“This is bad!”
Ita, standing beneath the eaves, underwent a drastic change of expression. He turned and shoved his way through the crowd, cursing and muttering in halting Tang speech as he fought his way forward — apparently abandoning his pursuit of Lin Sui’an entirely.
Well, would you look at that — someone even more enthusiastic for a spectacle than she was.
Lin Sui’an was not to be outdone. She skipped across several roof tiles and jumped over a handful of shopfronts until she found herself the best VIP viewing spot in the vicinity. With her eyesight, she could make out the kneeling man’s dagger in sharp detail: the blade looked well-polished enough, but it hadn’t been sharpened — just a prop. The man’s acting, however, was genuinely impressive. The tears were flowing in earnest, and he had the air of desperate, devoted love down to the last ten-tenths.
“Second Lady, I have known you for more than a year. They say: morning after morning the beautiful years stir thoughts of longing, year after year the days and months are spent longing for your return. Why will you not descend from the carriage to see me? Second Lady — ah, Second Lady — how can your heart be so hard—”
Lin Sui’an watched with keen enjoyment, and she’d even bought two water pears from a fruit vendor on a stall below to eat while she watched. The other onlookers in the street, however, were clearly not amused by this performance — every face was flushed with indignation:
“Who is this madman?!”
“What is the Second Lady’s standing? How dare this person say such outrageous things here in broad daylight?!”
“A creature like him isn’t even fit to carry her shoes!”
“The Second Lady’s literary talent is unmatched, her looks without equal — how dare this sort of low creature drag her name into his mouth?!”
More than a few scholars were already rolling up their sleeves, surging forward to deliver a beating. The man whipped out a second dagger and swung it wildly around him, bellowing as he did: “Anyone who dares come near — I’ll cut them!”
One scholar, careless for a moment, got his sleeve sliced. Frightened, he hurried back two steps. The others no longer dared press in.
Lin Sui’an flicked away a fruit pit and bit into the second water pear: not bad — this blade had been sharpened.
“Second Lady — does nothing short of me tearing out my very heart suffice to make you believe in my sincerity?!” The man pressed the blade tip against his chest and bellowed.
Just then, a woman’s voice drifted out from within the carriage, unhurried and light: “Who is making this noise outside?”
The groom driving the carriage gave a disdainful curl of his lip. “In reply to the Second Lady — another one with a death wish.”
The man burst into wailing sobs. “I am Qin Shanlan! At the Shangsi Festival, I met you here on the banks of the Jiuchu River — I gave you a love poem to mark our destined meeting. Do you still remember it?” His face tilted up to the standard forty-five-degree angle of a man overcome with feeling. Tears streaming, he began to recite: “On the third day of the third month the weather was clear and bright; by the Jiuchu River, beautiful women gathered in great sight—”
“Cough cough cough cough!” Lin Sui’an nearly choked on her pear juice and had to pound her chest repeatedly.
Big brother, that is flagrant plagiarism.
Jeers and laughter erupted from all around.
The grooms driving the carriage were rolling their eyes as they prepared to crack the reins and move on — but then that Qin Shanlan simply planted himself in the middle of the road and, with both daggers now pressed against his own throat, resorted to sheer shamelessness.
“Second Lady, if you truly mean to leave — then drive over my corpse to do it!”
“Scoundrel! I’ll hit you!” Ita plunged into the crowd and came charging at him in a fury. Qin Shanlan was startled; his arm jerked; the sharpened dagger caught his own throat and opened a gash. Blood flowed freely at once.
Ita stumbled to a dead stop. His body swayed. His face went a ghastly white.
Lin Sui’an stared: could that boy actually be — afraid of blood?!
“Ita, stand down.” The woman’s voice drifted from inside the carriage again, tranquil as before. The groom opened the carriage door, and a young woman stepped gracefully down, walking slowly toward where Qin Shanlan knelt. The river wind lifted her jade-green gauze skirt and her bright yellow silk stole, spreading them out around her like the fullness of spring in bloom.
