Agarwood Six Records · Volume Three: Night Rain of the Jingkang Era

Agarwood Six Records · Volume Three: Night Rain of the Jingkang Era

One · [Modern · the Capital (modern Beijing) · Autumn]

The fire began at a one-story house on the eastern outskirts — the place where Old Zhou had lived for the fourteen years since his retirement.

Liu Zhiqiang arrived to find the fire already out. Half the roof had collapsed; the doused timbers steamed white, and the air smelled of soaked, charred wood — beneath that smell, pressed as thin as could be, ran one wisp of agarwood he knew.

Wen Ye waited for him beyond the cordon.

"The fire started at two in the morning," Wen Ye said. "Old wiring, most likely. But I squatted outside all night: forty minutes before the fire, a car was parked at the mouth of the alley." "What kind of car?" "Black. One window open a crack." Wen Ye looked at him. "Someone inside was burning incense." Liu Zhiqiang said nothing.

"Boss Liu," Wen Ye lowered his voice, "the place that burned is where Old Zhou lived. Old Zhou has been dead only a few days. Tell me it's coincidence — I don't believe it." Liu Zhiqiang walked into the ruins. Of Old Zhou's things, only a tin box remained; he pried it open, and it was empty — something had plainly been kept inside once, but now only a layer of gray-white incense ash was left.

He crouched there a long while before he stood up.

"Brother Ye, there's still a plaque in my shop." "A plaque?" "Old Zhou wiped it clean once every year, in the twelfth month. The front he polished till it shone; the back he never wiped." Liu Zhiqiang's voice had gone a little hoarse. "I used to think he was simply lazy." By the time he was back at the shop it was afternoon. Liu Zhiqiang took the old black plaque with its gold characters down from above the door and turned it around.

On the back, apart from that one carved mark — the mirror image of the left-falling stroke of the character for "color" — there was nothing at all.

With a fingernail he traced the carving from end to end, one complete pass. On the third pass, the pad of his finger sank half a millimeter at one spot.

It was a false panel.

He took the incense knife, worked it along the seam, and pried. The strip of wood lifted; inside lay a flat hidden compartment, its depth enough to hold exactly one thing.

In the compartment rested a small booklet. The cover bore no characters; the paper was old, its corners eaten by worms.

He opened to the first page. Four characters: guarding one's share, not hoarding the whole.

Liu Zhiqiang stood where he was and read the four characters three times.

After that page came the accounts. Not accounts of incense, but of people — the names, the reign eras, and the destinations of every generation of the incense-keepers, and a line for each dividing of the incense: the second year of Jingkang, Bianliang fell. The purple went into a painting; the yellow went out to sea; the white went west. Eleven of the incense-guarding disciples died.

Second year of Xiangxing, Yashan. The yellow incense sank with the boat into the Southern Sea.

During the Chunyou era, the Mongols campaigned in the west. The white incense followed foreign merchants into Europe and afterward passed to the Holy See.

From 1914 to 1918, the green incense changed hands and entered a private collection in the Middle East.

From 1939 to 1945, the black incense was blocked on the sea routes and left stranded in the Americas.

Beneath every entry was written one character: "scattered."

Liu Zhiqiang turned to the second-to-last page and saw his father's name: Eighteenth Generation · Liu Shi'an. Gengchen year (2000), autumn: he did not return. Not an accident.

The Gengchen year. The year he was twelve.

The "business trips" his mother had believed in for twenty-six years collapsed beneath those four characters.

Two · [Northern Song · Bianliang · the First Year of the Jingkang Era (1126) · Spring]

When the Jurchen cavalry pressed to the walls for the first time, the first thing to come undone in Bianliang was not the price of rice. It was incense.

From the princely mansions down to the entertainment quarters, everyone was burning. Some prayed for safety; some prayed for a way through. The door planks of the Liu family's Agarwood & Sandalwood Shop were shoved out of true twice; Wen An jammed them with a wooden pole and shouted back over his shoulder: "Shopkeeper, stop the selling! Sell any more and people will die!" Liu Cheng did not answer.

