‘Sorry to interrupt you two, but it’s time for lunch.’ The reappearance of Nameless in the room broke off Han Shan’s narrative. ‘Our abbot Stainless is not feeling so well today, but he insists on my providing a special vegetarian meal for our two distinguished guests today. And he would like to meet you in person when he is better tomorrow.’

‘Yes, the vegetarian meal here is absolutely incredible,’ Han Shan said, nodding. ‘You cannot afford to miss it.’

Walking down along the winding hill trail, Yang knew he had to deal with an assignment totally foreign to him.

It was in Judge Dee’s field, the hunt for Xuanji’s poetry collection, but Judge Dee had to talk to the poet monk at the temple for the day. So it was a necessary division of labor for the two of them. There were just a couple of days for them to conduct the investigation, and Yang had to take over the job from his master.

As far as Yang knew, people sold and bought books mostly in temple market fairs, but he had no idea about the market fair dates. Only one time had he followed Judge Dee into something like a bookstore in the center of the capital city, and it was too far away for him to make it there and back in just half a day.

But he recalled having visited a medium-sized small town nearby, so he headed there.

It did not take him long to reach the town, but to his confusion, he failed to find a single bookstore there – at least not in the strict sense of the word. In fact, most of the stores he came across not only sold books but carried a lot of other stuff as well. On one or two half-empty shelves of the third store he stepped into stood nothing but textbooks of Confucian classics, including Book of Rites, Book of Songs, and Book of Changes, all of which were the furthest thing from his mind. The second shelf he was examining in a corner turned out to be more like an old rare book section, sporting several handwritten copies on display under an impressive array of silk scrolls of calligraphies and paintings hanging down from the white walls.

According to the store owner, some local poets and writers put a few of their handwritten manuscripts on sale there, but usually just a couple of pages, nothing close to a complete or well-edited collection.

‘A woodblock printing edition can be very expensive. For a poet’s collection, it is usually just a small print run. Not enough to cover the cost. Something like a vanity print, you know.’

So it might not be such a bad business idea for Judge Dee to compile a collection of Xuanji’s poems, Yang observed, if that was what Judge Dee indeed planned to do – perhaps not too small a print run after Xuanji’s execution, given the possibility it might gain wider attention and become a bestseller. Still, he doubted that his bookish master would throw himself into such a business venture.