Oh my, oh my, oh my!
Lin Sui’an had truly broadened her horizons today. To think that within the span of a single hour she had already encountered two peerless beauties. If she were to be frank: this woman’s features were not quite as dazzling as the one she had seen at the Yueluo Medical Hall — but she more than made up for it with a purity of bearing that was in a class of its own. By way of comparison: the beauty at the medical hall was all a hundred graceful charms, while the one before her now was like a lone orchid blooming high above the clouds.
The moment she stepped out, the Jiuchu riverbank seemed to fall under a pause — the whole street went wide-eyed and silent.
Not a trace of a smile touched the woman’s face. Her gaze was cool and clear; her lips parted, and her voice was like water from an ice spring.
“Qin Shanlan. I remember you.”
Heavens — at those words, the entire street erupted. Several scholars’ eyes rolled back and they fainted on the spot.
Qin Shanlan stood holding his dagger, dumbstruck. “You — you truly remember me?!”
The Second Lady nodded. “At the Shangsi Festival, I presided over the poetry gathering on the banks of the Jiuchu River. One person submitted twenty-four poems — ten five-character regulated verses and fourteen seven-character regulated verses — signed with the name Qin Shanlan.”
“Yes, yes, that was me! That was me!” Qin Shanlan scrambled to his feet, face flushed with excitement. The wound on his neck bled afresh. Ita, visibly on the verge of collapse, teetered.
The Second Lady took a quiet, imperceptible half-step back, and continued: “Of the ten five-character regulated verses, every one was assembled by fragmenting and rearranging lines from established masters — incoherent and utter nonsense.”
Qin Shanlan’s face went abruptly ashen.
“As for the fourteen seven-character regulated verses — they did show some literary merit. However, I had them traced. Every last one was composed by impoverished students from other parts, whose signatures you purchased with money. This is the very definition of shamelessness without limit.”
The veins on Qin Shanlan’s forehead began to stand out.
“You are originally from Guangdu. Your family is well off. You have four concubines in the household. In ten years of attempting the imperial examinations, you have never passed. Once you thought to attach yourself to the Feng family’s patronage, but you could not even pass the entry examination of the Feng family’s private academy. So you decided to make your name through submitting literary works, but with your limited talent you met rejection everywhere in the Eastern Capital and came to Yangdu to try your luck — imagining the Shangsi Festival poetry gathering to be a golden opportunity. You failed to be selected there as well.”
Qin Shanlan’s fury boiled over. “You vile woman — how dare you slander me!”
Two grooms moved with swift precision and positioned themselves before the Second Lady.
“Every word and sentence I have spoken was investigated by our Fourth Young Master. Not a single character is slander.” The Second Lady’s gaze was level as ice.
The Fourth Young Master? Surely not the Fourth Young Master I am thinking of?
Lin Sui’an’s temple began to throb. Details she had deliberately overlooked rose to the surface one after another:
The brilliant appearances of these two women, Ita’s extravagant gemstone rings, the ostentatiously wealthy carriage, and now this uncanny sense of familiarity and creeping foreboding—
“Hua Yifeng — I will kill you!” Qin Shanlan swung his dagger and lunged at the Second Lady. But no sooner had he moved than the two grooms struck: one kicked him in the stomach, the other disarmed him, and in three swift moves Qin Shanlan was subdued. At that exact moment, chaos erupted without warning. Someone in the crowd let out a rallying cry: “This man is truly despicable — we cannot let him get away! Everyone, together!”
“Protect the Second Lady of the Hua family!”
“Protect the Second Lady of the Hua family!”
That single cry sent everything spiraling out of control. The whole street of people surged toward the carriage in a single wave. Lin Sui’an immediately sensed danger. All of these scholars were fanatical admirers of the Second Lady. Stirred up by someone’s provocation, they had all lost themselves in hot-blooded collective frenzy. With this many people, the risk of a stampede was very real.
