"Such a coincidence?" Yu Lanchuan gave her a doubtful look and asked, "Don't tell me you believed them."

If her intelligence was really at that level, it was no surprise that she didn't get into No. 3.

"Of course not, what are you thinking?" Gan Qing waved her hands. "It's human nature not to believe it, isn't it… A pack of strange people suddenly coming over and telling you that the shifu who raised you had killed your parents… What kind of nonsense is that? Even T.V. series in the nineties don't use this plotline anymore. A normal person's immediate reaction would probably be to find out where these people came from."

Yu Lanchuan immediately asked, "Where did they come from, did you find out?"

Gan Qing spread her hands. "Nope. They were not locals and disappeared right away."

To investigate a matter until the truth came to light, the most fundamental requirements were time and money. Neither can be lacking, and it would be best if the investigator had some ways to get information. If someone was intentionally hiding something, how could a half-grown high school girl investigate?

Yu Lanchuan's gaze turned grave. He said, "But Yanning has people from all walks of life. It wouldn't be hard to find out what was written in the Alliance Leader's Command."

The Alliance Leader's Command was decreed by Old Alliance Leader Yu and it was the indisputable truth. Since the court case of the eighteen lives lost in the flour factory had no conclusion and Wei Xiao had clearly been right here in Yanning, insisting on bearing the blame by keeping his silence, people inevitably talked about him, saying things like "Wan Mu Chun went back on his words and is again conducting his shady business in jianghu."

Gan Qing let out a bitter laugh. "It wasn't only 'easy' to find out."

In actual fact, Wei Xiao wasn't the type who liked offending other people. When he interacted with others in private, he was very easy to talk to and was gentle and quiet, a rare breed. If one were to really calculate it, other than when Yang Ping and the others forced him too far, Wei Xiao had never had a grudge with anyone else.

However, rumours and slanders had never shown a preference for the real troublemakers. They had always gone for the quiet and gentle ones.

Gan Qing said, "In his later years, Old Alliance Leader Yu increasingly disliked stepping forward to interfere in other people's matters. He announced very few Alliance Leader's Commands and the one with Wei Xiao was exceptionally eye-catching. I heard all sorts of rumours that I didn't know were true or false. But I could not suspect my shifu. From an emotional standpoint, I just didn't want to believe it. So of course I had to find a loophole in those rumours to convince myself to remain firm in my belief."

Yu Lanchuan said, "That's human nature."

"I gathered some old newspapers and pinned down the exact date of the flour factory explosion. This wasn't hard, it was a major incident after all. The local news covered it. After that, I only needed to confirm that the old man wasn't at the scene at all when it happened and that would be the end of it." Having said so far, Gan Qing suddenly smiled. "At that time, I thought that if I could find proof, I would send it to the Old Alliance Leader in a way that didn't reveal our location so that he could 'erase' the Alliance Leader's Command."

She planned it out clearly and methodically in her mind and felt that she was so very clever and wise in the ways of the world, that she could protect this useless adult who only knew how to cook. In her imagination, she nonchalantly pushed open the door and entered the house, then casually said to Wei Xiao, "By the way, I've already taken care of the Alliance Leader's Command for you. Don't worry. Why didn't you tell me earlier that other people were bullying you?"

Then, under Wei Xiao's astonished gaze, she would return to her room to do her homework, as though the difficult matter had been a piece of cake for her.

Meanwhile, based on historical data, it was best if people who still fantasised in such ways focused their attention on their fantasies because once they took actual action, there was a large probability of them stirring up trouble.

"The old man didn't like job-hopping and moving house. He worked for many years in that lousy hotel. They have attendance records for their workers. I just needed to get my hands on it. So, I took the chance when the old man was at his second job to sneak into the hotel's management office and take their attendance records."

"That day, Senior Wei Xiao…"

Gan Qing's eyes raised gently, "He swapped shifts and took the day off."

This was quite a shock. Yanning's transportation system was well-developed. To go to the neighbouring province, one day was enough for a round trip. If he quietly made this trip, his family would think he had gone to work and might not realise at all.

"But I still calmed down very quickly. The stuff about being a murderer for hire wasn't something completely out of the blue. Even though I've not done it before, I've heard Wei Xiao talk about the ancestors. Wan Mu Chun had always been a lone wolf without disciples, so they had to be extra cautious before making a move. A moment's carelessness could result in their reputation being destroyed. Understanding the target's identity, personality and habits took at least a month," Gan Qing said. "I checked his attendance records before and after that day and they were all very normal. There was no way he would stop halfway through his job as a chef and drop out of the sky into an unfamiliar place and kill someone, and even leave Wan Mu Chun's mark. Here's the question—since it wasn't him who did it, then why did he bear the blame? What was he doing the day he was on leave? Other than him, who else was capable of leaving such a meticulous knife wound?"

