Upon the rivers and waterways of the Longshu region, a certain trade flourishes only when the midsummer nights arrive: the business of the flower boats.
In ancient times, touring the lakes on flower boats was a popular pastime in the Lizhou area. On the surface, they were merely painted pleasure cruisers; in reality, most were government-sanctioned brothels. With the authorities backing them, the business naturally thrived.
However, at some point, strange rumors began to spread along the riverbanks. It was said that a River God had appeared in a certain stretch of water, claiming the channel as his own once night fell. If he saw a passing vessel carrying a handsome youth or a beautiful maiden, he would sink the ship and abduct the beauty.
At first, some refused to believe in such superstitions, but after several boats were indeed dragged beneath the waves, the rumors reached a fever pitch before eventually subsiding. It wasn't until twenty years ago, when the upper reaches of the Huan River flooded and submerged half of Longshu, that the river's course shifted. The landscape changed so much that the old landmarks vanished, and over time, people stopped fearing events from centuries past. The flower boat business underwent a revival, becoming especially lively on spring and summer nights. No one avoided the old legends anymore; they were even brought to the stage, adapted into a grand play called *The River God Intercepts the Bride* for the public’s amusement.
Qin Jiuye spat out a melon seed hull, watching with a deadpan expression as an actor on a nearby stage twisted his waist with exaggerated effort. The actor was dressed as the River God, currently wailing in a high-pitched falsetto while chasing a "bride" adorned with flowers and a ceremonial crown.
With makeup that thick, a temperament that overbearing, and a singing voice so cloying, it was no wonder the River God couldn't find a wife and had to resort to kidnapping others' brides.
As she mused, her gaze shifted to the person sitting before her. Her hand faltered, and a small fragment of the melon seed shell she was holding crumbled and fell.
It wasn't just her; everyone passing by on the boat couldn't help but steal glances at Xu Qiuchi. These looks came from both women and men—searching, curious, scrutinizing, or filled with desire. It was a fascinating mix of gazes.
Today, he wore a round-collared robe of deep begonia red, embroidered with subtle threads of purple-gold. Atop his head sat a striking crown of coral and purple jade, and he lightly toyed with a folding fan. He cut the perfect figure of a wealthy, pampered young master with more money than sense. Even as he leaned against the railing, waiting for the boatwoman to lead them to their seats, he remained smiling, seemingly in high spirits.
Despite having seen this face several times before, Qin Jiuye couldn't help but marvel. This Second Young Master of the Qiu Manor must have had a stunning mother; otherwise, he could never have been born with such a face.
If he didn't have that face, he likely would have been beaten soundly many times over the years.
Qin Jiuye withdrew her gaze and dumped the remaining shells into a small, gold-rimmed bowl beside her.
"I suggest the Second Young Master stop smiling so happily. Who says the River God only likes tender young boys and girls? Perhaps one day he’ll change his palate and take a fancy to a flamboyant little master with a heart as black as ink."
Xu Qiuchi’s fan paused. He turned to study the woman who had spoken so insolently.
"I, on the other hand, feel that Shopkeeper Qin’s dress fits her exceptionally well today. You look no less impressive than the one playing the bride on stage."
Qin Jiuye looked down at her newly changed jacket and skirt, then touched the fresh bun in her hair and the precious hairpin tucked within. She tugged at her sash and smoothed her skirt, completely unbothered by his teasing.
The last time she had worn such decent clothing was at the Su Manor’s birthday banquet. However, she had been so anxious then that she had no heart to appreciate her attire. Today, she had the leisure to enjoy it, and the more she looked, the more she liked it. Whenever Qin Sanyou had offered to make her new clothes in the past, she always claimed she disliked such elaborate garments. But only she knew the truth: it wasn't that she disliked them, but rather that she knew she couldn't afford to maintain them, so she simply said she didn't want them.
It was her choice to dislike them, not her inability to have them.
Her hands slowly dropped from her skirt, and she forced the corners of her mouth down.
