What Shen Yi regretted most was not having managed to use a certain someone’s reputation to cut down a few more demons.
That, naturally, was not something he could say out loud.
He took down the scabbard and settled the saber back under his arm. It dug in a little, but that was preferable to losing his head without noticing.
Lin Baixi watched his cautious arrangement and pressed her lips together.
If she’d been that careful herself, she might not be in this situation.
She went to the cabinet and retrieved paper and brush, sat at the table, and added oil to the lamp. In the wavering light she closed her eyes, grinding the ink slowly while she worked through her memory.
Then she began to write — careful, deliberate strokes, neat small characters appearing one after another under her moving fingers.
“What are you doing? It’s late.” Shen Yi glanced back.
“Can you sleep without having something in hand?” Lin Baixi replied drily.
Both of them had their heads attached to their lives by a thread. No point pretending otherwise.
She still remembered the first time a demon had its hand around her throat — the moment she’d nearly stopped breathing, and how even after her fellow operative cut it down, her heart had kept lurching for the rest of the night. If someone had been there with her, the nightmares might not have woken her up crying.
“…”
Shen Yi was quiet for a long time. He closed his eyes.
By the time the roosters called, he was sitting up, glancing at the woman at the table mid-yawn.
He still couldn’t manage it. Even knowing she was Demon Suppression Division, sleeping with a fully clothed living person nearby was beyond him.
“I’m about halfway through.”
Lin Baixi rolled her wrist and reviewed what she’d written. “Don’t complain about the pace. One wrong character in something like this and it causes real problems.”
Shen Yi changed into clean clothes and nodded. “Thank you for the effort.”
“Hm.” Lin Baixi put on a look of theatrical surprise. “You actually know how to say something decent.”
“Naturally. I’m still planning to trade you back to the Lin family for money when the time comes. I need to keep you in good condition.”
He adjusted his cuffs, picked up the saber, and walked out.
Baiyun County was small, and word traveled fast. The sky was barely light when he arrived to find a crowd already pressed against the duty room gate, loud and packed in tight.
Someone spotted him. “Constable Shen’s here!”
The crowd parted immediately. He walked through and found Chen Ji and the others red-faced and hoarse.
“I’ll say it one more time — we handle demons here. Not thieves, not lost purses—”
“You’re wrong! The two tall ones went and grabbed Old Yang’s wife’s boyfriend! I saw it!”
The crowd surged into noise: “My purse was probably stolen by a demon too — sir, you have to help—”
“…”
Shen Yi walked into the courtyard in silence and waved a hand. “Shut the gate.”
Several of them leaned against the doors and wrestled the bar down, then sat on the ground looking at each other.
Zhang Dahu was shaking his head. “Used to be people would cross the street to avoid me. Now they’re trying to break down my door. What happened to this world.”
He caught himself a moment too late and swung toward Shen Yi with an ingratiating smile. “I meant — you’re the boss, sir. Obviously.”
Chen Ji stood up, still smiling, then noticed something and turned to look at the gate.
The next moment: a series of heavy knocks.
“More of them.” The Niu brothers rolled their sleeves and opened the gate, ready to shout someone down — and then both of them rocked back a step.
They were large men. The person outside was taller than both of them by a head, and built in a way that made their own considerable frames look modest by comparison. The distended belly straining against the white jacket was particularly arresting.
“Someone’s — someone’s here for a fight,” Niu Da reported, voice uncertain.
Chen Ji went still. He didn’t move.
He couldn’t work out what a Jingang Sect practitioner would want with a minor constable’s duty room. If there was something here this man couldn’t handle on his own, there wasn’t a second person in Baiyun County who could step in.
“Closing your doors in broad daylight. I thought I had the wrong place.”
Zhang Tuhu rolled a stalk of dried grass between his teeth and looked across the courtyard with a mild smile. “You’re actually here.”
No sign of the Gaunt Monk behind him. Shen Yi clasped his hands. “What brings you by, senior?”
“Don’t senior me. Ridiculous.”
Zhang Tuhu squeezed through the gate and offered his reply in the same unhurried tone. “I came to Baiyun County at someone’s invitation. I’ve been informed I’m too slow-witted for their standards. It happens that I also find their cleverness disagreeable. It occurred to me you’re about as slow-witted as I am. Thought I’d come and see if there’s a meal in it.”
Chen Ji nearly lost his footing.
A practitioner with a proper lineage, at the Threshold Realm, going hungry — completely absurd. Say the word and every wealthy family in Baiyun County would be competing to house him. The combined salary of the entire yamen wouldn’t cover two weeks of what he was worth on the open market.
“First of all — I’m not slow-witted.”
Shen Yi looked up with mild resignation, then spread his hands. “And I’m genuinely poor.”
“I’m not slow-witted either.” Zhang Tuhu let out a short laugh and walked himself inside. “Equally broke. Plain food and a place to sit is enough.”
Shen Yi was about to explain that plain food might also be optimistic given the appetite that belly suggested.
Chen Ji had already started stamping his feet.
What is wrong with both of them — one turning down real money, the other turning away a practitioner who just walked through the door of his own accord—
He yanked the silver ingot from his belt and shoved it into Shen Yi’s hand with an expression of concentrated desperation.
Shen Yi glanced at Chen Ji and pushed it back. “Go stand somewhere useful.”
Do I really look like someone who’d haggle over this?
“Who is this?” Zhang Dahu asked. The Niu brothers were still processing the situation, but Zhang Dahu knew Chen Ji well enough to know he didn’t throw money around. The man saved every coin of his salary for his sister without exception.
“Junior brother of the man at the magistrate’s residence.”
The words landed like a dropped stone. Everyone went briefly blank.
The Gaunt Monk existed for most of them as a story — someone at Clerk Liu’s level might get an audience, and even that would only be a glimpse. The idea that someone of equivalent standing was now standing inside their duty room, having apparently found the decorative stone lock and decided to play with it — the thing weighed three to four hundred jin at minimum, and he was tossing it up with one hand—
“You train with this?”
Zhang Tuhu looked over with genuine curiosity.
“No. I usually train before bed.” Shen Yi’s face gave nothing away.
True enough, for that matter — running panel simulations on the street tended to attract the wrong kind of attention.
“The worst thing for cultivation is to work alone. I’ve been stuck in this county growing restless. When you have time — spar with me?”
Zhang Tuhu set down the stone lock.
“No problem.” Shen Yi nodded. He could use exactly this — someone to fill in the enormous gaps in his practical knowledge.
Zhang Tuhu’s face shifted into a grin. “I’m available right now.”
“…”
“There it is.” The Niu brothers exchanged a look of vindication, their large heads nodding in unison. “Knew he was here to start something.”
(End of Chapter)