Winter passed, and spring came.

After a tranquil winter, the people of Jizhou seemed to have grown gentle again.

People say that rivers and mountains are easy to alter but human nature is hard to change — in truth, altering rivers and mountains is far harder than changing human nature.

A person in a different environment can change so quickly that neither they nor anyone around them would notice or believe it.

When life is abundant — no worry about food or clothing, with spare grain and spare coin at home — a person becomes generous and lighthearted.

When fortunes suddenly collapse, and there is not merely no surplus, but uncertainty about where the next meal will come from, a person becomes not only sullen but irritable.

A lighthearted, generous person can become a short-tempered, petty one — and it does not take long at all.

Equally, a person who has been poor for a long time and then suddenly comes into wealth will, after a period of cautious adjustment, find their character transformed as well.

What is most remarkable is that people can change back and forth as often as need be.

And then still manage to invent sayings like “rivers and mountains are easy to alter but human nature is hard to change.” Rather entertaining.

Those who shout slogans always say: we must not let our environment change us — we must change our environment.

Such talk is mostly nonsense.

The change Li Chi had brought to the people of Jizhou was clearly one from bad to better.

With the spring warmth came people streaming out of the city. Those who had once lived in fine clothes and lavish meals began to concern themselves with fields and grain.

How many people in Jizhou City had once been wealthy beyond measure — never needing to worry about a single meal in their lives?

After going through so many upheavals, they had at last discovered that having enough to eat was worth more than anything else.

The fields were alive with the vitality of the season. With the warming weather, the winter wheat was growing rapidly. It was only spring, yet people seemed already to see the early summer harvest ahead.

The soldiers shifted to a half-day in the fields and half-day in training, and Tang Pidi had set off for the Nalan grasslands with all of nature’s renewal around him.

Li Chi sat on a field embankment, watching Tang Pidi’s column disappear down the road, and let out a slow breath.

“My confidence just got a bit shaky.”

Li Chi sighed.

Not far away, Yu Jiuling turned his head and looked at Li Chi with some surprise — he had not caught the word “confidence.”

Gao Xining was crouched beside Li Chi, looking curiously at all sorts of small grasses. She truly did not know the names of any of them.

The previous winter, Xiahou Zuo’s mother, the Daoist Changmei, Director Gao, and the other elders had sat down and discussed seriously and properly the question of Li Chi and her betrothal. But after consulting the almanac, there was not a single truly auspicious day to be found.

Li Chi and Gao Xining both felt there was no need for a day free of all inauspicious signs in order to become engaged, but the elders felt it was a necessary matter.

After much deliberation, the sixth day of the sixth month proved to be an acceptable day — the plan was to first formally announce the young couple’s engagement, have everyone share an engagement feast, and then assess the state of affairs before settling on a wedding date.

The reason for this arrangement was that Li Chi’s year-and-a-half agreement with Luo Jing still made the situation of the Ning Army unsettled.

Counting it out, there were still some months before the sixth day of the sixth month — roughly three months or so.

Gao Xining heard Li Chi say his confidence had gotten shaky and immediately understood he was scheming something.

“Old Tang took away more than half the savings. Are you now sitting here thinking about how to go make some money?”

Hearing Gao Xining’s words, Li Chi immediately laughed: “Nothing brings happiness like making money.”

Gao Xining suddenly let out a crafty little chuckle, like a little fool.

Li Chi said: “Why are you laughing like that all of a sudden?”

Gao Xining pointed at Li Chi: “You — little money-grubbing thief.”

She pointed at herself: “Me — little miser.”

Then she leaned in and said in a secretive, conspiratorial voice: “Old Tang — big spendthrift child.”

Li Chi burst out laughing.

Gao Xining asked him: “Have you figured out where to go make money?”

Li Chi made a sound of agreement and said: “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Around Jizhou, there isn’t much left for us to squeeze.”

Gao Xining was tickled by that line and laughed — those beautiful big eyes of hers curved into crescent moons.

“People say a rabbit won’t eat the grass by its own burrow. You’re something else — you’ve already eaten all the grass around your own burrow.”

