In the temple, the young miss who'd come to worship first burned incense, then made her devotions, and after donating the customary incense money was invited by the old monk into the meditation room.
A small heap of silver still lay scattered on the table. Seeing it, the young miss was first taken aback, then narrowed her eyes in a smile, her bright eyes curving into crescents. "Master, were you just now counting your private savings?"
"The lady jests." The old monk sat down with a chuckle and, naturally enough, swept the silver to one side. "A renunciant has clothes for his body and food for his belly; beyond that he wants for nothing. What use have I for private savings? This silver was left just now by a certain layman. I'd not yet finished counting it and giving instructions for its use when I heard the commotion outside the temple and rushed off, leaving it unsorted — a sight to make the lady laugh."
The young miss exchanged a glance with her steward and covered her mouth, laughing. "Ah, that mighty, unbending, generous and upright errant. What, has he come to spend money on incense and buy himself some peace too?"
The old monk had by now grasped the rough shape of the whole affair, and shook his head. "The lady is mistaken. That layman is a truly free spirit; why would he need to buy peace? I've had the honor of overseeing this temple many years, and though I'd not claim a discerning eye, I've seen a great many people. One like that layman — truly the rarest I've met in all my life..."
He'd taken a very favorable impression of Sun Lang, and on hearing of the trouble outside had hurried out hoping to mediate... Nothing serious had come of it, but the young miss before him seemed innocent and pure while being, in truth, no easy character to deal with. So the old monk, minded to smooth things over, recounted the several times Sun Lang had given to charity, and concluded: "'To do good with intent, though it be good, earns no reward; to do evil without intent, though it be evil, earns no punishment' — the saying is one-sided, but that layman does good with truly no private motive. He seeks no gratitude, no repayment, no peace of mind, no karmic reward... Such freedom — even this old monk envies it greatly."
He murmured a few Amitābhas and praised Sun Lang at length, trying to turn around the young miss's poor impression of him... Seeing the surprise surface on the two ladies' faces, the painstaking master quietly let out a breath of relief — there, that ought to do it. The favor I went to such trouble to put in for the layman won't have been wasted.
The young miss discussed a few more points of Buddhist doctrine with the master, talked through some of her difficulties, and at last took her leave, well satisfied.
Once aboard the carriage, the girl settled onto the soft cushion, leaned her back against the cabin wall, and stretched, the very picture of languid charm. She looked at the steward, who had sat down carefully across from her, and smiled. "Sister — who'd have thought that bold errant who knows not the height of heaven would turn out to be such a free, easy, kind, and upright good man? Could this be what they call fate?"
The steward said hesitantly, "Young miss, this..."
"Mm-hm, just like in the stories..." The girl extended a slender finger and wagged it sweetly, her look dreamy — every inch a young girl picturing some beautiful romance. "The first meeting is a misunderstanding and a clash, both sides left with a bad impression. But later the girl finds the man isn't so bad after all — that he's actually a good person, that she misjudged him. Wracked with guilt, she wants to apologize but doesn't know how to begin, and can only watch him quietly from afar. Yet they keep finding chances to meet, and what started as drawn swords gradually softens, until at last... heehee, how embarrassing..."
Cupping her cheeks, the girl curled herself up and laughed with guileless innocence. "That kind of formula — storybooks have been spinning it for centuries. To think there are fools who'd actually fall for it..."
At her words, the steward's face changed sharply. "Young miss, you mean to say — this was all that man's deliberate arrangement?"
"Very possibly. Not that I'm flattering myself — it's only that everything was just too convenient, and that errant's behavior far too strange. It rather forces one to think the worst..." The girl smiled with pursed lips. "Let's start with that clash outside the temple. An ordinary man, seeing an entourage like ours, might curse 'rich dog' and think nothing of it. But when a rider snarled at him, he showed not the slightest fear and even threw the provocation back. Then you stepped down and spoke — first making our origins plain, then striking at him on moral grounds. Any errant with a shred of sense would have realized whose carriage he'd offended... and in that situation, instead of reading the room and backing off, he doubled down and mocked us harder. It defies all reason..."
The young miss sighed faintly. "The world isn't short of generous, upright, iron-spined men — that I've never doubted. But he's an errant, and an errant prizes knowing when to bend and when to stand. Any errant alive knows what comes of offending us. To court that just for a moment's satisfaction of the tongue makes no sense... In a spot like that, you even gave him a way out, and he wouldn't take the smallest face you offered. Doesn't that strike you as very odd? A green, hot-headed errant, fine — but he looked like an old hand. With that temperament all the time, how could he have lived this long...?"
The steward was a little puzzled. "You're saying he provoked us on purpose? But in that situation, a rider who lost his temper would have spilled his blood on the spot..."
"Maybe he has some skill, confident he can protect himself — and besides, we wouldn't want to offend the errants. At worst he'd take a beating. It's the bitter-flesh ploy. Look — if it went by that storybook formula, the guards wound him, and then, once I discover he's actually a good man, my guilt multiplies several times over, so I grow all the more mindful of him. He loses nothing at all." The young miss smiled brightly. "And he's a clever one too — he picked a spot right outside the temple, and left a good impression with the abbot beforehand. The moment the abbot learned of trouble outside, he was bound to come rushing to the rescue first thing... so the man wouldn't have suffered much."
"...The abbot's been bought off by him?"
