The next day.
Before the first light of dawn touched the sky, there was already movement in the valley.
Men carried hoes up the mountain to quarry stone, women boiled wild vegetables in the clearing, and half-grown children ran back and forth carrying bricks and tiles like a flock of tireless sparrows.
No one shouted orders, and no one was assigned tasks; everyone simply did what they could on their own initiative.
It was as if an invisible thread was guiding them, each person performing their duty in an orderly fashion.
When Shen Yu arrived at the valley, he was surprised to find that the foundation of the Divine Lady Temple was already beginning to take shape.
He stood at a distance and watched for a while.
He saw the ragged refugees carefully stacking every stone, watched their mud-stained, weathered hands smoothing out uneven edges, and observed them repeatedly discussing and adjusting the corners of the walls to ensure they were perfectly straight.
Their movements were clumsy yet earnest, as if they were building a magnificent palace.
An eight or nine-year-old girl stumbled past, clutching a stone larger than her own head.
Shen Yu instinctively stepped forward to catch it for her.
The child looked up at him.
Recognizing him as the handsome and exceptionally clever gentleman from the previous night, Cui San Ya beamed with a wide smile. “Thank you, young master!”
With that, she turned and ran back down the mountain.
There were still many stones and bricks to be moved at the foot of the mountain; she had to make more trips and carry more.
That way, the Divine Lady Temple could be finished faster.
Her mother said the Divine Lady was kind-hearted. As long as they loved and respected Her with all their sincerity, they would surely be able to move Her.
Shen Yu stood in place, watching the girl's retreating back.
If he hadn't experienced it himself, it would be hard to connect these vibrant men, women, and children with the hollow-eyed refugees from yesterday.
The change in these people was all because of Her.
“Young Master, give that to me.”
Shen Da reached out to take the stone from Shen Yu's hands. “You are of noble status; how can you do such menial labor?”
“No need.” Shen Yu stepped aside to avoid him.
He then carried the stone to the edge of the foundation.
His hands, meant for holding scrolls and playing chess, were now embedded with stone chips, and his sleeves were stained with yellow earth. He looked somewhat disheveled, but he didn't care in the least.
Shen Da followed behind him.
Finally, he couldn't help but lower his voice and ask, “Young Master, the First Young Master offended the State Preceptor with his advice. Now he has been demoted and exiled from the capital by His Majesty, only to be ambushed and his whereabouts unknown. If we delay any longer, I fear the First Young Master will be in grave danger.”
Before yesterday, the young master had been frantically searching for news of the First Young Master, sending people to the eastern ferry to inquire and personally chasing north along the official road. He had traveled dozens of miles day and night, his brow furrowed in a knot that wouldn't loosen.
But after last night, it was as if the young master had become a different person, never mentioning the search for the First Young Master again.
Perhaps it was related to the Divine Lady, he guessed.
Shen Yu didn't answer, simply watching the refugees.
“My brother is a martial artist. If he is in danger and cannot escape, what could a powerless scholar like me do even if I found him?” Shen Yu said softly. “You and Shen Er should go and search for him yourselves.”
“This...” Shen Da hesitated. “Young Master, the world outside is not as stable as the capital. Disasters are constant, and there is war and banditry everywhere. It is truly unsafe for you to be alone. If anything happens to you, I won't be able to answer to the Marquis.”
The First Young Master was away for years suppressing rebellions and rarely came home. The Marquis cherished the Second Young Master more than his own eyes, keeping him at home to study and never letting him leave.
The Second Young Master’s departure from the capital this time was an escape. If anything happened, he and Shen Er would be held responsible.
Shen Yu lowered his eyes in thought for a moment.
“Then you stay, and let Shen Er go find my brother.”
Leaving those words behind, he rolled up his sleeves, walked to a mud pit by the wall, bent down to scoop up a handful of yellow mud, and smeared it into an unfilled gap in the wall.
His movements were awkward, clearly showing he had never done such work. The mud leaked through his fair fingers, staining his hands and sleeves.
“Young Master, you’re doing it wrong.”
A weathered refugee reminded him softly, hesitating before reaching out. “The mud has to be worked until it's 'ripe' to stick firmly. Look at me—first, you knead it like this, using your strength evenly...”
