She Wanlin coughed twice as he came back to consciousness on the water’s surface. He truly had no idea how to swim.

Before Old Chou had knocked him out, he’d seen that old man from Dingyumen — someone with no small skill — subdued silently by Old Chou without a sound?

Then he’d blacked out, and by the time he came to, he’d already left the lower hold and was floating on the surface of the water.

Noise filled his ears — women screaming, the sharp hiss of giant crossbow bolts piercing through fishing boats. This place felt like an age of chaos.

He raised his head and saw Little Zai flying through the sky. Turning his face, he saw enormous ships that had appeared out of nowhere, fighting to the death without the slightest restraint, invisible lines of force clashing in midair — this clearly wasn’t a rescue party of imperial soldiers.

Honestly, ever since childhood he’d been more doted on by His Majesty than many of the young princes in the harem — but even now, the court still hadn’t sent anyone to save him?

Could it be?

A massive piece of deck debris fell, splashing water everywhere. She Wanlin wiped a hand across his face and thought — could that woman called Yushu Niang be a hidden piece His Majesty had placed on the board?

How could that be?

However skilled she was, could she really command this many ships? He genuinely couldn’t wrap his head around it. She Wanlin spat out a mouthful of river water and thought to himself: “Adults really are the most infuriating people.”

A large hand reached from behind and yanked open She Wanlin’s hair tie, letting his hair fall loose over his face. Four or five young girls crowded on a coffin screamed in a huddle. On shore, the local martial artists hid behind coffins, shouting curses. Old Chou had punched a hole in the tower boat’s planks — the boat was sinking, and those aboard had no idea…

Everything was chaos, and yet everything also seemed somehow planned. That coffin drifted past Old Chou and She Wanlin, and several arms reached out to pull them inside. To keep the coffin from sinking, two of the girls silently slipped into the water, not even surfacing, swimming toward shore without a sound…

On the ship, Zaishi watched the battle tensely, his awareness stretched out to cover the surroundings. He noticed someone swimming toward shore and leapt out, landing on the crow’s nest for a look — it was the two girls who’d fallen into the water. Their cries were pitiful indeed, until they were finally hauled up by the martial artists on shore, hand over hand…

Perhaps because they wore too little, once out of the water, the red gauze and green silk clung tightly to their bodies, their curves laid bare.

Tsk — how improper. Some “Red Sleeve Sect” — a lowly brothel dressed up with a fancier name. Tsk!

Glancing at the King of the West Sea across the way, and recalling Water Miss’s insufferable, overbearing manner throughout the journey, Zaishi silently thought serves them right, and leapt down from the crow’s nest to rejoin Little Zai in the fight.

The King of the West Sea’s assault grew fiercer and fiercer. Seeing the giant crossbows failing to bring down the tower boat, he finally switched to fire-oil bolts, and at last managed to set alight the canvas sail in Little Zai’s hands.

Little Zai, enraged, hurled the burning, shredded canvas back at the treasure ship, and at last one of the great ships caught fire… yet it stubbornly kept fighting, even speeding up to ram harder, clearly ready to go down fighting alongside the Nine Provinces Domain.

Someone — no one knew who — shouted: “The ship’s taking on water! It’s sinking!”

Only then did Little Zai and the others realize something was wrong. Looking again, the entire tower boat had already dropped two feet, sinking faster and faster.

In an instant, Little Zai abandoned the tower boat, gave up the fight, and rushed with Zaishi down to the lower hold. Before long, he emerged again onto the deck, carrying the unconscious Ding Yumen.

By now, the abandoned tower boat was ablaze on all sides. Little Zai carried Ding Yumen up onto the mast and looked around. The people on the water’s surface were simple to account for — the Red Sleeve Sect members he knew well, not one more, not one fewer. So then?

Where was he?

Furious beyond measure, Little Zai flung Ding Yumen into the river, stamped his foot, and shot through the air straight toward the West Sea treasure ship.

Meanwhile, Zaishi, left behind on the tower boat, having lost the young noble, was consumed with a manic rage. Unable to suppress his fury, he struck the tower boat again and again with his palms, shouting: “Come out! Come out! Boy… get out here… I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

Afterward, the tower boat broke apart…

It shattered into floating debris scattered across the river’s surface. The sailors, boatmen, and even the newly recruited disciples of the Nine Provinces Domain who’d fallen from the ship struggled in the water…

A tremendous fire-oil explosion sounded, and the King of the West Sea’s wild laughter cut off abruptly… The treasure ships, having lost their leader, began retreating in disarray… more ships caught fire, exploded, burned… lives fell into the water as though they were worth nothing at all.

