When it came to fishing, Li Chi was not easy to beat.

Cao Lie fished out of whimsy, out of fondness, out of enjoyment.

Li Chi was different. It had once been one of the essential skills for staying alive.

So when Cao Lie watched Li Chi pull fish up one after another with the most rudimentary of tackle, he felt the urge to take his own expensive lacquered rod and snap it.

Into eight pieces.

He asked Li Chi, “Why do the fish like your hook?”

Li Chi smiled and answered, “Young Marquis — think carefully. Would you say fishing is a kind of deception?”

Cao Lie actually thought about it, and the more he considered it, the more it genuinely seemed like exactly that.

Li Chi handed Cao Lie some of his homemade fish bait. Cao Lie took it and sniffed — a peculiar fragrance wafted up.

Li Chi smiled. “Since you’re deceiving the fish, if you don’t at least make the bait genuinely delectable, then it’s both deception and gracelessness.”

Cao Lie looked at him. “I suspect you’re insulting me.”

Li Chi laughed aloud. “You only use earthworms. That won’t do.”

Cao Lie let out a slow breath, rolling his neck as he sat on the stool. “But I’m lazy.”

Li Chi held out the bait. “Try mine.”

Cao Lie shook his head. “You just said fishing is really fish-deceiving. I’ve lost even my interest in fishing now.”

Li Chi laughed. “Then be blunt about it. Skip the deception — cast a net.”

Cao Lie asked, “Do you know how to cast a net?”

Li Chi answered, “Me? I know how to cast a net very well. One throw of the net — nothing but big fish.”

Cao Lie had no idea that the “big fish” Li Chi was talking about had nothing to do with the ones in this river.

And many of the things Li Chi said today were said deliberately.

Perhaps someday Cao Lie would recall today’s words and find a deeper meaning in them.

Cao Lie asked, “Is there anything you don’t know how to do?”

Li Chi thought about it and answered honestly: “As things stand right now — aside from things like bearing children, which are beyond my capacity by nature, I’d say there’s probably a little of most things I can do.”

Cao Lie asked, “Having learned so many things — aren’t you tired?”

Li Chi said, “In this world, there aren’t many people who can put on a fine show without doing the work behind it. For someone like me to impress people, I have to do the work when no one’s watching.”

Cao Lie turned that sentence over in his mind — crude in its phrasing, but the more he thought about it, the truer it seemed.

He was the kind of person with innate advantages. He had no need to strive.

Cao Lie sat in silence for quite some time, then sighed. “It turns out the people in this world aren’t simply divided into high, middle, and low.”

Li Chi said, “Of course not. The heavens themselves have thirty-three tiers, so thinking along those lines: high can be divided into thirty-three, middle can be divided into thirty-three, and low… well, those at the bottom are all roughly the same.”

Cao Lie was taken aback.

He murmured almost to himself, “Above the high there is higher still; within the middle there are many grades; but the low… are simply low.”

Li Chi looked at him — and felt more and more that this person above the highest tier was somehow different.

“People are truly exhausting.”

Cao Lie rose and casually tossed his fishing rod into the river — the rod he’d bought for several dozen taels of silver — just like that, thrown away.

Of course, for someone like him, buying a fishing rod was never something he’d done himself. Someone below him had gone and bought it. Three taels spent, thirty taels claimed on the accounts. That was nothing unusual.

But whether it was three taels or thirty, Cao Lie didn’t care.

“Have you ever eaten a fish you caught yourself?”

Li Chi suddenly asked.

Cao Lie shook his head. “Fish from rivers are filthy. People swim in them all day. Some of them probably relieve themselves in there too.”

That sentence, without any deliberate intent, laid the difference in rank bare. He hadn’t thought about it — hadn’t even considered it.

Li Chi sighed. “The fish you eat are bought — but bought fish also come from rivers or lakes…”

“From our own ponds.”

He hadn’t finished before Cao Lie cut him off.

“There are fishponds behind my family’s estate. Nine of them altogether — arranged like a great nine-square grid. All the fish my family eats come from our own ponds.”

Li Chi sighed and shook his head. “I forgot who you are.”

Cao Lie actually laughed at that. “Forgetting is good.”

Li Chi said, “You’ve never eaten fish you caught yourself — so surely you’ve never had fish simmered in an iron pot over a fire you built yourself.”

Cao Lie asked, “What is that?”

The fish he ate — in whatever preparation — were each refined to perfection, every method a culinary art form in itself.

Li Chi smiled. “Catch a few of the bigger ones, and I’ll make it for you. I didn’t used to be much of a cook, but lately I started learning. Properly learning, in earnest.”

Cao Lie asked, “Why are you learning even the cook’s trade?”

To him, this was something genuinely incomprehensible — in his eyes, cooks fell into the category he’d mentioned before: the low.

He didn’t know that his family’s cook, or the cooks of any fine establishment, were — in the eyes of the truly destitute — upper class, and by ordinary folk’s measure, middle class at least.

And so there was high, middle, and low, each with thirty-three tiers.

Li Chi said, “Because I think being able to cook every dish my woman loves to eat is extremely impressive.”

He meant it completely.

And when he said it, there was a manner about him as though this were the most impressive thing under heaven.

Cao Lie sighed. “You really have very few women.”

Li Chi: “Hmph!”

Cao Lie said, “If it were me, I’d be exhausted to death…”

Li Chi: “Hmph!”

