Chapter 32

The ink was thick. Chen Dasheng gripped the brush with all his strength, but his arm shook.

Face to face with the writing on the gate, he could not get the strokes down.

On the outskirts of Shaoshang, the master in the fox-fur robe had cradled a hand-warmer and told them, all smiles: "Our house, generations of us, building bridges and paving roads. Go and ask around. We're famous good folk for ten li about! I'm only sorry for you, come so far from home to our Shaoshang in the bitter cold. We need few hands. Press your mark and you can go up the hill to work, earn your money, keep your old and young, and put down roots here in Shaoshang..."

They had kowtowed to the kind old man, lined up, and pressed their handprints on that sheet of paper. They thought only of how to labor well for the master, win silver and grain, and go home and make a life.

But they were strung on one rope, one after another, trussed up, and hauled away.

The sky that day was so high.

The earth that day was so wide. And not one road on it was theirs.

His granny, leading Dingxiang, wept and called after them, a son's name, a grandson's name...

Seeing Chen Dasheng's hand shake so, Qi Qian'er said: "I, I'll help you."

And with that she put out her hand, closed it over his, traced the Chen on the gate again, and wrote two more characters.

Dasheng!

"You can write it now..." Qi Qian'er looked at the writing, and sniffed. He could write it now.

"My... my, my, grandson?"

Someone behind them was calling, trembling, quavering.

Chen Dasheng turned to look at his granny.

Granny was so old now, her hair gone white. He made to lift his robe and kneel, but the old lady caught him and drew him toward home.

No one spoke. They all followed in silence, watching the old woman lead her grandson home.

All that way the old lady was very quiet. No crying, no trembling. She only gripped, with all her strength, the thing she'd lost, the flesh cut living from her body. And one piece, at least, had come back.

Indoors, she let go his hand and reached to touch Chen Dasheng's head.

But Chen Dasheng had grown tall. She had to stand on her toes to reach.

Qi Qian'er stood in the doorway, watching this familiar scene.

In the old days, every time the old lady saw a grandson, she did just the same.

Chen Dasheng knelt slowly. The old lady took off his helmet and his hair-net, undid his hair, drew off his outer robe, his lined jacket, his underclothes, and last his boots.

Chen Dasheng knelt there in his loincloth. The old lady set to going over her grandson, bit by bit, missing no part of him.

His head was whole. His neck was whole. His shoulders were whole. Some saber-scars and whip-marks, never mind, never mind, all healed now, all well from now on.

The old lady touched those scars with a hiss of breath, and still she did not cry.

His back was whole. His legs were whole. Every inch of skin and flesh she felt carefully over, until she'd counted her grandson's toes and fingers all there. And only then did she look up and say, smiling: "Good. All whole. However your mother bore you, my grandson, my grandson is, is, just so."

Chen Dasheng slowly put out his arms and held his granny about the waist. He had no mother now. He had only granny.

The familiar smell rushed into his nose. Granny, feeling over his head, said: "My grandson. Were you afraid, before? Don't be afraid. Wasn't granny always here? Always with you, always with you, never far off..."

Chen Dasheng nodded, wordless. And he remembered the recruit camp. The day they knelt there trussed up, in terror and despair, sure they were about to die. When up the sharpened wooden stockade there had suddenly come climbing an old lady, all ten fingers bloody, no telling how she'd got up. She sprawled there and screamed, laughing, she screamed:

"My son!! Mother's here... don't be afraid! My grandson! Granny's here, I'm not leaving! I'll go nowhere! Don't be afraid... I'm here! Mother's there..."

From then on, outside the recruit camp there was one more old lady, sewing and mending for people, with a little granddaughter beside her.

A thousand li, ten thousand li, she never left again. Not when whole armies trampled across from the water's edge, and she took her granddaughter down into the marsh to hide from the pursuers, those eyes staring ahead without fear.

Not even across a whole ground of corpses. She led her granddaughter, the child's eyes bound with cloth, singing a little home tune, and walked across the battlefield...

Others at war always spoke of what lay ahead. But the Huo family, the old house, whenever they halted, they'd stand on high ground and look back. However far they went, they were never afraid. For they knew: Mother's here, Granny's here. She followed them a thousand, ten thousand li, all the way here...

The wooden bucket dropped with a clean splash to the water below the well. The windlass gave its earthly creak, creak.

