“… Sweet buns with sugar fillings and almond cakes made in hot pots. Wouldn’t you like to take a look and try them, please?!”
"Cooking cakes, big round cooking cakes!"
"Tanghulu..."
"A chamber pot with beautiful lace. You can plant flowers and plants on it when you don't need it, which makes it unique!"
…
It was early summer, and after the last rain of late spring, waiters carrying teapots were walking between customers. Through the open windows, I could see a bustling street with busy pedestrians walking on the wet ground. Occasionally, a citizen who had been busy all morning would stop to look at the steaming steamer, spend two or three cents to buy a piece of fragrant almond cake, wrap it in oilcloth paper, and share it with his family.
"Hehe, can you let me play with the windmill?"
"If you don't give it to me, I won't give it to you!!"
The children holding windmills were chasing and playing with each other. They ran past a banner with the words "Shuhua Changdao" on it, bumped into the crowd, laughed, stuck out their tongues, and ran away somewhere else.
On the bustling long street, this stall has been surrounded by many literati and elegant guests. They are looking at the painting of a beauty hanging in the most conspicuous position in admiration, and some are pointing and commenting on the words and scrolls on the surrounding hanging racks.
"The ink dragon is curling, the iron tree and the pear blossoms... This calligraphy is written very quickly."
"The painting is absolutely beautiful. When did such a scholar appear in Ning'an City?"
“It’s a pity to set up a stall to sell calligraphy and paintings.”
A man near the stall folded a paper fan and raised his hand to the scholar who was writing at the long table opposite. The man was also a scholar who seemed to make a living by selling calligraphy and paintings, but he did not act in an overbearing manner.
"My dear brother, is the painting I want finished?"
Behind the long table, the scholar had just stopped writing. On the scroll was a blue-and-black landscape painting with mountains and forests in patches. On the river, a lone boat sailed towards the rising sun. If you look closely, you can see the boatman paddling with a look of satisfaction on his face. In the distant mountains and forests, you can see monkeys climbing.
“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful…”
The man bent down to read it carefully and blew away the ink that had not yet dried.
Lu Liangsheng smiled and wiped his hands, then put the brush in a dish to wash: "Are you satisfied?"
“Satisfied! Satisfied!”
The scholar treasured the scroll, took out his purse quickly, counted out 120 coins and put them on the table.
"Brother, the money is here. I'll take it and frame it first!"
"Twenty cents more."
Lu Liangsheng casually picked up exactly twenty copper coins and handed them back to the scholar. Seeing the other party's surprise, he smiled.
"Whatever price we agreed to before is what price we agreed to. We won't charge more than that."
After leaving Shunyuan County, Lu Liangsheng still felt that it was better to avoid trouble. Now he had arrived in Chaoning Prefecture, which was not far from Qishan. He could earn some money for drinks and meals by setting up a stall so that he could speed up his journey.
After collecting the hundred coins for the day, he raised his hands to the scholars and guests who were watching him and said, "I will not paint today. I will say goodbye now."
After saying this, he ignored the customers who wanted to buy calligraphy and paintings, dismantled the flagpole, tables, chairs, and hanging racks, put them behind the donkey cart, and then led the old donkey away from the street. When he came to a sparsely populated street, he took advantage of the fact that there was no one around and the donkey cart, tables, and chairs turned into stars and disappeared.
"Master, what would you like to eat later?"
After tidying up, Lu Liangsheng pulled the reins and led the old donkey out again, looking back at the small compartment of the bookshelf.
"Steamed carp, or braised donkey meat?"
Ahem!
The old donkey widened his eyes and hummed a long note in panic, which made passers-by look at him curiously, thinking that it was a crazy scholar talking to a donkey.
In the small compartment, Toad Taoist put away the small map, rolled it up and put it back on his back, then picked up another booklet, flipped through it, and stroked over the lines of words with his round-headed little webbed hand, pondering for a moment.
"I just ate it yesterday. Let's try a different flavor today. Let's buy some goose meat."
"good."
He responded as he walked and turned the corner. There were many food vendors on the roadside. Lu Liangsheng went over and ordered two geese, which were killed and roasted right away. He asked the vendor to wrap them in lotus leaves and tie a rope around them and hold them in his hand.
"It's time to go to Qishan."
The surroundings are still bustling and noisy, filled with the sounds of hawking and bargaining.
"We agreed on six coins, why did you change your mind?"
"That one over there, don't put your hands on it if you don't want to buy it!"
"Look, look, here is the finest fabric."
The scholar, wearing a long green gauze robe, was walking through the market, leading his old donkey and squeezing through the crowd.
…
After leaving Ning'an City, they followed the direction of Qishan that people in the city had inquired about and walked onto the mountain road. Nie Honglian put on her painted skin and walked briskly in front, occasionally jumping happily.