He was just past thirty, the son of Liu Jiulang, and had kept the shop for eight years. On his deathbed his father had left him nine words — "Where the incense stays, the family stays. Guard the Six." In those days he had not understood what "the Six" were; later he came to understand them in the *Manual of the Six Incenses*, kept in the hidden compartment, and after that he never slept well again.

Early in the third month, a man nobody had invited came into the back courtyard.

The visitor wore civilian clothes, his hat brim pulled low; he was from the office of the Grand Commandant (Taiwei). He did not say that he was Gao Qiu; he said only that those above had one question to ask.

"A question?" "Does the Liu family's shop keep something of the Six?" Liu Cheng's hand clenched inside his sleeve.

The man smiled. "No need for nerves, shopkeeper. The meaning from above is this: if the Jurchen enter the city, no household can protect what it holds. The Grand Commandant has thought out a road for you: you hand over one piece, he keeps it under seal for you, and once the trouble has passed, he returns it to you unchanged." "Hand it over to whom?" The smile on the man's face faded a little. "Don't ask what shouldn't be asked. Say only this — do you have it, or not." Liu Cheng said: "No." The man stood, walked to the door, then turned back. "Shopkeeper, the Grand Commandant's health is not good this year. What he wants must arrive while he is still here. Weigh it yourself." After the man left, Wen An came out from the back room, his face as white as paper.

"Shopkeeper, the Commandant's office…" Wen An was sixty-two this year, more than half his hair gone, his errand-running legs no longer what they had been. "This is not the first time. Last month someone came asking after the Six as well." "Who?" "I don't know. He spoke with an Eastern Kingdom accent." Liu Cheng nodded and said no more. But Wen An did not go; he lowered his voice. "Shopkeeper, my elder sister's household… something has happened there too." At the Wen family's Incense & Medicine Shop in the west of the city, the lamp was still burning.

Wen Nuan was five years older than Wen An, sixty-seven this year, her hair entirely white, her back still straight. In the first year of Jingkang, with the Jurchen besieging the city, that small pharmacy of hers had taken in three young apprentices who had fled the Liu family's Agarwood & Sandalwood Shop — she had boiled anti-plague decoctions for the boys, and for her younger brother as well. When Wen An came in, she was frowning at a basket of newly arrived aromatics.

"Sister." Wen An told her about the questioning at the Commandant's office. "Those above want something from the Six, and men with Eastern Kingdom accents are hunting too. I'm afraid." Wen Nuan parted the cut lengths of aromatic wood in the basket, then stopped all at once, pinched up a small pinch of gray-green powder, and raised it to her nose.

"Anzi, look at this." Her voice was steadier than a time of chaos should allow. "Someone has been mixing an additive into the 'incense of peace' flowing into the city." "What additive?" "One that hastens the Cry." Wen Nuan set the pinch of powder down. "This thing gives off nothing on its own. Mixed into incense, it can draw the fragrance in other places to seethe along with it — once men's hearts drift, someone will use the confusion to strike. The pieces your Liu family keep have most to fear from this." Wen An's face grew darker still.

Wen Nuan only smiled, and pressed a packet of medicine into her brother's arms. "You guard the incense; I guard the people. The Wen family has two charges; let us sister and brother each carry one. Take this medicine with you — the road west is long; don't die out there. The root of the Wen family is still in Bianliang." What she did not say was this: she had long since cleared the cellar behind the shop, so that if the men of the Liu family never returned, this would be the place to receive the incense.

Liu Cheng closed his eyes.

That fangshi, the wandering adept with the Eastern Kingdom accent — he had seen him once as a boy: outside his father's study, through the window, a man in a gray robe setting a short length of ivory-colored aromatic wood on the desk. His father had eaten nothing that night.

That had been the third year of Yuanfeng. Forty-six years had passed; the aromatic wood remained, the men had changed.

In the fourth month, Gao Qiu died of illness. When the news came, Liu Cheng was cutting agarwood, and his knife did not stop.

He knew that the sentence had already gone out: the Liu family holds something of the Six. And whoever had received that sentence was not in Bianliang, but across the eastern sea.

Three · [Northern Song · Bianliang · the Second Year of the Jingkang Era (1127) · the Ninth Day of the Third Month · Night]

The city fell on a day of rain.