Yu Lanchuan asked, "You thought of Wei Huan?"

"Other than him, there's no other explanation," Gan Qing said. "Uncle Meng liked having a few small bottles of beer when he was young. His alcohol tolerance was so-so and when he was drunk, there was no filter on his mouth. I accompanied him for skewers a few times and got a few words out of him after getting him drunk, and roughly pieced together the story behind Wei Huan being thrown out of the sect. Wei Huan didn't want to waste all his training and decided to 'restore the old' and expand the sect's tradition. Uncle Meng said that he took the wrong path.

"While Wei Xiao was at work, I skipped school and went home. I went through his things and found a scrapbook. When I opened it, I saw that it was pasted full of colourful recipes and pictures. I skimmed through it and initially wanted to put it aside, then I suddenly felt that something wasn't right. The old man was an extreme miser and cherished all his things. When he occasionally bought a book to read, he would wrap it with a book cover and had never done something like cutting pictures from a book to stick in a scrapbook. So, I took it again and studied it carefully. I noticed that there were words beneath the pictures that had nothing at all to do with the recipes."

"What did he write?"

"A journal. It was all related to Wei Huan. The old man had been tracing him the whole time—when and where Wei Huan had killed a certain person, deductions on how he had done it, why he couldn't be caught… Oh, right, he also wrote about that anonymous 50,000 yuan remittance." At this point, Gan Qing seemed to feign nonchalance. She took a deep breath and changed topics with a rather forced smile, turning to look at the back kitchen and calling out, "Boss, are you making the noodles from scratch? We aren't so bougie, the ready-made ones are fine! Please make it quick."

Yu Lanchuan said, "Which is to say, Wei Huan killing your father and remitting your school fees…"

Were both written in that book.

"Yeap, can you imagine it?" Gan Qing's raised brows drew together in slight exaggeration and she spread her hands at him. "This old man Wei Xiao is really frugal. He used rubber bands to get the very last bit of toothpaste out of the tube and mixed water into empty shampoo bottles to continue using them for half a month. One scrapbook lasted him more than twenty years. Before he reached the last page, it was not considered used up."

Yu Lanchuan had always felt that Gan Qing carried with her a very heavy sense of drifting through life. She had drifted her way to her current age and had been grinded into her current gremlin state but surprisingly, he could still faintly see a tendency to stir up trouble. It was evident what kind of unstable timebomb she had been during her rebellious years. Destroying her own meridians, breaking ties with her sect, pursuing and killing a vicious disciple, turning herself in to the police… none of these were something a cool-headed ordinary person could do. He liked her but it didn't mean that he agreed with this worldview of going to the extreme in everything.

But now, Yu Lanchuan realised that there was nothing he could say.

Was she unable to tell that those few people at the start had acted on purpose? Was she unable to tell that there was someone instigating trouble in the shadows?

She was able to tell.

But even if she could, when she reached that stage, what could she do?

"I usually don't have much to do at work, as you know." Gan Qing smiled at him. "When there are no customers, I would take a book from the pile of self-help books from Uncle Meng and flip through them. A couple of days ago, I read a passage that talked about Festinger's Theory^[1]. It said that 10% of life is made up of what happens to you and the other 90% of life is decided by how you react. It's pretty reasonable. I belong to the type who did not handle that 90% of my life well. Nearly half my life is gone and everything I've done has brought hurt to the ones close to me and joy to the targets of my revenge."

Yu Lanchuan said, "Nonsense. From where did they get those tacky lines that they're quoting? And even 90%... Did some social scientist calculate that with their toes when they were drunk?"

Gan Qing sprawled on the table and laughed. "Little Master Yu, you're really good at making conversation. Arcane arts and tacky pseudoscientific self-help are the two cornerstones of the mental state of us ordinary people. Please stop coming over with your immortal aura and attacking our foundation, restrain yourself!"

Right then, noise came from the back kitchen. The boss chided the teenager who was more of a hindrance than a help in an agitated voice. "You don't need to do this, it's hot, don't drop the bowl! Quick, quick, move aside."

A savoury scent wafted out of the back kitchen. Their noodles and baked pastries were finally ready.

