If You Don't Know Where He Is, Summon Him

The morning after I sold the lightning-struck jujube wood, I went to my mother’s quarters.

“Mother, your son Mujin is here.”
“Come in.”

Inside, Mother was tending her orchids, as always. Watching those careful hands wipe the leaves clean made me glad, and set me at ease at the same time. She put the cloth down.

“You don’t look well. Elder Kang tells me you have been selling lightning-struck jujube wood down at the market street — is that what this is about?”
“No. My dreams were troubled last night, that is all.”

I had hidden it as well as I knew how. How had she seen through me? The dream of my past life must have unsettled me enough to show on my face without my knowing. I rather prided myself on hiding what I felt, and she had caught it at a glance.

Mother gestured toward the orchids.

“Trade is not so easy as it looks. It is like this orchid. However much care you pour into it, it will not flower until its proper time comes.”

She came closer and took my hand.

“Which is to say, it will not be hurried. Everything has its season and its hour. There is no need to lose heart over a bit of lightning-struck jujube wood that will not sell. You are doing well.”

At her words, at the smile she comforted me with, my chest swelled and my nose stung. I could feel how fine the hand holding mine was.

That’s right. Her hands were lovely.

Her hands were not the only fine thing about her; her skin was the same. Hard to believe she was past forty. Sometimes, when we went out together, people took her for my older sister.

And in my past life this woman had never refused even the lowliest work, if it earned so much as a single copper. Even at the moment I left for Blood Sand Plain, she worried for me more than for herself. Perhaps it was last night’s dream of that life, but the memory of that day came back all the more vividly.

This time I will never let it come to that.

Never again will I let Mother and our family suffer. I will see to it, without fail. I swore it to myself.

First, though, I had to tell her about the lightning-struck jujube wood.

“Let your mother ask around once for a place that deals in lightning-struck jujube…”
“Mother.”

I called to Mother before she could go on comforting me.

“This is what the lightning-struck jujube wood fetched.”

I set the pouch down in front of her.

— Clink.

The sound of metal knocking against metal rang through the room. Mother’s eyes went wide. The size of the pouch and the sound alone must have told her it was a considerable sum.

“You have sold it all already? Well done. Your mother worried for nothing. And by the look of it you were paid properly. What did you sell it for?”
“I was paid generously. Please put it toward the household.”
“Thank you.”

Smiling, Mother looked inside the pouch.

“Hah—!”

And then she sucked in a startled breath. The amount must have been more than she expected. It came to a full fifty taels of gold, after all.

Once she had collected herself, Mother asked again.

“What money is this?”
“It is as I said. The money I made selling the lightning-struck jujube wood. Fifty taels of gold.”
“Fifty taels of gold… You mean to say there is someone who buys lightning-struck jujube wood with gold?”
“Yes.”
“But how on earth…”

Mother looked back and forth between the gold and me, disbelief written all over her face, and a smile spread across my lips. It had been a very long time since I last saw her so flustered. I answered her, still smiling.

“It was as you told me, Mother. The season and the hour happened to be right, and I was lucky. As it turned out, there was someone in urgent need of it, so I got a good price.”
“…So my son has a head for trade as well. Still, I cannot take this. It is the first money you have ever earned, so keep it yourself. This time I will accept only the thought.”
“It is all right. I have set aside what I need. In truth, the lightning-struck jujube wood sold for a hundred taels of gold.”
“A hundred taels of gold!”

Mother covered her mouth with her hand. She looked thoroughly shocked. I rarely saw her like that, and I could not help laughing.

“So there is no need to worry about me. Please put it toward the household.”
“Very well. If that is your heart, I will make good use of it. Your father will be delighted when he returns.”

After talking with Mother a while longer, I gathered up my spear and several sheets of paper and went out to the courtyard. Elder Kang was there in the middle of spinning a tale for the servants, spraying spit as he went.

“Do you know what the young master said to the man who stepped down from that yellow carriage? ‘Two hundred taels of gold,’ he said. And what does the carriage’s owner do but lay the gold out without a word of complaint.”
“Truly? Lightning-struck jujube wood? Those chunks of wood are worth that much?”
“Of course they aren’t.”
“Then how did he get gold for them?”
“That is the young master’s head for business, that is. You have all heard the talk going round the market street, haven’t you? Every last one of them treating the young master like a madman — low-born whelps, the lot of them. Had they fallen into my hands I would have sewn their mouths shut. Anyhow, what I am telling you is that the young master had it all planned out.”

