At this hour, Gan Qing should be at Star Dreams. However, today happened to be the day for replenishing the stock. Madam Zhang Meizhen was very interested in those little accessories and had asked her to bring them home for her to pick. And hence, Gan Qing was just bringing a few pounds of little accessories up to the apartment when a row of apples came from far to block her path.

She looked ahead, following the trail of apples. She saw Mr. Yu dressed in a neatly ironed dress shirt with mother-of-pearl cufflinks, a bluish-green light reflecting off his new glasses, looking like he was ready to attend the Boao Forum for Asia… But his left hand was holding a wrapped smoked chicken, his right hand was carrying a bag of snacks that were nearly smashed to pieces, and at his feet was a flowery quilt wrapped around a tightly sealed jar of pickles.

"..." Gan Qing was dealt a heavy shock by this incredibly incongruous scene. "Lifestyle change?"

Yu Lanchuan wondered if he still had the time to pretend he was helping Grandma Zhang pick up those things.

Grandma Zhang was obviously unwilling to bear this blame. While the two young people were bending over and picking up the apples all over the corridor, the old lady faced the full-length mirror at her front door and put on her shoes and applied her lipstick. "Earlier, I heard that an old single lady came to look for Yang Qing. So it was her."

Yang Qing was Old Master Yang's name. Yu Lanchuan had seen it before on the poem couplet he had given to Granduncle.

Yu Lanchuan keenly sensed something from the phrase "old single lady." He looked up, incredulous.

Her back to Grandma Zhang, Gan Qing extended a hand and pointed downstairs, then glanced sideways at the enchanting Madam Zhang Meizhen and mouthed, "Fallback guy."

Yu Lanchuan was just about to stand up while carrying the apples and now, his legs weakened momentarily and he nearly knelt back down.

Gan Qing turned her head around and asked, "Meizhen-jie, who is she?"

Yu Lanchuan's incredulous look shifted to her. People nowadays could be so shameless for the sake of sucking up to their landlord?

Zhang Meizhen cheerfully bound her hair up with an elastic band and said patiently, "She's called Qian Xiaoying. When she was young, her temper was fierce and explosive and there were some who called her 'Flying Kick Little Chili.' Later on, she grew up and got married. The nickname of 'Little Chili' didn't sound very respectful, so everyone changed it to 'Red Rhododendron.' She was a beauty too. Back then, there were a few bored men who made a list of top beauties. I remember she was fifth or sixth."

Gan Qing said mildly, "Oh."

Zhang Meizhen asked curiously, "What would a little girl like you know?"

Gan Qing found a very thick needle, threaded it with yarn, then deftly sewed up the torn checkered nylon bag. After a couple of stitches, she said without looking up, "I guess that must be the list where you're number one."

Yu Lanchuan, "..."

Had she no shame?

Zhang Meizhen stared blankly, then began laughing uncontrollably. She didn't deny it and just poked her head out to ask Yu Lanchuan, "What happened to her?"

Yu Lanchuan briefly explained the matter.

"'Tsk, how pitiful." Zhang Meizhen took a couple of steps back and studied her full reflection. She said carelessly, "Doesn't that mean she's going to become a lonely old widow?"

Yu Lanchuan was not willing to use someone else's troubles to gossip behind their back, and did not reply.

"It's not a big deal." Zhang Meizhen breathed out a light, delicate sigh. "Who isn't a lonely old widow?"

Gan Qing and Yu Lanchuan both stared blankly. Meanwhile, Zhang Meizhen had already picked up a small handbag and walked away leisurely.

By the time the hourly worker was done, Yu Lanchuan had found a few people to move the sewn up checkered nylon bag to the rented place Madam Qian and the rest were temporarily staying. Then, he retrieved only the money from the bag and brought it to the hospital himself. He even took a close look, but didn't find even a hint of the "Red Rhododendron" from all those years ago in that face.

Yu Lanchuan didn't intend to say much and left right after putting down what he brought there. The packet of money he left behind was too large and Madam Qian initially thought that it was food. When she tore open the seal and looked inside, she went mad and chased after him, but Yu Lanchuan's car was already out of sight.

The modern-day car was a lot more advanced than the rundown coal trains from decades ago. Even Flying Kick Little Chili could not keep up.

Madam Qian stood for a while on the road, then realised that there was a row of words on the paper package.

The words said: A round sum of 200,000. From your friend Kowtow Twice, via Yu Lanchuan.

After sending the money, Yu Lanchuan went home, tidied up the materials for the weekly meeting on Monday, and then had nothing else to do. The sun was high in the bright afternoon sky, and it was a rare day of good weather. Typically, on a rest day like this, he would ask a few friends in his group for a round of golf. It was like clearing checkpoints in a game, a very utilitarian way of conducting social interaction.

Today, Yu Lanchuan suddenly couldn't muster up the enthusiasm. Thinking about it, he had never been interested in any ball sports and was too lazy to even watch matches. Whenever he got into the court to play, it was purely to accompany other people playing. When he chatted with those friends on topics such as Trends in Policies and Underlying Currents of the Era, at a glance it seemed like something very high level but in actual fact, it was fundamentally no different from high school girls chatting about celebrity gossip—they were all just blindly talking nonsense, like chasing the wind and catching shadows. As for depending on golf and dinner parties to expand one's "social network," who knew whether or not it could really be depended on when he needed it. Even when he reposted a fundraiser for someone with a terminal illness in his WeChat Moments, barely anyone clicked on it to check it out and drop some coffee money. It was evidently also just as illusionary.

