The sun was slanting westward when several childish voices echoed noisily down Qingshui Alley, finally stopping outside the gate of a small courtyard.
"Mother, I'm back!"
"Sis — I'm home —"
"Tigerhead, you're not going to your sister's place, you're going back to our home."
"But I'm already right at my sister's doorstep now. Can't I stop by her place first before heading back home?"
Lin Wu was squatting by the small vegetable patch, pulling up scallions for the evening meal, when the voices made her pause. She set the scallions down on the ridge of the field, stood up, walked over to the well to wash the dirt off her hands, and then went to open the courtyard gate.
As soon as the gate was pulled open, several little faces crowded up to her at once, their cheeks flushed bright red from the sun, brimming with excitement. Looking closer, the neat little topknots their hair had been styled into that morning had long since come undone, with strands sticking out wildly in all directions.
Lin Jing's small straw hat wasn't even worn properly, hanging loosely around the back of his neck and swinging with every step, looking just like a little turtle.
Lin Wu's gaze drifted past these little "wildlings" and landed on the figure walking up unhurriedly behind them.
This person looked exactly the same as he had when they set out that morning, his clothing neat and tidy, the hair he had tied up not a single strand out of place. Laifu was so excited that he pulled the leash taut, paws scrabbling at the ground to surge forward, eager to pounce over, but he was held firmly in place by that steady grip, and could only resign himself to plodding slowly forward.
She then glanced down at the disheveled little monkeys again. It turned out that after this whole trip out, he was the only one who came back looking presentable. She couldn't tell if the children were just too rambunctious, or if this gentleman was just too determined to keep up a poised demeanor.
Shen Guanting walked up, and noticing the curious look in her eyes, he smiled helplessly. "Though I, Shen, am A Jing's senior fellow apprentice by seniority, I am still quite a few years older than all of them. I have to maintain a proper sense of propriety, and cannot go rolling around in the grass mounds like they do, ruining my clothes."
The children who had indeed ruined their clothes had no such awareness. They dug around in their bulging little pockets, pulled out a handful of wild berries, and held them out to Lin Wu like they were presenting a precious treasure.
"Mother, we picked these by the village, they're for you!"
"Sis, these are super sweet, but they'll turn your teeth black after you eat them, so don't have them in front of other people!"
Lin Wu looked at their dirty little hands, her eyes full of warmth. "Thank you all. Did you have fun playing?"
"Super fun!" the children replied in unison, then chattered nonstop all at once, recounting every little detail: riding the ponies, practicing archery, and crawling through the thick bushes.
Lin Wu finally understood exactly how their hair had gotten so messy and their clothes full of grass bits.
Shen Guanting smiled as he listened to all of it. "It's getting late, so I won't impose on A Wu any longer. Laifu is returned to you safe and sound." He handed the leash over to Lin Wu.
Lin Wu took the leash and thanked him.
Perhaps a whole day of wild play had truly worn them out, Tigerhead and Sparrow climbed obediently onto the cart this time, no longer throwing a fuss about wanting to stay behind.
But what Lin Wu did not expect was that this would be the last time she saw this person for many days to come.
In the days that followed, that familiar tall figure never appeared at the morning pastry stall again. The first two days she did not pay it much mind, but when the third and fourth days came and went without a sign of him, she began to sense that something was off.
It wasn't that she was deliberately pining for him, it was just that this person had long since become a fixed part of the stall's morning scenery, and one of the steady, important regular customers. As the shop owner, keeping track of regular customers' movements and tallying up changes in revenue was perfectly normal.
Meanwhile, Lin Jing and Tigerhead still bounded home every day after school, chattering nonstop about all the interesting things that happened at the academy, and not a single one of them mentioned "Brother Ting has gone out of town again".
It seemed he was still in Huzhou, he just... wasn't coming to the pastry stall anymore.
Lin Wu deftly wrapped wontons with her hands, pinching each one into a neat little bundle that fell onto the bamboo tray dusted with a thin layer of flour.
