“Who said anyone was insulting anyone?” Lingbo immediately turned on her, asking Qinglan: “Sister, you saw her showing off her learning — won’t you argue back on my behalf?”
Among all the girls at the feast, the two with the finest scholarly knowledge were Qinglan and Shen Biwei. But Qinglan was composed, and only smiled as she soothed Lingbo: “She didn’t say you insulted her — it’s what’s written in the lyric: ‘The plum must surely envy, the chrysanthemum must blush with shame, where the painted balustrade blooms, it reigns supreme in mid-autumn. How heartless was that great poet — why did he not include it in his day?’ It means that the osmanthus is extraordinarily beautiful, yet the world does not appreciate it — even Qu Yuan overlooked the osmanthus and never wrote of it in the Li Sao.”
“Not content with insulting me and Sister Han, now she’s gone after Qu Yuan as well.” Shen Biwei immediately laughed at her: “She really does have Lingbo’s temperament — the moment something doesn’t go her way, she immediately starts ranting like a shrew.”
“You have the nerve to criticize me? You were the one teaching Yanyan how to roll on the ground.” Lingbo immediately started quarreling with her. In any case, looking at Cui Jingyu’s wretched state today, there was no hope of any progress there — better to just have fun.
After she finished causing a scene, she flipped over the flower name token and immediately laughed: “Good, this token is indeed excellent.”
Everyone came to look, and they all laughed. On the token was written: The osmanthus signifies nobility, reigning supreme through the three autumn months. Whoever draws this token may order anyone at the feast to drink, and none may refuse.
“Well now, we’ll let her have her way.” Shen Biwei immediately laughed at her: “She’ll throw her weight around and torment us to death before she’s satisfied.”
Before the words had even left her mouth, she got a tap on the head. Lingbo put on an air of great authority, holding the flower name token like a command tablet. She dealt first with the rebel Shen Biwei: “How dare you question the Order Official — drink a cup as punishment! Go on, drink. Do you think you can wriggle out of it?”
Shen Biwei was well used to indulging her, and actually drank. Lingbo stood up and made a circuit of the feast table, token in hand. Han Yueqi said: “I’ll drink a cup too.” But Lingbo said: “No, Sister Han cannot drink.” She was feeling exceedingly pleased with herself. Noticing Wei Yushan staring at her, she said: “Little Wei, it looks to me like you’re itching for trouble, aren’t you?”
“Afraid of you? Ha.” Wei Yushan was full of swagger: “This young master has built up a proper tolerance. I can hold two jin of wine.”
Lingbo wasn’t actually interested in him at all — her real intention lay elsewhere. She strolled over to Cui Jingyu’s side and gave him a meaningful smile: “Marquis Cui? You are a man of your word — surely you won’t refuse the Order Official’s command?”
Cui Jingyu remained perfectly composed. “Speak, then.”
“Then I order you to drink a cup of wine.” She spoke unhurriedly, and only after Cui Jingyu had raised his cup did she continue: “But first you must toast someone. Only after she has drunk may you drink.”
Even a fool at the feast could guess whom she wanted Cui Jingyu to toast.
“Lingbo.” Qinglan immediately issued a quiet warning. Lingbo had put on airs in front of everyone else, but before her sister she turned aggrieved: “Come now — I’m the Order Official, and Sister is the first to defy my orders. How am I supposed to command the others?”
“It’s just some ridiculous token — and you’re already ‘commanding the others’?” Wei Yushan immediately mocked her. Before A’Cuo could even shoot him a glare, Lingbo spoke first: “Wei Yushan has defied the order — drink a cup as punishment.”
“I’ll drink, I’ll drink — as if I’m afraid of you.” Wei Yushan was utterly brazen.
Lingbo simply smiled and instructed a maidservant: “Lv’e, put plenty of sugar in his wine — honey is even better.”
Wei Yushan immediately made a face of sheer misery. Young Lord Wei feared nothing in the world, except sweetness. A’Cuo saw this and burst into laughter: “Second Sister is right — let him be smothered in sweetness.”