Seven suits of guard's dress lay folded neat at the head of the east-room kang. Chen Dasheng sat on the kang in the new clothes the old lady had found him.

The old lady's small, murmured chatter with her grandson drifted out of the room.

"...I'm not grieved, see. I haven't even cried. If you talk of grief, when your eldest uncle died, granny truly grieved. But not long after, they told me your second uncle and your father had gone too. And I thought, well! Good, good! The three brothers and your grandfather are all together again now. They've a good bit of daft strength between them, so they'll fear nothing. A family together isn't bullied, isn't that so!"

"Mm, and Brother Chougou and the rest."

"...That's right! All of them gone on ahead."

Qi Qian'er passed by the dolts down under the windowsill, a full bucket of water in each hand. They wore the Huo estate's steward's cast-offs now. Yu Qingguan stood up quickly and said, a little bashful: "Little, little sister-in-law, let me."

Qi Qian'er backed off, awkward, forced a smile, and shook her head. She carried the buckets in, tipped the water one-handed into the pot, and went out for more.

Trip after trip she walked. She didn't quite know herself what she was after, what she meant to do. Only that busying herself let her heart ease a little.

Chen Dasheng, and these six outside, and one called Yangdan, yes, and later An'er too, and the old lady. Ten spirit-tablets were the worship of her whole life.

New moon and full, Qingming and the ghost festival, and every year besides, she'd send winter clothes over to them.

Alone, decades on end, the only one left living in the world. All these had gone early.

Three years after they first reached the frontier, they'd each in turn put down roots there. Even this one called Yu Qingguan, who'd brought his old mother, his wife, and his children over from home.

In those days they must have thought the good times were beginning at last.

But the good times didn't last long. The enemy began to seep in. And their superior, who hadn't the wit to use men, broke them up and spent them piecemeal.

In three years, at Zuoliang Pass, Chen Dasheng lost six brothers. Then he began twenty years of holding it alone.

And the new homes they'd made all scattered, each its own way.

Chen Dasheng feared there'd be no one to keep the offerings for them. So he had spirit-tablets made and sent back to the house on Quanqian Street in Qingfeng, and asked her to see to their worship.

For twenty-odd years, these men's children grew up one by one, no father to lean on, mothers dead or remarried. And Chen Dasheng raised their sons and daughters for twenty-odd years.

One man's salary split into eight shares, to keep other people's children. It stretched so thin it dragged down his own house, his own wife and child.

Who didn't call him righteous? Who didn't call him loyal?

But she, at home? She and An'er scraped through their days on the mean scraps clawed from Madam Qiao's hands.

How she'd hated him then.

Later, grown old, she slowly came to see it. Why want to lean on anyone? Aren't you a person too? Haven't you your own hands?

Why had she waited, day after day, on that man? Had she woken sooner, and struggled out on her own strength, her An'er would never have...

In the end, say what you would, it was her own not-trying!

She let out a slow breath. The one hurdle of a lifetime she could never cross had, in truth, long since scattered like smoke. Last life she'd thought it all through. Now it was only that she felt awkward.

"Sister-in-law, the water's boiling."

Guan Si'er looked down at the water rolling up in the iron pot, then looked at Qi Qian'er, startled. This little sister-in-law had such strength in her arms, carrying two great potfuls back and forth, steaming the main room till none of them could go in, driving them all to huddle under the east-room window.

Qi Qian'er looked down at the pot of water bubbling and boiling, then up at this boy, and smiled. Forty years' pain of losing her sons, like a long dream. And for the sake of these bright, living eyes, these leaping, healthy bodies, I will hold it against you no longer.

This time, if I don't put your lives in good order, I'll have lived this once for nothing!

This time, if I don't make each of you able to stand your own ground, I've lived for nothing too.

I tended your afterlife forty years. If I can't make a good go of this one turn in the world of the living, I'll have wronged Heaven itself!!

The thought made Qi Qian'er call out toward the east room: "Chen, Chen Scabby, come out here!"

Sitting on the kang eating pastries, chatting idly with granny, Chen Dasheng started.

His name had never been called by such a person, a woman, no less, so boldly, so much as a matter of course.

Remembering this was his wife, he was thrilled, and a little the-other-thing, oddly shy.

Hearing Qi Qian'er drop her manners, the old lady laughed, put out a hand, and gave her dazed grandson a slap: "Out you go, quick! Didn't you hear? Your wife's calling you!"

