The morning of the next day, Lin Shao sat in his room with the materials to make a harpoon on the ground and a long metal rod hidden under his bed. The room was just big enough for a small single-person bed and a small circular table that stood low to the ground. The table was just big enough for Lin Shao to eat at if he was sitting on the floor. No more than two people could comfortably fit inside of that small room.
Lin Shao used a palm-sized bar of iron to sharpen a small stone. Once the stone held a point that was sharp enough to pierce the skin of a large fish, he lashed the sharpened stone to a bamboo shaft he plucked out of the ground the day before. He cut a small divot in the bamboo to better house the sharpened stone. After cutting the bamboo shaft to a length more fitting for a harpoon, Shao held the finished harpoon out and took a moment to admire his work.
It wasn’t pretty. The stone had a sharp point, but its edges were jagged. Any fish killed with such a harpoon would be torn up by the uneven edges. A harpoon made in the village forge by Gongsun Bolin would be significantly better.
Despite the crude nature of the harpoon, it would do the job. It didn’t take much to kill a fish, and the damage to the meat wouldn’t be much of a concern to a fisherman. On any other day, Lin Shao would have taken more time to make a harpoon of higher quality, but he was anxious to get out of the house before the cultivator arrived.
With the harpoon in his hand, Lin Shao entered the living room of the Lin family home. The house shared by Shao and Granny Daiyu only had three rooms - the two bedrooms and the living room - but it was functional. There was enough room to store food and the tools necessary for fishing in the living room. Granny Daiyu was sitting in the living room with a length of fishing line in her hands. She was checking the line for any imperfections that would cause it to snap.
“Are you done with the harpoon?” Granny Daiyu asked without looking up from the fishing line.
“Yes.”
“Bring it here, then.”
Lin Shao handed the crude harpoon to Granny Daiyu, who considered it with an unamused frown. She said, “Not your best work. It’s sturdy, sure, but it’s barely been sharpened at all.”
Lin Daiyu looked up at her grandson, whose expression was tight with suppressed anger and his eyes were looking out the window. She sighed and said, “You were distracted, I understand. Learning the truth about your parents’ deaths must have been hard. Just make sure you don’t make the same mistake next time.”
“Thank you, Granny Daiyu,” Shao said as he slowly sidled over to the door. “I’ll make sure to do it right next time.”
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Seeing Lin Shao trying to make his exit, Granny Daiyu quickly said, “Where are you going?”
“Huh? Oh, uh, nowhere,” Shao said, obviously lying. “I’m going to… the forest to train for the Harvest Festival.”
Lin Daiyu squinted at Lin Shao for several moments before a mischievous smile appeared on her face. “Oh, I see. You’re going out to see that Chu Peijing girl, aren’t you?”
“What?” Lin Shao said, flustered. “No, I’m not.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. You’re at that age now. I’ve been wanting some great grandbabies, anyway. Just make sure you don’t show off too much.”
“Come on, Granny Daiyu. I don’t want to hear about that right now.” Taking a moment to shake his head free of embarrassment, a thought occurred to Lin Shao. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, why is it so important to you that I don’t show off? What would be the harm in that?”
“Is it really so strange that I don’t want to foster arrogance in my grandson?” Lin Daiyu said with a hint of tension in her voice. After a moment, she spoke once more with a more level tone of voice. “Okay. That’s not the only reason. I’m afraid that, if you show the full extent of your strength to the rest of the village, they’ll think you’re a cultivator.”
“What!?” Lin Shao gasped, shock and anger flaring within him. “Why would they think that? Cultivators shoot fire from their hands and make swords fly through the air. I can’t do any of that.”
“I know. But… they don’t. They’d see a young man who can lift a fallen redwood over his head, and they’d all come to the same conclusion.”
Lin Shao wanted to shout at his grandmother. He wanted to insult her for thinking that he could be anything like those monsters who killed his parents. Yet, he knew that Granny Daiyu was right. The villagers would jump to such a conclusion with their limited information.
After taking a moment to control his emotions, Lin Shao bowed to his grandmother and said, “Thank you for sharing your reasoning with me. I understand better now.”
A relieved smile appeared on Lin Daiyu’s face. She was clearly happy that Lin Shao had taken the information well. “Good. Have fun out there. Oh, and say hi to the Chus for me.”
“I’m not…” Lin Shao began to protest but stopped short. “Okay. See you later.”
Lin Shao left his home and immediately circled around to the other side of the structure. He opened the unlatched wooden window to his room, and silently snuck back into his room. Less than a minute later, he crawled out of his room with his iron staff in his hand.
With the iron staff braced against his shoulder, Shao walked toward the dirt road that connected Bluecrest Village to the rest of Haishan. The village was built on a small peninsula, so the only way to reach it was by road from the west. Technically, the cultivator could have arrived by boat from the west, but that didn’t seem nearly auspicious enough for a cultivator.
Shao was certain that the cultivator would arrive by land with a long caravan of servants and expensive beasts of burden. Thus, he spent several hours sitting on a small hill overlooking the dirt road, waiting for such an auspicious procession to appear.
At around noon, Lin Shao’s perseverance paid off. From the west came a single man riding a white horse. The man wore a long green coat over black robes, and a long, curved sword was sheathed at his hip. Shao was immediately certain that this was the cultivator.