Han Yueqi had been sitting nearby in a tipsy haze, and upon hearing these words, she suddenly glanced over at A’Cuo. But as everyone was watching Lingbo, no one noticed.
“Good, now no one dares obstruct my orders.” Lingbo smiled and said: “Marquis Cui, please pour a cup first.”
Cui Jingyu poured a cup with a cold expression and was about to rise and walk toward Qinglan, when Lingbo called out to stop him: “I haven’t said who it’s for yet — this cup is for me first.”
The whole table erupted in laughter. Lingbo also laughed: “Who did Marquis Cui think it was for?”
Cui Jingyu kept his cold expression and said nothing, bringing the wine and presenting it to her.
“Marquis Cui only offers wine but says nothing?” Lingbo teased him again.
“Please drink.” Cui Jingyu said drily.
Good grief — what a grudge-holding look on him. Lucky he wasn’t her brother-in-law yet, or who knows how he’d put on airs. Lingbo cursed inwardly: Damn you, Cui Jingyu. I work so hard to help reconnect the two of you, and you can’t even be bothered to drink a single cup?
But while she cursed in her heart, aloud she said: “Wei Yushan, stop glaring at me too — this cup of mine has a reason behind it. What day is the eighteenth day of the first month? I see that Marquis Cui has forgotten. The promises he made to me and Yanyan back then no longer count, it seems. And yet my congratulatory gift on the third day of the tenth month — that still counts every year, doesn’t it.”
Wei Yushan didn’t know that the eighteenth of the first month was Lingbo’s birthday, but he knew perfectly well that the third of the tenth month was Cui Jingyu’s birthday. With her words laid out like that, everyone understood.
A shadow passed over Cui Jingyu’s expression. He said nothing, simply picked up a cup and drained it himself — an acceptance of punishment.
Sister Han’s opening gambit today had been precisely right. What a pity that she’d drunk wine afterward and thrown herself off course. At the root of it, she still didn’t fully understand people like him — coercion wouldn’t work, and enticement was equally useless. The only way was to seize their weakness: an excessive sense of responsibility.
With anyone else, it would certainly not have worked. The engagement had been broken — what did anyone’s birthday have to do with him anymore? But Cui Jingyu was the sort of man who could become a great general; his sense of duty went without saying. He had once promised to treat Lingbo and Yanyan as his own sisters, and naturally he had kept that vow in his heart all this time.
But there was someone at this feast with an even heavier sense of responsibility than him. Lingbo had just finished with Cui Jingyu when she heard her own sister’s remorseful voice behind her: “In truth, I ought to be penalized a cup as well — I made a promise too lightly, and hurt you and Yanyan.”
At those words, Lingbo’s heart sank. As expected — two people at the table had now been provoked. That little scoundrel Wei Yushan immediately said: “Only hurt Ye Lingbo and Yanyan? My mother is still heartbroken even now.”
Cui Jingyu was far more composed than him, simply giving a cold laugh and drinking another cup.
Lingbo found it funny and infuriating at once. People said Yin Hongxuan was a sealed gourd — then what was this one? Qinglan said she shouldn’t have made promises so lightly, and he heard it in his ears, probably thinking Qinglan was saying she regretted getting engaged to him. His heart was likely already in turmoil, yet unlike Wei Yushan, he wouldn’t shout it out — he only sat there looking wretched for no one’s benefit.
No wonder they say people born in winter hold grudges.
But Lingbo didn’t concern herself with him — she simply went on tending the red thread of fate. Seizing the moment, she immediately said: “Then it’s perfect — Marquis Cui, toast my sister a cup as well. Whatever grievances lie between the two of you, you can settle them yourselves.”
“Well said.” Han Yueqi immediately seized the opportunity and raised her cup: “I’ll drink along — I was the matchmaker.”
A matchmaker’s thank-you wine — aside from the wedding night, when else could it be drunk? These words struck right at both their hearts, but neither spoke. It was Lingbo who pressed: “All right, my term as Order Official is nearly over. Are you still going to defy the order?”