"The Second Young Master surely didn't invite me here just to try on these clothes. This isn't the Su Manor’s back garden, and the people of the martial world are no kinder than that phantom River God. If some great hero or demonic lord takes a fancy to you, you might spend the rest of your life as a plaything in some mountain cave."
Her words sounded like a joke, but they were a warning.
Ever since they had boarded the boat, many eyes had been watching them, both openly and from the shadows. Beyond mere curiosity, there was something else in those stares.
Xu Qiuchi caught her drift. His tone shifted, and he lowered his voice.
"Does Shopkeeper Qin know why these people of the martial world keep staring at us?"
Qin Jiuye thought for a moment and spoke her mind without reservation.
"Because you are dressed far too conspicuously."
After everything they had been through, they spoke to each other without pretense. For some reason, even though she knew the man before her might harbor ill intentions, Qin Jiuye found herself unconsciously relaxing when speaking to Xu Qiuchi. It was as if she knew that while he was annoying, he was not a heartless man, nor would he truly harm her. When facing Qiu Ling, that feeling was much fainter.
Strange. The person she truly ought to trust was the Eldest Young Master of the Qiu family. This Second Young Master had always been the one who lacked public favor.
The "unpopular" Second Young Master observed her expression, his smile deepening.
"Shopkeeper Qin truly doesn't understand the mind of the martial world. They look at me simply because I am different from them. Humans are like that; they are always wary of those who are not like themselves. Don't you agree, Shopkeeper Qin?"
Qin Jiuye gave him a strange look. Before she could parse the hidden meaning behind his cryptic words, a flurry of hurried footsteps approached. A boatwoman in vibrant makeup hurried over from the other side of the cabin.
Seeing Xu Qiuchi, she performed a crisp martial salute, her voice carrying the shrewdness and efficiency of a seasoned merchant.
"The Second Young Master has waited long. The private seats on the third floor have been cleared. This way, please."
*Cleared?* The night cruise had only just begun. Had there been other guests before them?
Qin Jiuye felt a flicker of doubt. As her gaze swept over the boatwoman’s saluting hands, she suddenly noticed the woman was missing two fingers on her right hand.
A series of clattering sounds erupted. Qin Jiuye snapped back to reality and looked to the side, only to see a man who looked like a wealthy scion being dragged and thrown out from the staircase area. Behind him followed several servants who were clearly unskilled in martial arts, able only to stare helplessly.
No wonder they had waited so long; someone had been "occupying the nest."
Qin Jiuye watched the wealthy scion being hauled away and couldn't help but whisper, "I thought money could make even the devil turn the millstone..."
"Money is only one part of it. It can get you to the first floor of this flower boat, but not the second—let alone the third."
Qin Jiuye was speechless. The image of the three-story stone boat by Lixin Lake flashed through her mind.
Did people always have to be divided into so many layers? Even if she spent her whole life struggling, she might only ever wander the bottom floor, while some were born at the very top, looking down upon the world.
Having spoken, Xu Qiuchi followed the boatwoman up the stairs without looking back. Qin Jiuye watched his magnificent robes disappear around the corner. Suddenly remembering something, she found her courage and followed.
She had climbed the city walls of Jiugao; why should she be intimidated by a three-story boat? Ridiculous.
Unlike the vertical ladders found on cargo ships, the wooden stairs inside this painted boat looked almost identical to those in an ordinary city tavern, only slightly narrower—just wide enough for one person to turn. The wooden planks were inlaid with fine copper strips to keep out the dampness and the smell of mold. Every detail was meticulously crafted.
The boatwoman led the way personally, her posture as attentive as a head eunuch clearing the path for an emperor. She was clearly proud of her flower boat, and during the short climb to the third floor, her mouth never stopped moving.
