Hua Cheng steered his tall black stallion Binko through the red colored poppy fields buzzing with fireflies. The sun had just set behind the row of flat-crowned greeting pines as he rode up the small sandy pathway to the Fury Dragon inn. The unremarkable road towards his destination was in shrill contrast with the renowniness of what lay at the end of it. For many hundreds of years, since the peak of the Jin dynasty, the Fury Dragon was the life saver of many a lost travelers and land dwellers looking for a place to spend the night.
“Good evening, inn keeper.” said Hua Cheng half-meant when he entered the dimly but warm lit entrance.
“Welcome, how can I be of service, my master?” replied the tall, fit looking inn keeper. It must have been a sentence he had uttered many thousands of times since his first days, when he was a young boy graduated in Tang dynasty history at Shangai University, returning to the country side he had grown up. Yet the trivial question sounded with the enthusiasm as if it was his first day.
“I’d like to stay for the night”, answered Hua Cheng, “before my long trek over the Qilian mountains tomorrow”.