Night had fallen at the estate of Princess Chengguo’s consort.

Since the founding of the Wu Dynasty, the imperial Zhou clan had branched out and multiplied, growing considerably prosperous by now. But because the imperial court kept fairly strict control over its clansmen, though there were plenty of wealthy and noble relatives, few of them held any real influence in military or political affairs. Among them, the position of consort-prince was, naturally, the most awkward title of all.

Still, though more than one man holding the title of consort-prince resided in Jiangning, Princess Chengguo’s consort was different from the rest. Ordinarily, though a princess’s status was noble, the men willing to marry into such a role tended not to be especially capable ones—but Kang Xian’s standing was that of a preeminent scholar of his generation, genuinely accomplished in letters and learning. And more importantly, by this point, the two of them held a generational seniority greater than that of most of the imperial family.

Ordinarily, an emperor’s daughters were called princesses, and his sisters were called Princess Imperial; but as the emperor’s aunt, Princess Chengguo, Zhou Xuan, now held the even loftier title of Grand Princess. Grand and imperial both—it sounded impressive enough on its own. Precisely why the brilliantly talented Kang Xian had become a consort-prince in the first place was probably something few people still remembered; even the man himself had likely long since put it out of mind. In any case, the shrewd and formidable Grand Princess Zhou Xuan and her erudite husband Kang Xian, though well into their years of quiet retirement and seemingly living out their days at leisure, in truth commanded business interests and wealth beyond most people’s imagining—wealth that, laid bare, would likely leave everyone gasping.

Of course, wise people understood the value of keeping a low profile. Throughout the Jiangning region, Princess Chengguo’s influence largely stayed clear of major affairs, her many business holdings pursuing quiet, unassuming profit rather than prominence. Because of this, many of the surrounding imperial relatives were rather more inclined to keep close ties with this branch of the family. Today, after Prince Kang Zhou Yong had taken his two children out for tea with a group of talented young men, he’d stopped by to pay a casual visit as well.

By now, dinner had long since passed, and Zhou Yong sat chatting with his aunt in the courtyard. Earlier, his two children and Kang Xian had also been present, but little Pei and Junwu, being frequent visitors here, couldn’t sit still for long and had dragged Kang Xian off to look at treasures in the consort-prince’s Hall of Rarities. Zhou Yong didn’t visit the consort-prince’s estate often, but as a child he’d been quite close with his aunt, the Grand Princess Zhou Xuan, and the two spent a good while catching up on family matters before finally leaving the courtyard. He found Kang Xian near the garden; as for the two children, they’d wandered off somewhere unknown.

Zhou Yong had always held Kang Xian in deep respect, and now, as the two men walked toward the garden to enjoy the cool evening air, after some idle small talk, he casually brought up the afternoon’s events. “This afternoon, out with Pei’er and Junwu at the Fragrant Warmth Teahouse with some talented young men, I happened to catch sight of someone—the very man Uncle mentioned to me before…”

He recounted the whole affair, including Liu Qingdi’s appearance and his manner of speaking. “Heh, earning the title of foremost talent isn’t easy. This Liu Qingdi seemed open-minded enough, repeatedly praising Ning Yi’s astonishing talent, but I suspect there’s some jealousy underlying it, and he seemed eager to stir up some talk. Much of what he said sounded rather dubious, but by the end, it seemed a great many people were already aware of the matter. As for this Ning Liheng—Uncle suggested some time ago that Pei’er and Junwu take him as their teacher, and I’d wanted to meet him myself, though I hadn’t realized the whole affair with the Su and Wu families involved him. I wonder if Uncle has heard anything of it.”

