A century ago along the Yangtze's lower reaches, the Zhou clan stood as landed gentry - what Americans might call big butter-and-egg men with soil still clinging to their silver.
Patriarch Zhou had served as imperial physician to the Qing court. When the dynasty crumbled like aged parchment, he spirited his household away from Beijing's dying gasps, settling where artillery smoke couldn't taint his herbal compendiums.
Within a year, their new apothecary business took root. While warlords played musical chairs with artillery batteries, the Zhou herb and spice trade flourished like poppies in artillery craters.
At eighty winters, the old physician met death as an old colleague - no bitter tonics prolonging the inevitable.
He'd marked his expiration date long ago, arranging affairs with the precision of mercury scales measuring medicinal doses.
On his final twilight, when cicadas hummed funeral dirges, Zhou gathered his progeny in the ancestral hall heavy with sandalwood smoke.
The ceremonial ruyi scepter felt lighter in his liver-spotted hands than it had at the Guangxu Emperor's last spring.
"Father, can't this wait for the study? The night chill—"
"Third Brother!" The eldest son's voice cracked like ceremonial jade. "Let Father speak."
Old Master Zhou adjusted his horse-riding jacket, the mutton-fat jade toggle on his cane catching ancestral hall lamplight as he turned.
The incense he'd planted quivered like a dying man's pulse.
"My departure comes at the Yin hour's third quarter." He silenced First Madam's gasp with a physician's raised palm. "The coffin bearers arrive then. What I decree tonight shall be followed—character for character."
Second Madam crawled forward, brocade sleeves pooling like blood. "We'll summon German doctors! Swiss tonics—"
"Third Son." The patriarch's wrinkles deepened. "Help your mother rise. Eighty years is enough for any man who's tasted palace poisons."
The grandson's voice cut through sandalwood smoke. "Grandfather... is this Master Qingyang's calculation?"
Candle flames dipped. The old man's milky eyes gleamed.
"When Qingyang relocated our ancestral graves, he foretold four calamities. Three we survived. The fourth..." His cane pointed southeast. "Eldest—bury me there. Second Son—sever ties with General Gu's munitions trade."
Second Son's eyes darted like trapped mice. "As you command."
"And Qingyang..." The patriarch's breath rattled. "The Daoist who shaped our fortune. Honor him as myself. Fourth Son!"
The youngest heir jerked as if struck by lightning. "Y-yes, Father?"
"No more 'borrowing' temple funds for your jazz clubs. Let the master cultivate his elixirs in peace."