"No — the master's a sage beyond the dust of the world; he'd never do such a thing... But the things in this world that can deceive your eyes are simply too many." The girl sighed, a thread of dimness and weariness surfacing in her lively eyes, as if she'd recalled some unpleasant memory. But she quickly gathered herself, blinked slyly, and laughed. "So at first I meant to let this sharp-tongued fellow suffer a little — but seeing the abbot about to arrive, I came out early and made everyone stop. His plan came to nothing; he must be quite put out. Still, my coming out early was a happy accident. The man surely racked his brains to show himself off in our little talk and leave me a deeper impression — and I didn't give him the satisfaction. Once I'd apologized, I never spared him another glance. Heeheehee..."
The steward had long since grown used to her young miss's quick, capricious wit, and only smiled wryly. She had a more pressing matter on her mind now... By the young miss's reckoning, that errant did seem up to no good. At the thought, a thread of killing intent surfaced in the steward's eyes. "Then what's his aim?"
"Two possibilities... Ah, it's a touch conceited, but I do have some confidence in myself. A lovely, frail, fabulously wealthy orphan girl like me — it'd be no wonder someone had set his sights on my body and my fortune. Sister, we've met no end of such ill-meaning people over the years. It's only that this one's methods are rather more inventive." The girl spoke with a giggle, then her expression dimmed, and she sighed softly. "Sometimes I feel my life's rather a failure too — always reading malice into others, always full of guard... But there's no help for it. With no man in the house, all my life the people who tried to get close and curry favor with me had ulterior motives. If you weren't protecting me, Sister, I'd have become someone's plaything long ago..."
Seeing how pitiful she looked, the years they'd been through rising up in her mind, the steward's heart ached. She reached out and drew the girl's shoulders to her. The girl leaned in obligingly, nuzzling into the soft, full warmth of her bosom, and laughed. "Sister — actually I was playing pitiful just now on purpose, to trick you into hugging me... You'd stopped hugging me anymore, you know."
At that, the steward didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She instinctively raised a hand to rap the girl on the head, only to find the gesture no longer quite proper. But the girl took her hand of her own accord and set it on her own head, looking up at her with a sweet, beguiling smile.
The steward sighed and gently stroked the head of the girl in her arms. The young miss, like a kitten, narrowed her eyes.
The steward asked softly, "And the second possibility?"
"The second possibility..." The girl in her arms stiffened slightly and said quietly, "Now that I think of it, the second is the likelier one... He's an errant, and errants are all a meddlesome lot. If this chance meeting wasn't mere chance, then it explains everything — he's already traced a clue to that matter, so he set up this whole thing to manufacture a quick acquaintance with me, and find a way to dig out the truth... My route to this temple is no secret anyway; anyone with a mind to could easily work out the pattern and lay a plan. If that's true, then this man is a truly fearsome fellow."
The steward's face turned grim indeed. After a moment, her arm tightened, hugging the girl close, and she said in a low voice, "I'll protect you..."
"I believe you. You're the only one I trust now, Sister..." the young miss murmured. "I'm doing something wicked... aren't I..."
"No..." the steward said softly. "In my eyes, everything you do is right."
The young miss said nothing more. The two of them held each other quietly, two souls warming each other, just as they had all these years... This was how they'd gotten by.
Perhaps feeling the mood had grown too heavy, the young miss broke the silence. "Sister, you know — there's a third possibility too."
"What possibility?"
The girl laughed into her chest. "That this fearless-of-power, warm-hearted, kindly errant is in fact a peerless, matchless grandmaster, his martial might enough to crush the whole age — so he treats all things as straw dogs, fearing no rank and bullying no weakling, holding everyone equal, because beneath his blade your standing and mine, our power and our wealth, count for nothing... If so, his self-contradictory, baffling behavior is explained completely, isn't it? A man who could beat every one of us to a pulp single-handed naturally needn't trouble himself over anything else."
The steward was struck dumb for a moment, then turned the possibility over carefully — until she looked down and saw the ever-clearer smile at the corner of her young miss's mouth, and realized she was joking. She couldn't help shaking her head. "Miss..."
The image of Sun Lang surfaced in her mind, and she suddenly felt that, prior arrangement or not, the man had been just a bit too unruffled back there... But such a possibility was simply too absurd. She drove the odd thought from her head, looked at her young miss giggling away, and said in mock exasperation, "If you've actually called it and he is a peerless grandmaster, and he's coming to investigate this matter too — let's see how you fend him off."
"Sister, has your head gone soft?" The girl smiled with pursed lips. "If there really were a peerless grandmaster that kind and upright and full of character, good-looking and young besides — why would I fend him off? I'd do everything in my power to land him as a husband. Then I wouldn't have to spend my days scheming and counting against everyone — I'd just sit pretty at home as his wife and leave it all for him to shoulder!"
The words were a touch bold, and the steward's face reddened faintly. She reached out to scrape the girl's cheek in shame. "Have you no shame at all!"
"Sister, what are you blushing for? If I really took a husband, you'd have to come be the second wife too — ahahaha, stop tickling me there! Mercy, Sister, I was wrong..."
Leave the springtime scene in that carriage for now. The center of the two girls' discussion — that remarkable man who regarded beauty as so much dung — was at this very moment staring blankly at the female head constable standing in front of his own front gate.
His instincts told him he'd just been had.