Chapter 38

The two of them came out of the night-market street, and as they passed the all-night shop on the corner there was a sharp screech of brakes not far off.

A black Ford came out and hit a man in the road and threw him clear.

He went through the air like a sheet of paper and came down a long way off, and the blood began to spread out slowly from under him.

A crash.

Gouwa got there first to look, and Ning Shu shouted to the girl in the shop, "Ring for an ambulance!"

It was the middle of the night and there was nobody on the street. Gouwa ran and blocked the Ford so the driver could not hit a man and run, and Ning Shu went to look at him. He was badly hurt and bringing up blood.

And the moment she saw his face clearly, Ning Shu stopped where she was.

It was Fu Nansheng.

It was one in the morning, and the wide street was empty of almost everyone.

A plastic bag lay in the road a little way off with braised chicken wings in it. It looked as though Fu Nansheng had come out for something to eat and been knocked down.

The driver had been drinking. One look at him and you could see it. Ning Shu had Gouwa keep an eye on him so he could not get away.

On the ground Fu Nansheng was arching and going flat again, bringing up blood, with a great dark patch spreading under him.

"When is the ambulance coming?"

The girl came running out of the shop. "I've rung them."

"There isn't time." Ning Shu looked at him. He had stopped bringing up blood, and the life was going out of his face. There was hardly anything left of him.

"Aah!"

Gouwa gave a shriek and got behind Ning Shu, pointing at the end of the street with his hand shaking.

Ning Shu followed where he pointed. Two men stood in the middle of the road at the far end, in black silk, with no expression on either of them, grim and cold.

The underworld officers.

Waiting for Fu Nansheng's last breath to go, to take him down.

Ning Shu knocked Gouwa's hand down and said quietly, "Don't point. It isn't as if you've never seen them."

Gouwa pulled his hand back, shaking, and would not look at them again.

Fu Nansheng, it turned out, was a stubborn creature. He plainly had the look of a dead man on him and he was holding on and would not let the breath go.

He did not want to die.

"Sis, I don't think he's breathing," Gouwa said, putting a hand in front of his nose.

He had died, and not finished dying. His soul would not come out of the body, so the officers could not take him.

He thought a great deal of his life.

Ning Shu wanted to save him. He was somebody she had known when they were both young.

She bit the ring finger of her left hand open and let the blood drop into Fu Nansheng's mouth.

Gouwa asked, doubtful, "Will that work?"

"I don't know. We'll see."

Her grandmother said Ning Shu's blood was precious and could save a life. Whether it could bring back a man already going, she did not know.

Ning Shu bore the pain and put three drops into his mouth.

Little by little the colour came back into his face, and a few minutes later he coughed hard and his lungs began taking air again.

His breathing lengthened out, and he came round all at once.

"He's alive!" Gouwa shouted. "Sis, you're amazing."

Fu Nansheng opened his eyes and saw Ning Shu, and something complicated went through them. "It's you."

Ning Shu bit down on her own finger and told him not to talk.

The ambulance arrived then, and the doctors and nurses got out fast and had Fu Nansheng onto a stretcher.

In the moment the doors closed, Fu Nansheng turned his head and looked at Ning Shu, and there was meaning in it.

On the way home Gouwa said, "Sis, that was incredible. If the master business doesn't work out you can be a doctor. One drop of blood and you've got him back. The hospitals may as well shut."

Ning Shu gave him a look. "You think your sister's blood is free and anybody can have it? The ten fingers run to the heart. Blood from a fingertip is the blood of the heart, and money can't buy it."

"Then why did you save him?" Gouwa did not follow. "The officers had come for him, which means his number was up. You went and pulled him back anyway, and spent your heart's blood on it, and you've probably offended the King of Hell."

"The man was right there in front of me holding on to a breath because he didn't want to die. Was I supposed to stand and watch?" Ning Shu answered without a flicker.

"Ah. True enough."

The moon was bright and there were few stars, and the two of them went home and slept hard.

---

Early the next morning Gouwa came into Ning Shu's room in a hurry with the iPad.

There were a number of news stories, the latest of them: Jiangcheng funeral homes report multiple urns missing in recent month, all of baby girls under five years old.

There were photographs of some of the babies, and Gouwa pointed at one of them. "Look. That one. That's the girl who was frightening me in my room. The very same."

