Lan Tian puts down the waiter, and pulls Wu Yun's sleeve. "We're leaving."
Meng-er, unfurls a whip from his waist and cracks it in the air. "You're not going anywhere, until young master is done speaking."
Wu Yun gives A-Tan a sideways look. He doesn't look like the master of anything. In fact he looks in danger of being blown away by a stiff wind.
"Who's going to stop us?" Wu Yun asks, addressing A-Tan directly.
"Yangli's town guard." A-Tan's doesn't look like the kind of person who is used to being opposed, judging by the vein throbbing on his temple, which makes Wu Yun want to tease him even more.
"You sure like to puff out your chest for such a little boy," Wu Yun says, flicking A-Tan's pert little nose.
A-Tan goes through every colour combination available, before settling on pale green, and striking Wu Yun across the face with a loud slap.
For a moment the sound of the slap cuts through the din of the restaurant like a sword through wind, and the entire place falls deathly quiet. Wu Yun clutches his smarting cheek in shock.
So the little rooster thinks he's a phoenix?
He cocks his head to the side and smirks, before saying, "You shouldn't have done that."
Without warning, Wu Yun jumps on A-Tan and grabs his hair with one hand, and tries to scratch out his eyes with the other. A-Tan screeches in anger and tries to free himself from Wu Yun's vicious grip on his hair.
Everyone at the restaurant decides to join in at once, and it's obvious whose side they've picked. Besides Meng-er, three other men start pulling at Wu Yun's robes trying to pry him away from A-Tan. One of them, and elderly man with rheumy eyes starts beating him with his walking stick.
"This is ridiculous," says Lan Tian.
Clearly at the end of his incense stick, Lan Tian picks up a nearby table and uses it to bash the men crowding over Wu Yun. They fall on the ground in an haphazard pile, all screaming over each other.
Lan Tian picks up a still struggling Wu Yun under the knees and runs out of the restaurant. Several other patrons try to stop them but Lan Tian kicks them away, while Wu Yun punches everything he comes in contact with, trying to turn around in Lan Tian's arms to continue fighting.
"Stop squirming or I'll drop you," he says, almost in a growl.
"Who asked you? Let me go, I was handling it."
After running through several streets and finding a dark alley partially hidden under the shade of tall pine trees, Lan Tian finally stops running, and lowers Wu Yun into the ground.
"There were five men trying to beat you up, and you were mostly pulling hair and making a lot of noise."
"I clearly had the upper hand." Wu Yun crossed his arms and blows a piece of stray hair away from his face.
Lan Tian decides it's in his best interests to drop this train of conversation. "If we stayed any longer they would have called those guards."
"I would have beaten them up too."
"If you say so." Lan Tian jumps on a wall surrounding someone's house and hides his face in his hands with a sigh. "Apparently we need money, to have things here."
Wu Yun sits down next to him, and looks up at the mysterious shapes the sun creates shining through the pine trees. How much can things change in a day? Yesterday he was a fox with a single goal and not a care in the world. Today he is a fox trapped in a human's body, and between him and his goal lies a sea of uncertainty.
"Maybe we could steal money?" he asks, bumping his shoulder into Lan Tian's.
"The humans wouldn't like that."
"Then how do we get money? I'm always offering solutions and you keep rejecting them."
"Your solutions only cause us more trouble!"
"How was I supposed to know we needed money to eat? I've always eaten for free in the woods."
Lan Tian groans and hides his face in his hands again. "Talking with you is exhausting. Every second that goes by I regret meeting you more."
Wu Yun's lower lip stars trembling, his fine features taking on an air of overbearing sorrow. Anyone passing by would think he had been extremely wronged. Two solitary tears squeeze out of his left eye. "You regret meeting me?" he asks, letting out a pitiful sniffle.
Lan Tian's amber eyes widen in fright. He starts rubbing Wu Yun's shoulder, but that only seems to make him cry harder. He remembers that he seemed to like it when Lan Tian hugged him in the river, so he pulls him by the shoulder against his chest, and draws soothing circles on his back with his fingers.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. You're very annoying, yes, but it's...uhm...part of your charm."
Slowly, Wu Yun's thin shoulders stop heaving, and he turns his dark, tearful eyes, on Lan Tian, his sharp brows still drawn in consternation. "Are you sorry?"
Lan Tian nods. "Yes, I'm really sorry."
Wu Yun's sad moue splits into a brilliant grin."Got you! I can't believe you fell for that," he says between mirthful giggles.
"Why did you start crying if you weren't sad?" Lan Tian asks, putting some distance between himself and Wu Yun.
"Because you're so easy it tease, it's fun. And also, I know you didn't mean it." Wu Yun says, patting Lan Tian's back.
Lan Tian flinches away from his touch. "I could have meant it," he says, in a low voice.
Wu Yun's scathing next words are interrupted by the sound of voices approaching the wall they are perched on. With a quick exchange of glances they both jump behind the wall, hiding themselves from view.
Wu Yun takes a peek over the wall and spots two old ladies carrying bamboo baskets full of vegetables engrossed in conversation.
"Aya, it's really a shame what happened to that young master of the Jiang family at Old Lao's restaurant today. As if that poor boy doesn't have enough troubles."
