Cheng Qian was at the nominal age [3] of ten, but he grew too slowly to keep up with his age.

Around noon, he carried firewood from the courtyard into the central hall. As it was hard for him to carry a whole bundle, he had to run back and forth twice. He only then wiped off the sweats and buried himself in cooking.

His father was busy receiving a guest these days, so ch.o.r.es including washing dishes, cooking, making fires and chopping firewood, all fell on his shoulders, driving him as busy as a spinning top, as if he could raise a tired wind anytime and anywhere.

Due to his short stature, it was somewhat inconvenient for him to operate a large pot, although he could already reach the top of the kitchen range. So he got a stool from the corner to step on.

The four legs of the stool varied in length. Since the age of six, Cheng Qian had learned to cook stepping on it. Heaps of times he came close to falling into the pot and turning himself into a broth, but eventually he managed to get on in harmony with that uneven stool, keeping an unstable balance.

Today, his big brother came back when he was adding water to the pot on that stool.

Big brother was already fifteen, and had grown into a young man. He walked in the central room silently with a smell of sweat, took a sweeping look around, then lifted his young brother down from the stool and gave him a rude push on the back. "Leave it with me." He said in a m.u.f.fled voice, "You can go and play."

Cheng Qian, of course, wouldn’t really go out. "Big Brother!" the lovely boy called out, and then squatted on the side, blowing the bellows loudly.

Cheng Dalang [4] looked down at him with complicated eyes, not uttering a word.

There were three sons in his family, Cheng Qian was the second. He had been called "Cheng Erlang" until a guest"s arrival the previous evening.

Dalang was aware that he could hardly call "Erlang" anymore, for his second brother, along with the convenient nickname, would make a complete change and go somewhere far away.

The guest that visited the day before was a Taoist, whose name was unknown. He unblushingly referred to himself as "Muchun Zhenren [5]". But he might not necessarily have any genuine abilities, judging by his appearance — he had a spa.r.s.e goatee, a pair of half-closed bird eyes and slender feet showing beneath the pleats of his robe fluttering in the wind — he was more like a fortune-teller who swindled and bluffed than an immortal with an ethereal bearing.

Zhenren just pa.s.sed by on his tour. He came up to ask for a bowl of water and never expected to see Cheng Erlang.

Cheng Erlang had only just run back home from outside then — there was an old Tongsheng [6] in the village, who had failed in the imperial examinations many times. He recruited students and taught them reading. In spite of his very little learning, he demanded quite high emoluments. He turned up his nose at things like self-made cured meats, fruits and vegetables, and only true gold and silver would be accepted. Moreover, the amount depended — as soon as he p.i.s.sed it all away, he"d stretch out to his students for more.

As a man with such bad conduct, he was totally unqualified to be a teacher, who could transmit wisdom, impart knowledge and resolve doubts. But there was just no way, as it wasn’t easy for children in rural areas to get education, considering that there wasn"t a second teacher within a radius of one hundred Li [7].

In light of their family circ.u.mstances, the Chengs definitely couldn’t afford tuition for their sons" schooling. But those unp.r.o.nounceable archaisms seemed to appeal to Cheng Qian especially. Since he couldn’t walk in the cla.s.sroom decently, he had to eavesdrop periodically.

In the old Tongsheng"s opinion, every spay of his saliva was the crystallization of his painstaking efforts, which was not for free. Therefore, he would often go out on a patrol halfway through his lecture.

Accordingly, Cheng Erlang hid in the tall Chinese scholar tree in the old Tongsheng"s courtyard like a monkey. Every time the theory of "self-cultivation, family harmony and world peace" would bring him out in a sweat.

Last night, in such a sweat, Cheng Erlang handed a bowl of water to a guest at his father"s instruction. But oddly enough, the guest didn’t take it. Instead, he reached out his hand that was as skinny as a leafless branch. He didn’t feel Erlang"s bones, though, nor did he use any strange cultivation method. He simply raised Erlang"s head and took a look straight into eyes of the young child, who tried hard to put on an air of "bookishness".

Somehow Zhenren seemed to see something from that look. He nodded strangely and said with an air of importance, "If you ask me, this kid is blessed with great endowments. In the future, he may acquire the ability of soaring up to the sky and diving deep to the sea, and perhaps great fortune waits ahead. He is no mediocre but will go far!"

Dalang was also present when Zhenren said so. Being apprenticed to a shopkeeper, he had seen people traveling south and north. So he considered himself as a man of knowledge and experience, yet he had never heard that one can judge another’s endowments by a mere look.

Dalang was thinking of contradicting the charlatan, but before he could open his mouth, he was surprised to find that his father should have believed such nonsense. And all of a sudden, he got shocked by what had just occurred to him.

