Seeing that Chang Rong had already understood what he wanted, Lin Xiao had no desire to waste any more time on such a pointless matter. He turned to Qin Yao and said warmly, “The hour is not early — the performers inside are likely already in their costumes. Let us go in sooner so as not to miss the show.”
Though Qin Yao still had a wish to continue watching the spectacle, hearing Lin Xiao speak so gently and earnestly, she felt a flush rise to her face. She gave a quiet nod and allowed herself to be led inside by Lin Xiao.
The Crystal Pavilion was arranged with remarkable ingenuity. Though it had a main entrance, there was also a side door, and a discreet passage specifically for guests to come and go — presumably designed to protect the privacy of all who visited.
Inside the Crystal Pavilion there were two floors. At the center of the ground floor was a large performance stage, upon which the curtains had already been raised and the drums and gongs set out. The second floor housed private seating rooms — eight of them in total, arranged in a circle around and overlooking the stage below. Each private room had gauze curtains drawn before it. These curtains were produced in the Western Regions and were made of a most curious material: hung at the door of a private room, those outside could not see through to what was within, yet those inside could see everything on the stage below with perfect clarity.
Incense was being burned inside the building, its fragrance clean and unusual — nothing like the cloying, stupor-inducing scents found in ordinary pleasure houses and entertainment quarters. Rather, it had a distinctly clarifying and refreshing quality. The corridor leading upstairs was narrow, admitting only one person at a time, and gauze curtains draped thickly on both sides, completely concealing everyone who passed through.
Qin Yao quietly looked around and marveled inwardly. The Crystal Pavilion had gone to such painstaking lengths that it could virtually guarantee that every patron would remain unseen by anyone outside — and even patrons within the building could not discern one another’s identity. It seemed almost deliberately designed for secret assignations.
She thought of a joke she had heard in her early years — about a princess who had brought her paramour to some entertainment house to watch a performance, only to chance upon her prince consort emerging from inside with his kept mistress. Both secret affairs were exposed simultaneously, setting off a tremendous uproar throughout the city. In the end, the prince consort came out the loser, and was nearly beaten half to death by the princess, after which he never dared keep another lover. The princess, meanwhile, continued to indulge herself freely, going through one companion after another.
At this thought she could not help but find it amusing — had somewhere like the Crystal Pavilion existed at that time, such an awkward predicament would never have come to pass.
The two of them entered the private room through the corridor, whereupon the proprietor rolled up the heavy curtains that had hung in the passageway and lowered the light gauze curtains of the private room in their place.
Qin Yao looked around with curiosity. The private room was furnished with a daybed and a low table. Behind the daybed were windows — push them open and one could see the shimmering green water of the South Marsh Garden.
Turning around, through the lowered gauze curtain she could see the performance stage on the ground floor below. It seemed that sitting here to watch a performance would in no way interfere with admiring the lake view through the window. She did not know whose clever mind had conceived of such an arrangement — it was truly delightful and distinctive.
In the adjacent private room, there was someone — who it was, she could not say — silent as could be, without the faintest sound. Yet several servants were continuously entering and exiting, carrying towels and attending to things with the utmost care. In the private rooms across the way, several more had already settled in, but because the gauze curtains obscured everything, their features and appearance could not be made out.
Lin Xiao sat beside her, watching Qin Yao. Though she was seated perfectly still, her eyes — bright and clear as ever — roamed with undisguised curiosity over the surroundings, her expression watchful and faintly cautious, like that of an alert little cat. A warmth of tenderness rose in him, and he said softly, “You have been out in the sun for some time — let me pour you some tea first to cool you down.”
Qin Yao then noticed the fruits and refreshments laid out on the low table. In the center was a bowl of fresh cherries topped with sweet cream, chilled in a bed of ice — cool mist rising from it, looking perfectly refreshing just at a glance.
She cast a glance at Lin Xiao, recalling that the last time she had been at the estate of Duke Lu while vanquishing a demon, he had sent Chang Rong to buy her sweet cream cherries from De Rong Zhai. She had not expected to encounter this same delicacy at the Crystal Pavilion today — and the cherries in the bowl were notably large, clear and translucent, and the sweet cream fragrance was especially rich, clearly prepared with considerably more care than what De Rong Zhai offered.
Lin Xiao had not missed the puzzlement in Qin Yao’s eyes, and his face went straight to burning. How could he admit that today’s entire arrangement had been made entirely according to Qin Yao’s preferences? Every item of refreshment on the low table was something he had either previously seen her enjoy, or had made an educated guess she would enjoy — all prepared well in advance and kept chilled in ice, standing by in readiness.
Besides the sweet cream cherries, there were numerous other delicacies on the table that Qin Yao had never encountered before, covering it in abundant variety.
One dish had been sculpted into the shape of layer upon layer of small peony blossoms, making them irresistible to the eye. Another was molded into plump little watermelons of vivid green, perfectly round and quite extraordinary. There were also many chilled fruits and refreshments, the most conspicuous of which was a pile of red-shelled fruits arranged on crystal plates — Qin Yao recognized them as lychees, a delicacy only available within the palace. Peeling back the bright red shell revealed fruit flesh that was snow-white and luminous; one bite and the sweetness went straight to the heart. She had tasted them once before at Jade Spring Mountain and found them wonderful, but they were tribute goods from the Lingnan region, available only in the palace — there was no place to buy them outside, no matter how much silver one had.
Qin Yao ate with great enthusiasm, and found the little watermelon confections the best of all — before long she had cleared the entire dish.
Lin Xiao sat beside her drinking tea and quietly watching her eat. Seeing how much she enjoyed the lychees, he set down his teacup and personally shelled the lychees from the crystal plate one by one, placing them in the dish before her. Qin Yao had at first felt somewhat awkward and tried to stop him from helping her shell them, but as she got absorbed in eating, she stopped being coy about it, and the dish of lychees was duly finished off completely.
Lin Xiao looked on with quiet happiness, feeling that since his mother had passed away, he had not experienced a moment this pleasant and carefree in a very long time.
Qin Yao noticed that Lin Xiao had been doing nothing but watching her eat, without touching a single thing himself, and said, a little self-consciously, “The refreshments are wonderful — why are you not eating any?”
Lin Xiao smiled and said, “Because I still have a matter to attend to.”
With that, he reached into his garments and produced a small box of carved pear-wood with a cloud-and-water motif, setting it on the table before Qin Yao.