Scroll 1 There Is a Fish in the Northern Sea - Chapter 1 The Teenager in Baiyu Town

As the autumn came to an end in the third year of Shending in Dazhou Empire, an autumn rain finally fell in Baiyu Town.

It was just an autumn rain and it was not supposed to be a big deal. But rain was scarce in Baiyu Town and it was even rarer during autumn. This time, however, it had rained for three days straight.

The rain did not seem like it was going to stop anytime soon.

In the autumn rain, there was a teenager holding an oil-paper umbrella, strolling at an alley in front of a small yard, located just at the east of Baiyu Town. Not many people were around this deserted alley and if people happened to pass by him, they would notice that the teenager beneath the oil-paper umbrella was actually frowning.

“This stupid weather is just so damn… rare.”

He was clenching his teeth.

Baiyu Town was located at the southwest border of Dazhou Empire. It was a small and veritable remote town. There were around a few hundred households in that ordinary-sized town. Though there were quite a lot of families there, after so many years, it would not be a stretch to say that everyone in that town was somewhat related to each other.

However, this teenager did not have a relationship with any of the families in the town. He had no relatives and no friends, and he wasn’t from the local families in Baiyu Town. The people in town only knew that someone had dropped him off at the town during a winter when he was seven or eight years old. The person left a pouch of silver ingots and had bought a house for the teenager, who was still a kid back then. After leaving some silver taels behind, the stranger left by himself. The people in the town were puzzled because they thought that there was no way the kid could live through the winter season but they were mistaken. Not only did the kid manage to survive the winter, he even managed to find a job after he had finished spending the remaining silver ingots.

It was rumoured that in the years of Chuping in Dazhou Empire, this Emperor of Dazhou had a conversation with an imperial messenger of a great dynasty which was many times bigger than the Dazhou Empire in the city of Shaoliang. The Emperor told him, “If you give me a hundred years’ of time, I will expand the Dazhou Empire’s territory by tenfold.”

These were ambitious words, and the messenger just smiled.

Perhaps he did not want to destroy the Emperor’s dignity or maybe he just did not take the Emperor’s words seriously.

Some people respected the Emperor’s bravery while some just mocked the Emperor for overestimating himself by comparing him to an ant that tried to shake up an entire tree.

So how did the story of Shaoliang City manage to reach Baiyu Town in the Dazhou Empire which was thousands of miles away?

Of course it had to do with those storytellers.

The people of this country loved listening to the storytellers because those mighty human cultivators in the stories would never appear and show their strengths in front of them. Plus, the appearance of the cultivators of this country was always a rare sight to begin with. Thus, they could only use their imagination based on what was told by the storytellers.

Moreover, there weren’t just cultivators involved in the storytellers’ tales.

Baiyu Town had a few restaurants and there was a storyteller in each restaurant. These storytellers would share their stories every afternoon in a restaurant and the storytellers in each restaurant were very different. They had different personalities and characters so some of them could have three to five sessions per day, some two to three sessions while some only had one session in a day. Their stories were mainly about mountain fairies and wild demons; and how the human cultivators fend off evil and spread kindness. Even if the stories were different, their plots were still similar.

The Dazhou Empire was in the southwest and was located in a remote area. Its territory was not that big and Baiyu Town was even smaller. These storytellers did not have the chance to broaden their horizon or see for themselves what was outside of Baiyu Town. Once they kept repeating the same hearsay stories, their same old stories could no longer capture the people’s hearts and they were bound to get sick of those few stories that were just too cliché.

Thus, the young kid sold the stories from his memories to those storytellers back then like some form of commodity and that was how he managed to survive.

The people of Baiyu Town knew that this kid was not a local and that he was a foreigner but they did not understand how a seven or eight-year-old kid could retain so many memories in his mind. He had shared his stories for a whole five years.

During those five years, the storytellers were amazed by the teenager’s stories. The stories he told had never been heard before and none of the stories were similar to one another. Through these stories, the kid managed to survive in this small town.

As he grew older, the teenager had become a storyteller himself.

Now, everyone in Baiyu Town knew him as Li Fuyao.

He was the youngest storyteller in the town and he was not even 16 yet.

To officially reach adulthood at the age of twenty in the Dazhou Empire, Li Fuyao was still four years away.

His surname was Li and his name Fuyao was taken from a sentence in the Taoist Classics ‘Free and Easy Wandering’ [1], “When the Peng (a type of bird) journeys to the Southern Sea, the waters are roiled for 3000 miles. He beats the whirlwind and rises 90,000 miles.”

Li Fuyao knew about these legends when he picked that name but he did not care about it.

At this moment, this teenage storyteller was holding an oil-paper umbrella as he crossed the road to go to the restaurant. He reached the restaurant’s entrance but he suddenly stopped in his tracks; he did not seem to be in a hurry to enter the restaurant.

