Chapter 975
Unfamiliar Faces
“I don’t know. After I rolled down that mountain, I didn’t know where I was. I remember the first few days. After leaving home, the first night I hid in a haystack in the field, the second night I was in a dilapidated temple, and the third night…” She frowned, as if trying to recall, “The third night, it seemed to be raining heavily. I squatted under a bridge all night. The water rose up to my waist, and I was afraid to move.”
"and after?"
“I don’t remember anything after that.” Shen Yuan’s voice lowered. “The things that happened after that were fragmented. Sometimes I would wake up and find myself walking, not knowing how I got there. Sometimes I would fall down and wake up again to find it was either dark or light. I couldn’t tell if it was day or night, I just knew I was walking north. I looked at the sun, at the stars, at the shade of the trees…”
She suddenly stopped talking.
"How did you get injured like this?" Zheng Yi asked.
Shen Yuan remained silent for a moment.
"Someone is pursuing me."
"who?"
“I don’t know. Not those people wearing the same clothes and carrying the same knife. It was someone else.” Shen Yuan’s brows furrowed even more. “Maybe they weren’t chasing me, maybe they just bumped into me on the road. I don’t know. There was a man who saw me on the roadside and said, ‘Little girl, where are you going alone?’ I said I was looking for my father. He asked, ‘Where is your father?’ I said he was up ahead. He smiled. That smile…”
Her hands started shaking again.
“I ran away. He caught up with me. I threw a stone at him, hitting him in the face. He bled, cursed at me, and kicked me in the ribs. I got up and ran away again. He didn’t catch up, probably because he thought it wasn’t worth it.”
As Shen Yuan finished speaking, she suddenly glanced at Zheng Yi.
That look was complex, like looking at a stranger, like looking at a lifeline, like looking at someone who might turn away at any moment.
"You saved me," she said again, her tone completely different from the last time.
Last time, he said, "You saved me," as if confirming a fact.
This time it's saying "You saved me," as if asking "Why did you save me?"
Zheng Yi understood the implication, but did not explain.
"You should drink the soup first," he said. "The soup is getting cold."
Shen Yuan glanced down at the bowl of mutton soup on the table. The soup had stopped steaming, and the golden oil on top had condensed into a thin film, sealing the entire surface of the bowl.
Zheng Yi walked over, picked up the bowl of soup, held it in his hand for a moment, and then put it down.
"It's too cold, I'm going to warm it up."
He turned to leave.
"Young Master Zheng."
He stopped.
Aren't you afraid?
Zheng Yi turned around and looked at her.
"What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid of getting into trouble." Shen Yuan's voice was very calm, unnaturally calm. "If the people who are chasing me know I'm here with you, they will come looking for you."
Zheng Yi looked at her.
“Miss Shen, this is Beining City, not Jiangnan.”
Shen Yuan was taken aback.
“Beining City has its own rules,” Zheng Yi said. “Here, anyone who dares to touch you is going against the border guards of Beining City. Those border guards are a hundred times more ruthless than the fiercest officials you’ve ever seen. They don’t care who you are, they only care whether you’ve caused trouble in the city.”
He paused.
"Those who are chasing you, if they dare to come to Beining City, they will find that this place is different from Jiangnan."
Shen Yuan looked at him, her lips moved slightly, as if she had a lot to say, but in the end she only said one sentence softly.
"Thank you."
Two words. Very light.
But this time, those two words didn't slide across the ice.
When Zheng Yi carried the bowl of cooled mutton soup downstairs, He Liang was returning from outside with a bag of steamed buns. The buns in the oil paper package were still steaming, and the aroma of meat mixed with the fragrance of dough wafted out from the cracks in the paper. Chi Ya was squatting on the threshold, his eyes practically green with anticipation.
"Young Master Zheng, how is the girl?" He Liang asked.
Zheng Yi handed the soup bowl to Boss Sun, indicating that he should heat it up.
"I told you. His surname is Shen, and he's from Jiangnan."
He Liang put the steamed buns on the table and patted the dust off his hands: "From Jiangnan? You've come all the way to Beining City, that's quite a distance."
"Something happened at home." Zheng Yi didn't say much more.
He Liang glanced at him and wisely refrained from asking any further questions.
Chiya stood up from the threshold, dusted himself off, and leaned closer to whisper, "That girl... was she being chased by enemies?"
Zheng Yi glanced at him.
Chi Ya shrank back under his gaze: "I guessed. Look at all those injuries she's covered in, they weren't from a fall, they were from being beaten."
Zheng Yi neither denied nor admitted it.
"Let's eat," he said.
