In a small courtyard in the side yard of Jinyan Tang, Physician Hu was cooking medicinal porridge. Chan Yi came in with swollen eyes from crying to take the medicine. Physician Hu said, “Alright, take it. Let the elder pass away with less pain.”
The disease is incurable.
When Duan Yelin stepped into the yard, Chan Yi rushed over to him: “Commander! Head of the Household he… he…”
“It’s too late.” Duan Yelin shook his head. Chan Yi understood that Xu Hang had already left, which meant it was a miss.
They entered the room and saw an old woman with half white hair lying on the bed. She was very haggard due to illness, and her mouth was covered with purple bruises. If her hands had not been shaking slightly uncontrollably, they would have thought she was gone already.
Chan Yi went to help her mother up and tried to feed her porridge, but she couldn’t get it in. The old woman kept mumbling something.
Duan Yelin walked forward, took the bowl, and approached the old woman. He heard her chanting, “Young… Master… Little… Young Master…”
He once heard Xu Hang say that this nanny had many children of her own, but in order to take care of Xu Hang, she put her own children aside and ignored them, so a lot of her love was given to Xu Hang.
Duan Yelin scooped up some porridge and said to the unconscious old lady, “Nanny, Xu Hang will be here soon. Can you have a sip of porridge?”
Unsure if the old lady had heard him, Duan Yelin attempted to feed her, but she still couldn’t swallow. It was as though she sensed he wasn’t Xu Hang and deliberately refused to drink.
“Take a sip, take a sip, and Xu Hang will come back, believe me.”
But it still didn’t work.
Chan Yi cried anxiously, “Mother, even if you are going to travel, you must eat well before you go too. Please eat something…”
Poor people are most afraid of these ghost stories. Duan Yelin wiped the corners of the old lady’s mouth with a handkerchief and said with some pity, “If Shaotang were here now, he would be sad. If he came back and knew that he couldn’t see you for the last time, he would also be very sad.”
Chan Yi’s tears were dripping.
But at this moment, the nanny suddenly reacted. She grabbed Duan Yelin’s sleeve, her eyes lit up a little, and she tried her best to speak in a whisper: “Shao… Shao… tang…”
Duan Yelin immediately understood what she wanted to say and patted her on the back to calm her down: “Yes, Shaotang is coming back, he is coming back!”
Seeing that her mother seemed to be regaining consciousness, Chan Yi scooped up some porridge and tried it again. This time, she didn’t spit out a single mouthful but swallowed it all.
Yet her hand remained tightly clasped around Duan Yelin, refusing to let go for a long while. After a long time, she took out a peace locket made of old silver from her arms. It was obviously for babies. It might be very old because the surface was blackened. She put it in Duan Yelin’s hand tremblingly.
The front of the peace locket has “peace and good fortune” written on it, and the back has only the word “Hang” engraved on it. It must have been worn by Xu Hang when he was a child.
Perhaps he mistook Duan Yelin for Xu Hang. The old lady looked at him peacefully for a while, then closed her eyes and died.
Amid Chan Yi’s crying, Duan Yelin laid the body flat, covered her with a white cloth, looked at her for a while, and slowly walked out of the yard.
Qiao Song was standing outside the yard, and Duan Yelin immediately told him, “Prepare for the funeral.”
“Don’t we need to send someone to notify Young Master Xu immediately?”
“I know his temper. He won’t give up halfway through something important. Rather than letting him endure it in sadness, it’s better to wait until he comes back and tell him.”
Qiao Song understood: “Alright.”
Duan Yelin instructed carefully, “Go buy some white lanterns, gauze curtains, white candles… and some black engagement slips. Oh, and some black paper. Have someone cut out the surname and stick it on the lanterns to hang.”
“Yes, but what is Chan Yi’s mother’s last name?”
Duan Yelin thought for a moment and said, “Generally, if the funeral is held at the host’s house, we should put the host’s surname on it. Shaotang should agree with this, so let’s just put the word ‘Xu’ on it…”
At this point, Duan Yelin suddenly got stuck.
Last name? First name?
It was as if two electric currents collided in his brain and sparks flew. Duan Yelin realized that he seemed to have forgotten something.
Just now when he was taking care of the nanny, the nanny did not respond to him when he said “Xu Hang”, but when he called “Shaotang”, the nanny suddenly seemed to recognize him. Isn’t this very strange?
Was the nanny sick and confused, or was Duan Yelin overthinking?
The nanny knew ‘Shaotang’, but not ‘Xu Hang’?
