Chapter 2: Opening the Door

The sky was faintly bright, before the rooster's crow, Chen Pingan was already awake. The thin bedding couldn't retain warmth, and his time as a porcelain apprentice had instilled in him the habit of rising early and sleeping late. Chen Pingan opened the door and went into the small, soft-soiled courtyard. After taking a deep breath, he stretched and walked out of the yard, turning to see a slender figure, bent over, carrying a wooden bucket of water in both hands, using her shoulder to push open the gate of her own yard. It was Song Jixing's maid, likely just returning from fetching water from the iron-chained well in Apricot Blossom Lane.

Chen Pingan withdrew his gaze, walking through the streets and alleys, jogging towards the east side of the town. Mud Bottle Lane was on the west side, and the eastern gate had a person responsible for the town's merchant traffic and night patrols, as well as receiving and forwarding letters sent back from elsewhere. Chen Pingan's next task was to deliver those letters to the townspeople, with a reward of one copper coin per letter. This earning opportunity was hard-won. Chen Pingan had agreed to take over this business after the second day of the second lunar month, when the Dragon Raises Its Head.

As Song Jixing would say, he was born with a poor man's fate, even if good fortune entered his home, Chen Pingan couldn't hold onto it. Song Jixing often spoke in obscure terms, probably quoting from books, which Chen Pingan rarely understood. For example, a couple of days ago, he was muttering about the sharp spring chill freezing young men to death, which Chen Pingan didn't understand at all. As for the fact that after surviving the winter, it actually got colder for a while after spring arrived, the young man experienced it firsthand. Song Jixing said that it was called a "returning cold," as fierce as a "returning spear" on the battlefield, so many people would die at these "gates of hell."

The town had no surrounding walls. After all, there were few bandits, let alone petty thieves. So the "city gate" was just a row of old, crooked fences, barely providing a passable entrance for pedestrians and vehicles, and considered to be the face of the town.

As Chen Pingan jogged past Apricot Blossom Lane, he saw many women and children gathered by the iron-chained well, the well's windlass creaking constantly.

Rounding another street, Chen Pingan heard the familiar sound of reading aloud. There was a village school there, funded jointly by several wealthy families in the town. The teacher was from out of town. When Chen Pingan was young, he often hid outside the window, squatting and listening. Although the teacher was extremely strict when teaching, he didn't scold or stop children like Chen Pingan who "mooched reading and elementary education." Later, Chen Pingan went to a dragon kiln outside the town as an apprentice and never went to the school again.

Further ahead, Chen Pingan passed a stone memorial arch. Because the archway building had twelve stone pillars, the locals liked to call it the "Crab Archway." Song Jixing and Liu Yangxian had very different opinions about the archway's real name. Song Jixing confidently said that in an old book called "Local County Chronicles," it was called the "Grand Scholar Archway," an imperial archway bestowed by the emperor to commemorate the literary and martial achievements of a great official in history. Liu Yangxian, a country bumpkin like Chen Pingan, said that it was the "Crab Archway," and they had been calling it that for hundreds of years. There was no reason to call it some nonsensical "Grand Scholar Archway." Liu Yangxian even asked Song Jixing a question, "How big is a grand scholar's hat? Is it bigger than the mouth of the iron-chained well?" which made Song Jixing's face flush red.

At this time, Chen Pingan ran around the twelve-legged archway. Each side had four large characters, written in a strange and different style. They were "Duty-Bound," "Few Words Natural," "Seek Not Outward," and "Qi Pierces the Dipper." According to Song Jixing, except for certain four characters, the other three inscriptions had been painted over and tampered with. Chen Pingan was ignorant of these things and never pondered them deeply. Of course, even if the young man wanted to get to the bottom of it, it would be in vain. He didn't even know what kind of book the "Local County Chronicles" that Song Jixing often mentioned was.

Not far past the archway, he soon saw a lush old locust tree. Underneath the tree was a tree trunk, moved there by someone, roughly chopped, with two bluestone slabs placed under both ends, which was used as a simple bench. Every summer, the townspeople liked to cool off here. Wealthy families would even take out a basket of iced melons and fruits from the well, and the children, full and satisfied, would form groups and play under the shade of the tree.

Accustomed to going up mountains and down streams, Chen Pingan ran to the vicinity of the fence gate and stopped in front of the lonely yellow mud house, without being out of breath.

Not many outsiders came to the town. Logically speaking, now that the official kiln, this money-making tree, had fallen, there would be even fewer new faces. When Old Yao was alive, he once got drunk and told Chen Pingan and Liu Xianyang, his apprentices, that they were doing the only official kiln business in the world, making imperial porcelain for His Majesty the Emperor and the Empress. Even if other commoners were rich or high-ranking officials, if they dared to touch it, they would be beheaded. That day, Old Yao was particularly spirited.

Today, Chen Pingan looked outside the fence and found many people waiting for the city gate to open, no less than seven or eight, of all ages and genders.

Moreover, they were all strangers. The townspeople rarely used the east gate for their comings and goings, whether to fire porcelain or work in the fields. The reason was simple: the road extending from the east gate of the town had no dragon kilns or fields.