She pondered to herself, it seemed that the matter of her rejecting his purse, and her clear refusal to go to the country estate... Shen Guanting had received the message loud and clear. His decision to stop appearing so straightforwardly was probably him being thoughtful and not pushing where he wasn't wanted.
But what puzzled her was that while Shen Guanting himself was nowhere to be seen, Shen Qi showed up right on time every single day.
One morning, Shen Qi came to the stall as usual, ordered two servings of pancakes, and packed two bowls of sweet congee in a food container.
Fourth Sister He was flipping pancakes, and casually smiled as she made small talk. "Mr. Shen, are these for someone else? Two pancakes and two servings of congee, that's quite a lot of food to carry."
Shen Qi said frankly, "Yes, they're for my young master. He's been tied up with work these days and can't get away to come here himself."
"I thought as much," Fourth Sister He said as she scooped the pancake up and wrapped it in oil paper. "We haven't seen Young Master Shen for days, and we were wondering if the food at our stall had stopped suiting his taste."
"Not at all. The young master has been craving these flavors, and specifically told me to come buy them for him every day. There's just been some issues with the caravan lately, and he can't tear himself away."
Lin Wu, who was standing nearby, heard this and lowered her eyes slightly.
She had interacted with Shen Qi a few times before, and knew he was talkative and free-spirited. But just now, he had only said "there are issues with the caravan" without specifying what the problem was. Such a vague description most likely meant the matter was rather tricky, and definitely not something simple or easy to resolve.
Soon enough, the specifics of this "issue" slipped out of Tigerhead's loose mouth.
That day after school, the children gathered around the small square table in the corner of the stall, munching on crispy crackers as they heatedly planned their little puppet business that still hadn't seen much progress.
Sparrow rested her cheeks in her hands and sighed. "Alas, I was thinking that once our puppets are made a little more delicate, we could use a scrap or two of Azure Sky Gauze to sew tiny little outfits for them. That would be so proper, we could hold our heads high when we talk about it, and build a proper name for our brand!"
Even someone as relatively out of the loop as Lin Wu had heard of the famous Azure Sky Gauze, especially now that summer was rolling around. It was an extremely expensive fabric exclusive to the Cloud Weaving Workshop, said to be the exact color of the sky just after a rainstorm clears, clear and bright, so soft and light it felt almost weightless against the skin, yet strangely opaque, making it the most obvious status symbol for wealthy households in the summer.
While a regular fine silk bolt cost no more than five strings of copper coins, a single bolt of Azure Sky Gauze went for a hundred strings, and was so hard to come by that even most well-off households couldn't get their hands on it no matter how much money they offered.
Lin Wu listened, and thought to herself that it was almost funny. These little business owners hadn't even figured out how to run their small business properly, and they were already daydreaming about using a hundred-string-per-bolt fabric to make tiny clothes for puppets. Were they planning to display their puppets for sale in the Rare Collections Pavilion?
As soon as Tigerhead heard Sparrow mention Azure Sky Gauze, he looked left and right, then lowered his voice to share the secret with his little friends. "Don't tell anyone else, okay? I heard Brother Qi mutter that the first shipment of Azure Sky Gauze sent to Huzhou this year ran into some kind of problem. My Brother Ting has been running around so busy these days, that's what he's been handling."
Qi Lang let out a gasp. "There's a problem with it? My mom was just saying the other day that she was waiting for the new gauze to arrive so she could make a summer shirt for my dad."
Though their little business was still stumbling along, the children had developed a bit of a knack for spotting business issues, and immediately started chattering over different guesses.
"Did some bad guys make counterfeit Azure Sky Gauze to trick people?"
"No way, no one else can make Azure Sky Gauze, only the Shen family can."
"Then did the bad guys ruin the gauze? Is Brother Ting catching the bad guys right now?"
"Who dares lay a hand on our Shen family's cloth? The Sky-Clear Gauze, no less?"
A handful of little heads huddled together, whispering and chattering, but in the end, they couldn't puzzle out a single clear explanation.
Still, that exorbitant fabric costing a hundred strings of copper coins a bolt felt so far removed from the Double Wood Cake Shop and A Fu's Workshop that their tiny spark of curiosity was quickly forgotten.
