Extra Chapter 24 · Bookstore Street

1. Bookstore Street

On Bookstore Street in Kaifeng, at three in the afternoon, sunlight slanted across the bluestone slabs, stretching the shadows of the plane trees into long, thin ink lines.

Liu Zhijiang stood at the third storefront on the west side of the road. Beneath his feet were brand-new antique-style floor tiles, and the shop sign read "Wencui Ge," selling stationery and tourist souvenirs. The frontage was twice as wide as in the photo, the roller shutter half pulled down, and inside someone was sweeping dust with a feather duster.

"Demolished the year before last," Wang Guanshu said, tucking the photo into her bag. "Before that it was an old bookshop. The owner's surname was Wen."

Qu Huaisha stood half a step behind them, holding a worn copy of Dongjing Menghua Lu, its spine reinforced with transparent tape in three places. He looked up at the door plate, then down at the book, turning to the section "Streets and Alleys East of the Temple," and pointed at a line of small text: "Bookstore Street was called 'West Street Inside Daliang Gate' in the Song dynasty. The old bookshop's location was exactly at the base of the back wall of Wenji Xiangyao Fang. The Wen family later stopped selling incense and switched to books, but the shop never moved."

Liu Zhijiang said nothing. From the moment he entered the street he had smelled an extremely faint sweetness—not modern fragrance essence, but the muted sweetness of agarwood that had been scorched by fire and then sealed away for many years, like dried flowers pressed at the bottom of an old wooden chest.

"You smell it?" Wang Guanshu asked, seeing his nostrils twitch.

"Mm. Very faint. On the left."

To the left was the side wall of Wencui Ge, with a row of holly planted along its base. Qu Huaisha walked over and crouched down, parting the branches and leaves. There was a vertical crack in the wall brick, and wedged inside was half a burned incense stub, blackened, with fiber patterns still visible on the broken cross-section. He scraped off a bit with his fingernail, brought it close to smell, then handed it to Liu Zhijiang.

Liu Zhijiang took it and rolled it between his fingertips; the incense stub crumbled into powder. He licked his fingertip—bitter, slightly numbing, with a pungent finish reminiscent of aged tangerine peel.

"Wenji's blended incense," he said. "At least seventy years old. There's agarwood, sandalwood, clove, patchouli, and one ingredient I can't quite place."

"What does it smell like?"

"Like... borneol, but heavier than borneol. Could be ambergris processed by an old method."

Qu Huaisha stood up and brushed the dust off his hands. "Wenji Xiangyao Fang closed down at the end of the Northern Song and afterward became a bookshop, but the incense formulas were never lost. I checked at the National Library—during the Republican era a bookseller surnamed Wen donated a batch of Song-edition fragments, among which was half a page of a handwritten blended-incense formula, registered by the library as 'Anonymous incense formula, appended after the Wenji book list.'"

2. Boss Wen

The owner of Wencui Ge was surnamed Wen, named Wen Shouye, just over sixty, with graying hair and a pair of round copper-framed glasses. After hearing their purpose, he pulled the roller shutter all the way up, brought out three folding chairs and set them at the shop entrance, then went inside to brew a pot of tea.

"I was there when they demolished it," Wen Shouye said. "The excavator dug down to the wall base and unearthed an iron casket, rusted beyond recognition. My father—still alive then—told me to keep the casket, saying it was buried by the elders and must not be lost."

"What was in the casket?" Wang Guanshu asked.

"Half a handwritten incense formula, with 'Wenji Hexiang Lu' written on the cover. The paper was crumbling; my father mounted each sheet on xuan paper, and it's still locked in a camphor chest at home. There was also a bronze seal, a bit larger than a thumbprint, with a character carved on the face that I don't recognize."

"What character?"

Wen Shouye fished his phone out of his trouser pocket and pulled up a photo. The photo showed the seal face, heavily corroded, but the character was discernible: an "八" on top and a "刀" below.

