Common understanding between smart people
Zhang Zhu tells Shang Xin Ci he has grown suspicious of Fang Yuan and Bai Ning Bing since Fei Hou mountain: a gift of a hundred and fifty primeval stones left them visibly unmoved, they avoid the other servants as if wishing to vanish, they turned down several clans’ recruitment offers on excellent terms, and the wounds Fang Yuan showed the night he first asked them for help never matched a man of his strength. He adds one more point: the companion traveling in male clothes is a woman. ch. 242
Shang Xin Ci already knows all of it. She reasons that true schemers would have stayed hidden at Fei Hou mountain rather than step in to help her; when Zhang Zhu guesses the pair might be bandit accomplices, she points out that accomplices gain nothing by exposing themselves the way they did. She tells him that if the caravan is ever robbed, he must not fight to defend the goods: her mother’s dying wish was only that she deliver a token to someone in Shang clan city, and wealth matters less to her than keeping Zhang Zhu and Xiao Die safe. ch. 242
At the Jin clan’s temporary market on Huang Jin mountain, gold jewelry and carved statues crowd the stalls alongside the caravan’s wares. Fang Yuan buys milk from Jin clansmen to keep his stockpiled bone spear Gu fed, though two-thirds of them have already starved. When Bai Ning Bing questions the risk of buying so openly, he explains his method: rather than hide everything and be exposed eventually, he reveals pieces on his own terms so others believe they have already seen through him. He expects Zhang Zhu to probe them once the caravan reaches safety, but three days pass with no move; he concludes Shang Xin Ci, whose gentleness had made him underestimate her, is the one holding Zhang Zhu back. ch. 242
Fang Yuan takes the initiative and asks Shang Xin Ci and Zhang Zhu for a partnership: he will borrow a batch of the caravan’s goods and split whatever profit results evenly. Zhang Zhu bristles at the presumption, but Shang Xin Ci studies Fang Yuan’s burn-scarred, one-eared face and reads confidence and careful planning in it rather than the ugliness others see. She hands the goods over on that impression alone, remarking to Zhang Zhu afterward that Fang Yuan spoke of splitting profits before he had earned a single one. ch. 242