The two men sat down together in the pavilion, and after Zhou Yong finished speaking, Kang Xian let out a laugh. In truth, to suggest that Zhou Yong had taken much interest in this matter before now would have been hard for Kang Xian to believe—it was Kang Xian himself, if anyone, who’d taken the greater hand in overseeing little Pei and Junwu’s upbringing. When he’d first suggested the two children take Jiangning’s foremost talent as their teacher, Zhou Yong had simply nodded along absently—well, foremost talent, and Kang Xian himself had recommended it, so it couldn’t be wrong. Zhou Yong’s attitude toward the apprenticeship had essentially been to show up whenever called; as for what sort of man Ning Yi actually was, that had always been left to Kang Xian’s judgment. But perhaps it was precisely what he’d witnessed today that had finally sparked some genuine interest in him.

Those of imperial blood, in the end, still cared, deep down, about genuine competence.

“Heh heh, I actually asked Liheng something similar myself, over a month ago,” Kang Xian said. “At the time, the whole business over the Su and Wu families’ fight for the imperial merchant title was raging fiercely, and just as the dust was beginning to settle, the Su family had been dealt a final blow. He wrote out that poem, ‘A Toast to Pei Di,’ in a fit of anger in front of everyone. I assumed he was seething inside, and that if he couldn’t resolve things himself, he’d surely come to me eventually for help. I waited several days at home, and later ran into him at Old Qin’s place—his mind was clearly elsewhere, distracted even while playing chess, yet he simply wouldn’t ask for help. It was genuinely infuriating…”

“If that’s the case, the man does carry a certain pride, then,” Zhou Yong said, nodding. “Uncle and this Ning Yi—you’re truly well acquainted, then? And… Old Qin as well?”

He recalled the young man’s appearance—only just past twenty, remarkably young. He’d assumed his uncle simply admired the man’s talent, but hearing this now, it sounded like a friendship of some real depth.

“Heh heh, we were originally just chess companions, nothing more involved than that. But afterward, Liheng did help me with a great many things—tsk, more people have benefited from him than you’d think.” Kang Xian nodded solemnly, then broke into a smile. “Though I only learned later that it wasn’t pride at all. Heh, I told him that day—given our friendship, surely he needn’t be so cautious about asking me for a single favor? The matter concerned his reputation, and its impact on the Su family was significant as well. I’d already decided to step in and settle it for him myself, but then he said one thing to me, and it kept me from bringing the matter up again for over a month afterward, heh heh…”

He clearly found this amusing, laughing with real delight. Zhou Yong frowned. “One thing?”

“Heh. About the cloth fading.”

Kang Xian shook his head, letting these simple words drift lightly through the pavilion. Zhou Yong’s expression remained puzzled for a moment; the surroundings fell quiet, and it was a good while before he truly grasped the meaning and reacted. “Ah?”

…

While this conversation unfolded at the consort-prince’s estate, in the Wu family’s main hall, an argument and heated discussion were underway. Servants kept their distance from the area, occasionally catching glimpses of shifting figures within but unable to make out what was happening. In the room where those who controlled the entire Wu family’s fate had gathered, an unfamiliar, strange atmosphere hung thick in the air; everyone’s mood differed from the ordinary—anger, shock, fear, absurdity, even the occasional burst of near-hysteria mixed among it all.

“No matter what, a third of everything—that’s impossible… absurd, there’s never been anything like this before!”

The argument had already been going on for some time. When Wu Qilong had first finished relating everything, the room had fallen into a long silence, followed by outbursts of disbelieving discussion.

Even in a marketplace notorious for greed, such a thing was exceedingly rare—one merchant house openly telling another, hand it over, a third of your entire fortune. On first hearing, it hardly seemed worth even discussing. And yet, as the mood gradually settled, as they read from Wu Chenghou’s and the others’ expressions that this was no joke, and as time gave them room to think it through, they began, slowly, to grasp the true severity of the matter.

“Give them a third? And then spend another third, or even half, greasing palms to make it all go away? What would become of our Wu family then? We… even if we died for it, how could we face our ancestors, all the effort they poured into building this fortune! The name of Jiangning’s foremost cloth merchant…” Wu Chengluo, who oversaw affairs around Hezhou, shook his head. “It’s just fading cloth—I don’t believe it’ll come to the confiscation of our entire estate! With enough maneuvering, enough greasing of palms, my Wu family may well weather this storm after all!”