Qu Huaisha glanced at it and said: "Fen [分]."

"Fen?" Wen Shouye frowned. "Divide what?"

"The ancient form of 'fen,' composed of 'eight' and 'knife'—using a knife to judge a thing, each taking half," Qu Huaisha said, handing the phone back to Wen Shouye. "This seal and the half Chu-style bronze seal in Guanshu's family were originally a pair. One is carved with 'shou' [守, guard], the other with 'fen' [分, divide]. Together they read 'shoufen' [守分, keep one's place]."

Liu Zhijiang took the half Chu-style bronze seal from his bag and placed it in Wen Shouye's palm. Wen Shouye turned it over and over, then pulled up his phone photo to compare—the shape of the knob, the width of the border, the layers of patina—they matched perfectly.

"My father said something once," Wen Shouye said, handing the seal back to Liu Zhijiang, his voice lower. "He said the Wen family guarded not incense, but 'fen.' Incense can scatter, but 'fen' must not be disordered."

3. The Incense Is in the Book

Wen Shouye took them home. The old house was in an alley behind Bookstore Street—two single-story rooms with a small courtyard. The camphor chest was dragged out from under the bed; when the lid was lifted, a rush of aged wood fragrance mixed with paper and ink met them.

Only twenty-three pages of the Wenji Hexiang Lu remained, each mounted on xuan paper, edges damaged but the writing clear. Qu Huaisha turned page after page, stopping at the last one.

"This page records the 'incense-dividing ritual,'" he said. "Every year on the twenty-third of the twelfth month, Wenji divided the incense blended that year into several portions: one kept at the shop, one sent to the Liu family, one sent to the Wang residence, and one sealed for comparison the following year. During the dividing, this 'fen' seal was stamped on the sealing paper, and each of the three families kept one copy. If a family's sealing paper didn't match the seal, it meant someone had tampered with it in between."

"That's anti-counterfeiting," Liu Zhijiang said.

"More than that." Qu Huaisha held the page up to the window light. "Look at this line of small text—'If incense is not divided, it gathers; gathering leads to contention, contention to chaos. Divide and guard it, each in its place.'"

Wang Guanshu leaned in to look. That line was half the size of the main text, and the ink tone was different, as if added later.

"Whose handwriting is this?"

"Hard to say. But the brushwork resembles the batch of restoration inscriptions left by Mr. Wang Shouzhuo at the Palace Museum."

Wen Shouye interjected: "There was also a note in the iron casket. My father wouldn't let it be thrown away; it was kept with the incense formula. Just five characters on it—'The incense is in the book.'"

"The incense is in the book?" Liu Zhijiang was startled.

"My father pondered it his whole life without figuring it out. Later the shop was demolished and the books were all moved home and piled in the side room. I never looked through them again."

Qu Huaisha stood up. "Take us to see."

The side room held forty or fifty stacks of old books, tied with hemp rope and covered in dust. Wang Guanshu pulled a copy of Dongjing Menghua Lu from the top stack—a Commercial Press Republican-era edition, cover missing, the title page stamped with the blue seal of "Wenji Bookshop." She flipped through at random, landing on the section "Foods and Fruits," and between the pages was a piece of agarwood thin as a cicada's wing, dark brown, with fine grain.

She slid the incense piece out and placed it in her palm.

Liu Zhijiang leaned in to smell it.

"It's Wenji's blended incense. Same formula as the incense stub at the wall base."

"How many years has it been pressed in the book?"

"Judging by the oxidation of the paper, at least sixty years."

Wang Guanshu turned the incense piece over. On the back, written in extremely fine ink, was a line so small it was almost invisible:

Twelfth month of the bingshen year, third portion of divided incense, given to eldest daughter Guan.

The bingshen year. Sixty years ago.

"Eldest daughter Guan," Wang Guanshu read aloud, then looked up. "My grandmother's name contains the character 'Guan.'"

