15 Showed Up at the Door

“Hmm? Yes!” Jiang Zhu nodded hastily.

Fan surfaces are quite expensive!

“The wealthy families in the county prefer fans painted with artwork or inscribed with calligraphy. One fan can cost two to three hundred wen, and the pricier ones can go up to several taels of silver. However, the fan surfaces they use are painted on silk, and the ones used by the ladies are embroidered, which is even more costly.”

He hadn’t expected Shen Qingyue to be able to paint fan surfaces!

Seeing Jiang Zhu’s admiration, Shen Qingyue hurriedly said, “No, no, I can’t do that.”

His calligraphy wasn’t very good.

His hard-pen writing was passable, but his brush calligraphy was mediocre. He had practiced a bit when he was very young under his grandfather’s insistence, but hadn’t continued since. Especially with small characters, he hardly practiced at all and didn’t want to embarrass himself by writing them now.

Perhaps a simple painting could sell, but if he added calligraphy, literati of this era might find it shameful and refuse to buy the fan altogether.

“We won’t go for that high-end stuff.” If he aimed for the high-end market, his paintings probably wouldn’t be good enough anyway!

Eastern and Western painting traditions form systems based on their respective environments and materials—tools, techniques, and aesthetics are two distinct systems.

Although human aesthetics share a fundamental unity, he wasn’t certain whether the sketching, quick drawing, and watercolor techniques he learned would be appreciated here.

Moreover, this place was not exactly like the ancient times he knew; he wasn’t even sure if a market for calligraphy and painting had formed here.

Before his leg healed enough to go down to the county town and investigate, he absolutely couldn’t engage in silk or embroidered painting.

Jiang Zhu didn’t have much money to begin with, and Jiang Zhu wasn’t his father either; it would be too unscrupulous to exploit him. They couldn’t afford costly trial-and-error.

“That kind of cost is too high, and few people buy it. We’ll just use regular paper, paint a few simple strokes, and stick them on fans as decorative accents. If paper is too expensive, we’ll skip that too—I’ll just paint directly on the fan. We only need to make the fans cost a penny or two more than ordinary ones, preferably just one penny. The extra money will cover ink and brush expenses. The goal is to sell more fans, got it?”

Jiang Zhu understood: “Hmm, for ordinary folks.”

Shen Qingyue: “Exactly.”

The simpler the design, the faster he could paint it, wasting little time, so every fan would be painted, boosting Jiang Zhu’s fan sales.

Jiang Zhu thought for a moment and asked, “Can you paint butterflies, dragonflies, gourds, and longevity peaches?”

Shen Qingyue was surprised. “You want to sell to children and the elderly?”

Jiang Zhu shyly nodded. “Yes, children and little girls like butterflies and dragonflies, and older folks like gourds and longevity peaches—they’re auspicious.”

Shen Qingyue chuckled in a peculiar tone, “You really know your stuff, Master Jiang. Your brain is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull.”

“...”

“Don’t worry, I can paint butterflies, gourds, and longevity peaches, and I can even paint kittens, puppies, and young men. Want me to paint you?”

“...” Jiang Zhu put down his bamboo and grabbed his axe and knife, running off. “I—I’m going to pound the pestle now!”

“Aren’t you going to make more picture frames in the sun?”

Jiang Zhu ran off without looking back.

Before going to sleep, Jiang Zhu made three picture frames.

Not only were the watercolor paintings framed, but also the quick sketches Shen Qingyue had previously given him and the bamboo weaving of bamboo that he hadn’t yet turned into fans.

He reworked the bamboo weaving, cutting it into rectangles and placed them on the table like miniature decorative paintings.

He placed the watercolor and quick sketches on the small cabinet by the bed, covered them with a cloth to keep the dust off when not viewing.

---

Jiang Zhu stared at them for quite a while, even holding his glowing “magic tool” to examine them carefully.

The next day, after breakfast, Jiang Zhu packed his money and prepared to go down the mountain to buy brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones for Shen Qingyue, and also some medicine for a few more days.

His cousin’s family was busy making tofu in the morning, so Jiang Zhu planned to wait a bit before heading down, hoping to help carry their stone mill up the mountain once they were done.

However, plans rarely keep pace with changes.

What was bound to happen, happened: news of Shen Qingyue’s passionate scolding and beating of children had spread. Early that morning, they were confronted by the children’s parents.

In this matter, Shen Qingyue was rather unlucky.

Jiang Zhu had been anxious all day yesterday, but no trouble had come; he thought it was over. Unfortunately, one timid child named Jiang Shunzi, who had no trouble playing all day, began to repeatedly relive Shen Qingyue’s frightening act of scaring him with a firelighter in his dreams that night. His mind even dramatized it—sometimes Shen Qingyue became a fire-breathing dragon, other times he chased him with a needle thicker than his grandmother’s shoe stitching, trying to sew his mouth shut.

In the dream, Shen Qingyue’s face was green and monstrous, towering eight zhang tall, shaking the earth with his smile, sometimes with a snake-like long neck, other times with tiger-like furry paws—more fantastical and terrifying than even Shen Qingyue’s own imagination. He grinned maliciously, playing hide-and-seek all night long.

The child ran and ran in his dream, but even as dawn approached, he couldn’t escape the bamboo forest.

Finally, he hid in a dilapidated house, crouching in terror, afraid Shen Qingyue would find him.