He immediately took the peace locket out of his pocket and looked at it again and again. The word “Hang” also looked very strange.
Would anyone carve only the name but not the surname when carving a peace locket? This behavior is too abnormal.
He suddenly remembered what Qiao Daosang had told him before. In Shucheng, he did not find anyone with the surname Xu.
At that time, he suspected that Xu Hang might have used someone else’s identity or that he was not from Shucheng at all but just made it up because he didn’t want others to know his past.
Now that he thinks about it, isn’t there a simpler explanation—his last name is not ‘Xu’?
Duan Yelin suddenly grabbed Qiao Song, who was about to go buy funeral materials, and said, “Where is the person sent by Fourth Uncle Qiao?!”
Qiao Song was stunned by him for a while before he gradually reacted.
That person was a storyteller whose ancestral home was in Shucheng. His name was Jiang Sheng, and he was forty years old. Except for fleeing Shucheng during the war, he stayed in Shucheng all the time. Because he was popular, had a good memory, and was well-informed, some people regarded him as Bai Xiaosheng[mfn]Bai Xiaosheng, or a know-it-all, is someone who knows things that others don’t know, or other people’s secrets.[/mfn].
Jiang Sheng didn’t know what the commander wanted him to do, but he just thought that Old Master Qiao gave him a large sum of money and asked him to tell him everything he knew and get answers to all his questions and not to take anything else to heart.
So he saluted Duan Yelin and said, “Greetings, Commander.”
Duan Yelin got straight to the point: “What news did Fourth Uncle Qiao ask you to bring me?”
“Boss Qiao didn’t ask me to bring you any news. He just said there are some past events in Shucheng. You can ask me anything you want to know.”
Duan Yelin thought for a moment, asked him to sit down, and then slowly described, “Were there any wealthy and noble families in your Shucheng more than 20 years ago?”
Jiang Sheng waved his fan and said, “There were too many. Which one does the Commander want to know?”
This puzzled Duan Yelin. He thought for a while and said, “I don’t know either… oh, he has a mistress who is from Hezhou. I don’t know much else.”
Only at this moment did he realize that his understanding of Xu Hang’s past was so superficial.
Hearing this, Jiang Sheng clapped his fan in his hands and blinked: “Hezhou people… um… more than 20 years ago, there was a young lady from Hezhou who married into Shucheng. I was young at that time, and I still remember the scene of the ten-mile river of lights! I just don’t know if it is what the Commander wants to ask about or not?”
“Tell me in detail, what’s the situation of that family!” Duan Yelin spoke and breathed faster.
Jiang Sheng recalled and spoke slowly, “That Young Lady’s surname is Jin, her name is Jin Yanchai…”
Jin Yanchai. Jinyan Tang!
Crack, crack! Duan Yelin crushed a teacup, startling Jiang Sheng. Although his face was stiff, he said, “Go on.”
“Yes,” Jiang Sheng tried to speak faster, “More than 20 years ago, that family was the richest in Shucheng. They were kind-hearted and well-known to everyone in the surrounding area. This family has been practicing medicine for generations and opened the largest medical hall, called ‘Yanwu Medical Hall. The owner of the medical hall’s surname is Hang, Hang Heming. They were very famous for a while, and the couple was also a legend.”
Bang!
It was like a landmine entangled in a branch, and the branch entangled in the heart, exploding in the place closest to the beating pulse! Duan Yelin felt like there was a drum beating in his ears, and when he listened carefully, he realized that it was his own heartbeat.
Yanwu, when Yanwu characters were put together, they form the Chinese character Xu. It turns out that his last name is not Xu, nor is he called Xu Shaotang, but should be called “Hang Shaotang”.
He had never expected that the person he had loved for four years even hid his real name. The past that he had been unwilling to touch before was actually this fact that was like an ulcer.
“…And then?”
“And then? There was no more.” Jiang Sheng closed his fan and lamented what happened to Shucheng. “The fire in Shucheng burned everything down. Their entire family died. Not a single one was left.”
“All… dead?”
“Yes, it’s a pity that they only have one son left in the family, and he also couldn’t escape. Ai… God is blind, what can we do? I have also met that Little Young Master once, and I can tell at first glance that he is smart and clever. His eyes are very much like his mother’s, clear and bright. How pitiful!”
Jiang Sheng, who was lamenting incessantly, didn’t notice at all that Duan Yelin’s hands were hanging there, his eyes were also drooping, and a gray and dull color gradually appeared on his face.