Cao Lie waved a hand. “Never mind, never mind. Then let me catch one, and see what this iron-pot stewed fish of yours tastes like.”

The moment he said it, one of his attendants immediately jumped into the water, retrieved the rod he’d just thrown away, and brought it back.

He had dozens of fishing rods — but when he said he wanted to fish, his men would always retrieve the one he’d just discarded.

Because Cao Lie had once said that particular rod felt right in his hand.

He might toss it aside without a second thought, but his attendants could not think that way, and would never dare.

Cao Lie took it back casually, feeling nothing remarkable about any of it.

Li Chi glanced at the attendant — drenched through — and sighed inwardly.

That attendant, in Cao Lie’s eyes, was the low. In ordinary people’s eyes, he was the high.

Cao Lie had just said that people were exhausting. But he still didn’t fully understand — people truly were exhausting.

—

Li Chi had indeed been learning to cook these past days — learning seriously, in a way he hadn’t applied himself to anything in some time.

When he applied himself, there was nothing he couldn’t master.

Someone once said that cooking well could be divided into three kinds: those who cook for a living, who must cook well or no one will hire them; those who cook because they love to eat; and those who cook for the sake of someone they love.

—

Cao Lie fished for quite a while without catching anything large — only fish the length of his palm — and was growing irritable.

Seeing him irritable, the attendants grew more anxious still. Someone was already preparing to wade in and grab fish by hand.

“Small ones are fine.”

Li Chi, who was splitting firewood, called out, “Small fish have their own flavor.”

Before long, Cao Lie’s attendants had somehow procured a large iron pot and brought it back, along with several buckets of water. They scrubbed the pot clean and set it aside. And not only that — every seasoning needed for cooking, they’d also purchased and brought.

The riverbank was so abundantly stocked it could have opened a spice stall.

Li Chi set up the iron pot and cleaned the day’s catch — some over a foot long, some barely as long as a palm.

He prepared the larger fish first, letting them stew for a time, then arranged the smaller ones on top one by one. When the broth was burbling with rising bubbles, he added greens and bean curd on top.

Cao Lie asked, “How long until it’s ready?”

Li Chi answered, “An hour.”

Cao Lie startled. “But it’s already past mealtime.”

Li Chi smiled. “Then wait an hour.”

The people of the Nanping River region didn’t stew their fish this long — but northerners liked a long, slow simmer.

Cao Lie was intent on tasting Li Chi’s cooking, so he held out. He was very regular in his meals — though not hungry, by mealtime his body was already prepared for it.

The longer the wait, the hollower his stomach grew, until he was tinged with a faint restless irritability.

To avoid showing it, he struck up conversation with Li Chi for the sake of having something to say.

Li Chi just smiled and said, “You’re not actually hungry yet.”

Cao Lie said, “My stomach is growling.”

Li Chi asked, “Smell the fish bait again.”

Cao Lie didn’t understand why, but he picked it up and sniffed — and found it smelled even more enticing than before.

Li Chi asked, “Would you eat this bait?”

Cao Lie said, “Of course I wouldn’t eat this! Why would I eat that!”

He glared at Li Chi.

This was something Cao Lie would only tolerate from Li Chi — from anyone else, he’d have been furious long since.

—

Half an hour later, Cao Lie — Li Chi wasn’t sure what had come over him — wandered over and picked up the fish bait he’d tossed aside.

He sniffed it a third time. Then looked puzzled.

He turned and called out to Li Chi: “I just had a slight impulse to eat it.”

Li Chi burst out laughing. “Then you’re truly hungry.”

—

And so, there by the river, Cao Lie’s attendants witnessed for the first time their Young Marquis eat like this.

Only one pot of what looked like quite rough stewed fish, with cheap things like cabbage and bean curd thrown in. And Li Chi had been generous with the seasonings — completely unlike the delicately mild dishes of the Nanping River region.

Such an ordinary setting, such ordinary food — and their Young Marquis ate three bowls of rice.

“This is the best fish I’ve ever tasted!”

Cao Lie looked at Li Chi with an expression of heartfelt satisfaction and contentment.

Li Chi said, “Actually that’s a sort of deception too — the fish isn’t that extraordinary. You were simply very hungry, and hunger raised its quality by more than half.”

Cao Lie asked curiously, “Why did you bring up deception so many times today? Are you saying it with intent?”

Li Chi sighed. “Not really for any particular reason. Just a moment ago I felt a pang of something — a sense that people dealing with people in this world will always deceive each other, more or less.”

Cao Lie pursed his lips. “I’m not deceiving you.”

Li Chi said, “In all of Anyang City, Young Marquis is probably the only person with no desire to deceive me. So no matter what happens in the future — whoever I deceive — I will never deceive you.”

Cao Lie laughed aloud. “Naturally. You don’t deceive me; I don’t deceive you. That’s the right way to go about things.”

He clapped Li Chi on the shoulder. “Honestly, you’re also the only person I find genuinely comfortable to be around.”

Li Chi smiled.

Only behind the smile lay a faint, quiet sadness — and he felt he was being sentimental again.

The Young Marquis, in truth, was quite guileless.

“Thinking that you’ll be settled in Anyang from now on — I’m glad.”

Cao Lie looked into the distance with something like feeling. “Or — why not move the Shen Medical Hall to Yuzhou City in the end? Anyang is just a waypoint. Put your main hall in Yuzhou City.”

Li Chi thought for a moment, then answered: “Maybe it will actually come to pass.”