Shen Yu watched for a moment and then imitated him, repeatedly slamming the mud in his hands. “Like this?”
The man shook his head and said with a smile, “Your hands, Young Master, are clearly meant for holding a brush.”
“Hands that hold a brush are still hands,” Shen Yu said, pressing the prepared mud into the wall gap and patting it firm.
“If they can write, they can plaster a wall,” he said. “If I can't do it well, I'll learn. If I don't get it right once, I'll try twice. I'll learn eventually.”
The refugee scratched his head sheepishly. “This is the first time I've ever met a noble as easygoing as you.”
In his memory, nobles weren't like this.
Those people were high and mighty, their eyes never falling on those in the dirt.
When they passed by fleeing crowds, they would always cover their noses and mouths, as if even the air had been contaminated by the poor.
Before they fled their homes, even the most respected village head had to kneel when speaking to the Yamen runners, and those runners were merely the lowest dogs at a noble's feet.
When the village couldn't pay rent, the collectors would whip people without blinking, cursing them as 'worthless wretches.'
The poor were like grass by the roadside—stepped on just because they were there. Who would care if a blade of grass felt pain?
Nobles never looked the poor in the eye, let alone squatted in the mud to learn how to plaster a wall from a farmer.
“We are all followers of the Divine Lady.”
Shen Yu chatted with the refugee while plastering the wall. “Don't call me 'noble' or 'young master'; it’s too much. You can just call me Xiao Shen. How should I address you, brother?”
“My name is Zhao Erniu.” He felt a bit embarrassed.
Shen Yu, however, was very talkative. “Brother Zhao, help me take a look. Is this wall plastered correctly?”
Zhao Erniu was stunned. In his thirty years of life, no noble had ever called him 'brother.'
“Young Mas...”
Seeing Shen Yu look over, Zhao Erniu could only change his address. “Xiao Shen, you learn so fast. Not like me, I'm slow. Back when I worked for a landlord, it took me over a month to learn.”
Shen Yu asked seemingly at random, “Brother Zhao, you used to work for a landlord?”
Zhao Erniu squatted down and scooped up a handful of mud, his movements far more agile than Shen Yu's.
He was silent for a long while before saying, “Yeah, I spent a year building walls for a landlord. They provided food but no wages, saying they'd settle it at the end of the year. When the time came, the manager said there were disasters in the east and the harvest was bad, so they could only give us two liters of moldy rice.”
Shen Yu’s movements paused.
“And then?”
“Then?” Zhao Erniu smoothed out a gap in the wall, his tone devoid of resentment, only a numbness worn down by life. “Then the landlord’s house was suddenly hit by the war. The manor was burned down, and we had nowhere to go to ask for even those two liters of moldy rice.”
“After that, we just fled, all the way here.”
Shen Yu clenched his fists, his eyes filled with complex emotions—both indignation and a deep sense of powerlessness.
“The people living in peace and the world in harmony.”
He had read this phrase a thousand times in his study and written it a hundred times in his essays.
But the reality was this.
While within the capital lay pools of wine and forests of meat, outside its walls, humans devoured one another, and the fields were strewn with the bones of the dead.
How ironic.
“Xiao Shen, you’ve read a lot. I want to ask you, will the Divine Lady ever come back?” Zhao Erniu asked, full of hope.
Hearing this, Shen Yu gradually snapped out of his thoughts.
He said with a calm expression, “Brother Zhao, when the Divine Lady left, did She ever say She was 'never coming back'?”
Zhao Erniu thought for a moment. “No, She didn't.”
“Then that’s it,” Shen Yu continued. “The Divine Lady just didn't say when She would return. But this temple is here. If She passes by, She should at least stop in to rest Her feet.”
Zhao Erniu grinned, and just as he was about to say something, a sudden rush of footsteps came from outside.
A refugee stumbled up, his face as pale as paper, gasping for breath.
“It’s... it’s bad!”
“Bandits... the bandits have taken Gouwa!”
Everyone stopped their work in unison.
“What happened?”
“We sent someone to the city to buy incense for the Lady, and we ran into those bandits on the way back.”
He said with a dejected look, “Gouwa didn't make it away. I had no choice but to come back and report.”
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