The rain was not heavy, but dense; falling on the tiles, it was like someone speaking in a low voice. Everywhere in the city there was firelight; everywhere in the firelight there was the sound of weeping. The Jurchen cavalry passed before the Xuande Gate, iron hooves crushing a ground of rain-soaked spirit money.

In the back courtyard of the Liu family's Agarwood & Sandalwood Shop, six people knelt in the rain.

Liu Cheng stood at the mouth of the cellar, a wooden case in his hands. Inside the case were three things: the Purple Ranjatai — a double-lobed incense cake, its rim toothed so the halves could interlock; the Yellow Ranjatai — twelve amber-hued beads of incense; the White Ranjatai — three snow-white pills of incense.

Within the city of Bianliang, only these three remained.

"Shopkeeper," a young disciple raised his head, rain and tears indistinguishable on his face. "The Jurchen are searching at our very door. Do we… guard it, or not?" Liu Cheng did not answer. He looked first to Wen An.

Wen An was sixty-three, kneeling in the rain, his back no longer able to straighten. In his youth he had peeled aromatic bark on the threshold; afterward he kept the accounts, ran the errands, guarded the incense — he had run all his life. Now he was to run his last errand.

"We guard," Liu Cheng said. "But not this way." He took out the Purple Ranjatai, gripped the two lobes of the double in both hands, and pulled with all his strength.

The toothed edges bit tight; when it came apart there was a very faint crack — like a bone breaking inside cotton.

Joined, one; divided, two. Such was the form the Purple Ranjatai was born in.

"One cake," Liu Cheng handed the left half to the disciple kneeling farthest left. "Zhang Daizhao left a hidden compartment inside the painting, beneath the stroke of the characters for 'agarwood and sandalwood.' Take this; pry open that seam along the scroll and seal it inside. Give the painting to the monks of Daxiangguo Temple, and let it travel south with the people crossing." "And the other half?" "It goes to sea with the yellow incense." He poured the twelve yellow beads into another young man's palm. "The ship from Quanzhou sails tomorrow night. Board it; the incense is sewn inside your clothes. Wherever the ship goes, you go; the incense must not set foot on land — unless it sinks of its own accord." The young man's hands trembled. "Shopkeeper — then all my life—" "All your life you will drift," Liu Cheng said. "To drift is to guard." The last three white pills he placed in Wen An's hands.

"Uncle Wen, you go west. Out through the West Gate, follow the caravans of the Western Regions. Walk as far as you can walk; do not look back." Wen An took the pills, wrapped them in three layers of old cloth, and tucked them into a pocket against his chest. That piece of old cloth had been pressed into his hands the night before he left the city by his sister Wen Nuan — she had said little, only handed him the cloth: "Come back alive. The root of the Wen family is in Bianliang. You guard the incense; I guard the root." Wen An had not dared to answer, fearing that once he answered he would be unable to move. He looked at Liu Cheng and suddenly smiled. "Shopkeeper, I entered this shop at sixteen; your father had me squat on the threshold peeling aromatic bark. I peeled my whole life, and in the end I carry three pills of incense out through the West Gate — I suppose that counts as peeling my way somewhere." "Uncle Wen—" "Don't see me off." Wen An pushed himself up from the ground, rain streaming down his white hair. "I run fast; you couldn't catch me." He walked out the back courtyard door, into the rain.

Liu Cheng knelt down before the cellar and raised the last half of the purple incense cake before his eyes.

"Father," he said, "I understand." "Where the incense stays, the family stays. The family remains — and so the incense must scatter." That night, eleven of the incense-guarding disciples died.

Wen An did not die in Bianliang. After leaving the West Gate he walked for four years, and died in a post station on the Hexi Corridor. Dying, he gave the old cloth from his breast to a youth traveling with him — the grandson he had adopted.

The youth remembered his words, and his son remembered them after him, passed down generation by generation to this day: "Tell the Wen house in the generations to come — take the blow for the Liu house." And Liu Cheng, carrying half the purple incense and the newly opened account book, crossed the river and went south. As the boat passed the Yangtze, he looked back once at the northern bank.

The rain was still falling.