Qu Huaisha took the incense piece from her and held it to the light to read the line again, silent for a few seconds.

"This book," he said, "was bought from the Wen family bookshop by your father back then. After buying it, he put the incense piece back inside."

"Why?"

"Because 'the incense is in the book'—he was telling your grandmother that Wenji's incense-dividing tradition still existed, only hidden in a different way."

Liu Zhijiang placed the incense piece back between the pages and closed the book.

"And now?" he asked. "This wisp of incense—who should it be divided among?"

Qu Huaisha did not answer. He turned to the last page of Dongjing Menghua Lu; on the blank inside back cover there was another line written in pencil, extremely faint, as if added later:

Bookstore Street is going to be demolished. The next Boss Wen may not know about the incense.

"This is your father's handwriting," Qu Huaisha said, handing the book to Wang Guanshu.

Wang Guanshu stared at the line for a long time.

"He knew long ago it would be demolished," she said. "He was waiting for someone who could catch this wisp of incense."

Suddenly wind rose in the courtyard. The side-room door was blown open a crack, and dust sifted down. Wen Shouye came out from the kitchen with a dish of peanuts and saw the three of them standing around an old book, none speaking.

"Found it?" he asked.

"Found it," Liu Zhijiang said. "Uncle Wen, we'd like to borrow this book for a couple of days. And the half incense formula—could we photograph it?"

"Photograph away." Wen Shouye set the peanuts on the table. "My father said the Wen family's things were ultimately all meant to be handed over. To whom—when the one who's waiting arrives, they'll know."

Liu Zhijiang wrapped Dongjing Menghua Lu in oil paper and put it in his bag. Wang Guanshu tucked the agarwood piece back between the pages and closed the book again.

As they were leaving, Qu Huaisha paused at the courtyard gate and turned back to ask Wen Shouye: "Besides the incense formula, the bronze seal, and the note, was there anything else in the iron casket?"

Wen Shouye thought for a moment. "There was a short piece of rope, as if used to tie something. My father said it was for sealing the incense—when the rope broke, the incense scattered."

"Where's the rope?"

"Thrown away. The day they demolished the house, my father said a broken rope was useless and tossed it in the trash."

Qu Huaisha nodded and said no more.

As they walked out of the alley, Wang Guanshu suddenly spoke: "The rope broke, the incense scattered. But the formula is still here, the seal is still here. What has been divided can always be joined again."

Liu Zhijiang hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. "And after it's joined?"

"After it's joined," Qu Huaisha said, walking ahead without turning back, "what should be divided is divided, what should be guarded is guarded."

Plane leaves drifted down on Bookstore Street, spinning, sticking to the oil-paper-wrapped book. Liu Zhijiang reached out to brush off a leaf; his fingertip touched the seam of the oil paper and caught a faint scent of agarwood seeping from between the pages, as if someone very far away had just lit a stick of incense.

He glanced back toward Wencui Ge. The roller shutter was already pulled down, the neon tubes on the sign not yet lit, and daylight fell on the two characters "Wencui," bleaching the lower half of "Cui" white.

"Uncle Wen said the rope was thrown away," he said suddenly.

"Mm."

"But the iron casket is still missing one thing—the seal-paste box used for sealing incense. Stamping the 'fen' seal on sealing paper without seal paste—the seal can't be applied."

Wang Guanshu stopped walking.

"So..."

"So that box of seal paste is either at Uncle Wen's house, or," Liu Zhijiang bounced the bag up on his shoulder, "in someone else's hands."

Qu Huaisha walked on ahead without stopping, his voice drifting back from the shadows of the plane trees: "First go back and finish reading the incense formula. The matter of the seal paste can wait until we've finished."

The wind at the alley entrance scattered half his words; the other half fell into Liu Zhijiang's ears like an unfinished instruction.

—To be continued · Extra Chapter 25