Zhao Ziheng had one foot forced over the edge of the boat, the other stubbornly clinging to the gunwale. He clung to Bai Shiqi's arm with a death grip, looking ready to weep. "Shiqi, is this how you treat me? We're sworn brothers! When there was wine, meat, and girls, didn't I always include you? Do you have to be so cruel as to push me into the river?" His dramatic posture made it seem less like a swimming lesson and more like Bai Shiqi was forcing him to leap to his watery grave.
The corner of Bai Shiqi's mouth twitched. She cautiously glanced behind her and found Zhao Wujiu's face, stern and impassive as iron, showed not a flicker of emotion. She couldn't help but admire this man's resolve, knowing his will was unshakable. She racked her brains to console her good brother. "Ziheng, look at it this way: every skill you learn is another path to survival. What if next time we're on a pleasure barge and get into a fight? If we can't win, we can always jump in the river to escape, right?"
Zhao Wujiu, having survived harsh environments and long periods of life-or-death struggles, possessed a keen sense of danger. It was rare for him to agree with the smooth-talking Bai Shiqi. "Shiqi is right. Jiangnan is crisscrossed with rivers and lakes everywhere. We don't expect you to save others, but there will be times when the guards can't watch over you. You must have the ability to save yourself."
Bai Shiqi nodded vigorously. "Cousin is absolutely right!" At the same time, she tried desperately to peel the sniveling, tear-streaked creature off her arm and into the water. "Be good! I'll have people watching over you. You won't drown."
Two canal workers assigned to teach him chuckled quietly to the side—any child raised by the river had swallowed their fair share of river water growing up. This young master was just too delicate!
The delicate Zhao Ziheng tearfully accused her, "Shiqi, you're heartless! The day before yesterday I swallowed a bellyful of water and nearly drowned! What grudge do you hold against me that you insist on pushing me in?"
"Me? Wasn't it Cousin?" Bai Shiqi had gained a deep understanding of his tendency to bully the weak and fear the strong. Not daring to blame the stern-faced Zhao Wujiu, he pushed all the responsibility onto her. She gritted her teeth in a mock threat. "You can still climb down slowly by yourself right now. But if Cousin gets angry later and orders someone to throw you in... I won't be able to help you!"
Zhao Ziheng was a little tyrant at home, spoiled and indulged by his parents, with an old grandmother who doted on him as her precious darling. Growing up straight was a challenge, and now he was positively crooked, practically glued to Bai Shiqi. He kept casting pitiful glances at Zhao Wujiu behind him, as if trying to melt his cousin's stony heart with his eyes.
Zhao Wujiu felt his face was about to be thoroughly shamed. "A man stands firm between heaven and earth! Stand up straight!"
His guards, one after another, began warming up and climbing down rope ladders into the river. Bai Shiqi had assigned two experienced canal workers to each man. Yu Jinsheng was the first to climb down. Passing Zhao Ziheng, he offered encouragement, "Don't be afraid, Thirteenth Young Master. Someone will be right beside you." He jumped down a few rungs later, creating a large splash in the canal. The two canal workers assigned to him dove in immediately, grabbed him under the arms, and hauled him up until half his body was above water. He spat out a mouthful of water and laughed.
Zhao Wujiu's guards were all northerners, men who had galloped across battlefields with him, bold and courageous, but they were not swimmers. Seeing Bai Shiqi and the canal workers move through the water like fish, they had long been itching to try. Following Yu Jinsheng's lead, they took the plunge, swallowed a mouthful of canal water, clung to the canal workers, and waved for their comrades to join. The rest of the guards began climbing down one after another.
Shu Changfeng had changed into tight-fitting swimwear. After all the guards were in the water, he still wasn't at ease. Like a mother hen protecting her chicks, he issued numerous warnings to Zhao Wujiu: "Master, please don't go near the gunwale," or "Don't lean out to look either. There's no one behind to catch you. If you fall in, it's no joke," and so on, his nagging rivaling an old granny's.
Zhao Wujiu's ears were practically calloused from the nagging. He wished he could slap him into the river, his brows furrowed tightly. "Enough chatter!"
Not daring to pester his master further, Shu Changfeng shifted his pleading gaze to Bai Shiqi. "Young Gang Leader Bai..."
Bai Shiqi waved her hand. "Alright, alright, hurry up and get down. I'll keep an eye on Cousin." Meanwhile, she peeled Zhao Ziheng, who seemed to want to stick to her, off herself and practically tossed him to Shu Changfeng.
The poor Shu Changfeng, a guard who couldn't swim, now had to, under his master's watchful eye, drag the howling-like-a-slaughtered-pig Thirteenth Young Master down the ladder. Midway, Zhao Ziheng struggled, trying to climb back onto the boat. In the tussle, both men tumbled into the canal, nearly landing on Yu Jinsheng and his two canal workers.