Yu Lanchuan went online for a while, browsing without an aim. His two hands suddenly moved on their own and searched for "train-robbing gang." He didn't find any results so he searched according to Master Yang's introduction of The Two Qians and looked up old news from that locality. He found a few clues, saved them, then posted at the local comment boards and forums.

At first, no one paid any attention and Yu Lanchuan also put this matter aside. A few days later, he suddenly remembered it and went back to check. He found that one of the posts had been pushed up. Someone wrote a long comment of a few thousand characters, talking about the experiences of their train attendant grandfather.

Following that, there were more and more such comments. Some were real, some were probably made up from the stories by people who just wanted to join the hype.

The few of them sat separately in different carriages. When the train was about to reach the destination, they stood up and walked around the train, signalling to each other with their eyes. Red Rhododendron purposely sat in a corner with a shawl over her head. She put a small cloth bag on the little table and opened the window slightly. Those robbers had very sharp eyes. Seeing that she was a woman on her own who didn't know to be cautious, they immediately targeted her. Once the train slowed down, one rushed up and opened the train window, slipped in and grabbed her things. Red Rhododendron did not go easy on him; once she saw the robber take the bait, she grabbed the robber's wrist that was reaching in and slammed the window down. The robber saw that he had fallen into a trap and desperately tried to flee. He took a dagger from his chest to stab her; she kicked out and the dagger went flying. Her comrades who were lying in wait in the train jumped off and caught the robber's accomplices.

A sting operation to enforce the law. Unexpectedly, the method wasn't very different from her porcelain scams later on.

My grandfather said that Red Rhododendron grabbed the robber that was dragged into the train and pushed him down to the floor, pressed her knee on the robber's back, then smiled at the train marshals that had hurried there. Her head covering had fallen off, revealing a thick and long braid. Her lips were red and her teeth white…

She sat for a few stops. Then, seeing that everything was peaceful on the train, she got off. Her husband would definitely already be waiting for her on the platform. Apparently, Mr. Qian always let his other comrades take the train-robbers away while he took the shortcuts through the mountains and, using his two legs, reached the station ahead of the train to welcome her. Who knows if the rumour is true...

Yu Lanchuan thought a bit, then contacted the intern from his company's summer program. The intern was his university junior and had already gone back to school for classes. Yu Lanchuan asked his junior to look for a few students who wrote for the university newspaper. He collected all these comments that sounded like local folklore and sent them over, and had them write a biography of Red Rhododendron for a fee.

Then, he took this biography and contacted a few cultural media companies and small news agencies that his company had invested in before. They gave it a bit of a makeover, then, at a predetermined time, published it on the online forums at the localities where the train-robbing gang had operated back in those years.

Apparently, later on, President "buy bag and watches" Yang saw and poked a finger in too, paying for a round of publicity.

This was what Yu Lanchuan heard other people say. President Yang herself never admitted it to him.

In the end, by the time the 200,000 from "Kowtow Twice" was nearly all used up, from a stale article about crowdfunding the cost of medical treatment, the story of Red Rhododendron rose to prominence. Even though the readership never broke 100,000, as long as those who still remembered her knew about it, it was enough.

The feel of autumn in the air started to sharpen into harshness. The scarred-face man from the three brothers—because he had not participated in the kidnapping from start to end, and had even tried to stop his senior brother—was set free after the investigation cleared him. The story of Red Rhododendron was overshadowed by yet another society hot topic, but the money needed for Madam Qian's son's medical fees was nearly all collected.

And then…

Birth, old age, illness and death all depended on fate. It was beyond a person's ability to control them.

The money had just reached her account. Before it could be paid to the hospital, Madam Qian's son's condition suddenly worsened. She signed the umpteenth notice of critical illness and, as usual, sat outside the emergency treatment room to wait.

There was a sudden gust of wind outside the windows. Along the corridor, the tightly shut windows were all violently shaken by the brutal wind. The large parasol tree in the garden rustled loudly. Madam Qian's heart thumped erratically; the light over the emergency treatment room door turned off.

After struggling on death's door for a few months, Madam Qian became an old lonely widow.

When Yu Lanchuan received the phone call, it happened to be storming. The entire city was gridlocked and the car wipers couldn't sweep the water away in time. The cars in front of him were unmoving. In the car next to his, the driver wasn't afraid of getting wet and had wound the window down and his sleeve up, and flicked cigarette ash out the window.

Madam Qian waited for him at No. 110 Courtyard until late at night. When the rain stopped, Yu Lanchuan finally reached. Madam Qian had the scarred-face man kowtow to him. After they were stopped by Yu Lanchuan who was, by now, afraid of this gesture of theirs, she held on to her cane for support and gave him a tottering bow.

Due to the bad weather, Madam Zhang Meizhen could not go out to party. She leaned against the door frame and suddenly spoke, "Little Chili."

Madam Qian, who was turning to leave, stared blankly for a long time before finally coming back to herself. She looked at Zhang Meizhen with an expression that was hard to put into words.

Zhang Meizhen opened her mouth. She suddenly thought of something and smiled. "It's nothing. Actually, I wanted to tell you that everything will be okay. But after thinking about it, I decided not to. It's not true anyway. The weather is bad, be careful on your way back."

Would everything be okay?

No, it wouldn't. Whether or not things would be okay all depended on Heaven and fate.

But regardless of what happened, one still had to live, hadn't they?

Madam Qian led the scarred-face man down and disappeared into the shadows of the trees in the eastern side of the courtyard.

Zhang Meizhen turned her head around and called out to Yu Lanchuan. "Little Master Yu, we old fools all want you to move back here. Your Old Master Yang asked me to ask you. Would that be all right with you?"

— END OF BOOK 1 —