About this story
You play Major Lu, drinking in a Weizhou tavern, and the story that comes out is a butcher who offered help after a burial, claimed the daughter on a false promise, cast her out, and still collects a debt her family never received. You empty your purse to get them through the east gate before dawn. The daughter asks you not to turn their danger into a spectacle. By morning you are crossing the bridge toward his stall.
Who you’ll meet
Shi Jin, the young travelling martial-arts man, crossing the wine shop with his staff toward the partition, and the travelling singer and her elderly father who have just come out of it to ask for help — the reader is Major Lu, at the table and off camera.
How it opens
In Weizhou, your major's uniform earned space at a tavern before your temper earned silence.
Shi Jin had come seeking a teacher, and Li Zhong joined the table between street performances.
Shi JinMajor Lu, the roads have changed you less than they changed my directions.
Li ZhongWe may find him after food, if nobody fights the prefecture.
Shi JinThat condition asks more discipline than our host usually carries.
Choose
Bring whoever is crying here and let the cause speak plainly.
No music should continue while someone weeps behind the wall.