Four · [Modern · the Capital (modern Beijing) · the Same Night]

Wang Wanshu arrived while Liu Zhiqiang was sitting on the shop threshold.

Rain dripped from the eaves, pricking a row of small pits in the ground. He handed the booklet over and said nothing.

Wang Wanshu turned to a page near the middle and stopped.

Gengyin year (2010), winter: Wang Shouzhuo, a conservator of painting and calligraphy at the Palace Museum, obtained from the lining of a damaged Song painting a single sheet bearing six impressions in the shape of petals, and reported it to Xiangtang, the Incense Hall. That same winter, he died.

She stared at the three characters "Wang Shouzhuo," motionless.

That was her father's name.

"My father's disease was in the lungs." Her voice was very level, flatter than was like her. "The hospital issued three critical-condition notices. The last time, on his sickbed, he said to me, 'That paper — don't let anyone see it.'" She looked up; her eyes behind the lenses were very dry.

"I thought what he feared was the academic world. I thought he feared someone snatching the credit and publishing first." "Wang Wanshu—" "He reported it to Xiangtang," she cut in. "And then he died. The same winter." She closed the booklet, her fingers pressed hard until the knuckles went white.

"Liu Zhiqiang, half my life I have spent investigating this matter on my father's behalf. I thought that if I finished what he had left unfinished, he might—" She stopped there and did not finish.

Liu Zhiqiang looked at her. The sound of the rain was loud.

"There is nothing you can't find," he said, "except yourself." Wang Wanshu did not argue. She turned her face into the rain; her shoulders trembled once, very lightly.

That night, the two of them sat on the threshold, and neither went into the house.

Near dawn, Wang Wanshu said: "I want every record from my father's last year — the Palace Museum's, the hospital's, Xiangtang's. I want to know whom he saw in the end." "All right," Liu Zhiqiang said.

He waited for dawn, waited until Wang Wanshu had left, before he opened the booklet again, to its last page.

The last page was empty — until the final line.

The ink of that line was very new, of a completely different year from the ink of the whole old account. The handwriting was neat and regular: it was Old Zhou's.

Nineteenth Generation · Liu Zhiqiang. Bingwu year (2026) — opened.

Liu Zhiqiang stared at the line.

The Bingwu year. This year.

Old Zhou had lost his father before Liu Zhiqiang was born, and had disappeared in the year he turned twelve — yet before he died, Old Zhou had already written his name and his year into this account book.

Old Zhou had known everything.

Old Zhou had known that he would open this page in this year.

The next day at noon, two men came into the shop, showed their identification, and said they were carrying out a routine inspection of the sources of aromatic materials and the shop's operating qualifications. The formalities were complete; they spoke courteously.

Liu Zhiqiang cooperated. They searched for three hours and found nothing; on their way out they even said, "Sorry for the trouble."

At the door, the elder of the two glanced back at the plaque above the shop front and said casually: "This plaque has some age on it. Boss Liu, cultural relics — in private hands they're really not safe." Liu Zhiqiang smiled and did not take it up.

That evening, Wen Ye sent a message: the car outside the fire site — checked. A rental company, a false identity. The registered name of the renter — Liu Sheng.

Then a text came in from an unknown number: Mr. Liu. You have read the first layer of the blood ledger — that was only what others wrote for you. The second layer you must read for yourself. Before you read it, we had best talk.

— Liu Shengjingma
Liu Zhiqiang set the phone on the counter and walked to the shop door.

The rain had stopped. Standing water in the hutong caught the light of the sky, patch after patch, like fallen shards of mirror that no one had picked up.

He stood a long time, then went back inside, tucked the booklet once more into the hidden compartment behind the plaque, and hung the plaque back above the door.

"All right," he said.

As the plaque went up, wood struck the wall with a dull thud. The last backward glance that Liu Cheng cast from the boat heading south on that rainy night nine hundred years ago, and this sound — separated by a river, by a reach of time — landed on the same piece of wood.

— Volume Three, to be continued · next: Volume Four, "Eastward Crossing and Westward Journey"

> This is an original serialized story from *Agarwood Six Records*; characters and plot are fictional. Common knowledge of agarwood and aromatics herein is compiled from public materials and does not constitute investment or medical advice.