“When the wall’s already crumbling, everyone piles on to push it over, Old Seven,” Wu Chengyuan said.

Elsewhere, Wu Chengke’s face had gone livid. “Give them a third, then lose half or a third more to bribes, then give up market share going forward and content ourselves solely with the imperial merchant title—that’s exactly what the Su family was hoping for. After all this, do you honestly think the Su family will just let it go easily otherwise?”

“You just said yourself they won’t let it go easily—who’s to say they won’t leak word secretly, or set some other trap for us regardless!”

“It’ll take them time to digest what they’ve already gotten, and besides… this approach is better for their reputation too…”

“Not destroying our family’s reputation is somehow better for us?” Wu Chengluo looked at Wu Chengke as though he’d lost his mind.

“At the very least, no one could say afterward that they took our property and drove us to ruin on top of it…” Wu Qilong joined the argument, his tone low.

“Whether they can drive us to ruin at all is still very much in question!”

“Seventh Uncle, don’t speak out of anger…”

“I’m not speaking out of anger—you’re the one who’s been rattled by that scholar! Everyone knows those so-called talents are all just big talk!”

“But this is genuinely a fight for survival now, and when the wall’s crumbling, everyone piles on, Seventh Uncle! Right now there’s a whole crowd watching the Su family, waiting for them to fall on their own before they move in! The Su family hasn’t had any major scandal break out in public. But if something like this happens to our own family, everyone will have a hold over us, everyone will pile on while we’re down! Does our Wu family have fewer rivals than the Su family did?”

“It may not necessarily reach that point! And if we do as he says, what’s so different about ending up there anyway…”

“Enough!”

A cane struck the floor with a sharp crack. After all this arguing, amid the jumble of murmured voices, Fifth Granduncle Wu Zhen, seated up front, finally lost his temper and rose, trembling, to his feet.

“Enough of this idle chatter—this isn’t some ‘point’ we’re weighing here. It’s the confiscation of our estate and the extermination of our clan!” He struck his cane against the floor. “Confiscation and extermination!”

The room fell silent at once. The old man looked around at everyone, then sank back into his chair, speaking between labored breaths. “Still don’t understand? This isn’t about degrees. It’s not a question of thirty percent versus sixty percent if we get this wrong. If you get this wrong, it’s the confiscation of the entire estate and the extermination of the clan—everyone in this room, everyone outside it, your own wives and children—some will die, some will be exiled. By now, all of you surely already know this… stop arguing. Say something useful.”

“We could only… only try approaching some officials through connections,” Wu Chengyuan said hesitantly, after a moment.

Wu Chenghou, seated above, shook his head. “Ten days’ time. No amount of money can buy an official at the Three Departments or Six Ministries level in that span.”

Fifth Granduncle Wu Zhen caught his breath. “Actually—if the negotiation truly does fall apart, would it really come to something this severe? Let’s think about that first.”

“The Chen and Lü families have been watching us too. They’ve held the imperial merchant title before, and they want to expand further now—they have old ties within the bureaucracy. If our Wu family falls and gives up our share, they’d be delighted…”

“When the wall crumbles, everyone piles on—that’s certain…”

“And war really is coming. If it weren’t for that…” Wu Qilong frowned. “There’d likely be more room to maneuver…”

“It’s not certain that war changes anything for us specifically—how likely is that, really?” Wu Chengluo asked.

“I don’t know.” Wu Qilong said this frankly, then looked around the room. “Uncles, elders—what do you all think? Are you… willing to take this risk?”

