Half a Cup of Wine - Chapter 5
Part Five: Winter Flower
After the plum rains, a severe drought followed.
Even the conmen stopped spouting nonsense about this year being an auspicious one. The faces of the people of Chang'an were sun-baked pale, deathly pale.
The next news I heard about Mrs. Fang and her daughters was that she had remarried.
She married a wealthy merchant over sixty years old as his concubine. She would be moving to Jiangzhou with him after the new year. Her new family wouldn't accept her daughters, so she left them behind in Chang'an.
The seventh day of the eighth lunar month,1 an auspicious day, suitable for marriage.
Although she was only a concubine, her wedding procession still stretched for half a li,2 far more extravagant than an ordinary family’s, with gongs and drums creating a lively atmosphere. Yet there were few onlookers. The streets were deserted. Neighbors peered from behind their windows, watching coldly as the bright red bridal palanquin swayed past.
I remembered the day Butcher Fang was killed. I had gone to the West Market to buy stone. On my way back, I saw him chopping meat at his stall. Mrs. Fang stood a short distance behind him, holding their youngest daughter, dressed in faded hemp clothes, her gaze fixed on him, gentle and calm.
She wore simple clothes and no ornaments that day, her smile as radiant as a flower.
I didn’t see Butcher Fang’s eldest daughter that day. I heard that she had left Chang'an with her younger sister the day before, their destination unknown.
Two months later, I saw her again in the bustling marketplace.
She had become a beggar, her clothes ragged, her face filthy. Many people pointed and laughed, coming and going, no one stopping for even a moment. She shivered in the cold wind and under the judging gazes, yet her back remained ramrod straight.
She was selling herself to bury her sister.
That’s when I learned her name. Hanhua. Fang Hanhua.
A beautiful name. It reminded me of a red plum blossom standing proudly in the falling snow.
The neighbors who, just two months prior, had voiced their indignation at Mrs. Fang’s remarriage now walked past Hanhua indifferently, their eyes averted. After months of rain followed by months of drought, they had their own troubles to worry about. Hanhua called out to a woman who had once been friendly with their family, but the woman pretended not to hear and hurried away.
I saw my own reflection in the water jar as I scooped water, my face numb and indifferent.
Just like theirs.
Fang Hanhua stood in the marketplace for three whole days.
When I approached, there was no one in front of her. People had long lost interest.
"Miss Yan, please take me as your disciple."
She knelt on the ground, her back straight.
"I don’t take disciples," I said.
Hanhua's eyes were like stagnant water, undisturbed. She stood up, not bothering to brush the dust off her knees. Her straight back was as stiff as a late autumn wheat stalk, ready to break at the slightest touch. I remembered her bright eyes, like a deer’s, when she asked me whether her father was alive or dead not long ago, and how the light had slowly faded from them in my silence.
I handed her a banknote for one thousand taels,3 enough for a lifetime of comfort.
She refused to take it.
Hanhua knelt in the dirty snow, looked up at me, her eyes bloodshot, like a wounded, trapped animal. "Please take me to see Xue Wuyi."
Her eyes were dark, like polished black jade.
I didn’t know how she found out how her father died, how she knew his true identity, how she knew I was acquainted with Xue Wuyi, or how she knew Xue Wuyi had a grudge against Huai Wuya.
I looked into her eyes. "The person who killed your father was Shi Qiufeng."
"I know," she said. "Shi Qiufeng only killed my father. The one who caused his death was that beast, Huai Wuya."
I didn't know the story between Butcher Fang and Huai Wuya. That was another tale of grievances and revenge.
Huai Wuya rose from humble beginnings. He didn’t have the foundation of a martial arts family. He started from nothing and climbed high. He stopped at nothing to reach the pinnacle of the Jianghu, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. One could tell stories of those he wronged for ten days and nights and still not finish.
Fang Hanhua buried her younger sister herself. Coincidentally, she buried her outside the city, across the Wei River, directly opposite Butcher Fang’s unmarked grave.
She didn’t ask me to carve a tombstone. Looking at the freshly mounded earth, her smile was clear and bright, just like before.
“Go to heaven like this, without a name, pure and clean,”
She said.
I took her to buy clothes. She only chose a white garment.
"Don’t you want a red one?" I asked. I remembered she used to wear red.
Fang Hanhua smiled. "Red is too bright."
As we passed the cosmetics shop, she stopped and stood in front of the stall for a long time, finally choosing a box of the brightest red, "Crimson Spring." She applied the lip rouge, the color as vivid as blood against her pale face, like a red plum blossom blooming in the snow.
She never used to wear makeup, because Mrs. Fang had told her, a good girl doesn’t need it.
The middle-aged woman selling cosmetics, her face still heavily made-up, took the broken silver I offered and said with a smile, “This place really has good feng shui.4 My earnings have multiplied since I moved here. I don't understand how the previous shop owner couldn’t make it work. Such a prime location.”
Fang Hanhua smiled as well. "It’s because you’re a good businesswoman, Auntie.”
Her smile was radiant.
I didn't take Fang Hanhua to see Xue Wuyi. I entrusted her to Dr. Shen. He happened to be looking for a disciple.
Hanhua didn't resist. She left silently.
I watched her go, my gaze fixed on her for some reason. I didn't know what she would be like the next time I saw her, or if there would even be a next time.
As I turned to leave, I realized it had started to snow.
In an instant, the world was covered in a layer of frost.
It snowed heavily for over a month after that day.
Countless people in the south froze or starved to death. Refugees flooded into Chang'an. Frozen corpses littered the roadsides. Every household shut their doors and windows. Wealthy families, seeing that the meager congee they offered wasn't enough to feed the refugees, and overwhelmed by the sheer number of people begging for food, simply closed their gates and stopped offering anything at all.
