‘Surely you’re a very capable servant for your master, Yang. And I am the very man for your inquiry; that much I can assure you,’ Bao said, pocketing the small piece of silver readily. ‘In fact, Mayor Pei asked me about those things, too, though I don’t know anything about his interests in the collection of brush pen calligraphy and paintings. So I have done quite an extensive investigation of it.’

‘Really! That’s fantastic. But for me, it’s just an investigation for business.’

‘Well, investigation is investigation. I like your way of trying your best to do a good job of it,’ Bao said, taking up a piece of fried fish fillet in yellow wine sauce. ‘It’s excellent wine. To your business successes!’

After three cups of the mellow yet strong rice wine, Bao became a bit tipsy; his tongue was loosened, and his face animated and flushed like the crest of a cock when it’s ready to jump into the fighting ring.

‘Xuanji had good stuff from those rich and powerful men dancing around her. As neighborhood watchers, we may not be high on the social ladder, but we have the important responsibility to surveil all the time, so we may report anything and everything to the higher authorities. Our job is truly crucial to the maintenance of the political stability of the Great Tang Empire. No one in the neighborhood can escape our watchful eyes. And I can assure you, Yang, she got much more from those rich and powerful visitors than mere calligraphies or paintings. How? I don’t think you need me to tell you.’

‘The rich and powerful visitors must have been buzzing around her like flies smelling and sucking blood, I guess.’

‘What an insightful, ironical metaphor indeed! She was caught because of the flies whirling around the blood in the nunnery backyard. Karma! So that’s quite a story for another cup, right?’ Bao said with increasing gusto, crunching the soft-boiled chicken foot, and reaching out to fill his cup again. ‘In short, she’s a promiscuous slut. Shamelessly carrying on with one big bug after another, she took it for granted that they would continue to shower money and jewels and antiques – and protection, too – on her forever.’

‘She must have lost her mind.’

‘Fucked out of her mind, I tell you! Apart from those fly-like visitors, the people in the neighborhood have been so fed up with her wild, infamous ways, but it was not merely a disgrace to the village. It could also lead to political disaster for the whole country.’

‘What do you mean, Bao?’

‘According to a governmental document available to neighborhood coordinators at my level, quite a number of old-fashioned scholars in the capital saw her as a representative of the current moral decline of the Tang Empire. Whatever they could not have said against the empress in the open, they said out loud and clear through the Xuanji case.’