Just then, his parents woke up to begin their work, and the creak of the door startled him so badly that he finally escaped the nightmare.

However, whether from drinking too much water before bed, the tense squatting posture in the dream, or the sheer terror, he lost control and wet the bed.

At ten years old, still wetting the bed—one can imagine the punishment he endured early that morning.

Frightened and exhausted from a sleepless night and scary dreams, without comfort and with beating to boot, he felt increasingly wronged.

Amid his mother’s scolding and beating, the child finally broke down, crying loudly, and in his breakdown, spilled the whole story of the previous day.

However, this was his dramatized version.

He said, “There’s a monster on the mountain!”

The whole family was shocked.

His grandmother immediately said, “He must have scared the monster!”

Jiang Shunzi tearfully nodded in agreement.

Others found it reasonable: how else to explain a ten-year-old wetting his bed?

In an era without compulsory education and lacking scientific knowledge to dispel superstitions, there were several temples nearby famed for their efficacy, with monks eagerly using stories of gods and monsters to encourage virtue and donations.

Many villagers, young and old, sincerely believed in ghosts, gods, and monsters.

Thus, a simple quarrel among children, essentially a matter of adults punishing kids, escalated into a commotion about monsters.

The situation worsened.

At home, it was “the monster wants to absorb the yang energy of that wild kid on the mountain”; outside, it became “the monster is coming down from the mountain to attack our village!”

The innocent “monster” on the mountain, struggling with a twisted ankle and barely able to walk, was completely unaware and had no chance to defend himself, yet became infamous throughout the village.

Now, not only the children who had stolen vegetables yesterday and their parents but even the village head was drawn into the turmoil.

If there was a monster on the mountain, as the village head, he had to investigate.

Fortunately, the village head was still rational. He was old and experienced and believed in gods and ghosts but had never truly seen one. He had encountered many fake displays of the supernatural.

He stopped villagers from going to the temple to invite a master and first summoned the children to ask what really happened.

Jiang Hongliang, proud and stern, glared at Jiang Shunzi as if to cut him down with his eyes.

Coward! How shameful!

And he blurted out such an embarrassing story!

Unlike other children, he did not believe Shen Qingyue was a monster.

He firmly believed that Shen Qingyue had played some trick yesterday; he just hadn’t figured out how Shen Qingyue hid the firelighter or torch in that little box.

From his perspective, he refused to call it a monster or ghost; he only said that the Jiang family had a stranger who could perform tricks and had bullied them yesterday.

Some adults were confused: “Is it really a monster or not?”

Jiang Shunzi tearfully said, “It’s a monster, really a monster. It said it wanted to sew my mouth shut in my dream, and it really came at night!”

Jiang Hongliang gave him a disdainful look. “Then why is your mouth still fine and you can still talk?”

Jiang Shunzi cried even harder, feeling utterly misunderstood and alone: “In my dream, I couldn’t speak! I wanted to shout for help but couldn’t make a sound!”

The crowd was speechless.

Jiang Hongliang was speechless.

Jiang Hongliang’s father had passed away, and his older brother Jiang Hongming had been called over.

He thought for a moment and steered the conversation back.

“No matter what, a stranger came to the mountain and beat our village children. We have to check it out.”

“Right!” Jiang Shunzi’s mother said loudly, “No matter what it is, beating our village children is unacceptable!”

The village head pondered and then called some able-bodied men to go up the mountain and see what was going on.

He knew more about the bigger picture than others; he’d heard that a group of deserters from the southern neighboring country had recently fled into their county. He worried the stranger on the mountain might be one of them.

If it really was a dangerous person, they needed to report it promptly.

Because Jiang Zhu was one of the main victims—the children had encountered the “monster” at his home and said it wanted to absorb his yang energy and eat his flesh—the village head also summoned the Jiang family.

Jiang Zheng and his eldest son Jiang Jiajun were harnessing a donkey to a cart when they heard the news. They were stunned.

“Where?”

The village head’s messenger replied, “On your Jiang Zhu’s mountain. Hurry there. The village head said it might be a thief or a fugitive. Jiang Shunzi says it’s a monster. I don’t know what it really is.”

The Jiang family was utterly baffled.

Jiang Jiajun instinctively looked for his younger brother, “Didn’t the family just go up the mountain?”

They wanted to ask Jiang Jiaye, but he had gone early with his grandfather to the neighboring village to deliver tofu.

“Yesterday? Jiang Zhu came to our house yesterday? My goodness, what if there really is a thief or monster on the mountain, and Jiang Zhu went back unknowingly? He’s the only one living up there, a child alone! Let’s go, let’s go, we have to see!”

Lü Xiangmei, increasingly frightened, hurriedly took off her apron. “Jiahui, watch Shisheng, don’t let him run off!”

“Ah!” Jiang Jiahui quickly held her younger sister. Her father and brother also dropped their work and followed the crowd rushing up the mountain.

On the mountain, Shen Qingyue and Jiang Zhu were just discussing whether a certain paper was worth more than a certain cost and should be discarded, when suddenly they heard Jiang Zhu’s sister-in-law’s anxious voice calling from afar, “Zhuzi! Zhuzi!”

“Is someone calling you?”

Jiang Zhu perked up. “That’s my sister-in-law!”

He hurried outside and looked down from the doorway. Good heavens, so many people!