“On your knees, dogs, for you face the rage of Lord Li of Kao!” Master Li yelled.
“Cower, knaves, before the fury of Lord Lu of Yu!” I shouted.
Unfortunately, our lead horse slipped in some mud, and our carriage crashed into the ladies’ carriage, and we were pitched on top of half-naked females who were screaming their heads off. We gazed groggily at a pretty jade pendant that was dangling between a pair of pretty pink-tipped breasts, and it took a moment for us to remember what we were doing there. Then we jumped down to engage the ruffians.
Li Kao stabbed right and left with his sword, and I swung away with both hands—he was missing, of course, and I was pulling my punches short—and the thugs remembered that they weren't actually supposed to rob and rape anybody and began to do a very good job of acting. Once, when my foot slipped in the mud, a punch accidentally landed and sent the leader of the bandits sprawling. I forgot about the accident, and soon the bandits fled in terror and we turned to accept the gratitude of the rescued ladies.
Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang had already lost his nose and both of his ears in back-alley battles, and he did not appreciate losing several teeth as well. He crept up behind me with a log in his hands.
“A present for Lord Lu of Yu!” he yelled, and he swung with all his might, and I saw a glorious burst of orange and purple stars, and then everything turned black.
I awoke in a very expensive bed surrounded by very expensive women who were battling for the honor of bathing the bump on my skull.
“He wakes!” they shrieked at the tops of their lungs. “Lord Lu of Yu opens his divine eyes!”
I had been brought up to be courteous, but there are limits.
“If you don't stop that infernal racket, Lord Lu of Yu will strangle you with his divine hands,” I groaned.
They paid no attention to me, and the ear-splitting babble continued, and gradually I began to make some sense out of it. Our miraculous intervention had saved them all from rape and ruin, and the esteem in which we were held was not diminished by our fine tasseled hats, green silk tunics, jade-bordered silver girdles, Szech'uen fans, and money belts that bulged with Miser Shen's gold coins. This was all according to plan, but I was rather puzzled by repeated references to “the bridegroom,” and I was trying to get up enough strength to ask a few questions when I began to realize that my wounds were far more serious than I had thought.
I was sick enough to imagine that the floor was shaking, and that my bed was starting to bounce up and down. The hallucination was accompanied by a dull, rhythmic, pounding noise that gradually increased in volume, and the ladies suddenly stopped babbling. They turned pale and tiptoed quietly from the room through a side door, and I began to smell a revolting odor of rotting flesh.
The bedroom door crashed open, and the woman who marched inside weighed approximately five hundred pounds. The floor shook as she marched toward my bed. The coldest eyes that I had ever seen, even in nightmares, glittered between puffy rolls of sagging gray flesh, and a massive swollen hand shot out and grabbed my chin. The icy eyes moved over my face.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
She grabbed my right arm and probed the biceps.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
She jerked the covers down and squeezed my chest.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
She ripped the covers all the way down and prodded my private parts.
“Satisfactory,” she grunted.
Then the creature stepped back and I stared pop-eyed at a leveled finger that resembled a gangrened sausage.
“They call you Lord Lu of Yu,” she growled. “I know Yu well, and there is no Lord Lu. They call your antiquated companion Lord Li of Kao, and the province of Kao does not exist. You are frauds and fortune hunters, and your criminal activities do not interest me in the least.”
She slapped her hands to her hips and glared at me.
“My granddaughter has taken a fancy to you, and I want great-grandchildren,” she snarled. “The wedding will take place as soon as your wounds have healed. You will present me with seven great-grandchildren, and they will be boys. I intend to overthrow the T'ang Dynasty and restore the Sui, and boys are more suitable for the purpose. In the meantime you will not annoy me by showing your silly face any more than is absolutely necessary, and you will not speak unless spoken to. Insolence in my household is punishable by immediate decaptiation.”
The monster turned and plodded from the room, and the door slammed viciously behind her. For a moment I lay there paralyzed, and then I jumped from the bed and ran across the floor and started to climb out of the window. The view made me stop. That immense estate boasted no less than seven pleasure gardens, and one of them, in the tradition of great houses, was a pretty artificial peasant village. I gazed at simple thatched roofs, and crude water wheels, and green fields, and pigs and cows and chickens and water buffaloes. I felt tears well in my eyes and trickle down my cheeks.
My village was praying for a ginseng root.
I made my way back to the bed, and I lay there wrapped in misery and terror.
7. A Great House
When I had recovered enough to take stock of my surroundings it gradually dawned on me that the monster had decided upon seven great-grandchildren some time ago, and that her granddaughter would be ordered to see to it that they were twelve years old at birth. I was lying in the dormitory of the boys who were going to aid in overthrowing the T'ang Dynasty, and I will confess that I wept when I considered the life that my poor children were to lead.
Seven small beds were aligned side by side with geometric precision. Seven small desks were placed precisely in front of them, and the writing brushes lay exactly three inches to the right of the inkstones. Nothing in that cold inhuman room was so much as an eyelash out of alignment, and that included the signs on the walls. Some were kung kuo-yo, Tables of Demerits, and I will give an example.
EACH DEMERIT IS TO BE PUNISHED BY STROKES OF THE BIRCH ROD
Exciting lustful thoughts in oneself 5
Showing one's nakedness when easing nature at night 2
Lewd dreams 2
If such dreams occasion lewd actions 10
Singing frivolous songs 5
Studying frivolous songs 10
Not yielding the way to a woman 10
If at the same time one looks at the woman 20
If one looks longingly at her 30
If one conceives lewd thoughts about her 40
Insolence to a woman 50
Insolence to the Ancestress 500
If such insolence is recurrent Decapitation
Other signs were lessons to be memorized, and my frightened eyes jerked from one to another. Now and then in my dreams I find myself in a classroom with fragments of lessons plastered all over it.
The effectiveness of the flame throwers known as meng huo yu may be enhanced by the addition of pulped bananas and coconuts to the oil, which will cause the fiery mixture to stick to the flesh…
The Fire Drug will release deadly gas upon explosion with the addition of five ounces of langtu, two and one half ounces of pitch, one ounce of bamboo fibers, three ounces of arsenic oxide…
An excellent poison can be swiftly produced under field conditions by boiling two baskets of oleander leaves, distilling the essence, and adding three ounces of dried aconite tubers. At sea a simple extraction of the sac of the blowfish…
A more subtle approach was employed by Wang Shih-chen, who presented his victims with pornographic novels after smearing the edge of each page with arsenic, and when the victim licked his finger to turn the pages…