Sect Labor Dispatch

As Xiang Lingyun pried open the dead man’s fingers, his fingertips touched a rain-soaked scrap of paper. He unfolded it and, by the light of the river lanterns, saw two words. His own name. Snow had begun falling the previous night and still had not stopped by dawn. Fog and snow mingled over the Yangtze, turning everything white. The opposite bank was invisible; only the water could be heard. It flowed steadily, again and again, like an old man coughing. The wind came downriver, carrying pellets of snow that pattered against the bamboo canopy of the covered boat. They rustled like salt being scattered. Now and then, a boat passed over the river, a red lantern hanging from its bow. Its light blurred in the fog like a red eye. The boatmen did not call out in rhythm. In weather like this, no one spoke; they simply rowed. The oars creaked as they came from the distance and vanished into it, like someone sighing. Qingxi County lay on the banks of the Yangtze, a little place that belonged to no one. The county seat was small. It took the time to burn one stick of incense to walk from one end to the other. But its riverside location made it a busy stop for boats traveling north and south. The docks were crowded with cargo boats, fishing boats, pleasure boats, and the flying vessels of cultivators. Those flying vessels were used by proper cultivators, bearing yellow flags and dragon carvings on their prows. In three years, Xiang Lingyun had seen one only three times, and each time he had stood at the ferry crossing and watched for ages. A flying vessel was nothing like an ordinary boat. It needed no oars; a faint glow beneath its hull held it aloft, as if resting on clouds. The cultivator standing at the bow wore a robe of blue silk and a jade token at his waist. With his nose in the air, he never even glanced at the unofficial riffraff on the docks. Xiang Lingyun crouched at the bow, chewing on half a hard flatbread. He wore a gray cotton-padded jacket, its cuffs worn through until the stuffing showed, and a piece of straw was tied around his waist