Everybody were sleeping in the settlement: servants and their families. Only a few dogs barked lazily at Baby Snake from behind low fence – there could be no thieves here, consequently, no need in high fences and furious hounds. Although the Shaolin monks treated the hired workers with contempt and forced the servants to demonstrate their deepest respect to the venerable shaven-headed fathers, still the service was too profitable and nobody wanted to loose it because of such silly things as pride. An extra bow wouldn't break your spinal column, would it? On the other hand, the position of a man working for the famous monks promised much benefits: the population of the province eagerly supplied the inhabitants of the settlement with food, fabrics and bundles of copper coins in exchange for the promise to put in a word for them in front of the merciful Buddha, that is in front of the reverend monks clad in yellow cassocks.
Moreover, servants and members of their families were given full right to leave the monastery according their own wish or need and to return, unlike those monks who had not passed their final tests or had not obtained a special permission of the patriarch.
Baby Snake Cai crossed the quiet settlement from one end to another but didn't risk to knock at any of the doors and was already thinking to go away, but at this moment he noticed a candle-lit window in a low lopsided house at the southern end of the settlement. Looking around him and seeing nobody Baby Snake flung himself over the fence and in no time reached the interesting window. Leaning at the wall still warm from the day sun he peeped into the half-opened shutters: he heard long drawn-out moans inside as if a diseased or wounded person was trying in vain to get asleep. But it sufficed the curious Cai to cast a single glance at the scene to understand everything. He hemmed noiselessly, his lips curved into a wide smile. An extraneous spectator could have thought that such a sly and meaningful smile was more becoming for a grown-up man than for an inexperienced youth; but there were no other spectators nearby besides the Baby Snake himself.
So the first glance was immediately followed by the second one.
Inside the room a naked woman sat on a carpeted stove-bench to the left of the window; Cai the Baby Snake, being invisible, could see her half-turned. She was in her thirties, plump and heavy-breasted, broad-thighed – in other words, just a person to make love with and to give birth to many children. But it seemed to Baby Snake at first that the woman was going to break all natural laws being in the process of laying an egg which would be quite normal for a duck or a hen but not for a human female. The egg was visible between the woman's hips, smooth, bluish and glossy; it was moving a little up and down, and each movement caused the tormented fatty to groan again and to stroke convulsively the shining surface of the egg. In some minutes the egg produced a long smacking sound and rose above her haunch stretched apart, making the woman to bend like a lashed cat. And it appeared that the egg had a face.
Just a usual face, nose, mouth, eyes... it was simply a face, may be somewhat excessively wet with perspiration, belonging to quite a usual monk whom Baby Snake could not have seen before because the woman's thighs and the stove-bench edge hid him.
The man rose to his feet and went wearily to a small table in the far corner of the room. There he took a towel, wiped himself dry and threw the crumpled towel through the window, barely missing Baby Snake who managed to jump aside. Then the reverend libertine touched with his finger a small kettle standing on a portable brazier, found it warm enough and began to pour wine or tea (depending on what the kettle had been initially filled with) to a pair of earthenware cups. The monk was evidently not young but sinewy and skinny; at each movement muscles were finely playing in his lean but not at all emaciated body. The fatty stretched her arms and legs on the stove-bench, completely exhausted. The monk looked at her askance and seemed not to enjoy the view. Chewing his thin lips he took a canvas bag from under the table, put his hand in it and soon took out a small paper packet. Aromatic vapour rose over the cups (so it was exactly tea in them); the monk dropped a small pill out of the packet to his palm, thought a little and dropped another one. A cup in one hand and pills in the other the monk approached his partner.
– Drink it, darling, – sang the monk in a sweet voice giving the pills to the woman. – Do drink it and let us play "cloud and rain" once more! Why are you in so dark a mood?!
– Give me peace, you indefatigable! – the woman tried to wave her hand negatively at the pestering lover but failed. – I'm almost spent!
– Don't you worry my sweet bun! – Baby Snake heard. – You should know better than anybody: we the golden-headed arkhats [15] are resourceful! Swallow but two grains of the Spring pills and you'll become able for the delights of love till sunrise!
The woman answered something but Cai the Baby Snake didn't hear her words: they were drowned in a sudden sound of many feet tramping behind the fence.
In a moment the latch locking the gate was torn off by a strong blow from the other side and the gate itself flung wide open; a dozen of guards rushed into the yard. They were as shaven-headed as the owner of the very efficient "spring pills" but much larger in size – real giants arousing esteem and awe, able to cut a horse into halves with a single thrust of halberds they were armed with. It was the patriarch himself who choose them and whom they obeyed.
In the past the patriarch Meng Zhang, formerly a brigand, replaced with such "iron men" the Emperors' garrison in Shaolin; during the years of his power he succeeded to raise both the glory and the wealth of the cloister significantly. In general, the main task of the heroic guards was to ensure that nobody could leave Shaolin boundaries without permission, but the "iron men" were also used to make round-up in the servants' settlement where some beauties were always ready to open their doors for the reverend fathers.
The monk courting the plump woman seemed to understand perfectly well what did the sudden noise in the yard mean. Being an experienced man indeed, the golden-headed arkhat did not lose any time in vain: naked as he was he jumped out of the window and ran headlong around the house striving to reach the back door. But the guards appeared to be defter, they all stood in his way and one of the moral guardians struck the fornicator across his back with the halberd shaft. But this blow of justice missed its goal for the saint father ducked hastily and when he rose again he had a big basket in his hands – a good basket made of willow twigs, very convenient for carrying fish from the market or linen for washing. However, the basket could be also applied for other, less peaceful, tasks: its bottom hit rather sensitively the face of the nearest guard and in a moment its hard edge struck another "iron man"'s stomach. The latter uttered a guttural sound and stooped demonstrating thus the sheer relativity of his nickname; the monk abandoned him trying to apply his awful basket to all remaining guards in order to reach the salutary back door by any means.
The plump beauty was watching the scene from the window; she almost choked with a pill and a frightened cry when a large blade had nearly cut away some part of her unlucky lover's body – she could not discern in the melee whether it was his hand very important for fighting or some other body member resembling a clenched fist and much more important for the favorite entertainment of the holy father. But the monk strained his body better than his lady had done when playing "cloud and rain", and the halberd fell down missing him. Moreover, two other halberds crisscrossed with a clang just over the shaven monk's head, the basket hit successfully someone's feet, and the guard fell down with a squeak at the same time knocking down one of his companions.
