The young girl who grew up in Mud Bottle Alley now wore a look of utter confusion, appearing delicate, timid, and pitiful.

The refined scholar faintly revealed a trace of anger as he slowly turned his head to look over.

His gaze was cold and indifferent.

The girl still looked dazed and muddled.

Innocent and pure.

The middle-aged scholar stood up, graceful and elegant, looked at the girl, and sneered, “Wretched spawn!”

The girl slowly withdrew the innocent look from her face, her eyes gradually turning cold, a mocking smile appearing at the corner of her lips.

She seemed to be saying, what can you do to me?

She stared straight back at the scholar.

Inside and outside the small courtyard, it was as if two giant serpents were locked in a standoff.

Between them, they regarded each other as mortal enemies.

In the distance, Jason Smith shouted loudly, “Evan, come home!”

The girl immediately rose up on her tiptoes and replied obediently, “Yes, young master.”

She pushed open the wooden gate, ran past the teacher, and after a few steps, she didn’t forget to turn around, give a deep curtsey to his back, and said in a gentle, sweet voice, “Sir, Evan will be leaving now.”

After a long while, the scholar sighed.

The spring breeze was warm, bamboo leaves swayed, sounding like the turning of pages.

————

A young Daoist wearing a lotus crown was packing up his stall, sighing. When familiar townsfolk asked him why, he just shook his head and didn’t answer.

The last newlywed woman who had once come here for a fortune reading passed by. Seeing the young Daoist acting so strangely, she shyly stopped, her voice soft and sweet as she asked her question, but her expressive, watery eyes lingered intently on the young Daoist’s handsome face.

The young Daoist glanced at the woman without betraying any emotion, his gaze dropping slightly—to a rather full and curvy scene—then he swallowed and uttered a cryptic fortune, “Today I drew a lot for myself. It was a bad one—great misfortune.”

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Volume One: The Caged Sparrow

Chapter Seven: A Bowl of Water

There was a well in Apricot Blossom Alley called the Iron Lock Well. A thick iron chain, as thick as a strong young man’s arm, hung year after year from the well’s mouth. When this well and its iron lock first appeared, and who did such a strange and pointless thing, was long forgotten. Even the oldest elders in town couldn’t say for sure.

It was rumored that once, a curious soul in town tried to test how long the iron chain was. Ignoring the elders’ warnings about the old rule—“For every foot of iron chain pulled from the well, your life shortens by a year”—he didn’t care at all. After pulling with all his might for the time it takes an incense stick to burn, he dragged out a huge pile of iron chain, still with no end in sight. Exhausted, he left the heap of chain coiled by the well’s winch, saying he’d come back tomorrow—he simply didn’t believe in such superstitions. But after returning home, he bled from all seven orifices and died suddenly in bed, eyes wide open. No matter how his family tried, they couldn’t close his eyes. In the end, an old man whose family had lived by the well for generations told them to carry the corpse to the well. They watched as the old man put the iron chain back into the well, and when the entire chain had sunk straight down into the deep water, the corpse’s eyes finally closed.

An old man and a child slowly walked toward the Iron Lock Well. The little one, still with two trails of snot under his nose, could tell the story clearly and methodically, nothing like a country child who’d only been in school for half a year. At this moment, the child tilted his head up, big eyes like two black grapes, sniffed, and the two little snot snakes shrank back. The child looked at the storyteller holding a big white bowl and pouted, saying, “I’ve finished my story. Now shouldn’t you show me what’s in your bowl?”

The old man chuckled, “Don’t be impatient, don’t be impatient. Let’s sit by the well first, then I’ll let you have a good look.”

The child “kindly” reminded, “No going back on your word! Otherwise, you’ll die a terrible death—fall right into the Iron Lock Well as soon as you get there, and I won’t fish your body out. Or maybe a bolt of lightning will strike you into a lump of charcoal, and then I’ll take a stone and smash you to pieces bit by bit…”

Listening to the child rattle off a long string of vicious curses without repeating himself, the old man felt a headache coming on and quickly said, “Of course I’ll show you. By the way, who taught you to say things like that?”

The child replied firmly, “My mom, of course!”

The old man sighed, “No wonder this place produces such remarkable people.”

The child suddenly stopped, frowned, and said, “Are you insulting me? I know some people like to say good things in a bad way, like Jason Smith!”

The old man hurriedly denied it, then changed the subject, asking, “Do strange things often happen in this town?”

The child nodded.

The old man asked, “Tell me about it.”

The child pointed at the old man and said seriously, “For example, you carry a big white bowl but won’t let anyone put coins in it. When you haven’t finished your story, my mom says you’re not bad at telling it, but it’s all foggy and confusing—obviously you’re used to tricking people. That’s why she told me to bring you a few coins, but you just won’t take them. So what’s really in your bowl?”

The old man didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.