Chapter 27 Outer Eight Gates

  "Is this Zheng Banqiao's 'Bamboo and Rock in a Secluded Valley'?"

  When Qin Feng's eyes swept over the painting hanging on the desk, a look of astonishment involuntarily appeared on his face, and he hastily took a few steps forward, almost sticking his face to the painting.

  "That's right, it's Zheng Banqiao's 'Lan and Bamboo in a Rock Garden', Old Xia, where did you get this treasure?"

  After observing for half a day, Qin Feng reluctantly withdrew his gaze. This painting used simple and powerful brushstrokes to outline the rugged mountain rocks, with small axe cuts at the folds of the hard and thin stone, revealing its majestic demeanor.

  The bamboo poles in the painting are slender yet not weak, with few but lush leaves that are rich and strong; one pole of tall bamboo stands upright from top to bottom, while other bamboos intersect and overlap each other in a harmonious way, echoing each other in terms of emptiness and fullness, density and lightness, height and depth, distance and proximity.

  Zheng Banqiao almost always inscribed poems on his paintings. The calligraphy in this painting is unique, free and easy, with a strong and powerful brushwork. Qin Feng started practicing calligraphy with his father when he was five years old. Although he hasn't had the conditions to practice in recent years, it can still be seen that he has a good foundation.

  "Do you know Zheng Banqiao?" Originally sitting comfortably in the armchair, Old Xia suddenly became restless. He had originally thought that Qin Feng was just talented, but now it seemed that he had stumbled upon a treasure.

  Qin Feng turned his head around and said honestly: "I... I've heard people mention it, and I've also seen this painting, but it was in a picture book. Is this one real or fake?"

  Liu Lao Ye Zi was born into a family of scholars and can be considered a versatile talent in both literature and martial arts. The ancient literary figure he most admired was Zheng Ban Qiao, whose calligraphy was so masterful that his fake works could pass as real.

  Out of his own preference, the old man naturally leaned towards Zheng Banqiao when talking about calligraphy and painting with Qin Feng. The album Qin Feng mentioned was a collection of Zheng Banqiao's calligraphy and paintings published in Taiwan.

  "Nonsense! Do you think I'd hang something fake?"

  The old man seemed to have been insulted, his eyes bulged again, "What is this painting? In the past, it was 'Five Oxen in the Tang Dynasty' and 'Along the River During Qingming Festival', I played with them casually, what does this painting count for?"

  At this point, the old man seemed to have suddenly thought of something and calmed down, waved his hand, and said with a self-mocking expression: "What's the point of saying those things, kid? I won't play tricks on you anymore. I want to take you as my apprentice and pass on my legacy. Come and pay your respects to me as your master!"

  As he spoke, Old Xia straightened his body and his face turned solemn. Around him, a kind of inexplicable pressure seemed to emanate, and the old farmer's demeanor from just a moment before was nowhere to be seen.

  "Lao Xia, I don't want to learn that stuff from you. If I were to do this line of work, I'd lose all face."

  Qin Feng shook his head, although he had never heard his parents mention anything about his grandparents in his memory, but Qin Feng knew that his parents were both teachers, and it was likely that the family background was not bad either. If he became a thief, then Qin Feng would really have no face to see his "deceased" parents.

  The old man looked at Qin Feng with a playful expression and asked, "What line of work am I in?"

  "Aren't you just a pickpocket?" Qin Feng stretched out two fingers, mimicking the action of stealing a wallet in his pocket, with a look of disdain on his face.

  From the detention center to the reformatory, Qin Feng has been locked up for several months. In these two places, there are two types of prisoners that people look down on the most.

  One is a rapist, almost all prisoners who come in with this crime name have to be beaten first, and their status in prison is extremely low. Not to mention the prisoners, even the guards don't give them a good face.

  But there is another kind, that is the thieves, they are also street rats... everyone shouts to beat them, of course, those famous thief kings in the early years are not in this category, those are already big bosses with status in the underworld.

  "Farting is one thing, but doing it and getting away with it are two different things... I'm a Beile, after all..."

  The old man seemed to realize he had misspoken, and let out a sigh before saying: "What I'm going to teach you encompasses the entire range of skills from the Jianghu's outer eight schools, not just limited to thievery...

  Moreover, as the saying goes, those who steal a hook are executed, while those who steal a country become marquises. The thief at the gate is not entirely without reason. If there hadn't been the ancestor of the thieves, Empty-handed Master, Empress Wu Zetian would probably have had trouble keeping her throne!

  "What... what did you say? I didn't quite catch it!"

  Qin Feng was clever, but after all, he was just a thirteen or fourteen-year-old kid. What's this about the outside world, the eight trigrams, the thieves' door, and it even involved Wu Zetian? He listened to it and suddenly became confused.

  "Alright, I'll tell you what's called Outer Eight Trigrams. Not many people know about this nowadays..."

  The old man stood up, picked up the kettle that had been boiling on the stove behind the door, made himself a pot of tea, and then took out his long pipe, filled it with tobacco, before saying: "The eight irregular professions, outside of the 360 regular professions in ancient times, are not among the legitimate occupations of workers, peasants, soldiers, scholars, or merchants... but wherever there are people, there will be these eight irregular professions..."

  The old man's voice was not loud, but what he said was something that Qin Feng had never heard before. No one expected that on such a quiet spring morning, a young man would be brought into the Jianghu world.

