As the morning frost of Chang'an settled upon the gilded ridge tiles of the Hall of the Three Pure Ones, Daoist Master Yuqing's Jiuxia Daoist Robe rustled through the colonnade, casting dappled light and shadow. The Twenty-Eight Mansions abacus bead patterns at her cuffs fluttered softly in the breeze, looking precisely like the stars leaping beneath Huwa's carving knife. Zhang Yifan followed behind, jingling his abacus beads, which bounced into the character "debate" right in the palm of his hand, prompting the accompanying young Daoist disciples to whisper among themselves.
"If anyone calls you a 'copper-smelling Daoist' in a moment," he lowered his voice, the abacus beads bouncing into the character "smile" across the "Tianshi Enclosure" on her robe, "Daoist Master need only ask them whether the incense burner in the Hall of the Three Pure Ones is cast of bronze." Yuqing glared at him, but as she stepped across the threshold, the hem of her Daoist robe caught on the sill—Huwa had carved a "defiant grinning ghost face" onto the threshold at some unknown moment, and the tongue of the abacus bead pattern licked at the robe's tassels.
"Yuqing, do you know your crime?" The Abbot of Quanzhen struck the incense table heavily with his horsetail whisk, shaking the "mind-calming divination slips" in the bamboo tube into a frenzy. "Those who have left the secular world should cultivate purity and avoid worldly affairs, yet you established a Wishing Forest and sell apricot preserves…
Chapter 135