Jun Bujian was a thief, but a cultured thief. When he was born, his parents often overheard drunken scholars …
Jun Bujian was a thief, but a cultured thief.
When he was born, his parents often overheard drunken scholars reciting lines like "Have you not seen the Yellow River's waters descending from the heavens?" Thinking it sounded refined, they named him Jun Bujian ("Have You Not Seen"). Later, he looked up the poem himself and fell in love with one particular phrase: "Heaven bequeaths me talents." If wealth is heaven-sent, he reasoned, then taking a little isn't really stealing, is it?
Now, in Weiyang City, Jun Bujian has his eyes on a young nobleman: Wen Wuhen. The kind who seems shrewd but is actually the easiest to rob, and whose coin, in terms of steamed buns, could feed hundreds.
When they meet again seven days later, Wen Wuhen is half-dead from hunger. Jun Bujian can't fathom why the boy refuses to return home, even when starving. Pity that the money he'd lifted from him is long gone, spent on others. All he has left is a single moldy bun.
Eventually, he learns the truth: Wen Wuhen hates his family. The "Wen" ("Warm") Manor is anything but. So Jun Bujian makes a promise: "Next birthday, I'll treat you to fresh white-flour buns." It's the first warmth Wen Wuhen has ever known.
Today is Wen Wuhen's birthday, and Jun Bujian leaves early. Meanwhile, Wen Wuhen, knowing his friend loves magic tricks, steals a manual on Five Ghosts Command from his family vault, planning to surprise him. But in Jun Bujian's dingy hideout, he finds something else: his own stolen identity plaque.
So he was the culprit all along, Jun Bujian! Betrayed, Wen Wuhen vows to kill him. Because he'd trusted him. Yet Jun Bujian never returns.
Wen Wuhen went back to the Wen family. After four of its six heirs perished under mysterious circumstances, he became its head. Meanwhile, Jianghu buzzed about a new Master Thief who calls himself "Heaven's Bequeathed Talent." Every year, on Wen Wuhen's birthday, the thief appears, steals his favorite gift in plain sight, and then gives it back.