Chen Dasheng swallowed his pastry and still grinned foolishly at granny: "Ai! Coming." And with that he passed the plate of pastries out through the window.

Yu Qingguan poked half his head up, took it as a matter of course, and shared it out with the men under the window.

The old lady thumped her chest, wordless. Aiyo, this spendthrift boy! Her pastries, pastries the Emperor himself gave. But what could you do when her grandson liked to? Well, then, you, you lot, eat, eat!

Eat it clean and be done fretting!!

Chen Dasheng pulled on the brand-new cloth shoes, lifted the door-curtain, and came into the main room.

His eye couldn't tell a woman's beauty from her plainness. He'd had no schooling in it. But at any rate, he felt that this woman who'd held his hand and written his name was unlike anyone else, past all other women's compare.

He wanted to say something, and didn't know how to begin. So he stood there at a loss.

But Qi Qian'er was half at ease with him inside. Seeing him come out, she took him and unlocked the west room, went in, drew four or five keys from her waist, picked out a bright brass one, and opened the largest rosewood chest. From within she felt out a little pouch.

Chen Dasheng followed. This business of his wife's, going in and out, this whole set of motions, was somehow so? Eh? He couldn't say it. Only that it felt very capable.

She upended the pouch, and several bright bits of broken silver shook out into her palm. Qi Qian'er jounced them up and down, practiced, and Chen Dasheng was lost in the sight again.

So fine to look at, so grand. His mother had died with never a copper in her hand. Granny's hand was so tight not a soul could dig money out of it.

How came his wife to be so capable? A few days in, and already a great fistful of money. How had she got it out of granny's hand?

Chen Dasheng watched with bright, shining eyes, his smile clean and sweet.

His mother, dying, had chattered on: sooner or later, get a few coppers out of that mean old woman's hand to spend. And here it was, not a few coppers, but a good many few-coppers.

Qi Qian'er hefted the broken silver, satisfied. It was her recent bad habit, this jouncing it every day to feel its worth.

She'd no need now to touch the things from the Plague God's temple. She was a moneyed woman. Even as an old dame in her last life she'd never had so much to spare as this life.

Earl Chang's side had given two hundred taels at first. She'd traded the well-salt and iron for shopfronts. No telling yet how many rooms they'd allot, but any number was gain.

Later, when Earl Chang's people brought the furniture, they'd given a good deal of household sundries besides: grain, cloth, three laying hens. And they'd thrown in five hundred taels for her, reckoning up the half-worn wadding, the loom, the farm tools, and other odds.

Adding the hundred taels of the Emperor's reward, she now counted eight hundred in ready silver, seven hundred truly in hand.

The Emperor's gift couldn't be spent. It could only be set out, or given to granny to clutch and play with.

What the old lady grasped was hers. Qi Qian'er had no mind to take it back.

There wasn't so much as a peddler in the settlement. So these ten taels of broken silver she'd fished out early had gone unused.

Done jouncing, she divided off a few pieces, judged the weight, and pressed the silver into Chen Dasheng's hand.

Chen Dasheng looked at the silver in his hand, baffled. And soon, lowering his head, he said, rather shamefaced: "I, I never heard of the man being given money on first meeting. Is it the custom hereabouts?"

His face burned, his whole body afire. This was truly a wife from the foot of the imperial city, so grand, giving him a first-meeting gift.

Qi Qian'er was almost laughed into anger. What had that to do with anything?

A bellyful of temper carried over from her past life surged up. She'd been raised at the old lady's side a dozen years, so a touch of the old lady's manner had rubbed off. She glared at him: "What are you thinking! Give you money? You'd like that! Can you set your head on your neck-frame and think a moment? This is five taels. Go to the far corner across from the alley-mouth, the house up three steps with the red-lacquered gate. That's old Madam Tao's. Her family has plenty of sheep. Go lead one back."

Chen Dasheng was a little dazed. Wholly held in check by this tone of hers, so like granny's, he said in spite of himself, low: "A, a sheep? Just, just five taels?"

Grown as he was, he'd never once spent money. But five taels was a great sum to him too.

Qi Qian'er blinked, and nodded: "Right! Five taels. Is five too much? Go buy one outside the settlement, see if ten fetches you a sheep. Granny does say a village used to take in sheep at eight hundred cash a head. But that was long ago.

