"What should I bring if I'm heading to the jianghu?" Eight-year-old Xiao Shi asked the martial arts master hi…
"What should I bring if I'm heading to the jianghu?"
Eight-year-old Xiao Shi asked the martial arts master his father had hired, legs locked in a horse stance.
The old man, sitting on top of a rockery in their courtyard, snorted and tossed a pebble at his knee.
"What should you bring? Your father's curses."
Back then, Xiao Shi was a walking disaster—climbing rooftops, running off from home, brawling other kids with wooden swords. If there was a way to infuriate his father, he'd find it and do it twice. Deputy General Xiao, already burdened with court affairs by day, would wake in the middle of the night muttering, "That damn brat," before tossing and turning again. The little house on the backside of the Xiao estate became Xiao Shi's regular haunt. How often he stayed depended on how many times he'd driven his father out of bed cursing.
Whenever the servants heard shouts like "Help! Murder's a crime!" Echoing from that room, they'd sigh and mutter, "Young Master's upset the lord again."
Lately, the deputy commander had added two more locks to that door.
This was their worst fight yet.
"If you dare let me out, I swear I'll leave this wretched place in a heartbeat! I'm going to roam the jianghu!"
"As for that Miss Shen, even if you beat me to death, I'm not marrying her!"
After that "wretched place" rant, one more lock was added the next morning. By midday, after the "beat me to death" declaration, Deputy General Xiao gave the door a good kicking:
"No sense of right or wrong!"
But Xiao Shi didn't think he lacked a sense of right and wrong. He already had it figured out. There were only two kinds of things in this world—what he liked and what he didn't. What he liked was right. What he didn't was wrong. And he had already decided to only do the right things.
He knew from long ago he wouldn't stay here forever. If he ever went out into the jianghu, he'd take just two things: a flute and a sword. The sword to spar. The flute to play after winning, and to tell stories. Stories he heard, stories he lived.
"And who would you tell them to?"
"Doesn't matter who hears them. What matters is the story itself! But I can tell you one thing—it sure won't be Miss Shen. I really don't like her."