This whole affair should have had nothing to do with Lin Wu, yet it was tangled up with the senior fellow apprentice of Lin Jing after all. Before long, this young junior learned the full, precise details through their shared master's circle.
"Mother, Mother!" Lin Jing suddenly called out to Lin Wu right after he finished counting all the copper coins in the money chest. Lately, the boy seemed to have decided that the two words "Mother" rolled off his tongue especially smoothly, and whenever he needed a favor from her, he always loved to holler them twice first.
"What is it?" Lin Wu responded as she inventoried the goods on the shelves.
"Teacher said in a couple of days, he's going to Sky-Clear Village with Brother Ting. I want to go too!" Lin Jing darted over to her, tilting his little face up and chattering nonstop, "The academy head said Sky-Clear Village is tucked deep in the mountains, just like the hidden paradise written about in old books. There are reclusive masters there, and who knows, maybe even ancient rare treasures left behind from centuries ago!"
"Sky-Clear Village? Is that related to the Sky-Clear Gauze?" Lin Wu turned her head to ask.
"Yep!" Lin Jing nodded hard. "Teacher said that's where Sky-Clear Gauze is woven! That's the fabric that costs a hundred strings of copper a bolt!"
As he spoke, he unconsciously started counting on his little fingers again. Brother Ting was the man who could sell a twenty-string copper sword for five hundred strings, so Sky-Clear Gauze probably wasn't that expensive to begin with, he thought to himself. If he could buy a bolt of it in Sky-Clear Village for, say, fifty strings, then resell it for eighty, he'd make a tidy profit of thirty strings!
Lin Wu couldn't help bursting out laughing listening to his little business calculation. "If Guanting found out you're hatching that little scheme, he'd definitely leave you behind."
Lin Jing clapped his little hands over his mouth, shaking his head over and over.
"When you go to Sky-Clear Village, is it for fun, or do you have real business to tend to?" Lin Wu asked next.
"Teacher said we're going to look at the Sky-Clear Gauze, and see the village too," Lin Jing lowered his hands and answered earnestly. "Teacher says it's a beautiful, one-of-a-kind village, full of things you can't find anywhere else. Going there will let me see so much and learn so much."
"Brother Ting also said if I come along, it'll be the very first time our whole master's sect goes out together! Teacher said it only takes two days by boat, then half a day walking up the mountain, and we'll be there!"
So it was just an extracurricular outing. Lin Wu looked at the undisguised excitement and longing in his eyes, and her heart softened with quiet relief. These days, he'd finally gained the courage and the breadth of world to look forward to a trip with his master and fellow apprentices.
"Go on then, if you want to," she said, reaching out to ruffle his little head. "But you have to be good, stick close to Brother Ting and Master Jianshan, and never run off on your own. Remember that?"
"I remember! Thank you, Mother!" Lin Jing, over the moon to get her permission, hummed a tuneless little song and scurried back to the counter in a flash.
Since he was taking someone else's child out on a trip, no matter how busy Shen Guanting was, he had to observe proper etiquette and personally come to explain the arrangements to the "elder" of the family.
And so, after not seeing each other for many consecutive days, Lin Wu finally spotted him that day, right as the shop was closing for the night, leading Lin Jing back from his lessons, stepping down from a horse-drawn carriage.
All the shop's customers had already left, and the hired helpers had finished tidying up and gone home. Soft golden sunlight streamed through the open shop doors, falling across the tables and chairs, making the wood grain glow bright.
Lin Wu was just shifting the last few tables and chairs back into place when she heard the sound, and looked up.
The sunset spilled in from behind the door, wrapping the two figures, one tall and one small, in a soft halo of light. Lin Jing hopped and skipped right into the shop, while Shen Guanting followed behind, carrying Lin Jing's book bag and food box in his hand.
"It's been a long time, Guanting," Lin Wu said, straightening up.
Shen Guanting paused at the door, and smiled gently at her words. "I never thought I, Shen, would end up being the sort of person who only shows up when there's something important to ask."