"There’s quite a show to see tonight. At the third mark of the hour of the Pig, the sect that won the gold during the day will set off fireworks on the lake in celebration. Our position is the best; you two honored guests mustn't forget to step out onto the deck to watch. Our boat is one of the few three-story flower boats on Lixin Lake tonight. From the top floor, the view has no blind spots. If you are skilled with hidden weapons, you could dominate the entire scene without much effort. We also have small emergency boats prepared for our most prestigious guests, hidden on both sides of the bottom deck. The oarsmen are former protectors of the Ghost Water Gang; I guarantee that once you're on those boats, no one can catch you..."
Qin Jiuye listened in silence, feeling a slight urge to laugh.
The rules of the martial world were truly unpredictable. One moment they would turn their backs on you regardless of money; the next, they were smiling and leading the way. People always said blades had no eyes, but in her view, the human heart was the hardest thing to guard against. All the world's volatility likely stemmed from that.
Lost in thought, she kept her head down and continued climbing. Suddenly, the man in front of her stopped. She came to a sharp halt, her head bumping into a wooden panel wrapped in soft cloth. Her tightly styled bun pulled painfully at her scalp, and the precious hairpin tilted, suddenly feeling much heavier.
Qin Jiuye rubbed her head and looked up, realizing the stairs had come to an end.
The next moment, Xu Qiuchi’s voice drifted down from just ahead of her.
"Does Shopkeeper Qin know the legends of the River God in this Longshu region?"
He was acting very strange today, as if every word held a double meaning.
Qin Jiuye tightened the strings of her caution, reminding herself that she hadn't boarded a flower boat today, but a pirate ship in all but name.
She glanced at him and replied in a stiff, formal voice.
"When I was eight, I also bowed to Daoist masters and knelt before immortals. Unfortunately, I was judged early on to have blocked spiritual apertures and severed immortal roots. I’ve never had much affinity for ghosts and gods. As for that River God temple, I'm afraid it’s been soaking in the water for eight hundred years. Surely the Second Young Master hasn't had a sudden whim to go worshiping tonight?"
She was subtly telling him to stop beating around the bush, but Xu Qiuchi seemed not to notice.
"Whether it's a River God or a Water God, the legends are mostly the same. They exist to tell the world that if one can harden their heart and sacrifice their most precious possession, they may receive the god’s blessing."
As he spoke, his gaze fell upon the end of the wooden staircase.
Qin Jiuye followed his gaze and saw two massive floor-to-ceiling lattice doors standing at the landing. The doors were decorated with mother-of-pearl inlay, carving a scene of the rising sun over the sea. High upon the "sea" were two jade wheels carved with vortex patterns, representing Yin and Yang. Below the sea, a base of green jade and white clam-shell coral formed two strange fish biting each other's tails. The fish had long snouts and sharp teeth, their tails curled. Accompanied by the faint, rhythmic sound of silk and bamboo instruments from behind the screen, the scene exuded a sense of majesty mixed with the grotesque.
Xu Qiuchi turned around in front of the doors and looked at Qin Jiuye with practiced ease.
"However, what I just said is only the first half of the legend. The story of the River God has a second half."
Having not seen him for a few days, this dandy had apparently learned the art of storytelling from Old Tang. Tang Shenyan, that "teapot that never fills," always insisted on only pouring out half the news. Most of the things she heard were only half-stories.
Qin Jiuye said nothing.
She wasn't curious about the second half of the story at all. As long as she didn't speak, she wouldn't lose the upper hand.
The boatwoman leading them rolled up her sleeves, revealing thick arms. She gripped a polished wooden wheel on one side of the lattice door and began to turn it. With the sound of mechanical gears grinding, the details of the sea map carved on the massive doors began to rotate slowly. The two strange fish shifted from a diving posture to one of leaping from the sea. The Yin and Yang discs hanging on either side reversed, turning the sun and moon upside down. Finally, the doors parted from where the fish met head-to-tail, revealing a brilliant and eerie world.