  The so-called eight marginal professions outside the Jianghu are divided into eight categories: Jin Dian, beggars, Xiao Ma, Zei Tou, Dao Dou, Zou Shan, Ling Huo and Cai Shui.

  Eight lines have a collective name, called "Five Lines Three Houses". Metal point is for fortune-telling, Robbery Horse is for robbery and hijacking, Inverted Fighting is for tomb raiding, Walking Mountain is for swindling, Leading Fire is for sorcery, Fetching Water is for prostitution.

  It seems like there are only eight schools, but in fact, these eight schools almost cover all the minor schools in Jianghu, and from ancient times to the present, almost all Jianghu factions are inseparable from them.

  Among the eight trigrams outside, the greatest and most prosperous is the Qian (Heaven) trigram. Many businesses without capital can be classified under this category.

  Whether it's the flying thief mouse that walks through thousands of families and hundreds of households, or the responding horse bandits who occupy one side and set up flags. Even including the wild tomb raiders in the wilderness, these are all considered thieves.

  The most mysterious of the eight trigrams is Qianmen, which has been passed down from ancient times. It is said that Qianmen was created by Fu Xi, the ancestor who developed the Eight Trigrams. Fu Xi originally intended to use Qianmen to help people and bring them good fortune, but it has instead been used as a means for people to deceive and cheat each other.

  Thousands... can also be called deceit, including 'stringing along', 'color cheating', 'fraud', 'kidnapping and cheating', 'luring and cheating', 'adultery and cheating', 'dressing up and cheating', mutual deception, etc.

  In the big Shanghai beach more than half a century ago, swindling was rampant. Many people who had just arrived there were often sold and helped to count money, creating a deformed prosperous society.

  Apart from the Thousand Doors Thieves, those who made a living by performing magic tricks like Red Handkerchief, Spirit Gate with its clever deceptions, and Mechanical Gate with its wooden oxen and flowing horses, have all gradually declined.

  There are only two more schools that still thrive, and the first one is of course the Orchid School.

  The profession of selling sex has a long history that can be traced back to matriarchal society. Although it is despised by people, no matter how hard the previous dynasties or modern governments suppressed it, and no matter how people evaluated it, the industry of Lanhuayimen has always been thriving.

  As for the last remaining school in Jianghu, it is somewhat distant from ordinary people's lives, but it is the most bloody and so far the most internationalized assassination school.

  The founders of Suǒ Mìng Mén were Zhuan Zhu and Yao Lí, two famous assassins who preceded Jing Ke by centuries and have been revered as ancestors by the Suǒ Mìng school for thousands of years.

  But before the door of life and death was not the concept of exchanging money for life, whether it was Zhuan Zhu, Yan Zidai, Jing Ke, or Wuming Bai Ren, all these famous assassins in history were based on the belief of serving the people and the world, to do their great cause that they knew "the brave will go and never come back".

  The practice of ghost marriage eventually evolved into a situation where people were paid to take the place of the deceased, completely due to Zhu Yuanzhang's order to expel the eight outer lines during the early days of the Ming Dynasty.

  The most famous person in the modern era of the Soo Yuen Gate is also well-known to everyone, that is Wang Ya-qiao from Shanghai. He was the only one who could make Du Yue-sheng apologize and compensate, and make Mr. Chiang sleepless at night.

  "Lao Xia, what's the point of telling me all this?"

  When Old Man Xia was speaking here, Qin Feng suddenly interrupted him and said: "Now is not before liberation, what you said is no longer feasible, and what does this have to do with me?"

  "Listen up, you young whippersnapper!"

  Old Xia glared at Qin Feng with a bad temper and continued: "The Outer Eight Divisions were originally independent, but when Zhu Yuanzhang obtained the world in the Ming Dynasty, things changed..."

  Zhu Yuanzhang was originally a rivers and lakes person, had been a monk and had been a bandit, he deeply knew the harm of the people in the rivers and lakes to the imperial court's rule, so after becoming emperor, he massively eliminated the outer eight doors.

  The butcher's knife is raised above their heads, and these rivers and lakes people naturally do not want to stretch their necks to be slaughtered. Unfortunately, although they each have their own skills, a scattered sand can't resist the imperial army after all. After a massacre, the casualties outside the eight gates are heavy!

  Later, a master emerged from Qianmen, integrating the outer eight gates, turning from bright to dark, and passing through the reigns of Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di. It wasn't until the mid-to-late Ming dynasty that it slowly recovered.

  To thank this superior man, the outer eight doors jointly promoted him as the master of the general door. From then on, the outer eight doors set up another main door, which was in charge of listening to and following the orders of the door master. Moreover, as long as the door master gave an order, each door had to obey, and those who disobeyed would be killed by the crowd...

  In the early Qing dynasty, Tieguai Wu Liuqi was the master of the outer eight doors, but since Wu Liuqi, the main door has been declining and no strong figures have emerged.

  By the time of Qianlong, the main door was already in name only, and each door had returned to its own state before the Ming Dynasty. However... that inheritance has been passed down continuously and has not been interrupted!

  At this point, Old Xia stopped talking and stared at Qin Feng with a pair of dead eyes. He believed that with Qin Feng's cleverness, he should be able to hear what he wanted to express in these words.

  PS: The setting of Wai Ba Men comes from Mr. Gao Yang's "Thousand Doors", a very interesting book, friends can go and take a look.