Walking to Hua Niang’s side, Li Tai pulled out a large package of osmanthus soft candies from his bosom and placed them on the small table in front of Hua Niang. Hua Niang stared at Li Tai in a daze, making babbling sounds as she tried to touch Li Tai’s face. Xiao Cangsheng caught Hua Niang’s hand, habitually pulled out a very large handkerchief from his sleeve and tied it around Hua Niang’s neck, took a osmanthus candy and stuffed it into Hua Niang’s mouth. Seeing Hua Niang reveal a child-like satisfied expression, he pushed her to a shady spot, then invited both Li Tai and Li Gang into the cave.
The guards here were strict. Not only did Xiao Cangsheng need to take out his token and pass it in, Li Gang and Li Tai also had to go through the same procedure. After verifying the secret marks, a heavy iron door was opened. The entire cave was brightly lit with lamps and fires. Countless craftsmen were sorting various gunpowder weapons on a long row of enormous platforms. The noise was very loud, but not a single person opened their mouth to speak.
“They’re not mutes, so why don’t they speak? Why are all of them conversing in sign language?” Li Tai asked Xiao Cangsheng in surprise.
“This is tradition, Your Highness. The earliest Persian slaves couldn’t speak, so they communicated this way. Although the apprentices they trained aren’t mutes, following their masters they naturally learned to speak this way. There’s nothing strange about it—once a habit is formed, it won’t easily change.” Xiao Cangsheng explained to Li Tai as they walked.
The panda smelled the scent of egg white and habitually opened its mouth. A refined young man poured the unused bowl of egg yolk into the panda’s mouth, laughing as he helped wipe the egg liquid from the corners of the panda’s mouth.
This was the gunpowder granulation area. Two bare-chested strong men vigorously turned the cranks in their hands. The gunpowder inside the drum, with the injection of egg white, slowly transformed into small gunpowder particles. After passing through three sieves, they poured the oversized gunpowder grains back into the wooden drum to continue tumbling until their particles became completely uniform—only then would they be considered qualified.
“These things should never have been moved from Wude Hall to the academy. His Majesty worries these things will blow the imperial palace to the sky—how can he not worry these things will blow the academy to the sky? Moreover, this old man only learned three days ago that these things are here. This won’t do—tomorrow I’ll have an audience with His Majesty and request that he move these things away from here.” Today, taking advantage of Li Tai’s visit, Li Gang wanted to handle this matter. Yushan Academy was a place where literary brilliance gathered—what business did it have hiding a large workshop manufacturing killing weapons?
“Where would you say to move them? The Imperial City clearly won’t work. There have already been two explosions at Wude Hall—the palace can’t endlessly keep building Wude Halls, right? If we tell the common people again that Wude Hall was destroyed by lightning, they’ll suspect the imperial family never does good deeds.”
“The place that can put my Father Emperor’s mind at ease, aside from the imperial palace, is only the back mountain of Yushan Academy. Rest assured, even if it explodes here, there’s no great harm. This stone mountain is extremely sturdy—it won’t collapse.”
Li Tai looked at the tall cave, very confident. The site selection to construction here had all been personally supervised by him, deploying enormous resources.
Li Gang sighed and said: “I’m not worried this mountain will collapse. What I’m worried about is that as the Great Tang’s military force becomes increasingly dominant, we’ll abandon many other choices and prioritize solving all problems with military force. This is very frightening. What I’m even more worried about is that the high mountain in the hearts of the Great Tang’s subjects will collapse.”
The panda dragged Li Gang to continue wandering in the cave. Along the way, they passed through countless gunpowder processing procedures and witnessed with their own eyes how the Great Tang’s invincible gunpowder weapons were actually manufactured successfully.
When they emerged from the back mountain’s door, Li Gang looked at the convoy transporting weapons in the valley, sighed once, then buried himself in the bear cart and said to Li Tai: “From now on, these convoys shouldn’t pass through Yushan. Exit Yushan from the back mountain of Splendid Valley.”
Li Tai nodded in agreement. These weapons indeed weren’t suitable to pass through Yushan Academy.
“I won’t go to what’s beyond. Being old, I’m afraid that seeing what’s beyond will prevent this old man from sleeping peacefully. Qing Que, don’t you want to go listen to Xuanren’s lectures? Then go. I actually very much hope His Majesty and the Crown Prince would also come listen. His thinking is very clear and orderly—all his theories come from those words of Yun Ye about labor creating humanity, except he’s verified them in even more detail.”
“For this, Huang Shu hasn’t done little tomb excavation. Xuanren wanted to find evidence there, and he actually found it. Yun Ye previously mentioned that he saw a cave in Nanzhao with countless rock paintings depicting how the ancestors labored and produced—this was also found by Xuanren. He also has new discoveries, finding even more rock paintings, ancient and unadorned, truly from the hands of ancient people. After summarizing and organizing them, he devoted himself to painstaking study at the academy for three years before finally arranging his own system of thought. Very difficult—it has similarities to Laozi’s non-action and Zhuangzi’s naturalness. It’s a great field of learning.”
“Qing Que, you’ve now drilled into a dead end. Since your research has made no progress, why not first set it aside and broaden your horizons? In worldly matters, often when one method works, ten thousand methods work. Since this path doesn’t work, we’ll just open another path.”
