — there’s no way they went home.”

“Who told you a home has to be inside a building?”

What else could a home be, if not inside a building?

Zhang Zhixu was about to say she must be putting him off, when Chen Baoxiang stepped forward a few paces, rounded a pile of discarded clutter, and tilted her chin toward something below: “There — have you ever seen this?”

A hole roughly the width of a well-mouth, pitch-black inside — like an abandoned drainage channel.

Nearby, a man had finished his congee, set down his bowl, wiped his mouth, and dropped in with practiced ease.

Zhang Zhixu’s pupils contracted.

Shangjing received abundant rainfall. To protect its streets and buildings from flooding, the Great Sheng dynasty had — beginning with Emperor Shengwu — extensively constructed drainage channels throughout the city. The underground channels ran beneath all of Shangjing, and they were not narrow little gullies but passages taller and wider than a man’s height.

He had learned all of this. He had known all of it.

What he had not known — had never once thought — was that people might actually live in those passages. Down there it was lightless and sunless, and the air carried a foul smell. How could anyone possibly live in such a place?

“Immortal,” said Chen Baoxiang, “guess what kind of people make up the largest group down there.”