Whether a family faced confiscation and extermination ultimately depended on the emperor’s mood. If it were an isolated matter, perhaps they could risk it. But with war looming and the possibility that other cloth merchants might fan the flames once this became public, combined with however the emperor might react upon hearing of it, no one could feel any confidence about the outcome. A difficult silence fell. Fifth Granduncle struck his cane once more. “Then what is there left to discuss…”

“There may still be a chance.” Wu Chengke thought for a long while before finally speaking. “This Ning Liheng’s proposal is simple enough—essentially, he wants our Wu family to buy time with money. But business can always be negotiated, and we don’t actually know how much of what he said was mere bluster. What we need now is to gauge how badly the Su family wants a smooth transition, how much effort they’re willing to expend for it, and who exactly is orchestrating this, who’s making the calls. We need to figure these things out first…”

Wu Chenghou nodded. “It can only be one of three people—Su Yu, Su Tan’er, or Ning Yi…”

Wu Chengyuan frowned. “I can’t speak to Ning Yi, but Su Yu and Su Tan’er are no pushovers either. What if this is just a single probe, and the negotiation collapses at the first attempt?”

Wu Chenghou fell silent for a moment. “It depends on how decisive they are, how badly they want this…”

“Su Tan’er hasn’t had an easy time of it lately either,” Wu Qihao spoke up, raising his head. “Our Wu family still has a chance of avoiding real disaster, and even in the worst case, we can hold out for several months, maybe most of a year… Su Tan’er must be desperate right now to prove her own capability, with this whole affair under her direction. I think… there’s definitely room for negotiation. The critical thing is how long we can keep the news of a possible delay from going public—if we can hold out these next few days, we might be able to spread false information, muddy the waters so no one knows what to believe.”

“That would only keep some people from noticing, that’s all. Once the Su family lets word out, some people will believe it regardless—spreading rumors randomly only fools part of the crowd. We’d need to keep up this maneuvering for at least a month or two…” someone spoke up, shaking his head. “To find their weak point, we should first figure out who’s really controlling this scheme. But I don’t think it’s Su Tan’er pulling the strings here.”

“Su Yu’s never used tactics like this before, it doesn’t seem like him… but besides the two of them, surely it can’t really be that Ning Yi fellow. This kind of thing can’t be accomplished through cleverness alone—it has to rely on people like Su Yu and Su Tan’er, and besides, we already checked before—he has no experience at all with this sort of thing…”

Amid the buzz of overlapping voices and murmured discussion, Fifth Granduncle sighed and gestured toward Wu Qilong, who had fallen silent again in his seat. “Qilong—you’ve had the most direct contact with this Ning Yi. What do you think? Even if it truly is his scheme, what sort of man is he, really?”

Wu Qilong glanced at him, hesitating. “I… I have some thoughts, but…” He shook his head. “It’s difficult to put into words…”

In the marketplace, it was always by grasping the outline of one’s opponent that one could truly begin to counter them—the same held true when trying to formulate strategy and escape a crisis. If an opponent had constructed a seemingly flawless scheme, the only recourse was to search for weaknesses in their character, to guess at what they might have failed to anticipate. The Su and Xue families had been rivals for years, with the Wu family watching from the sidelines throughout—but as for this Ning Liheng, even now, truly no one could claim to understand him. Perhaps only Wu Qilong, who had spent the most time in contact with him, could manage to piece together some rough outline at this point.

“Actually, thinking back on it now, there’s one thing all of us seem to have overlooked…” After a moment, he sighed, and finally began to speak. “Everyone here already knows something of Su Tan’er’s character. Two and a half months ago, right after the assassination attempt on Su Boyong, she suddenly fell ill. We assumed it was simply the pressure getting to her—and the pressure on her at the time really was immense, we confirmed that much, so we had no reason for suspicion. But looking back now, there was actually something off about it.”