In a flash of lightning-quick thought, Lin Sui’an shot forward — three rapid bounds off the awnings of three small stalls to gain height — then executed a chain of rolling leaps to land directly above Qin Shanlan’s head. Without ceremony she swung a kick that sent him hurtling into the crowd. The crowd burst apart in a ring. Lin Sui’an seized the opportunity. In the instant she touched the ground, she caught Hua Yifeng around the waist, looked up, and found herself surrounded on all sides by a dense press of heads — no way to avoid them. The only option was to use the momentum of the landing to leap up onto the roof of the carriage. Drawing Qian Jing with a sweeping motion, she drove it into the ground with one hand. Crack — the jade-green blade sank three inches into the earth, landing squarely at the feet of the man at the very front of the surge. He lurched backward in fright and scrambled away on all fours, and the rest fell back as one.
“Step back!” Lin Sui’an bellowed. “Anyone who crosses this blade — loses the foot!”
The street fell into a dead silence. The whole crowd stared up at the two figures atop the carriage, mouths agape.
The river wind lifted Hua Yifeng’s wispy, near-transparent silk stole, spreading it like the gentle drift of springtime color around the figure of the young woman in her sharp, close-fitting garments. Though the young woman was not yet full-grown, her back was straight, her stance rock-solid. With one hand she held Hua Yifeng’s slender waist — lightly as a feather — while long brows and phoenix eyes swept the crowd with a cutting gaze, as though ten thousand vengeful spirits marched in its wake, chilling the liver and gall.
Looking at her bearing, looking at her presence, the crowd inevitably recalled a tale that had been spreading through Yangdu these past few days. Their expressions changed as one, and they retreated in a unanimous step backward.
“Exceptional skill. Worthy indeed of being the one Fourth Young Master has his eye on.” The beauty in her arms fixed Lin Sui’an with a pair of sparkling eyes.
Lin Sui’an was somewhat helpless. “You are worthy indeed of being Hua Yitang’s elder sister.”
The gift for stirring up trouble was, if anything, even more pronounced in this one than in Hua Yitang himself. Well, that was just grand — she was fast becoming a professional in the heroic rescue of beauties… actually, of members of the Hua family.
Someone in the crowd called out:
“The jade-green blade! It’s Lin Sui’an!”
“Yes, yes, that’s her! The Lin Sui’an who single-handedly challenged a hundred of the Feng family’s fighters!”
“The Lin Sui’an who killed the notorious bandit Zheng Dong with a single move — a man who had terrorized the martial world for decades!”
“Governor Zhou was stared at by her once and dropped dead of sheer fright!”
What. On. Earth.
Lin Sui’an’s eye twitched violently. Her composure shattered.
“Poke.” Hua Yifeng’s fingertip found Lin Sui’an’s cheek, with the exact same gesture as the beauty in the Yueluo Medical Hall — and the words she spoke were as if from the same script: “How delightful.”
Lin Sui’an nearly coughed blood.
“Let go of the Second Lady!” Ita came shoving through the crowd and bellowed up at Lin Sui’an.
Lin Sui’an was now well and truly stuck. In the present chaos, she naturally could not release Hua Yifeng. But standing on the carriage roof indefinitely playing the role of intimidating hero was obviously not a viable plan either. Worse still: the people who had originally gathered here were all admirers of the Second Lady. Now word had spread that a woman fighter capable of taking on a hundred opponents had appeared on the scene, and the ordinary townsfolk who had been hiding in the shops came poking their heads out in droves, eager to join the spectacle.
With a crowd clustering this large, where in the world were the constables responsible for keeping order?! Lin Sui’an fumed inwardly — then remembered: the new Governor of Yangdu had not yet been appointed; the Chief Clerk Magistrate was ill at home; the entire Yangdu Prefecture Office was leaderless.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she became.
What was Hua Yitang doing at this very moment? This whole mess was because of him! Why wasn’t he here yet to clean it up—
“Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!” A series of sneezes rang out across the full length of the Jiuchu riverbank. Lin Sui’an squinted toward the source and noticed that the congested stretch of road ahead was beginning, gradually, to clear. The dense crowd seemed to have received some order, parting to either side and opening a path. Down the middle of the cleared road, a procession of riders on tall horses advanced at a measured pace. The figure at the head wore white robes like petals opening in the spring light, astride a horse of flawless white, its mane threaded with golden bells that chimed and chimed with every step.