Little Zai, a lifetime of gentlemanly bearing entirely abandoned, having lost his hostage, had gone half-mad.

Meanwhile, She Wanlin — now dressed as a girl, a human-skin mask on his face, a wig on his head — watched dumbstruck, thinking: are these people dying because of me?

The young man’s thoughts were in chaos, his mind full of his grandfather’s teachings.

His grandfather had said: to bring peace to the realm, one must first set right one’s own foundation — the same held true for a person. One wrong step brings endless later troubles…

Every year during festivals, when families reunited, he alone had to be sent apart, delivered into the palace to celebrate with that family instead. Naturally he hadn’t wanted to go, and would sit sulking on the doorstep.

What had his father said at the time?

Oh — his father had said: son, making money happens in the bustling marketplace, but peace of mind comes from quiet places — the old saying puts it plainly enough, but where in this world is there ever a place that makes sense for you? There are far more places that don’t make sense. You’ll have to go whether you want to or not. Being a person means accepting your fate — if you don’t accept it, you’ll suffer for it…

But his ancestors had said: once you’re there, eat whatever’s offered — not eating is just wasting it…

His mother, though, had held him and said: son, I’m sorry.

Why “sorry”?

His head was a jumbled mess, all kinds of thoughts swirling.

But Old Chou spoke into his ear: “…This is just how the world is, young master, don’t dwell on it too much. The King of the West Sea has caused chaos on the seas for generations — the government’s case files on him could fill a whole room. The court has sent troops against him many times and never managed to wipe him out. This time, using the Nine Provinces Domain to lure them into the inland river to fight it out—”

“Stop! Just — stop…”

She Wanlin didn’t want to hear any more. In his mind, His Majesty’s face grew more and more distant, receding into darkness, no longer smiling with that warm, benevolent look.

Had he been used, then?

The King of the West Sea, Zhang Jinfang, every rib in his body shattered, lay collapsed on the deck. Little Zai ground his heel into the man’s face; he could no longer resist, blood foaming at his mouth — clearly not long for this world.

Little Zai cast him aside and searched the main ship all around — no sign of the young prince. He switched ships in a frenzy, searching like one possessed, killing anyone he came across.

Once he’d gone, the sailors who’d long since been weeping in the water finally climbed aboard, wailing “Brother” as they knelt beside Zhang Jinfang.

Zhang Jinfang was dying, and yet he was smiling. His blood-soaked hand fumbled inside his diving gear for a long moment before, with help from those around him, he managed to pull out a small piece of elm bark. He pressed it into his brother’s hand, closing the man’s open palm into a fist, and said with a smile: “Lost — lost that little noble. The Nine Provinces Domain’s — their lineage — is finished. We’ve — we’ve avenged our family too…”

His brother’s teeth chattered as he took the bark, trembling as he cried “Brother.”

Zhang Jinfang went on: “A prosperous age has come. Life on the water… can’t be sustained anymore. Take the family, go back to land… find Her Ladyship. Her Ladyship is benevolent — Baiquan Mountain is vast, there will surely be land for us to settle on. On that land, safe and — and secure, our descendants will never again have to eat the bitter rice of chaos and displacement…”

His eyes stopped moving, his mouth still open, and he died.

His brothers arranged his body properly, kowtowed urgently before him, then poured fire oil over him, set him alight, and one by one leapt into the water.

Across the river’s surface, pirate ship after pirate ship caught fire, the flames growing larger and larger, black smoke blotting out the morning light.

Xie Ximu stood on a mule cart, staring in dumbstruck shock, as he heard the terrified martial artists around him shouting that the Nine Provinces Domain was burning the treasure ships — cutting off their livelihood entirely — how ruthless, ruthless enough to chill the heart…

For the Zhang family of the West Sea, these thirty-odd great treasure ships were likely their entire family fortune — and now burned to nothing?

But the Nine Provinces Domain couldn’t very well step forward and say, we didn’t burn them, they burned themselves — we only killed a few people…

Beneath him, the mule cart turned. Xie Ximu looked at Xin Yijian in astonishment, but Xin Yijian, without turning back, said loudly: “Young master, it’s too chaotic here. Let’s go.”

Chaos, chaos!

