Medicine Master Disciple’s Cultivation Notes

Chapter 106: When the River Warms in Spring, the Fish Grow Fat First

Young Master Qing, what kind of person was he? The most notorious wastrel and good-for-nothing second-generation son in all of Yun County.

Letting a vicious dog maul people, beating another family's servants...

And now he had acquired yet another mad dog in human form at his side.

With these two together, there was bound to be some entertainment.

Everyone was waiting to see the fun.

And the fun came quickly enough.

As the fourth month and the season drew near, Xu Qing formally sent out invitations, asking the two young misses, Hu and Tang, to join an outing into the countryside.

It wasn't that his old intentions hadn't died, so much as that every year around this time, households of standing had this particular item on their leisure calendar.

It was a refined pursuit, befitting men of letters.

Not only students but teachers too were expected to venture outside.And Xu Qing hadn't invited just the two young ladies. He had also invited a whole crowd of classmates, each bringing their own attendants and study companions, household servants and bodyguards, totaling over fifty people in all, who poured out of the county town in a great procession heading southeast.

To the southeast of Yun County ran a great river, the second-largest waterway in the northern frontier after the Blackwater River, known as the Dragon Scale River.

The Dragon Scale River had its source in the lava lake of White Mountain. Its waters ran warm, and every winter, steam rose from the surface while the trees along its banks were draped in frost and ice, resembling dragon scales, which was how it had gotten its name.

Now that spring had come and the flowers were in bloom, the ice on the river had thawed and the current ran deep and swift, making it the perfect season for boating and fishing.

Why fishing rather than angling?

Because the fish of the northern frontier generally could not be caught on a line.

They were simply too large to fit in a single pot.

Tang Xiaoxue herself had no particular desire to join this kind of outing. She didn't know anyone there, and with strangers all around, she couldn't enjoy herself properly. If it hadn't been for the promise of fish, she absolutely would not have come along.

There was one other reason, which was that Xu Qing's manner had been genuinely sincere.

The first time he had invited the two young girls out for tea, he had been thinking about how to charm them into his pocket, so that he could bring them along on the outing as a pair of decorative attendants to pour his tea and make him look distinguished.

The second invitation was his way of signaling to everyone that he harbored absolutely no improper intentions toward these two young ladies, that it was purely a bond of brothers and sisters.

I have changed. I am a good person now. You are all here to witness it.

In all honesty, Tang Xiaoxue and Hu Caiyi had no way of fitting into his social circle. They had nothing to say to those people, and were perfectly happy to treat the whole affair as a free meal.

Inside the county school, Li Qiuchen was a student, but once through the gates of the inner hall, he and those idle young masters lived in entirely separate worlds. Nobody could be bothered to spare him a second glance.

Which suited him just fine.

Thanks to Young Master Qing's invitation, Li Qiuchen also got his first look at the other young master who shared his reputation, the one they called Young Master Liu.

It had to be said, the pairing of Qing and Liu had a certain quality to it. They had the looks, they had the standing, they had the cultivation, and in the kind of romantic fiction aimed at women readers, they would have been exactly the sort of male pair that had readers fervently invested in them as a couple.

And indeed, some people were fervently invested.

Also along for the outing were several senior female students from the upper years. Their backgrounds were unclear, but from the way they looked at the Qing-Liu pair, it was plain that these young ladies were paying very close attention to them.

By contrast, the looks they directed at Tang Xiaoxue and Hu Caiyi were considerably less warm.

None of that was any great concern. As long as those young ladies didn't come over to start trouble, the two greedy girls were perfectly capable of eating their fill and being thoroughly content.

Li Qiuchen sincerely hoped that Young Master Liu would maintain his aloof and lofty persona and not, in the manner of some overbearing young lord from a romance novel, suddenly take a baffling interest in the small circle of the Hu and Tang families.

The scenery along the riverbank was lush and full of spring, beautiful beyond measure.

Everyone went about their own amusements. Xu Qing was over on his side composing poems and trading verses, while Li Qiuchen found a local fisherman and bought two fresh fish.

