Lu Guiyan had just finished delivering lamp oil and returned to the inn when the bookkeeper slapped a ledger down and stopped him. All three fields on the registration page, name, place of origin, and native place, were blank. According to the inn rules, an unnamed guest was considered overdue, and overdue guests were sent straight to the Stitching Gate. Two servants came over carrying hemp rope, even advising him not to make them use force. Every guest in the hall craned their neck to watch. Lu Guiyan left the oil jug strap on his shoulder. The tip of his left ring finger was missing, and he rested that hand on the counter. He neither ran nor knelt. He only asked, "What day did I become overdue?"
The bookkeeper said, "There's no day. You're overdue from the start. Those are the rules."
He replied, "Those six characters aren't in the rules. You can't read them aloud."
Then he said, "You just looked up and called me Lu Guiyan. That proves it. If this page is blank, who did you call?"
The hall fell silent, then erupted in laughter. The bookkeeper's face flushed red. He reached for Lu Guiyan's collar, but Lu Guiyan twisted his arm and caught his pulse point. The whole arm went rigid, and the pen fell to the floor and rolled twice.
Lu Guiyan recited Article Seven of the Inn Rules for him, word for word, to the end: "A guest whose name is unregistered cannot be assigned a date for settling their account. Those without a date cannot be settled, and those who have not settled cannot be sent away. A name may only be added by the person who signed the ledger, using their own hand. The pen in your hand is for keeping accounts, not signing them. You can't add my name, so you can't send me away."
The bookkeeper clutched his wrist and turned to look at the judge, who had been sitting by the ledger screen the whole time. The judge stood and stared at Lu Guiyan for a long while, then asked, "Did you get a single word wrong?"
"I recited it every day for three years, on every trip from one end of the Long Inn to the other."
The judge took up his pen and wrote two short lines at the bottom of the blank page, granting Lu Guiyan three days' stay. Then he added, "Go to the lamp room tonight and collect your own bill."
At that, the entire hall fell deathly silent. Three days weren't even enough to make one trip through the Long Inn. But beneath the accounting lamp in the lamp room lay something he had left unclaimed three years ago.