Business was slow.
Many people died, but none needed tombstones.
Every day, people froze and starved to death in the city. Refugees who caused trouble were beheaded and their bodies displayed as a warning. The cracks between the bluestone tiles in the execution grounds were filled with blood, not yet congealed, only to be soaked again with fresh blood. The headless corpses were thrown into desolate graveyards to become food for wild dogs. The bodies of refugees who froze or starved to death were piled together by officials and buried haphazardly in mass graves, indistinguishable from one another.
Every family kept their doors tightly shut. Even if someone died in their household, they didn’t dare venture outside.
No one sought my services. Xue Wuyi, however, was busier than ever. The number of people wanting to hire assassins had suddenly increased tenfold. In the chaotic city of Chang'an, it was easy to kill discreetly, or rather, no one cared if a person or two died. The assassins of Chang'an couldn’t keep up with the demand. The leaders of the assassin guilds were counting their money until their hands cramped. Even a lone assassin like Xue Wuyi had constant work.
The scholars wrote: Chaotic times have arrived.
The knights-errant drew their swords: The Jianghu is in chaos.
The doctors sighed: What a tragedy.
The commoners panicked: Our peaceful days are over.
The wanderers scoffed: There's no difference between being alive and dead.
The assassin leaders, their pockets overflowing, laughed: This chaos is perfect.
The pleasure districts still echoed with music every night, gambling dens and teahouses remained crowded, and the courtyards of wealthy families were still filled with the fragrance of beautiful women. The wealthy and powerful avoided the refugees like the plague, treating them like vermin. Aside from bringing a few extra guards when they went out and occasionally visiting temples to burn incense and pray, their lives were unchanged, their privileged status unaffected. The commoners, their faces pale, hid behind their doors and windows, watching the world turn upside down, watching the cries and deaths of others, silent.
These were chaotic times, and yet they weren't.
The world had always been like this.
Xue Wuyi didn't have time to come to my place for plum wine anymore. He only visited once, during a dusk bathed in the crimson glow of the setting sun. He was too busy to change his clothes. He was still covered in someone else's blood, the thick, metallic scent filling the room.
Xue Wuyi didn't drink plum wine. He only asked for a cup of cold tea.
“I’ve killed too many people. The taste of blood lingers in my mouth,” he said.
His hand, holding the saber, was still steady, but ripples disturbed the surface of the tea in his cup.
I watched the tea leaves bobbing in the white porcelain cup and asked, “After this chaos subsides, many assassins will leave the killing life, right?”
Most people in the assassination business were forced into it. Moreover, most assassins lived a precarious existence, like mayflies. This period of chaos was enough for even third-rate assassins to earn enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
“Leave?” Xue Wuyi scoffed. “Yan Jiu, once you enter the killing life, there’s no turning back. With so many lives on their hands, without the protection of the assassination guilds, leaving is a death sentence. Tell me, who would dare?”
I looked at the saber in his lap. “What about you?”
I knew he wasn't afraid of these things. Lone assassins, though part of the assassination world, existed outside its structures, the key being the word "lone." Xue Wuyi, the "Blood Saber," the lone assassin whose name sent chills down the spines of many in the Jianghu, wasn't afraid of such things.
Xue Wuyi seemed to pause, then looked out the window at the fiery sunset. After a while, he smiled faintly, with a hint of self-mockery. “Yan Jiu, I can no longer leave this life of blood and blades. If I leave the killing life, stop killing, I don't know what I would become. Perhaps… a madman?”
He chuckled. “Who knows.”
“But Yan Jiu,” Xue Wuyi said, “I can’t stop. I don't know why I’m killing anymore, but I know I can’t stop, or I’m finished.”
The ripples in his teacup never settled.
An assassin needed a calm heart and a steady hand to kill with one blow and retreat without a trace. The ripples in the tea meant Xue Wuyi’s heart was no longer calm. His hand wouldn’t remain steady for much longer. He couldn’t have not noticed this. He should leave the killing life immediately, or he would die sooner or later.
Yet Xue Wuyi said he couldn't stop killing.
He was seeking death.
Xue Wuyi drank tea for half an hour that day, then hurriedly left.
I sat by the window for a long time, closed my eyes, and thought of many people and many faces. Xue Wuyi’s unrestrained laughter in his youth, Su Qiuchi’s perpetually gentle smile, Shi Qiufeng’s bright and lonely eyes, Huai Yu’s radiant smile when she looked at the sky, Fang Hanhua’s bright, deer-like eyes, Butcher Fang’s honest and simple face, Mrs. Fang’s peaceful and happy smile.
And that sunset, ablaze with color, when Xue Wuyi finally gained recognition from the leader of a small sect. He was so excited that he ran into the wilderness, lay down on the ground, spread his arms, and shouted at the sky:
"I shall live for another five hundred years—!"
The barking of a dog in the alley startled me awake.
I opened my eyes. Heavy snow was falling outside.
1 八月初七 (bā yuè chū qī): The seventh day of the eighth lunar month. The date's significance can vary depending on specific cultural or regional traditions.
2 Li (里): A traditional Chinese unit of distance, approximately half a kilometer or a third of a mile. Half a li of wedding decorations would be a significant display of wealth and celebration.
3 Tael (两): A traditional Chinese unit of weight and currency, often used for silver.
4 Feng shui (风水): Literally "wind-water," refers to the Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing individuals with their environment. It involves arranging objects and spaces in specific ways to attract positive energy and good fortune. Often considered when choosing locations for businesses or homes.
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