Chi Ya opened his mouth, but couldn't help but ask, "What do we do then? What if people from that sect she mentioned come after us..."
"We'll talk about it once we catch up."
Chi Ya choked for a moment, and before he could say anything, He Liang stuffed a steamed bun into his mouth, and he could only mumble and mumble and could no longer speak.
That evening, Zheng Yi went to the guest room again.
Shen Yuan had already finished her soup, leaving the bowl clean on the table. She leaned against the bed, her one exposed eye closed, as if she were asleep. But when Zheng Yi approached, her eyelashes fluttered.
I couldn't fall asleep.
Zheng Yi didn't point it out, but pulled the blanket over her and put her exposed hand back under the blanket.
As he turned to leave, a very soft voice came from behind him.
"My father's name is Shen Huaiyuan."
Zheng Yi stopped.
“In Jiangnan, everyone knows Shen Huaiyuan.” Shen Yuan’s voice floated in the darkness, as if it came from a very far place. “He started as a small tea egg vendor and worked for more than 20 years to become one of the largest tea merchants in Jiangnan. He didn’t rely on the government or gangs, he relied on himself. My mother said he was the most hardworking person in the world. She had been married to him for 20 years, and he had never slept a full night.”
She paused.
"Someone who could endure such hardship was ultimately devoured by others."
The room remained quiet for a long time.
Zheng Yi stood in the darkness, saying nothing.
“That man surnamed Qiu…” Shen Yuan’s voice suddenly changed, becoming less like she was talking about her own affairs and more like she was reciting a passage etched into her bones, “When he killed my father, my father was drinking tea. A cup of Biluochun tea, just brewed for the second time. He said to Mr. Shen, “Your biggest mistake in this life is not knowing what can be touched and what cannot be touched.”
“My father said that Shen has been in business all his life and only knows one principle—genuine goods at fair prices, and honesty with everyone, young and old. Shen doesn’t understand anything else.”
“That person said, ‘It’s okay if you don’t understand. You’ll understand when you die.’ Then he moved.”
Shen Yuan's voice trailed off at this point.
Like a string that's been stretched for too long, it finally snapped.
Zheng Yi heard a very soft, suppressed sound coming from under the blanket. It wasn't crying, it was panting. It was the kind of panting where a breath was stuck in the chest, and no matter how hard one tried, one couldn't exhale.
He stood in the darkness for a moment, then reached out and turned up the oil lamp on the table a little.
A tiny flame flickered and illuminated half of Shen Yuan's face.
She didn't cry.
His eyes were open, dry, and bloodshot, but without a single tear.
She looked at the lamp as if it were something very, very far away.
Zheng Yi pushed the lamp an inch closer to her.
"If the light is on, it's not completely dark."
Shen Yuan glanced at him.
There was something in that look in Zheng Yi's eyes that he couldn't quite put his finger on.
It's not gratitude, not trust, not dependence.
It's like a drowning person in the dark suddenly seeing a glimmer of light.
I don't know if that light was from the ship's lights, the shore's lights, or just a will-o'-the-wisp floating on the water.
But whatever it is, light is better than nothing.
Zheng Yi left the guest room and gently closed the door.
The corridor was dark, with only a dim yellow light coming from the lobby downstairs. He leaned against a pillar in the corridor, closed his eyes for a while, and his mind kept replaying Shen Yuan's words.
The Shen family of Jiangnan, who run a tea business, offended a powerful sect. The leader of this sect was surnamed Qiu.
仇。
He went over the surname in his mind several times, but couldn't find any information related to Jiangnan, sects, or tea merchants.
He knew too little about Jiangnan.
But he knew there was one person who definitely understood.
He Liang.
Zheng Yi went downstairs. He Liang was still sitting in the lobby, a pot of tea in front of him and an old account book that was half-read, his eyelids almost closing. He heard footsteps, looked up, and rubbed his eyes.
"Young Master Zheng, aren't you going to rest yet?"
"Steward He, I have a question for you."
He Liang sat up straighter and pushed the teapot in front of him towards him.
"In the Jiangnan region, is there a major tea merchant surnamed Shen?"
He Liang paused for a moment, his hand holding the teacup still.
"Shen? There's a tea merchant in Jiangnan named Shen..." He frowned and thought for a moment, "Why are you asking about that?"
"You tell me first, do you have it or not?"
He Liang put down his teacup and tapped his fingers on the table twice, as if flipping through a thick ledger in his mind.
