Chapter 3: The Old Fox Probes

The moment the four words, "The sky's about to clear," left his lips, the rain stopped.

It didn't taper off gradually; it cut out cold, like someone had slammed the shut-off valve in the heavens. A seam tore open in the cloud cover, and slanting light punched through the mist, hitting the blue stone pavement and steaming up a thin layer of white vapor. The crowd, frozen in surprise for a beat, erupted into a murmur.

Lu Yan blinked internally too. He’d just made an offhand remark, yet the system pinged in his head with a light chime: *Prestige Points +37.*

Was it that simple?

He kept a straight face, folded his umbrella, shook off the water beads, and gave the carriage a slight nod before turning to leave.

But the carriage curtain lifted higher. Fang Xuanling didn’t stay inside. He stepped down into the puddles, his boots splattering mud, and walked toward the teahouse with his robe hem lifted, his voice pitched just right: "Master Lu, might this old man steal a cup of tea?"

Lu Yan’s step faltered.

The teahouse was still thick with steam. Su Qingdai had just finished drying the tables and chairs. Seeing Lu Yan ushering in an elderly man, her gaze swept quickly to the carriage outside, then she smiled and welcomed the guest. When she poured the tea, her wrist hovered right over the edge of the tray—a position that could flip into a wrist lock in an instant.

Fang Xuanling sat by the window. He didn't touch the tea first. Instead, he sized Lu Yan up from head to toe, his eyes weighing him like a merchant assessing the weight of a bronze vessel.

"Master Lu has been telling stories in Chang'an for less than half a month," he said, "yet the patrons at the East and West Markets are repeating your words with every breath."

"Just a chatty plebeian and listeners with too much free time. We happened to cross paths."

Fang Xuanling lifted his bowl, the steam blurring his eyebrows. "That last remark... how did you know?"

"Which one?"

"The sky's about to clear."

Lu Yan laughed, open and honest. "I spent ten days on the city wall watching clouds. The wind starts on Zhongnan Mountain, goes from wet to dry, the cloud feet roll toward the northeast and press against the city walls. That's the tail end of a rain cycle. Just luck."

Fang Xuanling shook his head and set the bowl down gently. The porcelain rim gave a sharp, crisp *clack* against the table.

"Luck," he repeated the word. There was amusement in his tone, but something else too. "In all my years, I've seen plenty of 'luck.' When luck happens too often, it stops being luck. It becomes skill."

Lu Yan sighed internally. The old fox wasn't biting the hook. He was trying to put a hat on Lu Yan first, then stuff the hat with his own agenda. Classic political maneuvering. A thousand years of it and it never changed.

He decided to change the angle.

"You flatter me, Your Excellency." Lu Yan leaned back in his chair. "My little trick isn't worth much. It's just like that old coroner next door."

Fang Xuanling’s eyebrow ticked up. "Oh?"

"He's been examining corpses for thirty years, and his mouth has trained itself accordingly. Neighbors ask if it'll rain tomorrow. He says, 'Hard to say.' Ask again, he says, 'Depends on the sky.' Ask a third time, he says, 'You'll know when you're still alive.' Every answer is correct. None of them are useful. That's skill too."

A few low chuckles rippled through the teahouse.

Fang Xuanling smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes—it sank back down instantly. He smoothed his sleeves and suddenly changed the subject.

"Do you know what the court lacks?" Fang Xuanling's voice dropped, casual as small talk. "They need a certain type of person. Someone who can clearly hear what the common people say, and knows how to translate it back to them. That kind of person is harder to keep than a general and rarer to find than a censor."

Luyan smirked inwardly. Here it comes.

"If you're willing, I can nominate you for a position of imperial remonstrance," Fang Xuanling said, idly twisting his cuff. "Rank Five. You get uniform colors, access to the throne, and you stop begging for copper coins in the rain."

Su Qingdai's hand, pouring tea, paused for half a second.

Lu Yan looked down at the tea leaves floating in his bowl. Rank Five. A leap from storyteller to nobility. The bait was fat. But he also heard the unspoken second half.

Enter government, and your mouth belongs to the state.

"You honor me, Your Excellency," Lu Yan looked up, his smile earnest. "But I have a flaw."

"Tell me."

"I'm afraid of being an official. As a kid, my mother took me to a temple. A monk examined my bones and said I was lacking 'leisure' in my Five Elements. I get a headache when I'm busy. I fall asleep when people give me orders."

Fang Xuanling didn't respond. He just watched.

"Besides, I couldn't pull off a Rank Five official," Lu Yan continued. "I only know one thing—telling stories. If you need a talker, Chang'an is full of them. If you need a listener, you're not short on those either. A guy like me? There's only one mouth like mine in the whole city."

Fang Xuanling spoke slowly. "Your mouth is a knife."

"My knife is only used on my own cutting board. I chop vegetables, not people."

"What if someone uses your knife to cut people?"

"Then it depends on which chef invites me." Lu Yan refilled his cup. "Your Excellency, want to hear an old tale? There was a county school instructor in the previous dynasty who truly believed in education without distinction. He led a donkey into the classroom and taught it to read. Three years later, the donkey could only bray. The instructor reported up: 'One student made great academic progress; his wording is just very concise.' The superior's only feedback was one character—'Excellent.'"

The teahouse erupted in laughter. One patron laughed so hard he slammed his bowl on the table.

Fang Xuanling didn't laugh. He held his bowl, waiting for the noise to die down, before speaking slowly. "This joke of yours—is it saying the court's performance reviews only listen to donkey brays?"