“How can you put it that way — I’m a wolf. I’ve just finished eating all the rabbits near my burrow.”

Li Chi smiled: “So I need to think about how to go after the rabbits farther away.”

Gao Xining asked: “How far?”

Li Chi said: “A while back, the physician Master Shen from Shen Medical Hall told me that medicine merchants from Yuzhou also come to Jizhou to purchase medicinal herbs.”

Gao Xining nodded. A few hundred *li* south of Jizhou was a well-known region for medicinal herbs.

Li Chi said: “To know yourself and know your enemy means a hundred schemes and not one failure… To scheme against the Yuzhou army, you first have to understand the enemy.”

Gao Xining blinked: “You’re going to Yuzhou?”

Li Chi made a sound of agreement: “People from Shen Medical Hall said that this winter, the number of Yuzhou medicine merchants coming to Jizhou to buy — both the number of merchants and the volume of goods — has been increasing.”

Gao Xining thought it over and said: “They’re preparing for war.”

Li Chi said: “Most likely. I’m not going to Yuzhou itself — I’m planning to go to Anyang City.”

Gao Xining immediately understood. For the Yuzhou army to attack Jizhou, Anyang City would be the first stop.

Anyang City fell under Yuzhou’s jurisdiction, but it lay north of the Nanping River — an enclave of Yuzhou, in a sense.

Yet Anyang City was tall, solid, and strongly garrisoned, with terrain that made it easy to defend and hard to attack. That place would necessarily serve as the Yuzhou army’s staging base for any advance north.

“By my estimate, summer harvest is still about three months away. Going to Anyang City and back shouldn’t take me more than a month — two at most, there and back.”

Li Chi said: “Going to look around will let me roughly gauge how far along the Yuzhou army’s war preparations are.”

Gao Xining said: “I want to go too…”

Li Chi smiled: “You have a more important task.”

Gao Xining asked: “What task?”

Li Chi leaned close to Gao Xining’s ear and lowered his voice: “Stay home and take good care of yourself. Get all plump and radiant, so that when the sixth day of the sixth month comes, you look without equal in this world for the engagement ceremony.”

Gao Xining’s face flushed red, and she made a sound of contempt: “You scoundrel.”

Li Chi said: “Which word I said was scoundrel talk?”

Gao Xining: “That part where you said…”

Li Chi said, puzzled: “Which part?”

Gao Xining: “You said… plump and radiant…”

Li Chi: “Ah!”

Two days later, Li Chi’s party was ready. They packed up considerable goods and departed Jizhou heading south.

This time when setting out, Li Chi had not anticipated that the proprietor of Shen Medical Hall herself, Shen Rujian, would be joining them.

When he had discussed the plan with Shen Rujian, the arrangement was to make the trip to Anyang City under the name of Shen Medical Hall.

Shen Rujian naturally would not refuse, but it was only before departure that Li Chi learned she intended to participate in person.

Many affairs in Jizhou still needed someone to manage them. Zhang Yuxu and Peng Shiqi had their hands full — in the short few months since coming to Jizhou they had already built up considerable reputations there.

Tang Pidi had gone to the grasslands, and the home base could not be left without someone to hold it steady. So Li Chi had previously sent someone back to Yanshan to invite Liu Ge over.

Originally Zhuang Wudi and Liu Ge had been the two holding down the home base; now Liu Ge had come to Jizhou, and the military affairs there would be taken care of.

Master Yan could not come along either. Master Yan was now the chief administrator of Jizhou — the pillar that the common people looked to.

So the only person from Jizhou’s side who could travel with them was Yu Jiuling. But Li Chi, ever resourceful, had also brought back a few extra people when he had Liu Ge transferred to Jizhou.

Chen Dawei and Gang Gang — the two of them had abundant experience in the jianghu world, and both were sharp-minded.

Teacher Ye was certain to come along; even if Li Chi wanted him to stay behind to protect the family, Xiahou Zuo’s mother would not allow it.

With over a hundred personal guards, plus a contingent of about twenty from Shen Medical Hall, they headed south protecting eight large carts.

The same style of cart as always, the same dry straw bedding, the same comfortable lounging.