In Xie Ximu’s eyes, the burning stretch of river grew farther and farther away, until it vanished from sight entirely… only then did he hear someone shout loudly:

“Help! Save them!”

Back on the old dock, out of his sight, the martial artists kept pushing the coffins they’d brought into the water, more and more of them drifting toward the river’s center.

All the ships had been reduced to ashes, and the people of the Nine Provinces Domain were forced to stand on coffins as well. Little Zai was still searching.

Zaishi, however, sat in a coffin in utter despair, unwilling to say a single word. Ding Yumen, pale as paper, had drunk his fill of river water — it was the Red Sleeve Sect women who had saved him and pulled him into a coffin.

They examined every single face carefully. None of them. None… Everything had been a trap, everything pushed by an invisible hand into a boundless hell. There was no turning back now.

She Wanlin drifted right past the people of the Nine Provinces Domain, still wearing that girl’s face, his eyes shocked and wooden. In the space of only a few hours, it was as if his very soul had been replaced.

It wasn’t that Little Zai and the others didn’t know the art of disguise — but when they scanned faces, they didn’t look at the whole; they stared at each person’s eyes.

The young noble’s eyes had always been foolish yet cunning — but however his appearance shifted, that innocent, natural quality in his eyes could never be hidden.

What they could never have guessed was that in the span of just a few breaths, a child had grown up, and his eyes had naturally changed along with him.

The martial artists on shore already knew by now that the young noble had escaped — and since he was no longer among them, there was nothing left to fear. One by one, they cheerfully turned to rescuing people and fishing out bodies.

The Red Sleeve Sect women never went ashore — there was nothing to be done about it, and everyone could only watch helplessly as they drifted away on their coffins, farther and farther downstream…

The coffins drifted on and on, and somewhere along the way, the young girls quietly slipped away to other waters.

Old Chou, having found a plank from who-knows-where, wore a goose-yellow gauze robe, his face powdered, happily rowing along?

Oh — rowing a coffin.

She Wanlin sat leaning against the coffin, gazing off into the distance, lost in thought.

After some time, he heard Old Chou say: “Young master? Those girls left something for you just now — would you like to take a look?”

She Wanlin startled, sat up straight, and looked at Old Chou. “Something? For me?”

He looked around — the river was still the same river, but now only their single coffin remained afloat.

Old Chou grinned, set the plank back inside the coffin, and reached beneath it to pull out a bundle. As he unwrapped it, he said: “Ah, this Yushu Niang behind you really is something else — she really thought of everything, step by step. Don’t worry, the Nine Provinces Domain has figured it out by now — even if they sprouted wings, they couldn’t catch up to us here.

“Dozens of li now, and we haven’t drifted slowly either… And this whole scheme, layer within layer — even we, caught up in it, only just now understood. Those scoundrels… tsk! What fine work.”

He opened the bundle — a pile of fine cloth garments, and beneath them, a leather pouch. Old Chou turned the pouch over, and out tumbled two travel permits, a gilded bronze box with the Ping family’s seal-mark, a stack of gold leaf, a dozen or so two-tael silver ingots, and a small string of copper coins — roughly two hundred cash by the look of it.

She Wanlin tilted his head at the pile, unsure what to make of it, and asked: “Fine work?”

Old Chou, not looking up, rummaged through the pile of money, finally pulling out a small knotted cloth bundle. Without even glancing at it, he tossed it to She Wanlin with a grin: “This one’s for you, isn’t it?”

She Wanlin reached out and caught it, unwrapped the cloth, his brow furrowing — but by the end, he burst out laughing.

Old Chou, watching him go from gloomy to laughing, shook his head helplessly. “Still just a child.”

She Wanlin shot him a sideways glare. “You’re the real con artist.”

Old Chou admitted it readily: “Ah, my family’s made a living off this skill for generations.”

She Wanlin didn’t bother responding, cursing him as he went back to reading the writing on the cloth. In his father Chen Dasheng’s handwriting: change route to Jindian, after mapping the provincial military commissioner’s office layout in Jindian, return.

His mother’s hand, rather more elegant but somewhat rambling, said: son, if you have no money, you can go to the Ping family’s shops and draw funds against their credit note — everything your father says is nonsense… the rest of the writing seemed to have been deliberately blotted out, turned into a string of black smudges.

This was clearly a familiar little drama in his household — his father, trying to preserve his dignity, and his mother, forever puncturing his pot at the bottom. To protect his dignity, his father had blotted out his mother’s message.