He paused for a moment, his tone growing even warmer. "I've come today to discuss the trip to Sky-Clear Village in a couple of days, to take A Jing along."
Lin Wu nodded. "A Jing already told me. I'll have to trouble you and Master Jianshan to watch over him the whole way again."
"A Wu, you're agreeing that easily?" Shen Guanting looked a little surprised. "I, Shen, thought I'd have to do a lot more talking to convince you."
"It's such a rare chance, and the journey isn't far at all. With you and Master Jianshan looking after him, I have nothing to worry about. Besides, A Jing is dying to go, and it's always a good thing to broaden his horizons."
Shen Guanting nodded, his expression turning serious. "I imagine A Wu has heard the news too—this year's first batch of Sky-Clear Gauze ran into problems. Something must have gone wrong out at Sky-Clear Village. We have to go there in person to sort things out for our future supply. We'll only stay a day or two at most. The Shen family has done business with Sky-Clear Village for decades, and I've been there myself several times. The villagers are honest and kind, and I know the roads there like the back of my hand. You have nothing to worry about."
"Of course I trust you. But I didn't expect Master Jianshan to come along too. That shows this village really is something special."
At the mention of that, Lin Jing, who was standing right beside them, immediately perked up, puffed out his little chest, and cut in, spilling out every bit of knowledge he'd heard from his teacher. "Mother, Sky-Clear Village is amazing! Teacher says the village is over three hundred years old. Their ancestral rule says, 'The color of sky-clear is born of heaven, nurtured by earth, and made by human hands. Do not steal the timing of heaven, do not go against the spirit of the land.' We're going right when the village is holding their big celebration, Teacher says it's such a rare opportunity, he can take me there to see it all."
Lin Wu couldn't help laughing. "You've done your homework so well, you've even memorized their ancestral rule."
A smile flickered across Shen Guanting's eyes too. "It truly is a rare, lucky chance. If A Wu can spare the time away from the shop, you might as well come along with us. With you there, A Jing will feel much more at ease. Besides..."
"Didn't A Wu say a while back that you wanted to hear about the local customs and sights along the road? Unfortunately that previous trip didn't work out. Sky-Clear Village's festival and traditions are nothing like what you see out in the wider world. They're incredibly unique, and you almost never get a chance to witness them normally."
Lin Wu blinked, slightly stunned by the suggestion.
She was genuinely tempted. For one thing, she wanted to see with her own eyes how that bolt of Sky-Clear Gauze, worth a hundred strings of copper, was actually woven. For another, if even Yun Jianshan thought the place was worth going to, it must surely have plenty of wonderful sights to offer.
It wouldn't be any trouble to leave the shop unattended for a few days—she'd just make a little less money, that's all. And what's more, she still had that five-hundred-string money voucher in her pocket, so she had more than enough financial security.
As for the matter between her and Shen Guanting... with Lin Jing and Master Jianshan traveling with them the whole way, it would all be perfectly normal. If she avoided going just to keep up appearances, that wouldn't be drawing a clear line between them—it'd just be trapping herself in a self-made cage.
She only hesitated for a moment before she looked up at Shen Guanting, and asked him straightforwardly, "Would it be convenient for me to travel along with your merchant caravan?"
Shen Guanting had clearly not expected her to agree so readily. He paused for a split second, then broke into a warm smile. "Traveling with the Shen family's merchant caravan, all lodging, food, and transportation will be arranged for you. It's perfectly convenient. A Wu's already traveled long distances before, haven't you?"
Lin Wu smiled back openly. "Yes, I have. Then I'll be in your care."
It was getting late, so Shen Guanting didn't stay any longer, and took his leave.
Lin Wu locked up the shop door, and walked down the street side by side with Lin Jing. The boy was still chattering nonstop, bubbling over with excitement about everything related to Sky-Clear Village, his little mouth running a mile a minute.
Lin Wu listened, her gaze drifting unconsciously toward the far end of the long street. The daylight was still bright, and the stretch out there lay wide open. As her steps carried her forward, the expanse of sky ahead seemed to slowly unfold, growing broader and broader by the moment.
