Now, Lei Ming and Chen Liang were just about to kill Wang Gui when Wang Gui pointed and cried, “Our ladle-handle1’s here!” Lei Ming and Chen Liang both turned their heads, and Wang Gui took to his heels. Chen Liang went after him. “You villain! If I let you get away, call me no hero!” Wang Gui never even looked back. Frantic as a dog that has lost its home, flustered as a fish slipping through the net, he only wished he could sprout a pair of wings. He burst out of the wood, and as luck would have it there was a stream in front of him, some thirty feet across. Wang Gui leapt into the water and swam across for his life. Chen Liang saw him jump in. He thought of going round and chasing him, but by then the man would be long gone. “Let him off cheap, then!” thought Chen Liang. Gao Guangrui came up. “If you two good sirs hadn’t saved me, my life would have ended at that bandit’s hands.” “What’s your name, and where are you from?” said Chen Liang. “How did you come to be travelling with a bandit?” “My surname is Gao and my given name Guangrui,” said Gao Guangrui, and he told them in detail all about the meal at Qianjiakou. “We aren’t men of the greenwood either,” said Lei Ming. “Here, take back your thirty taels.” He took out the silver and handed it to Guangrui. Guangrui could not thank them enough. “You two have saved a life and laid up merit. Three branches of my family have only me for their one root2. I keep the Gao Family Money Shop outside the north gate of Longyou County. If you two ever come our way, you must honour my humble home with a visit.” “Fine,” said Chen Liang. “Be on your way.” No sooner had Gao Guangrui taken his leave than Chen Liang, who was a warm-hearted man, said, “Second Brother, look at Gao Guangrui, travelling all alone, and he’s never been away from home before. If he runs into bad men on the road again, it’ll be the end of him. We’ve nothing to do, the two of us. Why not follow him on the quiet and see him part of the way?” “All right,” said Lei Ming.

Talking as they went, the two followed Gao Guangrui at a distance along that road. Then Lei Ming and Chen Liang stopped. They were feeling hungry too, and a fine rain was still falling. “Second Brother,” said Chen Liang, “where shall we find an inn to stay and eat? It’s getting late.” “There’s the Dong Family Inn up ahead,” said Lei Ming, “not far from here. They do business decently. I stayed there once, a couple of years back, and I lay sick there too. There was an old manager, Dong, a very generous man. But who knows if the old man is still there, or if it’s changed hands.” “Good,” said Chen Liang. “Let’s go to the Dong Family Inn.” Talking, they came to a village. The street ran north and south, and the inn faced east. The two went up and knocked, and someone inside opened the gate. Chen Liang looked him over: a man past thirty, with a sallow face, in a blue cotton jacket and a black apron, white socks and black shoes, dressed like an inn attendant. He looked Lei Ming and Chen Liang over. “Staying the night, you two gentlemen?” “We are,” said Chen Liang, and the two strolled in. Inside the gate a spirit screen3 stood facing them. Rounding it, they saw the main rooms on the north side, and on the east and west a row of single guest rooms each. Under the eaves stood a table with a gauze lantern on it, and a man sat there drinking. When he saw Lei Ming and Chen Liang come in, he flung out his hand and knocked the lantern out. Lei Ming and Chen Liang paid it no mind and never got a good look at who it was. The attendant showed them into the east side room, and they sat down.

A word of explanation: by now the Dong Family Inn no longer belonged to the Dongs. When the old manager died, his two sons, the young masters, neglected the business and ate, drank, whored and gambled with Wang Gui, the Green Sprout God. One day Wang Gui said, “Young masters, let me run the business. I’ll pay you a few hundred strings of cash4 a year.” So the two young masters handed the inn over to Wang Gui. Wang Gui had started out clubbing travellers5 on the road. He found a few small fry from the greenwood to help him run the place, and whenever a lone traveller came by with luggage worth having, they did away with him and shared out his goods. Wang Gui was always talking big to his men: all the famous names of the greenwood, he claimed, were his juniors and called him Uncle. His men had no idea how much he could really do. Today Wang Gui had come back with his clothes soaked through and one ear missing, bleeding without stop. One attendant, surnamed Wu and named Jifang, was fond of a joke. “Chief6, how did you lose an ear and get soaked to the skin?” “Don’t ask,” said Wang Gui. “Rotten luck. I was eating at the Xiaozhen Inn when some men got into a fight. Out came the knives, and nobody dared step in. I went over to break it up, and they sliced off my ear by mistake. How could I let that pass? The man ran off with his knife and I went after him. He jumped into the water to get away, I went in after him, and that’s how my clothes got wet. Then a crowd of people knelt and begged me, and I couldn’t refuse them the favour. They talked me into coming back, and tomorrow he has to come and kowtow to me. Bring me some dry clothes to change into.” The attendant took it for the truth, asked no more and brought out the clothes. Wang Gui changed and said, “Get me some wine and fix me something to eat.” The attendant fetched two pots of wine and made two plates of food, and Wang Gui sat under the eaves drinking. The more he thought, the more he regretted it. Lucky for me I’ve got a pair of flying legs, or I’d have died at the hands of Lei Ming and Chen Liang.