Away from home, a letter from family was worth ten thousand pieces of gold — it could offer real comfort to the heart.

She Wanlin looked over the cloth strip no fewer than twenty times before handing it to Old Chou, gesturing for him to take a look too.

Old Chou looked startled, blinking and pointing at himself. “You want me to see it?”

She Wanlin gave a soft “mm” and pushed his hand forward again.

Old Chou hesitated, then finally smiled and took it — but instead of reading it, he closed his fist around it, crushing it into scraps, and let them scatter into the river. “Heh, what would I want to look at this for — I barely recognize more than a few characters anyway, so, so I won’t bother. If you need anything, just tell me.”

She Wanlin took a breath, looking at Old Chou’s scarred face, feeling an indescribable mix of emotions. This was someone who had been by his side since childhood, like family in his memory — and yet now, his true face was a mystery, his identity uncertain.

He was just an old con man — an old con man sent by who-knows-who. He wanted to ask, but knew the man wouldn’t say, so instead he said slowly: “Let’s… let’s go have a look around Jindian. The family’s given me a few months of freedom anyway.”

Old Chou looked at the river, quiet for a moment, then said: “Sure! Well, after eating so much of young master’s rice all these years, this old Chou might as well tag along. At least at night I can warm up some water for your feet, help ease the fatigue…”

As he spoke, he lowered his head, opened the gilded bronze box, pressed something, and drew out a small bronze tortoise.

Seeing it, he looked genuinely startled. He drew a breath and said: “Tsk, remarkable. The old master and lady at home really are people of means, to have something like this in hand.”

She Wanlin asked curiously: “What is it?”

Old Chou turned it over and over, then finally pried the tortoise open — inside was a small snake seal. He seemed genuinely impressed, clicking his tongue. “Tsk tsk tsk, now this — this is a real treasure. The tortoise-and-snake seal that props up the pillars of merchant houses across the realm — I’d only ever heard of it before, never thought I’d have the fortune to actually see one.”

She Wanlin rolled his eyes again — what was so special about this, really?

Old Chou handed both seals to She Wanlin. Looking down, he saw the seal wasn’t large but finely crafted — the tortoise shaped like the Black Tortoise, with teeth, whiskers, and shell scales all rendered vividly. The snake was a plain coiled serpent, its mouth empty of any spirit-bead, biting instead on a bronze coin.

The Four Sacred Beasts represented different positions and meanings depending on placement — this Black Tortoise stood for the North, and also the Water spirit. Turning the seal over, She Wanlin saw seal script beneath the tortoise’s belly, and beneath the snake seal, a ring of faint decorative pattern around the border, with the two characters Ping Yi at the center.

He said: “This is a new seal, made using the rare wax-casting method — is it really so uncommon? I’ve met Manager Ping a few times; his family’s things are rather interesting too.”

He was referring to the casting method — wax-casting in particular, a technique mostly held by noble clans.

He handed the items to Old Chou, who carefully returned the tortoise to its closed position and said: “Mm, this is indeed their token. Their third branch manages the northern trade — that’s the Black Tortoise position. Your family really thought this through carefully.”

She Wanlin, confused, said: “We’re heading southwest.”

Old Chou shook his head. “That’s exactly the point. The third branch’s young master wandering off to the southwest — that reads as simple sightseeing, no conflict of interest involved. The shopkeepers running the southwest storefronts naturally will welcome you warmly and won’t be on guard against you. Doesn’t that seem well thought out?”

He grinned, lifting the box. “This isn’t an ordinary token, you know. This seal being bronze means you’re of the Ping family’s direct bloodline — currently a young manager in training, someone who’ll eventually oversee an entire northern prefecture’s business, commanding at minimum a hundred or two hundred head managers under him. Of course, that future has nothing to do with you — doesn’t even match your real status. But just this seal alone…”

Old Chou’s eyes lit up. “Heh heh, young master, with this alone, any shop or house bearing the Ping name across the realm — you can draw up to two hundred thousand strings of cash freely. Now doesn’t that sound like something?”

She Wanlin, hearing this, showed no reaction at all, saying flatly: “Oh.”

Old Chou blinked. “…Oh?”

She Wanlin no longer wanted to look at him, turning his face back to the river instead. “You keep it.”