The oldest of the two nods, making her eyes disappear under the shadow of her wrinkled brows. "That's right, being attacked by those ruffians when he already has to worry about that awful Prince of Qi wanting to make him part of his harem."
The old lady who spoke first shakes her head. "It's really unbelievable, that terrible prince has been demanding that several sons of important families in our prefecture join his harem. None of them are ever seen again!"
"Every family who refused him ended up destroyed, and their son was taken, anyway, so there's not much that Old Master Jiang can do to spare his son his terrible fate."
The more sprightly old lady, waves her finger in the other's face. "That's not true, he's been offering prize money to everyone who can come up with a way to save his son, but so far no one has been successful."
Wu Yun starts violently jabbing Lan Tian with his elbow. He turns to him and mouths the word: "money".
Lan Tian dodges him and whispers angrily. "I heard them, too. Stop it with your pointy elbow."
The old ladies continue to walk down the cobbled street until their voices disappear in the distance. Wu Yun jumps up on the wall again grinning from ear to ear.
"It seems we'll have money pretty soon. The heavens are smiling down on us."
"They must not know you want to kill the Jade Emperor." Lan Tian sits next to Wu Yun, scowling.
"What are you being such a pessimist for? This is the answer to all our troubles." It never stops surprising Wu Yun how Lan Tian is always able to find the dark cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky.
"Do you have any idea how we can save the old man's son from the weird Prince?" Lan Tian asks, his scowl deepening.
Wu Yun waves off his concerns like dust in the air. "We'll figure that out once we get there. Now let's go find this Jiang family."
Finding the Jiang family is easier said than done. Wu Yun takes to asking everyone they come across where he can find the Jiang family, but it turns out there are several branches to the Jiang clan and they all live in Yangli. After leaving the house of Jiang Sui the former daoist monk, and visiting Jiang Nainai an elderly lady who tries to tell them everything about the Jiang family going back several generations, Wu Yun decides to be clearer the next time he asks for directions.
"Where can I find the house of the family whose son the Prince of Qi wants to take away?" he asks, clutching a child carrying a kite by the shoulders and boring into his eyes with desperate intensity.
The small boy starts crying immediately, but he does lift his chubby arm to point at a large house on top of a hill, visible from the street.
Wu Yun pats the boy's silky head of hair affectionately. "Thank you, you've been very helpful. Now stop crying, it makes you look really ugly."
Watching this, Lan Tian lowers himself to the child's height and picks up his kite from the ground. He dusts it off before handing it back to the crying boy. "Hey, boy, don't listen to him. You look, uhm, very handsome when you cry, but it's better not to do it too often or people will start fainting from your good looks."
The boy lets out a watery chuckle, and clutches the kite to his chest. "That beautiful gege is very mean."
"Don't listen to him, he is a nine-tailed fox who lost all his tails, so he's in a very bad mood."
The little boy's widen comically. "Really? Is he a good or a bad fox spirit?"
Lan Tian gives this some thought but arrives at summary conclusion. "Bad, very annoying. He's definitely bad."
To Lan Tian's horror the boy starts crying again, this time so loudly that he draws the attention of passersby.
Further along the road, Wu Yun hears the commotion and turns to call to Lan Tian, "Hurry up! What are you waiting for?"
Lan Tian gives up on trying to console the crying child and runs up after Wu Yun.
"Human children are very weird," he says once he catches up to him.
---
The Jiang family home is an imposing estate, composed of two story pavilions and sprawling courtyards. The wide eaves of each building are so large one could host an entire dinner party under their shade. It looks decidedly out of place in an unassuming town like Yangli.
As soon as they reach the gate, men carrying heavy weapons ask them what is their business with the family.
"We're here to save Young Master Jiang from his terrible fate," Wu Yun announces, with his hands on his hips and chin held high.
The men give them ambivalent once-overs, but one of them finally goes inside the house to call on a servant girl who leads them both into the house to meet with Old Master Jiang.
The man himself receives them sitting down on a low chair. He has bushy eyebrows like two spiky caterpillars have decided to slumber on his face, and thin bloodless lips. He motions them to sit on the pillows on the right of the chair.
"I'm the Master of this house, Jiang Yilong, I was told you could save my son from his fate at the hands of the cruel Prince of Qi." Jiang Yilong speaks in a slow drawl, and seems to chew on his words carefully before considering them ready for being spoken.
The slow cadence of his speech threatens to put Wu Yun to sleep. "Yes, we can do that, how much can you pay us?" he asks, trying to hurry things along to the part that really matters to him.
Jiang Yilong raises one hand, palm facing forward, to cut Wu Yun short. The slowness of his movements is hypnotizing.
"Before that, I, and my son, will need to learn your plan."
Jiang Yilong waves at one of the servants who bows to him, and comes back seconds later trailing an unfortunately familiar figure.
His face still bears the scratches of Wu Yun's nails, despite his robes and hair having been once again meticulously arranged. The vein at his temple starts throbbing as soon as he lays eyes on Wu Yun.
"You again!" A-Tan shouts, pointing a finger at both of them.
As if summoned by his voice, Meng-er appears over his shoulder, whip at the ready.