The straight corridor looked like a tube wrapped in colorful ribbons. Silk streamers woven into the shape of giant lotuses had golden bells hanging from their ends. They hung at varying heights, swaying with the motion of the boat. A slight breeze made them chime together in a lively chorus. The muffled sounds of revelry filtered through layers of curtains, and the air held a strange fragrance—the scent of burning incense powder, yet with the peculiar, cool dampness of aquatic plants.
Further ahead, the view suddenly opened up.
The enclosed corridor extended into a gallery that was half-suspended in the air. On one side of the gallery were small windows separated by lacquered screens; the other side faced a high, open space. Qin Jiuye stared blankly. In the center stood a stage built of wood, bamboo, and colorful cloth. Drums and pipes played continuously, and a lively performance was underway.
Among the civilian boats of the Jiugao area, the popular style was the "Great River Tune," filled with the clatter of gongs and drums—lively and full of the breath of common life. Old folks loved to hum a few lines of it when they had nothing to do. But the melody currently reaching Qin Jiuye’s ears was something she had never heard. It was a played tune, yet she couldn't name the melody; it was a theatrical lyric, yet it was unlike any play in the city’s theaters. The actors' singing style was very strange; she couldn't catch the words, and the melody had little rise or fall. It was simply many timbres layered together, the echoes long and unending. Listening to it for too long felt like listening to an incantation.
Looking closely at the people on stage, their costumes were equally rare. Some wore feather crowns adorned with myna feathers; some had dark green scale patterns painted on their arms; others were draped in animal skins and tails. Qin Jiuye watched from a distance for a while before she began to understand. Their appearances all seemed related to animals—perhaps a depiction of ancient gods as imagined by the people. Unfortunately, her eyesight was limited, and she could only vaguely identify two or three types of animals.
The Nuo opera on the third floor was clearly on a different level from the *River God Intercepts the Bride* being performed below. Though it had a strong flavor of the martial world, it was solemn in every detail, performed solely to please the prestigious guests in their seats.
This was Nuo opera, not ordinary theater or dance.
A sense of unease rose from her heart. Qin Jiuye had intended to look away, but a sudden tinkling of bells caught her gaze again.
The performers adorned in bone and feather quietly exited, and a dancer in a gold-threaded colorful skirt leaped onto the stage. Her slender, straight legs were visible through the gold-woven net skirt, which was hung with countless tiny golden bells. Her movements were slow yet filled with tension. Whenever her joints, painted with dark green patterns, rotated or stretched, they seemed to pierce through the gaps in the thin gauze like a fish breaking the surface of the water—utterly captivating. A moment later, they would vanish back into the fabric as her movements changed, inviting further scrutiny. From extreme motion to extreme stillness in a heartbeat—when the dancer’s body was strained to its limit, she could still manipulate a tiny muscle to flick a single bell on her toe while all the other bells remained silent. Such skill could not be mastered overnight.
As the dance ended, the surrounding seats were silent. Only after the final bell chime faded did a burst of cheers erupt. One had to realize that the audience here was not the same as the spectators on the stone boat the day before. To please these people of the martial world with novelty and danger was a difficult task indeed.
Perhaps this was the true face of the martial world.
The martial world was the beautiful dancer with her wild golden bells, and it was the boatwoman missing two fingers. It was exquisite craftsmanship and precious clam-shell ornaments, but also the mountains and seas reversed, the sun and moon turned upside down. It was a theater above a theater, one mystery followed by another. The martial world was the flip side of order, the sum of all things novel and stimulating.
Or perhaps, this was the essence of this chaotic world. Her past life of mundane tranquility had been nothing more than a tiny island peeking above the surface of the lake.
The atmosphere below the stage was heating up, but a shiver crawled from every pore. In this warm summer night, Qin Jiuye couldn't help but tremble.
The events at the Su Manor had left indelible shadows on her. Hearing those bells now, she instinctively thought of the terrifying sight of He Yuanzhou lunging at her. How could she have the heart to appreciate the dancer’s graceful form?
