Sun Lang had become a knight-errant for two reasons: one, the enticement of an old friend; two, because it suited his fancy.
An errant is a meddler in others' business — governed by the Errant Guild, serving as a civilian peacekeeping force, overseen by or relied upon by the authorities, doing the things the public-office monkeys found it inconvenient to do.
He'd switched careers not long ago, and last night he'd struck it rich, nabbing a seemingly rather famous lady rooftop thief. So today, naturally, he was off to collect his pay and reward.
Another downside of this martial-minded populace was that rooftop thieves and master burglars had honed their craft considerably; thieves of that stripe even had their own schools and lineages.
Some highly skilled rooftop thieves moved high and low, their whereabouts like a phantom's, and many had heretical side-arts handed down to them, so that when they struck they were often unstoppable, leaving landlords and rich households crying out in misery.
Such famous burglars and great thieves naturally carried high bounties.
Ordinarily, a reward so rich wouldn't fall to a newcomer like Sun Lang to claim. But come to think of it, the people errants least wanted to lay hands on were precisely these master thieves and habitual offenders.
As mentioned before, these burglars in fact had organizations behind them. Take Qin Yu from last night: skilled and well-known, a backbone member of her own organization.
Even if she slipped up, the organization would arrange for someone to spring her, and as for methods, there were plenty indeed... By common reckoning, if a famous rooftop thief got caught by an errant and thrown in the cells, then once out, she'd surely want to get even — though there was no need to worry the thieves' organization would launch open reprisals against any given errant, since errants too had their local lodge for backing.
Everyone was out here scraping a living, and no one would go breaking the unspoken rules.
But even without open reprisals, while you needn't fear a thief stealing from you, you do fear a thief keeping you in mind. Being kept in the thoughts of a whole pack of burglars was no good thing either.
And if it was a lady thief, that was even more screwed up — she need only be brazen enough to bite you during interrogation, claim you took the chance to grope and molest her, and then you could wait to be hounded to death by the assorted feminists...
These problems, though, were nothing at all to Sun Lang. So-called reprisals, being kept in mind — none of it mattered.
Or rather, when it came to people delivering their faces to his door, he rather yearned for it... Don't be fooled by the placid, easygoing look of him now; in truth a restless heart that couldn't bear loneliness was forever in a state of unbearable thirst.
He spoke of longing for an ordinary life, but everything wants a balance of tension and slack, and too plain a rhythm wasn't quite right either.
A little seasoning now and then was rather nice — so if some warm-hearted friends came to help improve his quality of life, that would be goddamn wonderful.
This mindset was, in fact, perfectly normal... When you readers come across a brain-dead power-fantasy story, you all grumble that this Long Aotian is a boring bastard and these enemies are real morons.
But if you actually transmigrated, who'd give a damn about Long Aotian this or that — the bigger the cheat, the better, you'd wish you could swap your golden finger straight out for world-editing mode.
Mm, you lot definitely haven't read that one book, right? Right.
So before he transmigrated, Sun Lang fancied himself a high-end reader, sneering at every vulgar face-slapping antic.
But once he'd truly, genuinely transmigrated, the heart that itched to show off grew all the more restless — and the deadly part was that the moment he transmigrated he got press-ganged off to war.
In other words, the guy had bottled it up for a full six years, and his state of mind had no doubt drifted in a psychologically warped direction.
So you see... his hankering for a little play-the-pig-to-eat-the-tiger, hide-your-strength-then-slap-faces was really only natural.
Mulling over future scenes of the crowd bowing their heads and crying out in shock that this man cannot be defeated, Sun Lang walked along the bustling street.
Shops lined both sides, peddlers hawked their wares at the top of their lungs, pedestrians thronged this way and that, each rushing off to their own life.
This had been the unchanging daily round of the common folk for a thousand years of dynasties — yet now, some subtle changes were quietly taking place.
He watched the pedestrians on the road curiously and clumsily trying on the garb of the Western barbarians.