Li Chi looked up at the spotless white clouds drifting slowly across the sky, his mood somewhat lifted.

Yu Jiuling, on the other hand, looked somewhat troubled, sitting there sighing repeatedly.

Li Chi smiled and asked him: “Are you unhappy because I’ve taken you away from your princess, and you’ve had to leave her?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Absolutely not. The reason I’m troubled is because she heard someone say that men of the Central Plains write love poetry when they like a woman…”

He looked at Li Chi and said: “And I have no idea who the scoundrel was who told her that. Now she’s asking me to write some for her too.”

Yu Jiuling said with some feeling: “Writing poetry — that’s for the kind of person whose words flow like a stream. I’m the kind of person whose words flow like a drain…”

Li Chi looked at Yu Jiuling in surprise: “When did you develop this level of self-awareness?”

Yu Jiuling said: “Stop laughing at me, chief. Help me think…”

Li Chi said: “Whether you write love poetry or not isn’t really the point. If you learn to say the right sweet words, they work better than poetry.”

Yu Jiuling asked: “How do you say sweet words?”

Li Chi took it seriously.

He pointed at the white clouds in the sky and said: “We borrow this to work with, for example, those white clouds.”

Yu Jiuling said: “What do white clouds have to do with sweet words?”

Li Chi smiled: “Ask yourself to describe those white clouds. How would you describe them?”

Yu Jiuling thought carefully for a moment and said: “Probably something like — these clouds are so white, they look just like cotton fluff, that kind of thing?”

Li Chi said: “Too plain. If you say it, I say it, there’s nothing beautiful about it — just dull and ordinary.”

Yu Jiuling said: “Come on, chief, you show me.”

Li Chi lay back in the dry straw, looking up at the clouds in the sky, and after a moment’s thought said: “Look at those clouds — white just like that handkerchief you once gave me. I never dared use it to wipe my hands. Just as the sky is blue, when the clouds pass through, even the sky cannot bring itself to color them — white clouds and blue sky are a perfect pairing, and that handkerchief you gave me, and I, are a perfect pairing too.”

Li Chi looked at Yu Jiuling and said: “If after you say all that she blushes, then you say — look, the clouds are white, the sky is blue, but when two hearts find each other, the sky and clouds together turn into a horizon of red evening glow.”

He told Yu Jiuling: “And at that moment, you ask her — I see you blushing, and I think of the only thing in this world worthy of your blush: the red wedding dress I’ve been getting ready for you. Would you wear it?”

Yu Jiuling stared wide-eyed at Li Chi.

Li Chi asked: “I was just making it up off the top of my head — roughly that kind of thing. What do you think?”

Yu Jiuling swallowed and then said: “Chief… you really are something else.”

Li Chi gave him a kick and sent him off the cart.

Yu Jiuling quickly climbed back up, patted the dust off himself: “But she never gave me a handkerchief.”

Li Chi sighed: “You give her one, then force her to say that to you. If she can’t manage it, you beat her — beat her until she can’t take care of herself.”

Yu Jiuling: “…”

Li Chi said: “Try repeating it back.”

Yu Jiuling thought back over it, did not catch the earlier part, and said just the later portion: “I see you blushing — the only thing in this world worthy of your blush is me. Now take your clothes off.”

Li Chi gave him another kick and sent him flying again.

In the cart behind them, Shen Rujian was sitting inside the covered carriage and had heard Li Chi and Yu Jiuling’s exchange. She was laughing so hard she could barely close her mouth.

She thought to herself: Li Chi really was exactly as Gao Xining had described him.

She had once asked Gao Xining how she would describe Li Chi.

At the time, Gao Xining had smiled and answered: that thing is an absolute delight.

Shen Rujian laughed and shook her head. Then it suddenly came to her — did not Gao Xining’s laughing description of him as “an absolute delight” show that they were already two hearts in perfect accord?

*When two hearts find each other at last, the wedding dress is the color of an evening glow.*

But she herself would not be like Li Chi, preferring to sit in a cart without a canopy. She did not like to be disturbed.

She also did not want the dust of the road to smudge her appearance.

—