---

That afternoon Ning Shu went to the hospital to see Fu Nansheng. He had come round, and the odd part was that when he was brought in the doctors had seen him bringing up blood and been certain of internal injuries, and when they examined him properly there was nothing much wrong at all. Every organ was whole.

Apart from a broken arm they could find nothing that should have killed him, so Fu Nansheng was moved to an ordinary ward very quickly.

When Ning Shu got there he was sitting on the edge of the bed with nothing to do, playing chess with the man in the next bed.

"Oh, you've come."

Ning Shu said, "You remember me?"

Fu Nansheng had fine, gentle features, and he smiled. "You saved my life. I won't forget that as long as I have teeth."

So he did not remember. Fair enough. It had been one meeting, years ago.

"Think nothing of it."

Fu Nansheng rubbed his forehead, looking troubled. "What am I to do? I'd been meaning to ask you for my commission, and then you went and saved my life with your heart's blood, and now I can't bring myself to raise it."

"Commission?"

"I was the one who told you to make money streaming. It must have gone fairly well. Don't I get a commission?"

So he did remember.

Ning Shu smiled too. "Three drops of my heart's blood, and your name struck off the register of the dead. If we're counting properly, you should be paying me."

Fu Nansheng said, "I'll let the commission go, then. Here's what we'll do. I'll put in for another twenty thousand off the flat. How's that?"

The man was still trying to sell her the flat.

But Ning Shu had not come about the flat. She sat down and asked him seriously, "Have you studied feng shui?"

Fu Nansheng kept nothing back. "I have."

"With a master?"

Fu Nansheng said, "You've seen it for yourself. I was born on a losing run. Nothing I do comes off and trouble finds me wherever I go. Without a master's protection I wouldn't live long."

Which was true. Yesterday, if he had not met Ning Shu, he would have been gone.

Fu Nansheng looked her over and saw the faint red mark on her forehead. "You've done well for yourself. The heavenly eye open, no less."

"It'll do."

"High school now?"

"Mm." Ning Shu nodded, and asked, "How old are you? You're working already."

Fu Nansheng said, "Nineteen. My parents died early, there was no money for school, so I've gone up and down the country with my master. I can turn my hand to anything. It scrapes a living."

Ning Shu could see it. Fu Nansheng was very clever, and if it had not been for that run of bad luck he would have got on at anything.

"Since you've been up and down the country, you'll have seen a great deal. I want to ask you about something."

"Go on," Fu Nansheng said. "Pay me what you think it's worth."

"You charge for opening your mouth?"

Fu Nansheng raised an eyebrow. "In our line we mostly live off our mouths."

Ning Shu thought about it, and he had a point. Nobody goes to a master with a question and pays nothing.

"I shan't cheat you. Ask first, and if I can answer it and it's any use to you, pay me then."

So Ning Shu asked, "Is there anything in the world that can make a person live longer?"

"A great many things." Fu Nansheng said, "Tonics. Not staying up late. Looking after yourself and taking exercise. All of that will do it."

"Not that. I mean the crooked ways. Shutting yourself in a dark room and seeing nobody, cultivating to be an immortal. Smoking opium."

"An elixir, you mean. The First Emperor tried that. Look how long he lasted."

Ning Shu came at it straight. "Smoking. Opium. Is there a wicked art like that?"

"Opium to lengthen your years? That's a new one. I've never heard it." Fu Nansheng smiled. "How many opium smokers have you met who lived long?"

Ning Shu's brows drew in. "What about the ashes of baby girls?"

Fu Nansheng thought, and said, "I have heard of foul things eating ashes. But not to live longer. To build a yin body."

"And what is that?"

"A girl's nature is yin to begin with, and a baby girl who dies before five is yin on top of yin. Eat their ashes and you can forge yourself a yin body that way and become very powerful. An ordinary person can't do it. Evil things do, to push their cultivation on."

Ning Shu nodded slowly, thinking.

Fu Nansheng asked, "What's made you curious about that sort of thing?"

"Nothing much. My cousin's been dreaming these last few days. Little girls coming to find him, and somebody smoking opium. I thought I'd ask you about it."

"And what I've told you. Is it any use?"

Ning Shu thought. "I haven't much money on me."

Fu Nansheng raised an eyebrow. "Easily done. Put my number in your phone and transfer it."

Ning Shu thought, the man misses nothing. She exchanged numbers with him and sent him two hundred. He had said it himself. Pay what you think. More or less, it is the thought that counts.