To the eyes of decent, well-bred women, those foreign clothes — bosom bared, back exposed, figure cinched, arms and legs on show — were rather shameless, and even the bold young misses didn't dare wear them so.
Only the hems and cuffs of their yellow gauze and silver skirts, their fragrant blouses with narrow sleeves, had been delicately edged with pretty lace by nimble needleworkers, and the white veiled hats worn over their fair brows and moth-feather eyebrows, their plain rouge and delicate makeup, had been swapped for white gauze and small round formal hats.
This mix-and-match struck Sun Lang as clumsy and odd, but the shy, romantic boldness of the girls reaching for beauty was truly enough to make a man smile in understanding.
By the steamed-bun shop on the street, a new establishment had quietly hung out long loaves of bread and red roasted sausages, a clever shop-hand loudly hawking and recommending these foods from the Western barbarians.
He watched well-dressed merchants emerge from exquisite little Western-style houses, the gazes of others mingling scorn and gossip with a thread of envy.
The blueprints for the differential gear had been dug out of old paper-piles again, and four-wheeled carriages were gradually growing more common, their cabins refined and Western in flavor; the carriages of the Central Lands had mostly been two-wheeled.
Food, clothing, shelter, travel — what the common folk desire.
Once the court's edict came down, the exchange of cultures could no longer be stopped: new things poured in, old things flowed out, Chinese and foreign thought crossed swords.
Some looked forward to it eagerly, some fretted over it anxiously — joyful or worried, none could halt the change from happening, and could only sit in their teahouses and taverns, racking their brains and arguing over court affairs and this inexplicable edict to open the borders.
Sun Lang didn't care in the least about the court's edicts; he was only curious about and freshly struck by the changes in this street, this city, even this country.
He came from another world, and for certain reasons his sense of closeness and belonging to this country was next to nothing.
Whether opening the borders and passes, exchanging with the four barbarian peoples, would shake the foundations of the state, whether it would shame the sages and ancestors — to him it was all too abstract.
He only saw, on this street, steamed buns and noodles set out beside loaves and red sausage, round-collared robes coexisting with Western formal wear, carved beams and painted rafters standing alongside pure-white Western houses.
And the people of this country met these new things with a scrutiny tinged with a little arrogance. That... seemed rather good.
For he thought of a certain stretch of history in his own world: after centuries of dark, high-pressure rule by an alien people, the rotting dynasty had its gates battered open by the predatory powers of the West, and a once-proud and glorious civilization and nation was wantonly plundered and trampled by robbers, on the brink of national and racial extinction, the orthodox Central Land in decline.
Only in the face of painful reality and humiliating defiance did men of insight awaken at last to the need to save the nation from ruin.
And so the ancient and glorious Eastern civilization, having already endured the cultural destruction of alien rule, was forced to face a second terrifying shock head-on.
In dread and timidity the people passively bore the cultural invasion from the West, and so much culture, custom, faith, and spirit was lost in the process...
By comparison, this world's situation was far better than that scrap-heap of a final dynasty back home.
The Han Empire of today was still acknowledged as the foremost first-rate power of the Central Land, and in the Tianyuan War, only two years ended, it had displayed a terrifying might that shocked the world... It was precisely because the nation was strong and its military at its height that, in such an excellent situation, the sudden proposal to learn from the West and exchange experience left men of insight baffled.
But it was also precisely because the nation was strong, possessed of dignity and power, that when its people faced the novelties gushing out of foreign lands, the look in their eyes was not ignorance or inferiority, still less worship, but a scrutiny laced with arrogance — or rather, pride.
Of what comes by ship, adopt the good.
How very interesting.
A smile crept to the corner of Sun Lang's mouth... In his past life, reading history and books had always left him with a defiance, an obsession.
The modern exchange of cultures was the total rout of Eastern civilization; Western civilization won its great victory there, its radiance blanketing the globe.