It was Hua Yitang and Mu Zhong arriving with the people of the Mu family’s merchant caravan. A procession of nearly a hundred men worked with clear division of labor: one group methodically parting the crowd, another maintaining order — the ease with which they operated made it plain this was a routine they had rehearsed many times over, each person a seasoned professional.
“Hua the Fourth Young Master!”
“It’s Hua the Fourth Young Master!”
“Heavens, what a lucky day — to see both the Fourth Young Master and the Second Lady of the Hua family at once. My life is complete!”
“If only we could catch a glimpse of the Third Lady of the Hua family too — then I could die without regret!”
“Dream on — the Hua family’s Third Lady isn’t someone you can see just because you want to!”
“The Third Lady of the Hua family ought to still be in the capital, shouldn’t she?”
“What a shame.”
“Fourth Young Master! Fourth Young Master! Over here!”
Hua Yitang waved his fan, his professional smile deployed to maximum brightness — all eighteen teeth — waving back at the crowd left and right, making his way forward with great fanfare, moving at an unhurried, leisurely pace until he finally arrived before the carriage. His eyes went progressively wider. He hurriedly dismounted. “Lin Sui’an, how did you—” Then he registered the situation and broke into a broad smile. “So it was you who rescued my Second Elder Sister!”
Lin Sui’an rolled her eyes. She swooped down from the carriage with Hua Yifeng still in her arm, helped arrange Hua Yifeng’s silk stole, then pulled Qian Jing from the earth, sheathed it, and turned to walk away.
Behind her, voices overlapped in rapid succession:
Hua Yifeng: “Fourth Young Master, you came too late.”
Hua Yitang: “There were simply too many people on the road — Lin Sui’an, where are you going?”
Groom A: “Fourth Young Master, you are finally here — it was nearly a disaster!”
Hua Yitang: “Who dared cause trouble? Lin Sui’an, wait for me—”
Ita: “Fourth Young Master, haven’t seen you in a long time.”
Hua Yitang: “Oh my goodness, Ita, have you been drinking wolf blood this past half year? Look how tall you’ve gotten!”
Groom B: “Fourth Young Master, it was this Qin Shanlan here who started trouble.”
Hua Yitang: “Who is this pig-faced fool? Drag him away, drag him away! Lin Sui’an — achoo! Achoo! Achoo!”
The sneezes were drawing ever closer. Lin Sui’an could bear it no longer. She stopped, turned around. Hua Yitang hastily hit the brakes on his own momentum, rubbing his red little nose, and smiled. “You’ve helped me out again. Thank you.”
Lin Sui’an swept a glance over Hua Yitang’s clothes. Sure enough — another change of outfit. Even more flowing, even more striking than before, and with even less insulating value. Just how much did this person love making himself look beautiful? All about the style, never about the warmth — at this rate he’d be sneezing himself into a cold soon enough.
“Your Third Elder Sister is at the Yueluo Medical Hall.” Lin Sui’an said.
Hua Yitang: “What?! Third Elder Sister is back too?! How do you know?!”
“Do you know what season it is right now?”
“Au…tumn?”
“Those clothes of yours — they! Look! Absolutely! Wonderful!” Lin Sui’an delivered her pointed reminder in a perfectly deadpan tone, then turned and pushed her way into the crowd.
Hua Yitang stood rooted to the spot, a look of delighted surprise spreading across his face. “That was the first time Lin Sui’an has ever complimented my appearance — achoo!”
Her good mood thoroughly wrecked, Lin Sui’an trudged through the chaos with her head down. She crossed the Kaiming Bridge, entered Chongyuan Ward, and only when she caught sight of the rental agency’s signboard did her spirits lift a little.