Li Tai bowed respectfully to receive the teaching, leading the panda to slowly leave the main road. Following the mountain path to circle back to the academy, he knew Teacher Li Gang didn’t want to walk the same road as those killing weapons.
Emerging from the mountains, Li Tai sent the teacher home and went directly to Hypatia’s residence. As soon as he entered, he embraced Hypatia and gnawed at her like a puppy.
Hypatia stood there proudly, allowing Li Tai to get her face and neck covered in saliva. Only when Li Tai impatiently stripped off his outer garment, leaving only short pants, did Hypatia hold Li Tai’s clothes, completely ignoring Li Tai’s shouting. She tidied her clothes and walked out with her head held high. As she closed the door when leaving, she said to Li Tai: “This is the sacred ground of the academy—it can’t withstand daytime debauchery. Li Qing Que, obediently take a nap. If you want to make a fuss, do it at night as you please.”
Li Tai looked down at his angry younger brother, smiled bitterly, and lay spread-eagled on Hypatia’s bed. Smelling the rich fragrance on the bed, his lustful fire burned even more intensely.
“This is the Thirteen Chapters of Daoism. Yun Shou, you must look carefully. A man’s place of storing essence is the source of life. A woman’s valley is the field of the human world. Storing essence and gathering energy, cultivating and nourishing original yang…”
Yun Shou threw the pair of porcelain dolls in his hands far away as soon as he left the room, roaring at the old palace maid who specialized in discussing matters between men and women: “How shameless! Even if these things must be explained, it should be my father who tells me. Why do you have to say these things? I’m not a five-year-old child. What I should know, I already know long ago. What I shouldn’t know, I also know.”
“If I want to look at women, can’t this young master find beautiful women? Must I look at you? If you dare approach me again, I’ll sell you to a brothel.”
That old palace maid twisted her fat body and said with a smile: “Yun Shou, matters between men and women can only be explained by women, not by men—this is the rule. Now you come look at my body and listen to my detailed explanation. This is not a lewd or evil matter, but rather the great way of human relations. Young people should guard against lust—why do we say this? It’s precisely because many times people don’t know, don’t understand their own bodies, and act recklessly, which causes many young heroes to age and die prematurely. You don’t want to encounter such terrible things, do you?”
Yun Shou tightly closed his eyes and said painfully to the old palace maid: “Why are you people all so ugly? If you were better-looking, perhaps this young master would have some interest in looking a couple more times. Now that I’ve seen you, how can I look at other women in the future?”
The old palace maid laughed heartily and said: “We are all ugly people carefully selected by the imperial family. The reason for this is to make you think a woman’s body is nothing more than this, thereby achieving the goal of reducing desire. But this is indeed the case—the difference between women is only in beauty and ugliness. Remove this point, and essentially there’s no difference.”
Yun Shou gave a great shout and fled from the scripture lecture room. He truly didn’t want to look at this incomparably ugly naked old woman one more time. Hearing that woman’s gong-like laughter, he couldn’t help but run even faster.
Just as Yun Shou ran out of the scripture lecture room, Xinyue’s figure appeared outside the door. She specially brought a set of the finest Shu brocade robe, having a maid help the old palace maid put it on. Then she took a plate of silver coins from another maid’s hands and placed it before the old palace maid, saying: “Thank you for your hard work, teacher. My son is ignorant and spoke nonsense—please don’t take it to heart, teacher.”
The old palace maid said with a smile: “This servant specifically does this work. Being able to lock away the young master’s restless heart and mind is this servant’s good fortune. Madam is too polite.” As she spoke, she smiled and accepted the plate of silver coins, poured them into the satchel she had brought, then took leave of Xinyue, exited through the back door of the Yun household, and left in a horse carriage.
Xinyue covered her mouth and secretly laughed for a while. After coughing twice, she barely suppressed her laughter and went to the front courtyard to find her fat son, estimating he was still angry at this time.
“Li Xiang, yesterday afternoon I saw an ugly woman.” Yun Shou lay listlessly on the table and said weakly to Li Xiang, who was practicing calligraphy with a writing brush.
“Not strange. I estimate you should have seen her too by now. Just endure it and it will pass.” Li Xiang’s body shook once, and the brush immediately drew a long ink mark on the paper.
Yun Shou felt Li Xiang’s expression was wrong. He raised his head to look at him and said: “That means you’ve already seen her?”
“This is propriety and ritual. Not seeing won’t do.” Li Xiang tried as much as possible to calm himself down, feigning indifference.
“When I saw that old woman undressing, I couldn’t take it anymore. How far did you persist?” Yun Shou suddenly became extremely spirited.
“A bit worse off than you. At the time, I was tied to a chair and watched the entire set.” Li Xiang put down his brush. Right now, he couldn’t write characters.
“Admirable! My dear brother, after this younger brother saw it, I vomited three liters of overnight rice. You, elder brother, actually watched the whole thing—truly remarkable! You’re indeed the leader of us brothers. Admirable, truly admirable.” For the first time, Yun Shou looked at the timid Li Xiang with new respect.
“I’m not like you—when you don’t like something, you can run. I couldn’t run. If I ran, in the future I won’t be able to save my mother from dire straits.” Li Xiang explained to Yun Shou awkwardly, stating the reason he had no choice but to watch.