"I grew up hereabouts, in Qingfeng. The price of a sheep here has always run around three strings. Here by Yanjing everything's dear. Sheep are near four strings already, and the camp takes them at the same price. The pity is there's no one selling.

"In this whole settlement it's only old Madam Tao's side that deals fair. Add half again to the price and she's glad. So it's five taels, and lead a fat sheep of hers back."

Chen Dasheng listened dazed and dazed, rubbed the back of his head, and asked, silver in hand: "...But it's all fine here. Why kill a sheep? We brought dry rations."

He hadn't finished before Qi Qian'er set him straight again: "You brought your brothers back from so far off, and there's nothing in the house to set before guests. They've come all this way for your family's sake! Years of eating bitterness together, home just these few days, and you'd not lay in a little something rich, put a bit of fat on them?"

Chen Dasheng waved a hand, half in sweetness, half in fluster: "No, I mean, granny's got sheep, I saw several..."

Looking at that round face so like An'er's, Qi Qian'er couldn't strike him. She could only draw a breath and swallow her temper: "You, you great... never mind! A fool to begin with, and here I am telling you this. Tomorrow I'll die of vexation, and who'll grieve for me then?"

Chen Dasheng was all bewilderment. How did this come to vexing her to death?

Qi Qian'er pointed out the window and lowered her voice: "Your lordship the Recorder! Have you not seen how old those few sheep are? They're old sheep. Granny says she keeps them to help out the house. But with you all away and Dingxiang married off, those few are the only company she has. If she'd meant to sell them she'd have sold them long ago. Would she wait for you to come eat them? Oh, the darlings of the old lady's heart, and you come home and kill one off for granny?!"

So that was it! So that was it!

Chen Dasheng nodded like a chick pecking rice, grinned in shame, and patted himself at his side. Then, remembering his clothes were off in the east room, he said: "No need for your money. This is yours. I've got some! When we came back, Assistant Commander Guo said they've no minting yet, so our pay won't come till the full month, mm, and it may not even be doled out on time. So each family was given fifty taels of settling-in silver. And I've saved a bit over the years too, all in the saddle-bag on the horse."

That said, he smiled at Qi Qian'er to please her: "In a bit, I'll give it all to you."

Well now. He'd brought money home! And was giving it to her, no less.

Qi Qian'er pressed her lips at once into a smile. It was different from before, after all.

Seeing his wife smile, Chen Dasheng smiled too.

He couldn't help currying favor: "Mm, all to you!"

Pah! Now you want to give it. Well, I don't want it anymore!

Qi Qian'er pushed him all the way out to the main room, and ordered: "Go buy your sheep!"

Watching through the window-lattice how well the two got on, the old lady set her heart at rest and laughed.

Just so. Her Dasheng was so fine, how could Qian'er not like him.

Chen Dasheng walked to the gate, then swerved over to his brothers. He jounced the silver in his hand up and down, learning it from Qi Qian'er, his tone brimming, his smile sweet as sweet: "My, my wife... she's really something! Same as my granny."

Something fierce, is what! Terrifying!

In Chen Dasheng's eyes, the best, the properest woman in the world had to be just like granny: able to decide anything, able to bear up under anything. That was a good woman.

His brothers watched him go, then looked at one another, and were truly glad for him.

The old lady leaned at the window watching her grandson leave, brimming with joy, and waved hard at Qi Qian'er.

Qi Qian'er came in, all puzzlement: "What is it?"

The old lady smiled at her, most pleased: "What's he gone to do?"

Qi Qian'er said: "Mm, I sent him with five taels of silver to Madam Tao's to buy a fat sheep."

The old lady had been smiling. In a flash her eyes swam with gold stars, and she sat up to spring off the kang.

But Qi Qian'er ran over at once to steady her, and whispered in her ear: "Those few out there, they're the hide on your grandson's back, they're his flesh, they're his bone! They'd throw down their lives to die for your grandson! And besides, this is my money spent, not yours."

The old lady sat stunned a good while. Then, muttering with a curled lip, she got down off the kang all the same: "What are you telling me all that muddle for? You think I meant to do anything? I only, I'm only getting down, I, I'm going to fetch something... I, I'm going to the privy!"

Rather sheepish, she got down off the kang, took a turn outside, and came back.

She shuffled on her knees to the kang-cabinet, worked up three lifetimes' worth of courage, and only then opened it and lifted out a whole three-tiered stack of pastries. She set it on the kang-table, opened it tier by tier, and laid it out in silence. This to count as entertaining guests.