His family wasn’t wealthy, especially after his mother gave birth to his youngest brother before the turn of the year. It was a difficult labor, and since then, she had been so weak that she always had to stay in bed. As a consequence, there was an invalid mother in the family who lived on medicine in replace of a healthy woman who could work.

The harvest of this year was bad. With no rain for months, there was going to be a severe crop failure. The three brothers… their family was unlikely to afford to feed them all.

Dalang knew exactly what his parents thought. He had served as an apprentice for a year and a half, and in one year or so, he would be able to make money back and become the hope of his family. While his youngest brother was still a baby in swaddling clothes, it was naturally difficult for parents to part with him. As for Erlang in the middle, he seemed quite superfluous. Perhaps he"d be better off cultivating himself with that Taoist.

If he struck it lucky and did succeed, that would be terrific. Even if not, it wouldn’t matter whether he lived by fortune-telling or cheating others, as long as he could feed himself and grow up. Both were his own life paths.

Muchun Zhenren and the short-sighted master of this family soon reached a "deal" through talks. Zhenren left a silver ingot and Cheng Erlang would go with him. From this moment on, he would no longer be "Cheng Erlang" but "Cheng Qian". This afternoon, he was going to cut off the bonds of this world and set off with his master.

Dalang was several years older than his second brother. They didn’t talk much and were by no means close to each other. Whereas this brother had been sensible from a very young age. He neither blubbered for no reason nor stirred up any trouble. He wore what his big brother had worn, ate what his mother and younger brother had eaten, only took the lead when it came to ch.o.r.es, and never complained.

Dalang loved and cared for this brother from the bottom of his heart, though he failed to say it.

But he just couldn’t help it. The family was too poor to rear him. He was yet the mainstay of the family, so his words wouldn’t count.

But anyway, that was their own flesh and blood, how could they be so ruthless to sell him?

The more Dalang thought about it the worse he felt. An idea popped into his mind that he should hit that old charlatan"s head to a hole with a big iron ladle. But in the end, he failed to muster up the courage — after all, he wouldn’t have been a mere apprentice if he"d got the courage. Wouldn’t he make much more money by plundering and looting?

Regarding his parents" plan and big brother"s pent-up frustration, Cheng Qian wasn’t completely in the dark.

Honestly, he wasn’t very precocious, definitely couldn’t be mentioned in the same breath with some child prodigies who were able to compose poems at the age of seven, or those that were appointed as prime minister at the age of thirteen. He was only a little oversensitive.

Father started work from dawn to dusk. Big brother went to work with stars shining and came home with the moon up. Mother didn’t hold him in her eyes as there were already his brothers. Therefore, even if no one beat or scolded him, no one would take him seriously either. Cheng Qian was well aware of that and he was tactful enough not to look for trouble. The most outrageous thing he had done ever since his birth was to climb up the big tree of the old Tongsheng"s, and listen to him explaining those trashy saints" books.

Cheng Qian worked conscientiously and diligently. He thought of himself as a young waiter, worker, servant — but never a son.

A kid should be talkative and restless. Now that Cheng Qian wasn"t a son, he naturally didn’t enjoy the privilege of being garrulous and naughty. He had been used to holding back his innermost feelings, and overtime, the words that couldn’t be let out, had to pierce inside, poking a lot of tiny holes in his little heart [8].

The boy with thousands of holes in his heart knew that he was sold by his parents. But bizarrely, he felt extremely calm, as though he had expected this day to come.

Before leaving, Cheng Qian"s ailing mother got out of bed once in a blue moon. She called him aside with a trembling voice, and gave him a parcel with eyes red. There were several pieces of clothing and a dozen pancakes. Needless to say, the clothes must be altered from his big brother"s, and the pancakes were made by his father the previous afternoon and evening.

He was her own flesh and blood, after all. Gazing at him, his mother couldn’t help reaching her hand into her sleeve and shipped out a string of copper coins shakily. The b.u.mpy and tarnished coins suddenly struck a chord with Cheng Qian slightly. He was like a small frozen animal, sniffing gingerly in a world of snow and ice, and somehow scented the smell of Mother.

His father also caught sight of that string of coins, however. He coughed heavily from the side, and his mother was forced to put it back, tears in her eyes.

The smell of Mother was like flowers in a mirror and the moon"s reflection in the water, all of a sudden, vanished into the air again, before Cheng Qian could give a second sniff.

"Come here, Erlang." His mother held Cheng Qian"s hand and took him into the inner room. She started panting within just a few steps.

She was exhausted and got a bench to sit on. Pointing to the oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, she asked weakly, "Erlang, do you know what it is?"

"Immortals" Eternal Fire." Cheng Qian looked upward indifferently.

This lamp with undistinguished appearance was the heirloom of his family, which was said to be his great grandmother"s dowry. It was palm-sized with no wick or kerosene. There were a couple of lines of Taoist magic figures carved on the old ebony lamp holder, with which the lamp could give out light automatically, forever illuminating an area of one Chi [9] square.