With Lingbo’s earlier reminder about his failure to acknowledge her birthday this year as groundwork, this time Cui Jingyu truly picked up his cup and walked over to Ye Qinglan. As Lingbo watched, she felt almost dazed — so tall and gallant, so handsome as a god. If he truly were her brother-in-law, how wonderful that would be. Besides a man like him, who could possibly be worthy of Qinglan?
And yet those two were twisted up in knots, wasting their finest years in vain.
Qinglan also stood. The peach blossom grove was a blaze of soft crimson, yet she wore pale colors — a fish-white shirt set against her jade-like face. Her hair was dark as ink, yet billowed like clouds. Wisps of hair at her temples drifted across her moonlit face, and because she had been drinking, the corners of her eyes were tinged faintly red. The way she lowered her gaze — she looked exactly like a lotus blossom opening on the water.
Cui Jingyu wore a robe of black brocade, standing across from her — a sight that not even the best theater stage could offer, a pair perfectly fashioned by heaven and earth. He toasted a cup to her, then drank one himself. It was only a brief, fleeting moment — like the glimpse of a wild swan’s reflection. A matched pair from four years ago, delayed by fate until today.
Lingbo had drunk wine too, which was why her eyes felt so hot.
She did not believe in flower name tokens, but those words on the token left her no choice but to believe. “What need has it for pale jade or pale red hues — it is of itself the finest flower.” The most beautiful at the feast were actually Shen Biwei and A’Cuo — one green, one red, as if by design. While Qinglan possessed grace and poise, and Han Yueqi possessed noble bearing. Only Ye Lingbo had unremarkably thin, ordinary looks. What gave her the right to be first among flowers?
Only the spirit burning in her chest — the resolve to carry this red thread all the way to its end. She would be the finest sister in the world, and would never fail Ye Qinglan.
After Lingbo finished her turn, she relinquished the role of Order Official and handed it to the others — in truth, only A’Cuo and Yanyan were left, and they took their turns in a merry jumble. Lingbo actually had the weakest tolerance for wine, and troubles weigh on drinkers, so she leaned against Shen Biwei’s shoulder and spoke lazily with her.
Shen Biwei was in the middle of explaining a poem to Yanyan when she heard Lingbo beside her on her shoulder: “Let me ask you about a poem — whether it’s any good.”
For an ordinary poem, what would there be to say about whether it was appropriate or not — but unfortunately Shen Biwei was distracted by Yanyan, and didn’t think too carefully, so she just said: “Go ahead.”
“It’s a poem about the New Year festival. ‘Fire trees and silver flowers blaze red to the eye, drums and pipes raised to the heavens stir the spring wind’ — who wrote it?” Lingbo recited the line Pei Zhao had casually uttered that day: “I don’t understand poetry, but even I can tell it sounds like a woman’s hand.”
She had no love of scholarship herself, but having Qinglan and Shen Biwei around her, she had an undeniable sense of taste. Sure enough, Shen Biwei said: “It is indeed a woman’s work — Zhu Shuzhen’s. Her lyric poetry is excellent, and her verse is no less so. This is one of her Three Poems on the Lantern Festival Night: ‘Fire trees and silver flowers blaze red to the eye, drums and pipes raised to the heavens stir the spring wind. New joy seized in hand midst the rush of worries, old memories startling the heart amid dreams of the past. I only wish we could linger together for a time, no matter if the moon remains veiled in haze. No leisure to grow drunk on lantern-gazing — come next year, this gathering may never be the same.’ Her lyrics are all tender and melancholy. Though this one is written about the Lantern Festival, it carries its own undercurrent of regret.”
Lingbo listened, and lowered her eyes.
She had known it.
The Lantern Festival poem he had recited — amid all its festivity, it held boundless regret. He was just that sort of scoundrel, knowing from early on that all things in this world turn out contrary to one’s wishes, always braced for disappointment.
