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bright yellow. By day it steamed and bubbled, and at night it emitted an eerie violet light, and fish and frogs floated on their backs with horrified dead eyes lifted to the billowing black clouds from the ironworks. By then the trees were all dead, and no birds sang, and the Laughing Prince made some marvelous jokes about the smell. There were some who protested, but protests ceased when the prince opened the books. The profits were enormous.
    Then something happened which nobody fully understands to this day. Prince Liu Sheng abruptly lost interest in making money. He returned to his first love, and he had his field of science picked out. He was going to revolutionize medicine.
    “I shall strip the veils of ignorance from the healing art, and display the very nerves and tissues!” he proclaimed.
    The assembled sages and scholars were appalled when the prince explained some of his proposed experiments, but their protests abruptly ceased when he pointed out that he would need lots and lots of subjects. “Lots and lots and lots and lots,” he chanted, breaking into his little dance step, “lots and lots and lots and lots . . . of subjects!” The sages and scholars danced right along with him.
    Close to his estate was a grotto. He transformed it into his Medical Research Center, and sages who came to observe the experiments either applauded and praised — and then staggered outside to vomit — or protested, and became subjects for the next experiments. Nobody argued about the prince's expertise. Unquestionably he was the world's greatest expert on the effects of stretching, compressing, slicing, dousing in acids, burning, breaking, twisting — seldom if ever has the human body been so carefully studied. People who enjoy such pastimes need never be lonely. The Laughing Prince gathered like-minded fellows around him. He called them his Monks of Mirth, and he dressed them in robes made from clown's motley, and they danced and laughed beneath the moon as they capered through the valley with a brigade of soldiers to gather peasants for more experiments.
    The Laughing Prince was hopelessly, homicidally mad. Some say that his imperial brother finally had enough and sent the yellow scarf, which is the imperial command to commit suicide. Others deny it. At any rate, the prince fell ill. He tossed and turned in a delirium of fever, screaming and swearing, and in his lucid moments he gazed out the window at the ruins of the valley and swore to return from the grave to finish the job.
    He died. He was placed in his tomb.
     
    “Seven hundred and fifty years later, capering monks in motley have been seen in the
    
    
     Valley
    
     of
    
     Sorrows
    
    
    ,” Master Li said. “Brother Squint-Eyes has been murdered, and it appears that part of the valley has been destroyed in a way that is worthy of the Laughing Prince.”
    “Whoof,” I said.
    “Whoof indeed, although in such cases the poetic promise almost always turns out to be pathetically prosaic,” Master Li said, rather sadly. “Let's go see what the body of Brother Squint-Eyes can tell us.”
    The monastery was very old, and quite large for such a small valley. The abbot had his monks lined up like an honor guard, and he was disappointed when Master Li declined a tour of inspection. Master Li also declined to begin with the scene of the crime, stating that it was unwise to come to a corpse with one's mind crammed with preconceptions, and we were led down a long winding flight of steps to the lowest basement and the cold room.
    Lanterns were hung all over. The room was very bright, which meant that the shadows were very dark, and the play of light and shadow over the body on the block of ice highlighted the head. I stopped short and caught my breath. Never in my life had I seen such terror on a human face. The bulging eyes and gaping mouth were permanently fixed in the expression of one whose last view has been of the most horrible pit in Hell.
    Master Li said that the