"Have a taste. The baked pastries are our specialty and so are the noodles. We are very particular about the broth." The boss enthusiastically urged them to start eating. The teenager in the shop also followed suit and poked his head out of the back kitchen, giggling and brimming with anticipation for the customers' praise at the same time.

The two freeloading customers had no choice but to pause their conversation and pick up the utensils to first complete the shop owner's "good review mission." At the first mouthful, they froze in unison.

The noodles were very springy, there was nothing wrong with the soup and the vegetables that accompanied it were very fresh. If it wasn't so incredibly salty, it would indeed be a good bowl of noodles.

Gan Qing strained to move her tongue. She felt that the cells on her tongue were becoming dehydrated from the salt and the tongue hanging in her mouth was like a dried out persimmon.

No wonder no one came here anymore.

The two of them exchanged a look over the steam, then looked at the old shop owner earnestly wiping his hands on his apron.

Gan Qing said, "It's… uhh… very good!"

The boss looked at Yu Lanchuan.

Gan Qing kicked him under the table. Yu Lanchuan had no choice but to put down his chopsticks, reached out to take the glass of water and downed half of it in one go to dilute that mouthful of salt before finally savouring the taste. "It tastes just like it did in the past."

The boss was overjoyed and sat down beside them, his spirits high. "Our shop hired a great chef in the past. This is the recipe he left behind. The chef usually had to work at a hotel and didn't come here every day, he only came once every three to five days. When he was not here, he would leave us with the soup base so that we could cook for the customers ourselves. I bought the rights to the recipe. You can't get this anywhere else."

Gan Qing listened to this old acquaintance that she had met by chance yet did not remember tell his story and got something different from it. She couldn't help smiling. "So you already knew about buying rights back then, that's quite forward-thinking of you. How much did you pay?"

"20,000." The boss extended two fingers at her. "It was nearly ten years ago. Not cheap, is it?"

Gan Qing agreed with him and at the same time, thought in her heart, I never would have guessed that the old man had this bit of extra income.

The boss continued to prattle on, "He said he had a young daughter in senior high. Earlier on, he didn't prepare the school selection fees and had only scrambled for it at the last minute so the girl ended up attending a lousy high school. He couldn't let that happen for university so he had to save up for the fees and living expenses in advance. It never hurts to be prepared. What if her results are bad? She would still have to attend a third tier private academy. But the fees would be higher. 20,000 was not enough."

Gan Qing suddenly tightened her grip on the chopsticks.

"Later on, one day, he suddenly resigned and stopped coming," the boss said. "I guess it was because his child was going to sit for the gaokao and he had saved up enough. I wonder how he is now… Just look at that old man, his child hadn't yet sat for the exam and he was already dooming her to third tier private academies."

That disobedient little girl of his had never been willing to sit down and study steadily. His worries ate away at him but he also didn't know what he could do to help. He could only work two jobs, work hard to save up for her school fees and prepare for the worst case scenario.

But he was not prepared for what was even worse than the worst case scenario.

She smeared the glorious days of her youth with blood until it was a complete mess, living in a hopelessly muddled state. And it was only when her mad and deranged prison cellmate used her soul to offer up a few textbooks to her that she woke up from this nightmare.

They said that she still had many years of life ahead of her and that there was still time to turn back. She had also believed them, and had wanted to try turning her life back to the right track, bumpy as the road might be.

She knew regret.

That was when she seriously buckled down to study. She dreamed of walking out of that place one day and entering the exam hall again, of bringing the notice of admission from the university home with her to see the old man and telling him, "Shifu, I detoured for a few years but I'm back now. Do you still want me? All that stuff about breaking ties and revolting from the sect, we'll consider them invalid, okay?"

"Gan Qing!" Yu Lanchuan watched in alarm as she stuffed the noodles into her mouth like she could neither taste nor feel it. In just a few mouthfuls, she drained the bowl of salt-steeped soup.

But were there so many roads that could bring her back home?

This dewdrop world —

Is a dewdrop world,

And yet, and yet…^[note][2]

— — —

The author has something to say:

[note] This dewdrop world —

Is a dewdrop world,

And yet, and yet…

— Kobayashi Issa

T/N:

[1] The 90/10 principle was coined by Stephen Covey (author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and other similar books). There are some similarities to Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory, however there is no such "Festinger Theory" that uses this 90/10 split. From a quick search online, using the phrase "Festinger Theory" to refer to the 90/10 principle seems popular in Chinese media, however it is unknown who started it and why.

[2] The translation of the haiku that appears at the end of the chapter is by Lewis Mackenzie. I took it from the Wikipedia page on Kobayashi Issa.