The property officer at the agency was a man in his thirties named Zhao, with a neat, meticulously maintained handlebar mustache and half-foreign blood in his veins. His Tang speech flowed effortlessly, and auspicious phrases fell from his lips with every breath — successfully rousing in Lin Sui’an renewed yearning for a beautiful new life.
“Lin Niangzi, you have absolutely struck gold with this one! Your landlord is a generous soul — upon hearing that the renter was a young lady, he gave the place a full renovation, and has cut the rent in half. It now comes to only two hundred and fifty coins a month. You are truly a person of great fortune!”
Two-fifty?
Lin Sui’an’s mouth gave a twitch. “When can I view the property?”
“The landlord is already waiting, and the lease agreement is all prepared,” said Officer Zhao, patting the satchel at his waist. “I will take you there at once.”
The courtyard was in the residential area of Huarong Street in Chongyuan Ward, a stick of incense’s walk from Liuyue Tower — convenient to get about from, with shops and businesses on all sides as neighbors. More than half the residents in the area were from out of town, and living by the principle that harmony brings prosperity, they were a generally easy-going lot — which had been one of Lin Sui’an’s chief reasons for choosing this location.
What Lin Sui’an prized most about the property was the garden: the ground was flat and the space larger than any of the nearby residences — more than enough room for her to practice the martial techniques in the Ten Purity Collection. She was also thinking of buying a couple of wooden practice dummies and sandbags for working on her hand-to-hand skills. The three side rooms could serve as bedroom, sitting room, and study respectively — she was going to need to make a serious effort to improve her classical Chinese. As for the kitchen, that was something of a puzzle: first she would need to learn how to manage a clay stove—
“Lin Niangzi, we have arrived.” Officer Zhao pushed open the courtyard gate. “And this is the landlord.”
A young man in cyan robes stood in the courtyard with his back to Lin Sui’an, a translucent jade-green hairpin resting in his topknot. Hearing the sound, he turned around and clasped his hands in greeting. “Lin Niangzi, I have long heard of your name.”
The corners of Lin Sui’an’s mouth, which had been lifting in pleasant anticipation of her bright new future, froze in place.
The man before her was bronze-skinned, broad-shouldered, and narrow-waisted, with a square face and strong brows. His most striking feature was his eyes — exceptionally beautiful, with lashes as thick and dark as a fan — and the more she looked at them, the more maddeningly familiar they seemed.
This street was called “Huarong Street” — Lin Sui’an’s head was beginning to ache — how had she not put it together earlier?
The man watched her quietly, his gaze sharp and penetrating.
“So it is the Hua family’s head of household who has graced us with his presence,” said Lin Sui’an, forcing herself to press on with a bow. “Truly a dazzling honor.”
Mini-theatre: From the chat records of the Hua family messenger pigeon group—
Hua Yimeng (the lovely Third): Heavens above, earth below! The Fourth Young Master single-handedly dismantled the entire Feng family!
Hua Yifeng (the learned Second): He is the Fourth Young Master, after all.
Hua Yiheng (the astute First): What the—!
Hua Yimeng (the ever-sharp Third): Though “single-handedly” may not be entirely accurate — I hear a very capable young lady helped him.
Hua Yifeng (the gossip Second): Oh? Do elaborate.
Hua Yiheng (the headache First): (Connection lost)
Hua Yimeng (the burning with curiosity Third): I hear this young lady is highly skilled, full of integrity, and very pretty too — she has saved the Fourth Young Master from peril on multiple occasions! Ita and I are rushing back to Yangdu as fast as we can!
Hua Yifeng (the-already-en-route Second): I will arrive in Yangdu in three days. Keep in touch. We can discuss details along the way.
Hua Yimeng (the thrilled Third): We should arrive around the same day. Where is Elder Brother?
Hua Yiheng (the exasperated First): I will arrive before dawn tomorrow.
Hua Yimeng (the disgruntled Third): Elder Brother, that is completely out of line — sneaking off on your own!
Hua Yifeng (the equally disgruntled Second): Absolutely not done.
Taking a break tomorrow!