Under the bookshelf where the donkey's buttocks were placed, the compartment was open. The Toad Taoist stretched out his two short legs and hung them outside. He leaned on a pile of books behind him, hugged a goose wing, and looked at the mountain scenery outside the forest with great enjoyment.
"It's so familiar..."
Looking at the rolling hills, he couldn't help but sigh, then lowered his head and continued to gnaw on his wings.
The scholar who was walking slowly in front of the donkey looked back without saying anything. Now they were almost at Mount Qishan that their master had mentioned, but the closer they got, the more careful they became. They compared the surrounding mountains with those on the map from time to time to see if they matched, so as to avoid passing by them again without realizing it.
Soon, we went west out of Chaoning Prefecture and walked for another day. The surrounding mountains became steeper and the green at the foothills became less. After being accustomed to the mountains and rivers in the south, we couldn't help but feel desolate when we saw the land in the northwest of the Northern Zhou Dynasty.
"Master, this should be the area of Qishan, right? Why is your cave in such a desolate corner?"
Lu Liangsheng led the old donkey up the ridge. The endless brown and yellow stretched before his eyes, like a brown and yellow earth dragon stretching to the end of the sky and earth. The occasional mountain peaks looked like big mounds from a distance.
"Are you sure you didn't remember the location wrong?"
The Toad Taoist jumped off the bookshelf, walked to the front of his apprentice with his hands behind his back on his flippers, and stood under a small tree, scanning the surroundings with his toad eyes.
"How could the master forget where his cave is?"
Hong Lian floated over and sat on a nearby branch, covering her mouth with her hands and laughing softly: "Then how did we get to Shunyuan? We carried it for such a long distance?"
"… "
Toad glanced at her, snorted, turned around and left with his hands behind his back... As long as I return to the cave and restore my cultivation, I will see if a little ghost like you dares to be so presumptuous!
He crawled back into the cubicle and waved his paddles: "Not here, let's go a little further and see."
Qishan is a large area, so it is normal that he could not find it for a while. Lu Liangsheng did not complain. He rested for a while, put the second volume of "Illustrated Records of Mountains and Seas" back on the bookshelf, and continued on his way. He did not want to worry too much about whether there was another copy of this book. Anyway, if he was destined to find it, he would come across it. Forcing it would not be good.
In the afternoon, the light of the sky slanted over the mountain top. Looking around, the surrounding rolling ridges were covered with a layer of rosy clouds.
“If the mountain were higher and greener, it would really look a bit like Mount Qixia.”
When Lu Liangsheng was looking at the remaining red and muttering something, the Toad Taoist, who was standing on the donkey's head with his webbed feet on his forehead and looking out, was stunned for a moment, then his frog mouth opened and he burst into laughter.
"I saw it! I saw it!"
Lu Liangsheng followed the direction pointed by the round webbed head. In the middle of the intersection of the two "earth dragons" was a solitary peak. From a distance, it looked like a dead tree standing on the brown and yellow hillside.
"Go over there quickly! Go over there quickly!"
Amid the excited urging of Taoist Toad, Lu Liangsheng led the old donkey, carefully avoiding the sharp rocks and earth, and went down to the foot of the mountain. He went in the direction of the solitary peak. There was a withered old forest that was strangely twisted, and several large rocks with mottled sand stood quietly. The towering mountain in front became more majestic as he got closer, and there were also a lot of green dots on it.
When they reached the foot of the mountain, Toad Taoist excitedly jumped off the donkey's head, and with the clatter of his webbed feet, he ran towards a place where he could go up the mountain.
"Haha... I will reply..."
Bang!
He tripped over a stone and fell to the ground, with his long tongue sticking out and hanging on the corner of his mouth. When Lu Liangsheng hurried over, the Toad Taoist climbed up without a care in the world, dragged his long tongue behind him, and continued to run forward.
"Hahaha!!"
"The old man is back—"
After a moment, the short figure disappeared at the entrance of the mountain path.
Lu Liangsheng withdrew his hand with a smile, and followed his master, leading the old donkey, up the weed-covered mountain path. From afar, he could hear the Toad Taoist's excited laughter echoing among the mountains.
"My dears, I am back..."
After a moment, the laughter suddenly stopped.
The scholar frowned, quickened his pace, and pushed aside the branches that were covering the mountain wall. The mountain path above became open, like a small platform.
"Master?"
On the other side of the field of vision, the toad stood there with its back to the world, its long tongue dragging crookedly on the ground, staring at the opposite side with a dull expression.
A few tufts of weeds grew on the flat ground, and on the mountain wall that extended over, a tall stone gate was covered with moss and tilted to one side, revealing a pitch-black entrance.
"Sure enough... it was stolen."
Taoist Toad sat down with a thud.