There was a young male servant in front of the restaurant entrance holding a green, long gown in his hands; he had been waiting there for quite some time.

The servant saw Li Fuyao standing outside the restaurant for quite long and did not look like he was planning to enter the restaurant. The servant did not know why he was behaving in such a manner but he knew that the owner of the restaurant was nagging him to hurry. So, the servant put on a bold face, went up to him and asked politely, “Mr. Li, the people are waiting for you upstairs, is there something you have yet to settle?”

Li Fuyao was standing under the roof while he closed his oil-paper umbrella and passed it to the servant beside him. He then asked the servant, “How long is this rain going to last?”

He was met with silence.

The servant was troubled because how could he know how much longer it was going to rain for?

He glanced at Li Fuyao but he did not respond to his question.

Fortunately, Li Fuyao did not utter a single word and just took the green, long gown from the servant and went into a changing room that was reserved specially for him.

　　…

The decorations at the second floor of the restaurant were minimalistic. Besides a long wooden bench and a huge elm-wood table in the middle of the grand hall, the other decorations were similar to the ones on the first floor. There was a small jug of wine and a gavel on the elm-wood table but the storyteller had not arrived yet.

People of all ages and genders were there at the restaurant. The small town was only that big and of course they knew about the teenage storyteller’s temperament so they did not dare to complain about it. It was already getting late and they were just wondering why the teenager still hadn’t showed up.

The restaurant customers who were there to listen to the storyteller made those teenage girls among the crowds who weren’t initially there for the storytelling stand out. The girls looked antsy but their hands were just under the table, rubbing the corners of their clothes nervously as they tried to suppress the look of urgency on their faces.

The other people were there for the storytelling while these girls were there for the storyteller.

Time slowly passed and Li Fuyao finally showed up fashionably late, wearing a slightly oversized green gown. He walked to the centre of the grand hall and sat on the long bench.

The teenager turned his head calmly to face the restaurant crowd and apologised, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Bang!

The sound came from the gavel banging forcefully onto the elm-wood table.

The clash between the table and the gavel gave everyone a startle and their attention turned to him.

This was what the gavel was for.

Li Fuyao cleared his throat and raised his voice slightly. “Previously, I talked about those demon foxes that loved seducing the poor scholars who spent the night in the woods. So does anyone know how those demon foxes seduce them?”

After he asked the question, the second floor’s crowd quickly became tumultuous. Some said that those scholars were fakes and they could not resist the temptation while some said those demon foxes only loved preying on scholars. All of them had their own opinions and they just talked non-stop.

The teenager who was sitting in the middle of it all waited for the chattering to calm down then he slowly cracked a smile. “Why would they seduce those poor scholars? Because they were poor; if they had been rich, why would they be spending their night in the wilderness? If they were not staying in the woods then stories like this will not exist in this world anymore.”

The crowd burst into laughter after hearing Li Fuyao’s explanation. They had heard so many stories from storytellers but they had never heard such an explanation before.

The few teenage girls blushed after they heard his explanation but they gazed into Li Fuyao’s eyes with a look of pure admiration.

Li Fuyao chuckled and he raised his bowl of wine to have a mouthful before he continued.

He had been telling stories in this restaurant for quite some time and he knew the ropes here. Also, the stories in his mind were far more than the other storytellers and that was why people in Baiyu Town loved to listen to him.

...

At the second floor, Li Fuyao improvised the stories in his mind and brought them to life. His stories captured the attention of so many people but the owner of the restaurant did bother to listen to them. He was leaning against the door at the entrance, staring at the autumn rain. He was calculating inside his heart how much silver taels he was going to pay Li Fuyao after this. Although that teenager brought in business for him every time he came here to tell his stories, he was also splitting quite a huge amount of the silver taels with Li Fuyao.

After being silent for quite some time, the restaurant owner suddenly spat out his saliva for some unknown reason. Just as he lifted his head, he saw two oil-paper umbrellas, a big one and a small one, getting closer toward the restaurant in the rain.

A middle-aged man who was wearing a green gown held a young lady’s hands as they walked underneath the roof.

The middle-aged man looked at the restaurant owner who was guarding the entrance and asked calmly, “Are there any seats left?”

On usual days, the restaurant owner would welcome customers with open hands but he was now stunned after looking at these two unfamiliar faces. He only nodded after some time and replied, “Yes.”

[1]: Free and Easy Wandering is a representative work of the philosopher and writer Zhuang Zhou during the Warring States Period. It is listed as the first chapter of the Taoist classic " Zhuangzi ·Inner Chapter", which can be used as a representative of the book "Zhuangzi" both in thought and art. The theme of this article focuses on pursuing an absolutely carefree outlook on life.