"Among the major tea merchants in Jiangnan, the largest are the Cheng family of Huizhou, the Wu family of Hangzhou, and the Zhou family of Suzhou. These three families control the majority of the tea business in Jiangnan. As for the Shen family..." He thought for a moment, then shook his head, "I've never heard of them. It's not that I know them all, but I've heard of a few of the big tea merchants in Jiangnan. The surname Shen isn't among them."
Zheng Yi remained silent for a moment.
"Could it be one of those that isn't the biggest, but is very famous locally?"
“Possibly,” He Liang said. “There are many small tea-making families in Jiangnan, a few people from one family, tending a few acres of tea plantations, and doing it for decades. But they’re not called big tea merchants, they’re called tea farmers. What kind of family is this Shen family you’re talking about?”
Zheng Yi thought about the tone of Shen Yuan's voice and the unconscious pride she showed when she mentioned the "Shen family of Jiangnan".
“It won’t be too small,” he said.
He Liang thought about it again, but still shook his head.
“I’ll inquire about it for you in a couple of days. There are also merchants from Jiangnan in Beining City, and some of them still have connections there.” He Liang paused, “But Young Master Zheng, I must remind you. It’s best not to spread the word about that girl. Things in Jiangnan are thousands of miles away; we can’t afford to get involved.”
Zheng Yi nodded, picked up He Liang's now-cold tea, and took a sip.
Tea is bitter.
a few days later.
The first rain of autumn fell in Beining City. It wasn't heavy, just a fine, dense patter on the roof tiles in the backyard of the inn, sounding like someone slowly scattering rice on the roof. The muddy ground in the courtyard was soaked by the rain, leaving deep footprints with every step. Most of the locust tree leaves had turned yellow, and the rain-beaten leaves stuck to the ground, lying flat and obedient.
Zheng Yi stood outside the guest room window and pushed the window sash inward. Rainwater streamed down the eaves, forming a curtain of water in front of him. He glanced into the room through the curtain of water—Shen Yuan was lying on her side on the bed, facing the wall, the blanket pulled up to her chin, her exposed hand clutching the corner of the blanket, her knuckles slightly white.
He wasn't asleep. He knew.
Shen Yuan had been sleeping very little these past few days, and even when she did, her sleep was restless. The old woman said she often woke up suddenly at night, but wouldn't cry out; she would just lie there with her eyes open until dawn. The old woman was old and couldn't stay up all night; she couldn't keep watch for two days. Zheng Yi asked Boss Sun's wife to take her place. Boss Sun's wife stayed up all night, and when she came down the next morning, her face was pale. She said the girl had tossed and turned dozens of times throughout the night, as if the bed was covered in thorns.
On the third day of the rain, Zheng Yi received a letter.
The letter was sent by Manager Meng of Shenghe, sealed with sealing wax and stamped with Shenghe's seal. Zheng Yi opened it and read that the final payment for the last batch of leather goods had been settled, and that he could pick it up at the shop when it was convenient for him. At the end of the letter was a sentence in Manager Meng's own handwriting: "Recently, some unfamiliar faces have appeared in Beining City; they don't seem to be doing business. Young Master Zheng, please keep an eye out."
Zheng Yi read the letter over and over again, and silently recited the last sentence once more.
A stranger. Doesn't seem like someone in business.
He folded the letter, put it in his pocket, and went to find Wu Chen.
Wu Chen was chopping firewood in the backyard. His chopping posture was exactly the same as when he was in the north—the axe was raised above his head, his back was taut like a bow, and when he brought the axe down, his whole body sank down, and the firewood was neatly split in half in the middle, with very few wood chips flying. This way of chopping is strenuous, but the firewood is easy to burn and looks good when stacked.
"Wu Chen," Zheng Yi called to him from under the eaves.
Wu Chen nailed the axe to the wooden block, turned around, and saw a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.
"Manager Meng wrote that there are unfamiliar faces in the city. Be careful when you go out these next few days."
Wu Chen wiped his sweat and nodded. He didn't ask "what kind of unfamiliar face," nor did he ask "why we should pay attention." He and Zheng Yi had reached a point where such questions were unnecessary.
"Should we also inform Chiya?" Wu Chen asked.
"Speak. Also, regarding Helian, tell the Hanling tribe members not to spread out too much when they go out; at least two people should walk together."
Wu Chen nodded again, pulled the axe off the stump, and continued chopping wood.
Zheng Yi stood under the eaves watching the rain for a while, then suddenly remembered something.
"Where is the Bone Woman?"
“He went out early this morning. He said he was going to the pharmacy in the west of the city to get some herbs to brew for that girl’s wound.” Wu Chen didn’t even look up.
Zheng Yi hummed in agreement and turned to return to the main hall. (End of Chapter)