At this, someone else seemed to catch on. Wu Qihao spoke up. “She was gone from view for that entire month…”

“Exactly,” Wu Qilong nodded. “Given Su Tan’er’s temperament, once the initial days of her illness passed and the fever broke, there’s no way she’d have stayed bedridden through the rest of it under those circumstances. But at the time, Ning Yi had taken over—somewhat comically, in fact—while behind the scenes, the Su family kept up their loud promotion of the yellow cloth without missing a step. We all assumed Su Tan’er simply couldn’t handle the finer details, so she’d left him to hold the overall course while she recovered—and because of that, once Ning Yi had put on a few performances, we figured that even if he could manage the big picture reasonably well, there’d surely be gaps in the details we could exploit…”

“It might sound like hindsight now, but think about it—given Su Tan’er’s temperament, how could she possibly have stayed at home through all that? Ning Yi may not have understood her, but she certainly understood herself… Today, when Ning Yi told me everything, it finally clicked for me. He said it was because of the fading yellow cloth that Su Tan’er collapsed in the first place. A woman like that, with Su Boyong assassinated and the Su family facing crisis on every front—none of that alone could have kept her bedridden for a full month. We overlooked all of this, but thinking back now, when she first collapsed, the Su family’s Eldest Branch had absolutely no one steady at the helm. Her condition at the time couldn’t possibly have allowed for this kind of calculated scheming—it must have been during exactly this period that Ning Yi finished planning everything, which is why, once her fever broke a few days later, she still didn’t get out of bed, and why the Su family’s old patriarch never intervened either…”

“And then everyone fell right into this scheme. At the time, it looked as though this Ning Yi hadn’t done anything at all, yet looking back now, we didn’t have even the slightest sense that anything was wrong—it never even crossed our minds. Even more than a month after the imperial merchant title was decided, Ning Yi simply set the whole matter aside entirely, and we went back over the timeline several times without a single moment of suspicion… Uncles, elders, every single step of this was executed with perfect precision. If you ask me to describe what kind of opponent a man like this truly is, then I genuinely… genuinely…”

He frowned, his expression hesitant for a long while, unable to find the words. But everyone around him could already see, more or less, the outline taking shape…

…

“…In the end, when you break it down, it’s really just a simple matter of using someone else’s flowers to make an offering to Buddha—say it out loud, and plenty of people could probably think of it. But actually carrying it out is another matter entirely—far, far more difficult than it sounds. You have to lure someone into having the idea themselves without being too obvious about it, every single step has to land at exactly the right moment. Otherwise, the Wu family is no novice in the marketplace either, seasoned by decades of experience—the smallest misstep would let them catch on to the scheme…”

In the pavilion at the consort-prince’s estate, Kang Xian shook his head with a smile.

“At the time, the Su family had a mole in their midst, and there’s no way Ning Yi could have gone around personally coaching people to play their parts—he’s a matrilocal son-in-law, after all, controlling the whole affair from that position was no easy feat. And yet he managed to draw out exactly the thoughts he needed from people, bit by bit, apparently without anyone noticing a thing. The Wu family believed they’d cleverly stolen the Su family’s formula on their own initiative, with no idea how many threads Ning Yi had been pulling behind it all. I’d had people keeping an eye on the Su family at the time too, heh, and we noticed absolutely nothing either. When he said that one line to me, I sat there stunned for a good while myself, same as you just now—once I finally worked out what he meant, the back of my neck went numb. Formidable, truly…”

“Making the heaviest of tasks look effortless, weaving the whole scheme together thread by thread… Many things about it seem almost miraculous, though the underlying idea might be simple enough. But what determines success or failure often lies in exactly these details that others can’t see or don’t notice. The only person I can think of who might manage something similar would be Old Qin himself… ahem…”

He paused here, and let out a faint sigh. Zhou Yong frowned. “Uncle mentions Master Qin—could you possibly mean…”

Kang Xian shook his head. In truth, what he was hinting at wasn’t much of a closely guarded secret anymore, though it still wasn’t something to bring up carelessly. “What Liheng has accomplished this time is truly admirable. I suspect the timing is nearly right now—we’ll soon see the truth come to light. Heh heh, and when it does, you and I shall get to watch everyone’s dumbfounded expressions. It’s a fortunate thing indeed that Pei’er and Junwu were able to take him as their teacher—Defang, you mustn’t neglect him.”