But Cheng Qian never figured out what the use of the c.r.a.p was besides attracting bugs in summer.

But seeing that it’s a magic tool, it"s not necessary to have any practical use. As for a countryman, it could be handed down from generation to generation as a treasure, provided that he could show it off when the neighbors visited.

The so-called "magic tool", was something where there were charms carved by "immortals". And it was impossible for the mortals to fake — there was wide variety of magic tools with an even wider variety of uses, such as lamps that didn’t fuel kerosene, paper that didn’t burn, beds that were warm in winter and cool in summer, and so forth.

There once came a story-teller roving the country. According to him, there were large houses built with "Immortals" Bricks" in bustling cities. It appeared as if it was glazed in the sunlight and was as resplendent as a royal palace. And bowls that the rich used had charms written by high-level immortals on the outer side. Such bowls could avoid poisons and cure illnesses. One fragment of such bowls was worthy of four Liang [10] of gold, yet was still pursued by many.

"Immortals", that was, "cultivators", and were also called "Daoren" or "Zhenren" — the former was usually used to call oneself to indicate humbleness.

Legend had it that they began with absorbing Qi from the natural world, and as their Cultivation Base leveled up, they became so powerful that they could refuse to eat, go up to the heaven and enter the earth, to such an extent that they"d enjoy eternal youth and become immortals at last when they pulled through Heavenly Tribulations… but n.o.body had ever seen true immortals, and legends remained legends.

The immortals always drifted about with great uncertainty. Thus a good piece of magic tool was really a rare treasure, which high officials and n.o.ble lords all scrambled for.

Cheng Qian"s mother bent over to look at him carefully. "When you returned, make an Eternal Fire for me, okay?" Asked his mother in a mild tone verging on blandishments.

Cheng Qian didn’t reply. Raising his eyelids and looking at her, he thought to himself ungratefully, "You wish! From today on, whether I succeed or not, die or not, and whatever I become, I shall never come back to see you again."

Suddenly, his mother was seized with shock. She found that this kid wasn’t like her or her husband. She saw her big brother in him instead.

Her big brother was born with ancestors" blessing. He was as pretty as a picture and was nothing like a countryman. His parents supported his study with all they might, and he was worth the price. He pa.s.sed the imperial examination at the county level and became Xiucai at the age of eleven. People said he was Star of Wisdom [11] descending from the sky.

However, Star of Wisdom probably didn’t want to linger in the world for too long. He died from illness before he could pa.s.s the triennial provincial civil examination for the degree of Juren.

Cheng Qian’s mother was very young when her big brother died, so some memory had blurred. But at this moment she suddenly recalled, that when he was alive, he was exactly the same as Cheng Qian — he would always understate his raptures and furies with merely a casual look, as if nothing appeared to ruffle his perfect composure. His poker face always forbade others from getting close to him.

Cheng Qian’s mother let go of his hand in spite of herself, and at the same time, Cheng Qian took a half step backward un.o.btrusively.

Thus he put the separation of a son from his mother into an abrupt end mildly and firmly as well.

In Cheng Qian’s mind, what he had done was not out of hatred. Actually, he got no reason to hate them — his parents gave him birth and raised him up. Even if they gave him up halfway, at most their faults offset their merits.

He looked down at his toes and said to himself, it wouldn’t matter his parents didn’t have him in their eyes, it’s also nothing that they sold him to a bird-eyed Taoist.

[1] Liu Yao: see here.

[2] Bright Future: the original words literally mean that "A roc can reach a destination of a myriad miles away at one jump". It originates from a cla.s.sical Chinese pa.s.sage Xiaoyao You, by Zhuang Zhou.

[3] nominal age: according to a Chinese tradition, a person is considered one year old at birth, so that he will always be one year older than his actual age. See more here.

[4] Dalang: in a Chinese family, the eldest son is often called Dalang (大郎) by his parents, the second son is called Erlang (二郎), and the third is called Sanlang (三郎).

[5] Muchun: a big tree with a very long life span from the pa.s.sage Xiaoyao You, 

Zhenren: see here.

[6] Tongsheng: scholars that failed in the imperial examination (in the Ming and Qing Dynasties).

Xiucai: Tongsheng who pa.s.sed the imperial examination at the county level (in the Ming and Qing Dynasties).

Juren: successful candidate in the provincial imperial examinations (in the Ming and Qing Dynasties).

[7] Li: a unit of length, equivalent to 500 meters.

[8] poking a lot of tiny holes in his little heart: it explains why Cheng Qian is oversensitive, because the Chinese idiom "one has many holes in his heart" means that “one is oversensitive”.

[9] Chi: a unit of length, equal to 1/3 meter.

[10] Liang: a unit of weight for silver or gold (about 31 grams).

[11] Star of Wisdom: a legendary G.o.d in charge of imperial examinations and literary affairs.