The blood-sealed parchment rolled across the cracked jade tiles. It stopped right at the toe of Gu Changsheng’s cooking shoe.
Elder Jian-Chen gasped from the ground. His yellow street-sweeping apron was crooked. His backside still throbbed from twelve solid belt smacks.
He lunged forward on his knees to grab the scroll.
“Don’t touch that!” Jian-Chen shrieked. “That belongs to the mountain!”
Gu Changsheng didn’t even look down. He pressed the flat edge of his iron spatula onto the parchment. The scroll froze under three hundred pounds of kitchen iron.
Jian-Chen’s fingers clawed uselessly at the cold stone.
“Finders keepers,” Gu Changsheng said. “Besides, you’re on street duty now. You should focus on picking up trash, not hiding secrets.”
What is this old bird sweating about? Gu Changsheng wondered. He didn’t scream this loud when his flying swords got bent into pretzels.