Elder Kang was holding forth about yesterday. But Elder Kang… you weren’t beside me when I sold the lightning-struck jujube wood yesterday, were you? Anyone listening would think he had been standing right there.

I walked up to him while he was still mid-oration.

“Elder Kang.”
“Good morning, young master. Are you going out?”
“Mm. I’ll be back after a short walk.”
“Take care on your way.”

I nodded and passed them by. Perhaps because they had heard I earned two hundred taels of gold, every one of them watched me go with envy in their eyes. Behind my back I heard him start in on my exploits all over again, and I let out a small laugh.

Is he really that pleased?

Elder Kang had always been that way. However small the thing I managed, he was gladder of it than anyone. He probably thought of me as a son, or a grandson.

In my past life he had left the world far too soon. Losing someone I had given my heart to was more than I could bear in those days, and with my martial arts going nowhere on top of it, I think I buried myself in my room all the deeper.

I really was a fool.

I was young, and I had no sense. Times like that were exactly when I should have tried harder. I learned far too late that shutting myself away solved nothing. In this life I would make no such foolish choice.

I went out to the market street. I had one objective: to bring Doctor Yu here. He was the man who would take charge of one of the family’s sources of income.

The problem is that I have no idea where Doctor Yu is.

If my memory was right, he wandered the Central Plains. We had talked of many things together, so I remembered that much.

Doctor Yu and I met at Blood Sand Plain in my past life and grew close. I tore through that battlefield as though my life depended on it, and I lived with wounds. Torn open, run through, split apart. The enemy’s attacks left my whole body in tatters, and every time, he brought me back with uncanny medical skill.

Without him I probably would not have survived Blood Sand Plain. We spent so much time face to face that we talked a great deal about each other.

He had given his whole life to saving a daughter who suffered from the Soul-Returning Severed Meridians¹, but by the time he found the cure, she had already left the world. I still remember clearly what he added afterward.

Perhaps it is just as well. Had she known a cure existed and still could not be healed, it would only have hurt her the more.

The cure he had found, he said, turned on its timing. Once five years had passed since the symptoms of the Severed Meridians first showed, it had no effect.

He never stopped regretting it. If only he had found the cure a little sooner, he could have saved his daughter.

In this life, I can stop that regret.

Of course, it would not be free. He would have to build a source of income for our family, and keep my people alive. In short, if the Yang manor was to grow, I needed Doctor Yu.

So how do I find him?

Go out and track him down on my own two feet? No. That way I would only ever be chasing his tail. With luck I might run into him, but the odds were no better than finding a needle in a desert.

There was a way to cut out the time wasted searching and get word to him instead.

Let it be known that I have what Doctor Yu wants.

Then he would come to where I was of his own accord. I headed into the market street to put the plan into motion.

Far off, in front of an inn, men were loading cargo onto carriages and carts. I went up to one of them, a man whose face I knew.

“Escort Runner Shim.”
“Ah, young master Mujin.”

He was one of the escort runners who often worked with our Yang manor. Spotting me, Escort Runner Shim bowed from the waist.

“Heading out on an escort run?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Spread a rumor for me along the way.”
“What sort…?”
“That someone in Qingzhou has recently found a cure for the Soul-Returning Severed Meridians.”
“Wasn’t that an incurable disease? And who is it that found the cure?”
“Me.”
“I’m sorry?”

Escort Runner Shim stared at me, bewildered, his eyes wavering as if he could not believe it. But what could I do? He would not believe it even if I told him the truth. What mattered was driving it into people’s heads.

“Just take it as it is. And hang this at every inn.”

I drew a sheet of paper from my robes and handed it to him. The paper read: “Cure for the Soul-Returning Severed Meridians — Qingzhou, Shandong.”

“…Understood.”
“This is for your trouble.”

I pressed five taels of silver into his hand. At that, his sour expression brightened.

“Have no worries! I’ll have every place I go buzzing with talk of the young master!”

One by one I sought out every escort runner I knew and asked the same of them. Sooner or later the rumor would spread through the Central Plains. But I had no intention of squandering the time left until Doctor Yu came to find me.

Is there no way to keep up my training and make it easy for Doctor Yu to find me at the same time?

Then I thought suddenly of the lightning-struck jujube wood, and how well the sale had gone. I went back to the stall where I had sold it. There I got hold of a wooden board and pasted a sheet of paper across it.

Severed Meridians Treated

And then I took up my spear. From today, until Doctor Yu came to find me, I would swing it in this place.

I’ll be waiting.

Doctor Yu.