The teahouse went silent. Su Qingdai's hand pressed back onto the edge of the tray.

Lu Yan looked utterly innocent. "Your Excellency is giving me too much credit. I was trying to say donkeys are more honest than people. Donkeys don't write essays bragging they have the talent of emperors and ministers."

"Are you saying the officials who write essays are worse than donkeys?"

"I'm saying if I became an official, within three days I'd be forced to write that kind of paper. Write it long enough, I'd lose the ability to speak human. By then, Your Excellency would just have one more braying donkey in your circle, and lose a storyteller."

Fang Xuanling stared at the water stain on the table for a moment, then suddenly laughed. This time, it reached his eyes.

"What a mouth. I've finally seen one today."

"What you're looking at isn't a mouth, Your Excellency. It's a livelihood." Lu Yan cupped his hands. "This livelihood of mine is valuable only because of this one trait: 'This man won't bend.' If I bend today, the patrons won't come tomorrow."

"If you know 'not bending' is your livelihood," Fang Xuanling’s tone shifted, "you should also know that a livelihood in Chang'an is not easy to hold."

He extended one finger and tapped lightly on the table.

"The story venues in the East Market have owners."

The moment those five words landed, the air in the room seemed to drop a degree.

Lu Yan understood. This was move number two—since he couldn't pull Lu Yan in, he'd first make him feel the pain. The name Zhao Tiezhu rolled around on his tongue, but he swallowed it. He just smiled. "Good warning, Your Excellency. I'm a coward. The moment I hear the venues are taken, my legs turn to jelly."

"A man with weak legs would have packed up and left just now."

"I couldn't bear to lose those few copper coins."

Fang Xuanling shook his head, lifted his sleeve, and pushed the tea bowl back to the center of the table. Not too hard, not too soft. It landed exactly in its original spot.

Lu Yan understood the message. The old fox had read him: sharp-tongued, fearless, protective of his turf, refusing to be a subordinate, yet carrying a set of skills that made people believe him. A man like that was useless to kill, and annoying to use.

"Master." Fang Xuanling stood up and straightened his robes. "I came today with no other intent. Rain is good, but too much creates floods. Your talent is fresh water if used correctly. Misused, it's a disaster."

Lu Yan stood and bowed deeply, his manners flawless. "I'll remember that word, 'disaster,' Your Excellency. And I return the favor: Water is water only in the river. Dammed up, it's a flood."

Fang Xuanling’s eyebrow twitched sharply. He looked at Lu Yan deeply, said nothing, and turned to leave.

At the door, he paused, not turning back. "What's the name of this teahouse?"

"Your Excellency, we haven't named it yet."

"Name it."

The carriage wheels rolled over the wet street, leaving two long ruts that pedestrians quickly trampled into mud.

Su Qingdai slapped a plate onto the table, her voice sharp. "My hand is cramping. One more word from you and I'm going to hit someone. Four guards around him. I counted them. One has a heavy straight sword at his waist."

"So you're saying I should have shut up?"

"I'm saying you nearly choked the current Prime Minister to death in a teahouse." She tipped the teapot, the water line skimming past his shoe tip. "And you're smiling."

Lu Yan moved his foot away. "He asked me what the teahouse was called as he left."

"What does that mean?"

"It means he noticed me." Lu Yan sat down slowly. "Being noticed by that kind of person is neither good nor bad. At least he'll be up at night worrying about me."

Outside, the crowd had mostly dispersed. A few elders who had knelt earlier still stood on the street, bowing toward the teahouse, muttering under their breath.

The system notification finally drifted up, leisurely.

*Prestige Points +214.*

*Respect 131. Curiosity 47. Discontent 36.*

Lu Yan stared at "Discontent" for two breaths. Fang Xuanling had left looking unhappy, and half the street had seen it. Emotions in this world never flowed in one direction only. He filed that word away in his mind. He might need it later.

A thought sparked, and he opened the exchange menu.

Books lined up at the top: *Fragment of the Book of Han*, 200 points; *Excerpts from the Records of the Grand Historian*, 150 points; *Fragment of the Tang Code*, 120 points.

His eyes locked on the last item.

For a storyteller in Chang'an, the hardest part wasn't making it sound good. It was not getting into trouble. Zhao Tiezhu could monopolize the story market not because of his voice, but because he knew which words were safe and which words earned you a beating.

*Exchange: Fragment of the Tang Code.*

120 points deducted. Suddenly, a pile of stiff legal clauses loaded into his brain: What constitutes sedition, what constitutes slander, what constitutes superstition and misleading the masses, how to file accusations, how to gather evidence, and the penalties for false accusations.

Lu Yan closed his eyes, then opened them. Interesting. Before, he only knew which words were popular. Now, he knew which words could send someone to prison.

At the entrance, the post-rain slanting light bleached the threshold white.

A man in a short gray cloth shirt stood there, quiet and still. There were no footprints in the wet around him—he hadn't come through the rain, and he hadn't just walked in. He'd waited for the rain to stop and the crowd to thin before quietly moving to the door.

Lu Yan looked up.

The man didn't enter. He didn't make a sound. He bent down and placed three copper coins on the inside of the threshold, lining them up in a row.

"My master wants to hear you tell stories," he finally spoke, his voice very soft. "He's not asking you to go elsewhere. He just asks that tomorrow, you stay right here."

"Who is your master?"

The man was already turning. Two steps later, he left one last sentence hanging in the air: "When you tell the story, Master Lu... pause when you say 'Heir'."

Su Qingdai's hand slowly gripped the doorframe.