“Of course not, I would never dare neglect him,” Zhou Yong said, bowing respectfully, signaling that he now held Ning Yi in considerably higher regard. “Though I did hear he refused a position as a guest scholar at the princely estate. I wonder why.” He’d heard about this some time ago and had let it slip his mind, but it now came back to him.

“Heh, Liheng’s temperament differs from most people’s. Give it time, and you’ll come to understand—it’s not that he holds any grievance against the princely estate. Do you know, Defang, that even while he spoke of business matters so casually that day, he still seemed rather distracted while playing chess? Do you know what that was about?”

“Had he run into some trouble?” Zhou Yong asked, frowning, resolving to remember this.

Kang Xian, though, only smiled with some amusement. “No… though, well, trouble it was, in a way—just not the sort anyone else could resolve for him. At the time, he’d handled the whole life-or-death affair concerning the Su and Wu families with such casual ease, and yet there was still something troubling him. Old Qin and I were rather curious ourselves, and when he finally told us, heh heh, we found it quite amusing indeed. It seemed that a certain woman had confessed her feelings to him that day, and being the Su household’s matrilocal son-in-law himself, he found himself uncertain and torn over how to arrange things going forward.”

Zhou Yong blinked, then let out a startled laugh. “Such a trivial matter as that! A man having several wives and concub—er…” He’d meant to say this in a hearty, magnanimous tone, but recalling that the uncle before him kept only a single wife—albeit one he clearly held deep affection for—he stopped himself short and changed course. “Ahem, the man does seem to be one of deep and genuine feeling, at that…”

“Heh heh, speaking of which, Old Qin and I are actually acquainted with that woman as well. A fine person indeed—she was once in the pleasure trade, though she always kept herself carefully above reproach, and eventually bought back her own freedom…”

…

In the quiet of the night, on the second-floor veranda of the small courtyard at the Su estate, Ning Yi and Su Tan’er sat gazing up at the round moon, eating snacks, letting the breeze wash over them as they talked.

Tonight the two of them were, rather uninspiredly, gnawing on plain flatbread.

“When you negotiate with the Wu family, try to sound a bit more commanding.”

“Mm… but how exactly should I sound commanding?”

“Er, something like… ‘Don’t be sad—everyone’s got to go sometime, after all…'”

“You’ll drive people to their graves with talk like that, husband.”

“They won’t die that easily—they’re all business elites… hm, tonight’s moon on the fourteenth is quite round too.”

“Too bad it’s not the fifteenth of the eighth month…”

“Why’d you suddenly think of the fifteenth of the eighth month? You missed the poetry gathering this year—was that a disappointment?”

“Not really. I just suddenly found myself thinking, if it hadn’t been because of me that husband missed it, we wouldn’t have gotten to see him write another moon poem that left all those talented young men without a single verse left to write.”

“It wasn’t quite that dramatic…”

“Well then, why don’t you write one now, husband, to celebrate the Wu family’s downfall?”

“Sure.”

“Wait, you’re really going to write one?”

“Heh, I’m a talented scholar, aren’t I—dashing off a poem is child’s play…”

“…” She waited, holding her breath in anticipation.

“…Oh, the ocean—you’re just water!”

“Um…”

“Oh, the steed—you have four legs!”

“…” Her expression began to twitch.

“Oh, the moon—you’re so round!” His expression here remained perfectly composed.

“…”

“Oh, the Wu family—you’re done for.”

“…” Her head had already dropped, stuffing flatbread into her mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle her trembling.

“There we go—see, a poem about the moon, and about the Wu family’s downfall, all in one.”

“Um… uh… cough cough… uh…”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Uh, uh, uh…”

“Are you trying to choke yourself to death?”

Under the moonlight, Ning Yi began laughing helplessly, patting his wife on the back. Seen from this angle, Su Tan’er’s figure looked genuinely quite slight and delicate.

She seemed on the verge of choking to death and had started headbutting Ning Yi’s chest in her distress.

This might be the year I’ve laughed the most in my whole life…

Amid this almost entirely unladylike display—something she’d never once done before—that was what she found herself thinking.