In the blink of an eye, the dancer had also exited. For some reason, half the lanterns at the corners of the stage went out. The light dimmed, and the final group of performers appeared on stage, stepping on their own shadows. Each wore a paper mask, but the masks bore no drawings or decorations—they were blank, looking incredibly eerie.
Qin Jiuye stared at those blank faces, entranced, when Xu Qiuchi’s voice suddenly rang out.
"This is the true River God Dance. It’s different from the ones before. You won't see this anywhere else."
Qin Jiuye jumped and instinctively looked away. Turning her head, she realized that she hadn't noticed when the boatwoman had disappeared—likely to attend to other guests.
At this moment, only she and Xu Qiuchi remained in the deep corridor.
Qin Jiuye swallowed hard and offered a casual remark.
"A pity there is no river here, only a lake."
"There isn't one now, but in the past, the Jushui River, where the clear and muddy waters merged, flowed right through here." The music on stage vanished, leaving only the monotonous beat of a fan-drum. Xu Qiuchi’s voice lowered accordingly. "Legend says that back then, the Longshu area was always plagued by floods. The Jushui would overflow every summer. Fearing the River God’s wrath, the people would craft massive paper boats, fill them with sacrifices, and cast them into the river to appease him. Later, when the floods subsided, the Jushui was renamed the Huan River, and the River God Dance was rarely mentioned."
Qin Jiuye didn't turn back toward the stage, but she couldn't stop her peripheral vision from catching a glimpse. The performers had their hands behind their backs, acting as if they were bound. Their movements were exceptionally stiff and sluggish. With that one look, she understood: those masked actors were not portraying the people performing the ritual, but the sacrifices placed upon the paper boats to be cast into the river.
The monotonous drumbeats grew more frequent, and the actors' movements became more violent. They were mimicking the struggle of being bound and sinking into the river, gasping for air while drowning.
Who would choreograph such a dance? And for whom would they perform it?
Qin Jiuye’s expression turned grim. She reached up to touch the back of her neck and found she had broken out in a thin sweat. Looking up to see the dandy’s face—innocent yet laced with a hint of malice—she finally understood.
Who was he trying to scare?
With a cold snort, she spoke slowly.
"I am not old, and I haven't traveled to many places. I don't know if there are truly so-called gods in this world. But if someone finds joy in the cruel treatment of others, they shouldn't use a god’s name as an excuse. They should simply recognize the fact that they are a scumbag and find an opportunity to throw themselves into the river."
Xu Qiuchi blinked, returning to his usual lazy demeanor.
"I only wanted to show Shopkeeper Qin the true face of the martial world. Perhaps there are far more scumbags in this world than you imagine. If you are determined to enter it, you must keep your eyes sharp." He finished speaking, his gaze sweeping over the audience below the stage and the closed windows lining the corridor. "The second half of the River God legend goes like this: If the River God is unsatisfied with the sacrifice offered, he will turn and leave, leaving behind only calm, rippleless water. He will grant that person a gift they cannot refuse—a chance to look into a mirror. That person must face the true visage reflected in the water, or perhaps... their own true heart."
***
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
---|---|---
龙枢 | Longshu | A regional place name.
花船 | Flower boat | Or pleasure boat; historically associated with entertainment and courtesans.
河神截亲 | River God Intercepts the Bride | The name of a popular play based on local legends.
许秋迟 | Xu Qiuchi | Second Young Master of the Qiu family.
秦九叶 | Qin Jiuye | The female protagonist; a shopkeeper/physician.
深棠色 | Begonia red | A deep, vibrant shade of reddish-pink.
圆领袍 | Round-collared robe | A traditional style of Chinese robe.
傩戏 | Nuo opera | A ritualistic form of Chinese opera used to drive away evil spirits.
沮水 | Jushui River | The ancient name of the river in the legend.
洹河 | Huan River | The modern name of the river in the story.
璃心湖 | Lixin Lake | The setting of the current chapter.
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