Though in his whole life he’d never once seen two hundred thousand strings of cash piled together, he didn’t think it was anything so remarkable either — growing up, whenever he saw some junior relative or another, he’d simply hand out whatever he had on him without a second thought. He’d genuinely never had much occasion to actually spend money himself.

But Old Chou didn’t see it that way. He held the box, hesitating, testing: “Really… you want me to hold onto it?”

She Wanlin turned to face the other direction. “Yeah, keep it.”

Old Chou hesitated a long while, but in the end, worried the boy didn’t understand the value out of childishness, deliberately played greedy: “Heh heh, well then, I’ll just warm it up for young master for a few days, heh heh…”

He tore a strip of cloth from his own clothes, wrapped the seal box carefully, and tied it tightly under his armpit.

Just as he was busy with this, the young master suddenly muttered: “Uncle Chou, look, there’s someone over there.”

Old Chou froze. “Chou… Uncle Chou?”

She Wanlin, still pointing ahead, said: “There really is a person.”

On the river’s surface, someone floated motionless with the current. Old Chou glanced at She Wanlin, oblivious, and muttered again: “Little brat, calling me Uncle Chou, Uncle Chou… let’s go save him, save him.”

He grabbed the plank and paddled quickly toward the spot. Drawing close, he stopped, looked down, and said: “Dead — not a person anymore then. Young master, just let this corpse be.”

The body floating on the water had its eyes wide open, staring peacefully up at the sky. A massive crossbow bolt was lodged in his chest, only a small stub of the tail remaining.

The force of the bolt had been immense, pinning him to a plank of wood, killing him instantly. Later, when the tower boat broke apart, the body had drifted along with the current to this spot.

She Wanlin looked at the face, his heart growing heavier.

He looked at this face, not very old at all, and after a long moment said: “Uncle Chou, I know this person.” Then, looking at Old Chou seriously, he added: “You’ve seen him too.”

Old Chou, with his sharp eyes, of course had seen him before.

Some days ago, at the mouth of Quanhou Street, that person-trafficker posing as a Nine Provinces Domain agent had said something still vivid in memory — that this young man’s family was a proper fifth-rank official household, living in Libu Alley, surnamed Yang.

These past days, these young people had been made to study on deck every day, and She Wanlin, through the cabin door, had often seen them.

These young men had naturally regarded him with disdain and jealousy, their attitude toward him never kind — occasionally their eyes would meet and they’d glare at him fiercely, leaving She Wanlin quite embarrassed.

After all, they were all around the same age. He, on the other hand, had good food and drink, and soft-spoken girls to coax him along.

As for this group of young men, judging by their treatment throughout the journey, they’d fared no better — especially the food, which She Wanlin had seen for himself. Just two lumps, neither quite black nor green, with a bowl of soup, and yet the whole group sat there eating it eagerly and cheerfully, while he, sitting in his cabin, couldn’t even catch a whiff of food.

Worse still, every day they were forced to study desperately, scrub the deck desperately, work hard to please their teachers…

Little Zai had never bothered paying this group any mind, hadn’t even cared to protect them — and to keep She Wanlin, the young prince, secure, he’d had the cabin door to the deck bolted shut after going below.

When the great treasure ship began its attack, those on deck with some martial skill could still dodge, but these poor newcomers — there was no telling how many of them had survived.

Seeing the young lord’s eyes lose their usual liveliness, Old Chou said carelessly with a laugh: “Oh, feeling upset, are you? Well, I suppose, given you were neighbors — if his family hadn’t run into trouble, he might’ve grown up alongside you as a childhood friend. Such a shame…”

He tore another strip of cloth from his clothes and tied the young man’s hair to the coffin.

Once done, he looked up at the sky, then side to side, found the direction toward Jindian, and began rowing steadily, saying with a wry note: “Sometimes, being dead is better than being alive — being alive is hard! If your ancestors didn’t build up enough virtue, it curses generation after generation… once they kick the bucket, it’s over — well, never mind that. Heh, this Yang fellow’s actually rather fortunate, wouldn’t you say?”

The remark was rather vague and roundabout.

She Wanlin, looking at the corpse drifting along with them, asked without turning: “Dead — and still fortunate?”

Old Chou laughed. “You have fortune, so naturally you fear death. Ah, well, don’t feel too sad either. As I see it, a person can’t be unlucky their whole life, can they? Look — he’s ended up drifting right toward this very coffin under us. That’s his fortune, isn’t it? Quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you say.”

She Wanlin thought that over — it really was true, this ready-made coffin had been prepared just for him.