In the latter half of the banquet, people gradually drifted apart to wander and enjoy the scenery. Shen Biwei continued explaining poems to Yanyan. Qinglan went to see to the food, wanting to prepare hot dishes to warm everyone against the chill. Han Yueqi naturally wouldn’t miss this opportunity, and was preparing to pull Cui Jingyu aside for another attempt at rekindling the red thread of fate…
Lingbo suddenly had a thought — she wanted to see whether Pei Zhao was anywhere in the peach blossom grove.
Xiao Liu’er saw her walking toward the peach blossom grove and at first assumed she was going to admire the flowers. When she saw her walking deeper and deeper in, she grew anxious and called out to her young miss repeatedly — but she couldn’t keep up, and was left behind.
Lingbo paid her no mind and simply walked on. The deeper one went, the more beautifully the peach blossoms bloomed, because it was warmer there — trees of Chinese redbud frequently burst into full blossom, clouds of rose-colored haze gathering and billowing like heaped brocade. The blossoms blazed brilliant on the branches, and beneath the trees, fallen petals lay in layer upon layer, like a carpet spread over the ground. Lingbo steadied herself against the rough bark of peach blossom trunks, walking on with uneven steps. Exactly as Qinglan had said — to be in love with someone was like spending all day walking on clouds.
Perhaps it was the wine, but her eyes felt hot, while waves of bitterness washed through her heart. Of course she knew she wouldn’t find him — just like every wish she had ever made, this too would come to nothing. In the end, this was peach blossoms and flowing water — begun, but without an end.
It was in the year her mother died that she had developed this bad habit: she always liked to use small things to foretell the outcome of great ones — just as she had done that day at the Grand Princess’s manor, using tea to predict good or ill fortune. When she thought about it, it was laughable — nothing but a futile attempt to grasp at even the faintest sign.
“Is Miss Ye looking for me?” A voice came from behind her.
Lingbo turned and looked. She saw Pei Zhao wearing the azure robe she had made for him, standing beneath the peach blossom trees, smiling faintly as always, watching her quietly.
For one instant Lingbo suspected she was imagining it. She walked two steps toward him. Pei Zhao immediately stepped forward, and Lingbo instinctively stepped back, feeling a surge of weakness in her heart.
And there he was, right in front of her again.
Together with his peach blossom eyes, his tall and slender frame like a peacock’s, together with his charm, his teasing, and his unwillingness to strive…
Lingbo knew perfectly well it was a battle she was certain to lose, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to take the gamble. The spring breeze carried the faintly intoxicating scent of peach blossoms, blowing warmly against her face — even the most iron-hearted person would have to surrender at a moment like this.
“What if it’s me?” she asked Pei Zhao, her voice carrying a hint of drunkenness.
Even someone as clever as Pei Zhao had moments when he couldn’t understand.
“What?” he asked, puzzled.
He walked forward — just as Lingbo so often found herself unable to stop herself from walking toward him. Closer. And closer still. Close enough that the peach blossom branches overhead cast their shadows over them both. Close enough that the small mole at the corner of his eye was clearly visible…
Lingbo leaned back against the peach blossom tree, looked up, and met his eyes. She asked the question she had been wanting to ask all day.
“What if it’s me, Pei Zhao?” she asked him earnestly. “Am I worth one effort — worth you striving upward for?”
A flash of startlement crossed Pei Zhao’s eyes. Clearly he had not anticipated this question from Lingbo.
But he did not answer.
Because he had suddenly turned his head with sharp alertness, looking toward some direction behind him. This was the first time Lingbo had ever seen such an expression on his face. All this time, he had always been languid and casual, wearing a smile, even a little glib and carelessly playful, indifferent to everything.
But now he furrowed his brow, and the look in his eyes was keen and razor-sharp — like a blade drawn from its scabbard.
Lingbo only belatedly realized — that must be a murderous intent.
Pei Zhao stepped in front of her, concentrating intently on some unknown direction, listening carefully. Even his delicate, long brows were pulled tight with concentration.
“What is that sound.”