More than once before, he had wondered: should Eastern civilization at its zenith and Western civilization at its zenith collide head-on, just what sparks would fly, and might the ending be any different?
Now, it seemed, he had the good fortune to see for himself.
...And yet, even so, this world was a subtle thing, different from the original world in far too many ways.
As for which aspects, specifically, were different...
Sun Lang came to a row of breakfast stalls.
First, at the Western-food stall, he bought two rounds of bread; then, over at the Chinese-food stall, he bought a slab of roast pork, paid a few extra coppers, and asked the owner for two leaves of lettuce.
He sandwiched the roast pork and lettuce between the bread and, under the alarmed and thoughtful gazes of the two shopkeepers, sauntered off.
With the change he'd gotten, he bought a newspaper from a loudly hawking newsboy, and, breathing in the fragrance of the ink, ate his makeshift hamburger as he flipped through it.
In the old days the empire had a thing called the court gazette, a sort of newspaper, used to list great affairs of state and important court news, dispatched to the provinces.
But its readership was basically just the officials and clerks, the dignitaries and grandees, and its contents were nothing but court affairs — which ordinary commoners couldn't understand, weren't interested in, and hadn't the means to get.
Now that the empire had opened its borders and come under the influence of foreign currents, merchants caught the scent of opportunity and began aping the ways of the capitalists, and so the newspaper gradually grew popular.
Sun Lang flipped idly and came to the international-news page.
"Recently, the Departing-Fire Nation, the Blazing Theocracy, test-detonated a new type of thermobaric bomb. According to the Strategic Rocket Forces' Chief Recorder, the Great Monk Privalov Ivan Viktorovich, this new weapon is intended chiefly for cleaning up heavy-industry pollution, and is a weapon that brings peace and justice. May the glory of the God-Emperor watch over you, may the Soul of Flame burn eternal, ura!"
...So you see, this world had, in many subtle places, undergone some truly remarkable changes from the world of his past life.
"Then again... as I recall, Old Pri the Bearded is plainly a high priest of the Flame Faith, and his office is plainly Chief of Staff of the Strategic Rocket Forces. What's all this 'Chief Recorder' and 'Great Monk' business? If your news report's got errors, you lot are going to be held to account." Sun Lang shook his head.
Since the paper was meant for the masses, the parallel prose and pedantic word-mincing of the court gazette were of course unnecessary; the wording strove for the vernacular and the common touch.
This particular report was current-affairs news and thus came off a touch grave and proper, but in certain other sections the reporting included lines like "I reckon them grand councilors up in the capital are all dumbasses"... Even so, the translators could afford to put a bit more care in.
Sun Lang finished off the ingeniously makeshift breakfast and went on reading this crude, raw, but interesting paper. Everything happening in this world, everything about to happen, struck him as so interesting and fresh that he could smile and pore over it again and again with real attention.
"..." Hm, killing intent.
Sun Lang halted his steps and, with great interest, folded up the paper and glanced around — which blind fool... no, which warm-hearted member of the public wanted to come enrich my spiritual life?
Then his expression promptly changed.
The Errant Guild — the place Sun Lang clocked in for work — lay just ahead, and last night's fierce, imposing, radical-feminist-freak-sprout busty head constable was standing there with two or three blade-bearing underlings, glancing about, seemingly waiting for someone.
Judging from her faintly anxious expression, her slightly angry eyes, the right hand gripping her hilt, the whole aura she gave off, and last night's encounter, the person she's waiting for is most likely me...
So reasoned Sun Lang, with the keen-as-an-autumn-hair, clear-as-fire, meticulous-as-Judge-Bao-Blackcoal, sharp-as-Lord-Di powers of logical deduction.
Then he saw the woman turn her head and look his way.
Sun Lang once again applied his keen-as-an-autumn-hair, clear-as-fire, meticulous-as-Judge-Bao-Blackcoal, sharp-as-Lord-Di powers of logical deduction, and arrived at two conclusions.
...Damn. She really is here for me.
And, I've been spotted.