The moment Zhao Ziheng fell into the canal, he screamed at the top of his lungs, flailing in panic. Before a single "Help!" could escape, he had already gulped down several mouthfuls of canal water. One of the canal workers guarding Yu Jinsheng finally managed to grab him.
Bai Shiqi sat on the railing of the gunwale, swinging her legs and laughing so hard she rocked back and forth. Her teeth shone like jade, her laughter rippled like wine. Below her feet were the canal waves, behind her the broad deck. It seemed if she kept laughing, she might just topple headfirst into the canal. Zhao Wujiu watched with a start, drove his wheelchair behind her, and firmly grasped her wrist, fearing she might accidentally fall.
The moment he grasped it, he was struck by how unexpectedly slender and delicate the bone of her arm felt in his hand, so different from the burly, ox-like northern soldiers in his camp. Indeed, southerners were frail. Despite Bai Shiqi's tall stature, her bone structure was refined.
Bai Shiqi turned back, puzzled. "Cousin?"
Zhao Wujiu held her arm, not letting go. "Be careful not to fall."
The corners of Bai Shiqi's eyes and brows were all mirth. She boasted grandly, "To be honest with you, Cousin, I was in the water before I could even walk. As soon as I could walk, I was climbing all over boats. My father says I must have been a fish in my past life. I was happy soaking in water since I was a baby, and cried when fished out. I wished I could stay in the water all twelve hours of the day. By age three, I could swim faster in water than run on land. Quite different from Ziheng here, who's terrified of water."
Her tone was light and cheerful as she pointed at the panicking Zhao Ziheng in the water with glee. "We'll have to prepare a bowl of calming soup for Ziheng tonight. Look how scared he is."
Zhao Wujiu slowly released his grip, his hand still seeming to feel the delicate wrist bone beneath her thin sleeve. His gaze involuntarily drifted to her waist, a slight sense of surprise washing over him—in his camp, there were men with crane-like arms and wasp-like waists, and even among the burly, ox-like men, you could still see the difference in measurement between shoulder and waist. But Bai Shiqi was a bit strange. From top to bottom, the dimensions seemed uniformly straight and smooth, as if cut out with a pair of scissors—flat and even.
In the brief moment of this thought, Bai Shiqi had already pulled a handful of red dates from her sleeve pocket and stuffed them into his hand. "Cousin, have some dates."
Zhao Wujiu: "..." No one had ever openly handed him snacks before.
Bai Shiqi said, "Cousin, try them. A friend of mine who's a traveling merchant in the capital sent them. There were only two baskets in total. If you like them, I'll have a couple of plates sent to your room later."
Perhaps swayed by her enthusiasm, Zhao Wujiu couldn't help but take a bite. "It's sweet," he said, thinking to himself, just what kind of person is Bai Shiqi?
This fellow, from the sons of princes down to peddlers and porters, whenever their boat docked at a town along the canal, could always find a few acquaintances with ties to the local area. On board, he even had the famous writer known throughout the land, Qiu Yunping. His friends truly spanned all walks of life.
The two of them were standing very close. Bai Shiqi, nibbling on the date, was intently watching the group of landlubbers bobbing up and down in the canal below. The guards in the water were generally quite composed, spitting out water if they choked, learning the dog paddle with serious effort. Only Zhao Ziheng seemed to have developed a psychological block; he didn't even dare to let go of his grip in the water, clinging to a canal worker's neck with his legs wrapped around the worker's waist, refusing to get down. This made the canal worker teaching him, his face already ruddy, flush deep red with embarrassment.
Zhao Wujiu's gaze swept over the floundering Zhao Ziheng in the canal. His heart stirred, and a question escaped his lips before he could stop it: "Shiqi, do you happen to know the Jiangnan Miracle Doctor, Huang Youbi?"
Bai Shiqi, engrossed in the amusing spectacle while munching on his date, replied offhandedly, "Old Man Huang? He's terrible!"
Zhao Wujiu, a man who could remain unshaken even if Mount Tai collapsed before his eyes, found his heart racing uncontrollably at the mention of the Jiangnan Miracle Doctor. "...You know him?"
Bai Shiqi turned his head, his face full of indignation. "Don't even mention it! Whenever I got sick as a child, besides catching me to give me acupuncture, the medicine he made me drink was especially bitter. That old man loved nothing more than doubling the amount of coptis root in my prescriptions. Thank goodness I have a robust constitution and haven't suffered any major illnesses these years." Meeting Zhao Wujiu's slightly altered expression, a realization dawned on him: "Oh, oh, cousin, you want to see him about your legs?"
He finally remembered Zhao Wujiu's reason for coming south. "That old man might be unreliable, but his medical skills are passable."
The Jiangnan Miracle Doctor, spoken of with such reverence by the Minister of Revenue, Xia Chengjie, was just an "unreliable old man" in Bai Shiqi's mouth?
Zhao Wujiu thought to himself: If we're talking about unreliability, could anyone top you?
Perhaps because they had spent so much time together, he now found this slippery fellow much more agreeable to look at.
