Yang Huaixi looked at the character "Qing" on the paper, its final stroke trailing off long and elegant. He remembered the wizened, skeletal hand of the old beggar in his final moments, and the small figure of Douzi with a medicine basket strapped to his back, following him through the narrow alleys of the Black Market.
He reached out and covered the boy’s hand with his own. The warmth of his palm seeped through the bamboo pen holder, and he said softly:
"When spring comes, we’ll go to the mountain behind the village and find a slab of bluestone. We’ll ask Brother Shuzhuo to have a scholar from town carve the name, then use iron ore powder to trace the characters in a vibrant, deep red."
Chapter 736