Qi Qian'er leaned in the doorframe watching, the corner of her mouth hooked all the while.

Ever since the palace gave those ten stacked boxes of pastries, this old lady had sat by the cabinet all day and not budged.

Qi Qian'er reckoned it out: so long as they didn't go furred with mold or rot, the old lady simply couldn't bear to eat them.

Seeing her granddaughter-in-law standing to one side stifling a laugh at her, the old lady wagged her neck and said sheepishly: "Well, you, you have a piece too?"

Qi Qian'er wouldn't. She said instead: "Not now. When I want one I'll help myself!"

And with that she dropped the curtain and left.

Only then did the old lady recall that her granddaughter-in-law had a key to every cabinet in this house, her own included.

Inside and out, most of the things here were the girl's dowry too. The girl really was quite at her ease, eat what she liked, do as she liked.

And she herself? But for three carts of junk, three head of beasts, a few sheep, and a scrap of private money, she really did live under someone else's name.

The more she thought, the angrier she got. The old lady spitefully took up a pastry she'd been hoarding and bit into it: "Damn their bones. I don't even know who I'm saving it all up for, day in, day out. I'll, I'll eat myself to death and be done!"

Just as the old lady was working up her spite, she heard sheep bleating outside.

Chen Dasheng came into the yard, all smiles, leading two sheep. Behind him came Meng Wanquan, all smiles too, a basket on his arm, some eggs in it, and two jars of aged wine.

Seeing Qi Qian'er come out to meet him, Chen Dasheng said, smiling: "Look!" He tugged the two fat sheep forward to show them off: "Madam Tao gave me two sheep."

He waited to be praised. But Qi Qian'er's face changed by slow degrees, from the smiling eyes she'd worn outside, saying little, to a face all overcast.

Chen Dasheng didn't know what to make of it. He looked at the two sheep, then at Qi Qian'er, and asked, careful: "Are, are you angry?"

The old lady leaned at the window to watch the fun. The moment she saw Qi Qian'er give her grandson a hard look, she wouldn't have it, and cursed through the lattice: "Hey, I say, Qi Qian'er? Is this house too small to hold you now? My, my grandson's barely home a moment!"

Qi Qian'er's heart was wrung. Hearing the old lady curse her, she could only swallow her temper and say to Meng Wanquan: "Brother Wanquan, bar the gate! We'll talk indoors."

That said, she went in. At the door she turned to the six dumbstruck stumps: "You lot come in too. I've words for you as well."

A short while, and, but for Meng Wanquan, too shy to take off his shoes, Qi Qian'er knelt at the old lady's side, and facing her knelt seven men in a neat row.

The old lady felt only that her grandson had lost face, and held herself in with real effort. She glared at Qi Qian'er, and by the look in her eye, one wrong move and she might well launch herself over and land Qi Qian'er a fierce bite.

Seeing everyone settled, Qi Qian'er explained to the old lady first: "Granny, when you took me into this house, didn't you say it was because the Chen family had eaten the loss of not knowing their letters? So you'd smash the pot and sell the iron to get someone lettered and numerate into the house, so you'd never again eat a loss that could cost lives?"

The old lady blinked: "That's so, right enough. But what's this to do with my eldest grandson? You bully him like this, and I tell you, you just dare bully him..."

Qi Qian'er said quickly: "Hear me out to the end of today's reasoning first, and then lose your temper at me. All right?"

The old lady shot her a glare and held her tongue.

Having soothed the old lady, Qi Qian'er looked at the bewildered Chen Dasheng: "Just now, going out, I gave you five taels of broken silver. And what did I tell you?"

Chen Dasheng started, and, recalling, said: "You, you said sheep are always dear around Yanjing. Three strings and a half before, and now five taels at least. You told me to buy one from Madam Tao's to put fat on my brothers."

Yu Qingguan and the rest looked up at once, gazing at their little sister-in-law with eyes full of feeling.

Qi Qian'er nodded: "Then how did you bring back two?"

Chen Dasheng blanked again, then recalled through the haze: "Old Madam Tao wept the moment she saw me, said it was like seeing her own son. She said, with three years' friendship close as one family with granny, how could she take my silver? She'd have me lead it away for nothing no matter what. But we can't take folk's things for nothing, so I insisted on paying, and Madam Tao insisted I take two. I, I couldn't out-argue her..."

