While the Abacus Poetry Gathering in Chongren Ward of Chang'an was in an uproar, a certain gifted scholar had just recited, "Before my bed, the moonlight gleams." Instantly, the abacus beads leaped onto his draft, rearranging themselves into the character for "bright," and changing "suspected to be frost on the ground" to "suspected to be abacus light." Moli waved her brush to paint "The Illustrated Tang Poems Altered by Abacus Beads," but the beads hopped right onto her painting, adding an abacus-bead wine flask for Li Bai, from whose spout a wild cursive script poured out: "Abacus calculation stretches three thousand feet."
Su Wangyue's health-infusion tea parlor drifted with the scent of abacus-bead mint as the beads bounced into the shape of the character for "wake" atop the tea stove: "Drink this 'Abacus Brain-Waking Tea'! Write a wrong character in your poem, and the abacus beads will rap you on the head!" A scholar was just about to retort when the beads instantly leaped into his hair to form the character for "error," tapping his forehead lightly with a *pop*—it turned out he had written "pondering" with the wrong character for "deliberate."
Inside the Foreign Maiden Tavern in Yanshou Ward, the abacus beads danced inside Pei Hongxiu's abacus-bead dice cup, forming the character for "gamble": "Patrons! Roll the 'Abacus Three Talents' combination, and your wine is completely on the house!" A foreign merchant rolled ten times, and every single time came up "bead, bead,…
Chapter 233