So he nodded, looked at the face again, and said: “I… I suppose that’s true.”

And so, these two unlucky souls rowed the coffin along, dragging a corpse behind them, until dusk finally brought them to a stretch of riverbank they could climb onto.

Once ashore, they hastily dug a shallow pit by the bank and laid the young man surnamed Yang to rest inside the coffin.

She Wanlin wanted to use the paddling plank to fashion some kind of grave marker for him, but Old Chou stopped him. “Young master — never mind. In his next life, he may not even wish to be born into the Yang family again. He’s had a hard enough life this time around, and he’s paid off his debts to this world. Best let him hope for a different family next time.”

She Wanlin paused for a moment, then tossed the plank into the river.

The setting sun cast its glow over the fresh grave.

Old Chou pinched and kneaded She Wanlin’s face this way and that, and when the boy looked at his reflection in the river, he found he’d become a round-faced, round-eyed young man in his early twenties, with a faint, ever-present hint of a smile even when silent.

This was a skill passed down in Old Chou’s family — far superior to the Red Sleeve Sect’s disguise arts.

Watching She Wanlin glance this way and that at his reflection, Old Chou asked with a grin: “This is a trick my grandfather and father spent two generations perfecting. Want to learn it, young master?”

She Wanlin stood up and rolled his eyes at him again. “Why would I want to learn that?”

One scout chief in the family was more than enough — and here he was, kidnapped, yet somehow still expected to bring back intelligence for them.

“Fair enough, why would you want to learn that?” Old Chou chuckled, looking up at the fire-red sky. “Let’s go, young master. Tomorrow looks like good weather — let’s find a nice spot to rest, sleep in till the sun’s high overhead. We’ve got plenty of money now — eat well, drink well, do whatever we please! Tsk, wonderful!”

She Wanlin shook his head, half laughing, half exasperated, and followed him a few steps before suddenly feeling a lightness in his chest. He clutched at his heart and looked back.

That grave — it looked so lonely.

Seeing this, Old Chou teased: “What, young master can’t bear to part with his little friend?”

She Wanlin shook his head, confused, his expression hard to read. “Uncle Chou, you won’t believe this, but I… I feel like a huge stone’s been lifted off me. I feel really light now.”

Old Chou paused for a moment, then smiled and waved him over.

When She Wanlin came closer, Old Chou threw an arm around his shoulders and said, walking on with a laugh: “My young master, you’re a clever child, but some truths take time to understand slowly.”

“Understand?”

“Yeah — it means walking a lot of roads, meeting a lot of people. Isn’t that exactly what your father and mother wanted for you? Now that you’re out here, the good, you should recognize it. The bad, we won’t shy away from either. In this life, especially for a man, some sins are shared by everyone — twenty years old carries its own weariness, fifty carries its own guilt. Whatever’s owed, everyone has to pay it eventually, no exceptions. You’ll come to understand it slowly.”

“Mm.”

“But no matter how many died today, the blame isn’t yours. Don’t carry it in your heart. This was other people’s wickedness — if you insist on taking it upon yourself, that would just make you a fool.”

She Wanlin stopped in his tracks, looking at Old Chou’s new face — scarred no longer, but now rough and pockmarked — knowing the man didn’t want to reveal his true face, so he didn’t press further, only said: “Uncle Chou, so many people died — truly none of it is my fault?”

Old Chou patted his shoulder. “Childish talk! Why would it be your fault? You think too much. If you’d just stayed put, none of this would’ve happened, sure — but have you ever considered, if those bastards hadn’t kidnapped you in the first place, none of this would’ve happened either, right?

“How old are you, and how old are they? Any one of them could be several times your age. Rest easy — even if the wronged spirits of this world chase their grievances all the way to the underworld courts, it’s them they’ll come looking for first…”

Old Chou was mid-lecture, worked up and passionate, when he suddenly spotted a decent-sized passenger boat slowly approaching in the distance, flying a strange three-colored banner with large characters reading: Zhuoning Wufu.

Old Chou let out a long sigh. “Well now, would you look at that grand banner!”

With that, he leapt up, strode a few steps to the water’s edge, and shouted loudly out over the river: “Hey! Immortals of the water road! Branches and leaves from the five lakes and four seas, trunks rooted in the same earth, old roots tied together for three generations — you walk the clouds, we’re forged in fire, but we’re all from the same root! Come, come, give us a lift!”