Seeing her grandson's poor, aggrieved look, the old lady stroked the pipe-bowl lying on the table. And she heard the wretched girl go straight on:

"Granny's had three years' friendship with her, fled the killing-field together before that, close as sisters, they all say. But granny never got a single copper's advantage out of her hand. With granny for a very iron rake, and never so much as a needle scratched off the woman, and she gives you a sheep worth five taels of white silver to eat! Do you believe it?"

Meng Wanquan couldn't hold it in and snorted a laugh.

The whole room turned and looked at him coldly, till he was thoroughly abashed, and could only say: "Ai! It's true, that old lady, next to our granny, is, that! Ahem. Sister-in-law, go on, ahem ahem..."

The old lady let go the pipe-bowl and said, much put out: "What are you on about that for? I, I was giving way to her."

Qi Qian'er drew a helpless breath, and said to Chen Dasheng, grave: "The truth is, from the first day I entered your Chen house I knew this. This life I could never live like other men's wives, gentle and demure, soft-voiced and mild. They mind the house well in the back court, raise the children well, and that's a wife's whole easy life...

"I can't. Fretting is just my lot. Heaven makes up a shortfall with a strength elsewhere. It set things in order, and along I came! I hadn't yet bowed with you at the wedding before I had to fret over this old lady's coffin. Do you truly think Madam Tao did it on old friendship? Is granny's face bigger than a millstone, then? How was it she never saw fit before? All well and good, and she must give an extra sheep? You think this is a matter of one sheep?!"

The old lady muttered at her side: "Or was it three? You wish! That old skinflint!"

Qi Qian'er didn't trouble to answer her, and said loudly: "One sheep today! And she's a good sort, one of us now, close to our house all of a sudden, two generations' friendship! Tomorrow her children come home. If they're not doing well and go to Yanjing to seek you out, to have you pull a string or find them a way in, on the strength of this five-tael sheep, would you have the face to refuse? I ask you, would you?"

Chen Dasheng started at that, and fell at once to thinking.

The old lady wouldn't have it: "She! By what right?"

Qi Qian'er turned and glared at her: "By right of our house eating her five-tael sheep. By right of your grandson not knowing right from wrong. By right of your taking her advantage and being too ashamed to say no! You ask by what right?"

The room went quiet. The old lady included, no one there was a fool. Thinking it deeper, every face turned grim.

Qi Qian'er sighed faintly: "The other day Eunuch She came and said the Emperor thinks very highly of you, has you keeping the gate for the Emperor's own house. Isn't that so?"

True enough. The seven of them nodded together.

Qi Qian'er sighed again: "And isn't it so, that everyone who sees you now meets you all smiles, everyone's your friend?"

Again they nodded together.

"Are they well acquainted with you? Is there old friendship?"

Chen Dasheng thought a moment and said: "Little Hua'er."

"Besides little Hua'er."

"And the Emperor."

"The Emperor's not in it. The Emperor is the parent who gave you your second life! Remember that?"

"Mm."

Qi Qian'er raised her voice: "Louder! The Emperor is your second father and mother!!"

They nodded together in spite of themselves, and said loudly: "Mm!! The Emperor is our second father and mother!!"

The old lady jumped in fright, clutched her chest, and backed away.

Qi Qian'er nodded at last, satisfied: "Think it through carefully. It's as if your parents handed you the most important gate of the house. Those people are good to you on your parents' account. They meet you all smiles day in and day out, scheming up ways to do you kindness.

"So, today it's a five-tael sheep, tomorrow ten-tael shoes, the day after a fine hundred-tael robe woven with gold thread! Having taken the man's five-tael sheep, you're too ashamed not to wear the ten-tael shoes. And the debt grows and grows. Till one day the one who sent the clothes comes to your parents' gate in the dead of night, pleading. A head-losing calamity. He begs you, on the old friendship, whatever it takes, to open the great gate and let him in to beg the Emperor to save his life..."

At that Qi Qian'er slammed the table hard, and the poor little kang-table collapsed with a crash!

The whole room was struck dumb.

Qi Qian'er, her small face grave, her eyes sharp, pressed the question on these fools: "So I ask you! This gate of your father's, will you fools open it, or not! Speak!!"

Chen Dasheng answered at once: "Won't open it!"

Qi Qian'er, furious: "Then what of the sheep you ate?"

Chen Dasheng answered, open and forthright: "I'll spit it back up for them!!"