The teahouse.

Young Lord Cao Lie had no interest whatsoever in clay oven flatbreads or brined tofu soup. In his view, those were coarse, lowly things.

He was more at home in a teahouse—someone on the side brewing tea while he sat before a spread of varied morning delicacies, frowning over the difficult decision of what to actually eat.

He found northern breakfast offerings unpalatable and coarse—not only coarse in any one respect, but coarse across the board.

By comparison he preferred southern-style morning fare. At home he had at least twelve or thirteen pastry chefs brought in from the south, producing a breakfast spread that was refined, delicious, and above all, impressively varied.

The Cao family’s household was immense. Every courtyard had its own kitchen staff—and in his father’s main residence alone, chefs gathered from every corner of the country numbered sixty in all.

Among them, twenty-six pastry chefs, each with a different specialty and role.

His father’s lifestyle was refined to a degree that ordinary people could not conceive of—and even if you described it to them carefully, they would assume you were telling stories, or simply have no frame of reference to picture it.

In the prosperous era of Great Chu, what ordinary people hoped for was meat in their dishes now and then—not every meal, just a little meat occasionally.

In the turbulent era of Great Chu, what ordinary people hoped for was enough to eat at least once a day—not every meal, just one meal a day to be full.

The teahouse pastry chef clearly did not suit Cao Lie’s palate, so he ate only a token amount and had the rest cleared away—nearly everything untouched.

The tea was being prepared by the most beautiful tea-server the teahouse had to offer, who appeared to be around twenty, quite lovely, with a well-proportioned figure.

But Cao Lie didn’t spare her a second glance. In his eyes she looked unremarkable, and her clothes were plain.

What others saw as a celestial beauty—to him, she was simply… too ordinary.

Xingsheng Trading’s twelve branches were all in Yuzhou—but that didn’t mean the Cao family’s interests were limited to those.

The medicine trade was only an insignificant piece of the Cao family’s holdings.

Their largest enterprises were silk weaving and canal freight, and they had virtually monopolized the entire cargo trade along the Nanping River line.

Who on the Nanping River would dare compete with the Caos?

Beyond weaving and canal freight, they held major stakes in Yuzhou’s overland transport, the tea trade, and the medicine trade.

And beyond all of those, there was the one business others refused to touch and would never dare approach—the weapons workshop.

The weapons workshops had always been under imperial authority, directly administered by the Ministry of War. But once Great Chu descended into chaos, workshops throughout the country were largely seized by the regional military governors.

In Yuzhou, once Prince Wu took control, the matter of the weapons workshops also fell into Cao family hands.

The weapons and armor equipping Prince Wu’s army—all of it came from here.

So the Cao family was, beyond any dispute, the foremost power in Yuzhou.

From which it naturally followed that someone like Cao Lie—born into all of this—was destined to be the object of boundless indulgence.

“Young Lord,” Ding Shengji said, watching Cao Lie’s reaction and smiling, “this Li Duidui really is different from others.”

“He’s interesting, yes—but that’s got nothing to do with my intentions toward him,” Cao Lie said with a laugh. “His being interesting is one thing. His having bullied our Xingsheng Trading people is another.”

He had one leg propped up on the table, sprawled at ease in his chair, tilting it back and forth lazily.

“I won’t give him trouble on the road.”

“Only because he’s interesting,” Cao Lie said. “The plan to teach him a lesson here—that I’ll let go.”

“But…”

His tone shifted.

“General Meng’s face I’ll give, and yours too. Let the General see him first once he reaches Anyang City. After you’ve finished your business, I’ll still need to make his life difficult once—that’s how we call it even.”

He glanced at the men still groaning in the street below, and smiled. “This round doesn’t count. Consider it my gift to him—something to play with.”

He tilted his chair back. “Once he’s in Anyang City, I’ll watch a while longer. If he turns out to be more interesting still, I’ll find a way to keep him in Yuzhou.”

Cao Lie spoke with a cadence that didn’t belong to his age. “You know—my days are very dull.”

When he said those words, he was like an old man who had lived through decades, for whom all the sensations the world had to offer had long since grown stale and flavorless.

And he was barely in his teens—and yet this weariness, this sense of having already exhausted every experience the world held, had already taken root.

It was baked into him from birth, and there was no escaping it.

Other children would never see in their lifetimes what, to him, was already scrap.

What other children could not eat in their entire lives was, to him, already garbage.

At that moment, Li Chi walked off down the street with a bag of clay oven flatbreads swinging at his side, perfectly unhurried.

Watching Li Chi from the second floor, Cao Lie couldn’t help but smile again.

“He’s a wealthy man himself, and yet he uses stolen silver to pay the bill.”

Cao Lie asked Ding Shengji: “Why do you suppose?”

Ding Shengji shook his head. “Probably just didn’t want to spend his own money.”

Cao Lie sighed. “General Ding… because he already worked out that those men were yours. So of course he wasn’t going to pay for it himself.”

He looked at Ding Shengji. “You said you were taking him out for breakfast—and you left without paying.”

Ding Shengji paused.

He had indeed forgotten to pay. And the flatbread-selling couple would never have dared ask him for it.

Cao Lie sighed. “I forgot too.”

—

Back at the government inn, Li Chi returned and asked if any two medicine merchants from Jizhou had come to sell medicines. The answer was no.

Li Chi smiled to himself. Ding Shengji, he thought—your martial arts are formidable, your appetite even more so, but this little scheme of yours is really quite transparent.

Back in his room, he set down the flatbreads. Yu Jiuling wandered over to look, then curled his lip. “A general of Anyang City—and this is the breakfast he treats you to?”

“Why do you think I packed some to go,” Li Chi said.