He couldn't say what they were called exactly, but the weight was more than enough.

One weighed twelve jin, the other fifteen.

The head of each fish was larger than a human skull.

The local fisherman's method of cooking fish was refreshingly plain. A wide iron pot four feet across was set over a fire. Fermented farm-style bean paste was stir-fried until fragrant, then in went two chunks of old ginger and half a jug of yellow rice wine, followed by the fish. That was all.

For those who wanted a little more refinement, the classic three additions went in as well, cabbage, tofu, and glass noodles.

As the saying goes, roll tofu a thousand times and fish ten thousand, so let it simmer away.

Once the broth in the pot had nearly cooked down, the cabbage and glass noodles were tipped in, and the dish was done.

The locals wouldn't generally boast about how delicious their fish was or how authentic the recipe. You just ate it and found yourself struck silent. One mouthful and you were filled from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head, with not a scrap of mental space left over for reflection or commentary.

A pot that size could only braise one fish at a time. The other was cut into pieces and packed in salt.

This wasn't salt fish but something more like the southern method for stinking mandarin fish. The flesh was cured through with fine salt, then back home it would be pan-fried in lard on both sides until golden, and when pulled apart, the inside was pure white, tender as cloves of garlic.

The flesh had the kind of springy resistance that bounced between your teeth like a Chaozhou beef meatball.

Li Qiuchen sat beside the great pot with the two young misses, heads down and eating furiously, drawing sidelong glances from the poetry crowd nearby.

Nothing to be done about it. The smell was too powerful.

To put it dramatically, lift the lid and the aroma carried ten li downwind.

But people of standing didn't eat like that.

They were all waiting for the Three Flowers.

The finest river fish of the Dragon Scale River were known as the Three Flowers and Five Ravens. The truly discerning ate only the first of the Three Flowers, the aohua.

That is to say, the mandarin fish.

It was a small fish and difficult to catch. One cast of the net rarely brought up more than a few.

But that was precisely the point.

Otherwise, what had the young masters and young ladies come all this way for? To experience the rustic pleasures of a farmyard outing?

Li Qiuchen was deep into his third bowl of rice soaked in fish broth when he suddenly heard a startled cry from close by.

He looked back and saw a senior female student, her face drained of color, pointing toward the middle of the river with a trembling hand.

Following the direction of her finger, he saw a small wooden raft drifting downstream along the current toward them.

On the raft were planted more than a dozen severed human heads, dripping with blood. Two children of four or five years old were trapped on it as well, their bodies covered in chicken feathers, a strip of red silk wound around each of their heads, for reasons unclear.

"Terrible, terrible! The Old Blind One has come seeking revenge!"

The fisherman tending the fire took one look at the scene and was frightened nearly out of his wits.

Li Qiuchen seized the fisherman by the arm and said, "Speak plainly. Who is the Old Blind One, and who has he come to take revenge on?"

The fisherman was a poor speaker, and shook so badly he could barely get a word out. Under Li Qiuchen's steady gaze, he finally managed to collect himself, lowered his voice, and said, "Good sir, you would not know of this. The Old Blind One is a malevolent flood dragon that dwells in the Dragon Scale River. It has cultivated for a thousand years and achieved the way, and claims dominion over three hundred li of river in either direction, calling itself the River Lord. Each year it demands tribute and offerings from the fishing folk along the banks."

"At first it only demanded the three sacrificial animals, which was bearable. But more than ten years ago, something changed, and it suddenly began demanding boys and girls as offerings. We went to the county to report it to the authorities, but the government runners couldn't do a thing about it. Instead they provoked its savagery, and it swallowed dozens of people alive on the spot. Then it stirred up floods that destroyed three villages along the banks, killing and wounding countless people."

"Later, a sword immortal of the Bai family passed through here, blinded both its eyes with a sword thrust, flayed its skin and drew out its sinews, and drove it in defeat back beneath the river. Since then it has never dared show itself in the world of men again... and yet after all these years, it seems it has come out once more. What are we to do..."

[NEXT CHAPTER]