At this moment, Chen Pingan and the outsiders looked at each other through a wooden fence.

At that moment, the boy wearing self-made straw sandals was simply envious of the thick clothes they wore, which must be very warm and cold-resistant.

The people outside the door were clearly divided into several groups, not one group. But they all looked at the thin boy inside the door, mostly with indifferent expressions. Occasionally, one or two of them looked past the boy's figure, towards the farther reaches of the town.

Chen Pingan was a little strange. Did these people not know that the imperial court had banned all dragon kilns? Or were they taking advantage of the situation because they knew the truth?

A young man wearing a strange tall hat, tall and slender, with a green jade pendant hanging from his waist, seemed impatient. He stepped out of the crowd alone and wanted to push open the unlocked fence gate. But just as his finger was about to touch the wooden door, he suddenly stopped, slowly retracted his hand, put his hands behind his back, and smiled at the straw-sandaled boy inside the door, without saying a word, just smiling.

Chen Pingan's peripheral vision inadvertently noticed that the people behind the young man seemed to have different emotions: some were disappointed, some were amused, some frowned, and some were mocking.

At this moment, a middle-aged man with messy hair suddenly opened the door and cursed at Chen Pingan: "Little bastard, are your eyes glued to money? Coming so early to demand my life, are you rushing to be reborn to see your dead parents?!"

Chen Pingan rolled his eyes. The boy didn't care about these mean words. Firstly, living in this rural place with only a few books, if he got angry at every scolding, he might as well jump into a well to save himself the trouble. Secondly, this middle-aged bachelor gatekeeper was often ridiculed and teased by the townspeople, especially by those bold and unruly women, who did more than just verbally abuse him. Plus, this person also liked to brag to children wearing open-crotch pants, such as saying, "Your father had a fight at the city gate, and five or six strong men were beaten to the ground, with blood everywhere! The entire two-zhang-wide road in front of the city gate was as muddy as a rainy day!"

He said impatiently to Chen Pingan: "We'll talk about your little chores later."

No one in the town took this guy seriously.

But the man controlled the power of life and death for the outsiders entering the town.

He walked towards the wooden fence gate while reaching into his crotch.

This man, with his back to Chen Pingan, opened the door and occasionally took a small embroidered pouch from people, put it into his sleeve, and then let them pass.

Chen Pingan gave way early on. The eight people, roughly divided into five groups, walked towards the town. Besides the young man with the tall hat and green jade pendant, there were also two children, seven or eight years old, who walked past one after another. The boy wore a festive red robe, and the girl was pink and tender, like a fine piece of porcelain.

The boy was more than half a head shorter than Chen Pingan. When the child brushed past him, he opened his mouth. Although he didn't make a sound, his mouth clearly formed two words, full of provocation.

The middle-aged woman holding the boy's hand coughed lightly, and the child restrained himself slightly.

The little girl behind the woman and the boy was held by a burly old man with snow-white hair. She turned to Chen Pingan and said a lot of things, not forgetting to point at the boy of the same age in front of her.

Chen Pingan couldn't understand what the girl was saying at all, but he could guess that she was tattling.

The burly old man glanced sideways at the straw-sandaled boy.

Just from being glanced at intentionally or unintentionally, Chen Pingan instinctively took a step back.

Like a mouse seeing a cat.

Seeing this scene, the little girl, who had been chirping like a little canary, immediately lost interest in fanning the flames and turned her head, no longer looking at Chen Pingan, as if another glance would stain her eyes.

The young Chen Pingan had indeed never seen the world, but that didn't mean he couldn't read faces.

After these people went away, the gatekeeper asked with a smile: "Do you want to know what they said?"

Chen Pingan nodded: "Yes, I do."

The middle-aged bachelor was amused and said with a smile: "They praised you for being good-looking, all good words."

Chen Pingan twitched the corner of his mouth, thinking, "Do you think I'm stupid?"

The man saw through the boy's thoughts and smiled even more happily, "If you weren't stupid, would I let you deliver letters?"

Chen Pingan didn't dare to retort, fearing that he would annoy the guy and the copper coins he was about to get would fly away.

The man turned his head, looked at those people, and stroked his unshaven chin, muttering in a low voice: "That woman just now, her legs could crush a person to death."

Chen Pingan hesitated and asked curiously: "Did that lady practice martial arts?"

The man was stunned, looked down at the boy, and said seriously: "You kid, you're really stupid."

The boy was bewildered.

He told Chen Pingan to wait and strode towards the house. When he came back, he had a stack of envelopes in his hand, neither thick nor thin, about ten or so. The man handed them to Chen Pingan and asked: "A fool has a fool's luck, and a good person has a good reward. Do you believe it?"

Chen Pingan took the letters with one hand and spread out his palm with the other, blinking his eyes, "It was agreed that it was one copper coin per letter."

The man became angry and slapped the five copper coins he had prepared in advance into the boy's palm, then waved his hand and said boldly: "I'll owe you the remaining five coins for now!"