Yu Jiuling pinched off a flatbread and took a bite. The taste was actually quite decent.

He ate and asked: “That fellow was trying to show you who’s boss?”

Li Chi made a sound of agreement. “He showed me.”

“What kind of showing?”

Li Chi sighed. “I made a rather embarrassing…”

He glanced over at Shen Rujian nearby and didn’t feel comfortable using the coarser phrasing.

He reorganized and continued: “The usual sort. Some people came to rough me up.”

“And we’re not even in Anyang City yet,” Yu Jiuling said. “Boss—is it too late for me to resign as grand steward?”

“It’s too late,” Li Chi said.

“Then… is it too late to bring up the pay raise?”

“I’ll add it to your medical expenses,” Li Chi offered.

Yu Jiuling: “……”

“Still…”

Li Chi smiled. “That so-called young lord—he’s actually an interesting person.”

After two days of rest in Shengfang County, the caravan set out again.

This time with Anyang Army escorts, there was no need to worry about trouble on the road.

Li Chi never caught sight of the young man in the caravan again. He had only glimpsed him at the flatbread shop doorway—but he was certain. That had been Cao Lie.

It appeared he had already left Shengfang County ahead of them and returned to Anyang.

Li Chi found Cao Lie interesting because he was flamboyant without being genuinely tyrannical—protective of his own, yet hadn’t actually harmed anyone.

A rich do-nothing son, to be sure. People sometimes conflated “do-nothing son” with “scoundrel,” but the two were not the same.

Several days of travel later, the caravan arrived at Anyang City. And arriving there, Li Chi finally understood what it meant to say a place had presence.

This was Li Chi’s first sight of the Nanping River.

Jizhou had its own great rivers, and Li Chi had seen river channels four or five li wide.

But those rivers, set beside the Nanping, were nothing more than streams.

Standing at the Nanping River’s edge—watching the sails thick as forests stretching near and far, listening to the calls of the haulers rolling over the water—his chest tightened with a surge of something.

No wonder this place was called an uncrossable barrier.

Traveling along the riverside official road, he spotted a shipyard in the distance—modest in scale, with cargo vessels under construction.

The largest merchant ships Li Chi could make out on the water ran close to twenty zhang. Ships of that size would be unimaginable in the north.

“This place already has something of the Jiangnan about it—and one can only wonder what the real Jiangnan must be like.”

Li Chi let out a quiet breath.

The people and customs along the Nanping River were already worlds apart from Jizhou.

There’s an old saying: those who live by the mountains eat from the mountains; those who live by the water eat from the water. But mountains feed people no better than poor, while water never fails to feed well.

Throughout history, no region that lived by the mountains had ever grown wealthier than one that lived by water.

As they were about to enter Anyang City, General Meng Kedi’s residence was hosting Young Lord Cao Lie—who was cheerfully recounting to Meng Kedi everything that had happened at Shengfang County.

“Ha ha ha ha…”

Even Meng Kedi couldn’t help laughing when he heard the whole story.

“By all accounts, that really is a remarkable man—and a real one too.”

Meng Kedi deeply admired Li Duidui’s attitude: he could back down himself, he could bow and scrape—but you don’t get to bully his people.

“What does the Young Lord have in mind?”

Meng Kedi was curious. Now that Cao Lie had taken an interest in Li Duidui, how would this little demon proceed?

The boy’s head was full of strange and unpredictable ideas.

“If I plot everything out in advance—every step mapped and calculated—where’s the fun in that?”

Cao Lie said: “Playing means doing as you feel, going with whatever comes to you in the moment. That’s where the joy is. Something planned out in advance—that isn’t play.”

He leaned back. “Let the General see him first.”

Meng Kedi ventured carefully: “The Young Lord may play to his heart’s content—but this man still has uses. Come the sixth month, I’ll be moving on Jizhou. This man’s Shen Medical Hall could provide intelligence for the army, even serve as an internal collaborator for taking Jizhou.”

Cao Lie made a sound of acknowledgment, though he gave no sign of caring in the slightest.

He looked at Meng Kedi. “But once I start playing, how could I possibly spare attention for the General’s plans? So the General had better keep a close eye on things himself—don’t count on me.”

Cao Lie stood, rolled his neck, and said: “Which is the best restaurant in Anyang City?”

Meng Kedi answered: “There are several of roughly equal standing—Maple Forest Tower, Autumn Garden, Zither Drum Tower, and Prosperity Harmony Tower.”

Cao Lie nodded and looked toward the young man who had been standing at the door the whole time. “Xu Wenjun—did you get all of that?”

The young man—who appeared to be in his late twenties and looked for all the world like a wooden block—lowered his head. “In reply to the Young Lord: yes.”

Cao Lie looked at him and sighed. “You wear that same dead expression every waking hour. You’re not suited to be following me around.”

Xu Wenjun replied: “The Prince’s standing orders. This subordinate dares not disobey.”

“Ah…”

Cao Lie turned to Meng Kedi. “Do you see? Not an ounce of freedom.”

He asked again: “Xu Wenjun—if I ordered you to kill someone, would you do it?”

Xu Wenjun replied: “No.”

Cao Lie let out another sigh. “You see? Not only no freedom—I’m being constrained on top of it.”

He turned and walked out, talking as he went: “Xu Wenjun, I have a punishment for you.”

Xu Wenjun bowed. “I await the Young Lord’s judgment.”

“Count every restaurant in Anyang City—large and small. If you lose count, go back to the Left Martial Guard.”

Xu Wenjun nodded. “This subordinate obeys.”

Cao Lie narrowed his eyes at him. “You truly never smile?”

Xu Wenjun glanced at Cao Lie and said nothing.

Cao Lie felt suddenly more bored than ever.

—

—