“So you’re the Ning Liheng?”

“The one who wrote the Prelude to Water Music?”

Green hills, fresh grass, all of nature stirring back to life with spring — the sun hung at a slant in the sky; it was still fairly early in the morning. In the small pavilion, a group of scholars down from the capital had cast Ning Yi as their most formidable imaginary rival, talking at length about the tactics they’d employ against him — only to look up and realize this imaginary rival had somehow already made his way right into their midst. The scene grew more than a little awkward for a moment; fortunately, after a few seconds of stunned silence, Zhou Bangyan and the others recovered themselves enough to voice their questions, however uncomfortably.

Ning Yi could only shrug in acknowledgment.

Had everyone truly held some spirit of rivalry going in, Ning Yi could be said to have scored the first point right off the bat with this entrance. Yet it was Li Shishi, off to the side, who blinked at him in astonishment for a good while before her first words turned the whole situation around. “So little Ning, brother, is the same Ning Liheng someone invited here specifically to give me trouble?”

Her expression at that moment was all innocence, tinged with a hint of wronged feeling, and Ning Yi found himself momentarily at something of a loss for how to respond. “Ha, that’s just rumor. I only came to watch everyone perform.”

“To watch performances?”

“Mm. Out sightseeing with a couple of friends, watching pretty girls sing and dance.” Ning Yi cracked open a peanut and popped it into his mouth, laughing. “As for giving anyone trouble — Puyang Yi did come to me once about it, but I’m not really all that keen on poetry, so I never really agreed to anything. So Shishi just needs to worry about whoever else Puyang Yi’s brought along. I’m a good guy.”

Though he claimed to have come only to watch the singing and dancing, none of them believed it for a moment. They had, after all, just been discussing among themselves how to devise questions that would trip up the scholars of Jiangning, and had no idea how much of it he’d overheard. Amid the awkwardness, it hardly seemed appropriate to bring up the matter of giving him trouble. And besides — judging from the three poems that had already made their way to the capital, Ning Yi’s literary talent was clearly considerable; whether it was the Prelude to Water Music or the Green Jade Cup, even Zhou Bangyan, the most accomplished among them, admitted he couldn’t have written anything to match. Whatever small tricks they’d planned would only end up embarrassing themselves in front of a man like this. Having spoken so confidently just moments before, if it had come to an actual formal confrontation later, they might have felt no particular pressure — but right now, in this small pavilion, all four of them felt distinctly overshadowed, and could only fall back on genuine pleasantries.

“…Actually, back when Shishi was here in Jiangning studying the zither, she lived at the eastern end of Sanlian Lane, and little Ning’s family lived right in the middle of that same lane. We were just children then — I remember he’d sit there every day with a book, reading and reading, everyone used to call him the bookworm…”

Shishi kept the conversation lively, explaining her connection to Ning Yi to the group. Fang Wenyang laughed along. “Actually, I was quite the bookworm myself as a child — Brother Ning and I have that in common.” He went on to bring up how the Prelude to Water Music and the Green Jade Cup had been circulating through the capital, using it as a topic, and soon everyone was chatting and laughing together.

Talk carried on like this for a while until, at the courtyard entrance, Yu Hezhong finally showed up, greeting everyone before turning to Ning Yi. “Well, meeting Shishi turned out to be a real surprise, didn’t it?” His relationship with Zhou Bangyan, Tang Weiyan, and the others wasn’t particularly good; the men, munching on fruit, eyed him with odd looks, thinking to themselves — how on earth did this fellow manage to find him? This Ning fellow seems to have gotten a pleasant surprise out of it, while the rest of us have gotten quite the opposite…

Yu Hezhong, still unaware of what had actually happened, sat down and chattered away to himself while the others responded with a few perfunctory words. Ning Yi, realizing he’d already spent a good while here, figured Yun Zhu and Jin’er must have made it inside the estate by now, and stood to take his leave. Shishi rose to see him off, exchanging a few more parting words, and finally walked him all the way to the courtyard gate, having Chunmei lead him the rest of the way.

“Little Ning, brother — did you really never agree to that Master Puyang’s request to give me trouble?” Standing at the courtyard entrance, Li Shishi asked this quietly, eyes lowered.

Ning Yi looked her over for a moment. “And if I had agreed?”

“Then… I suppose I’d have no choice but to admit defeat.”

“Ha.” Ning Yi laughed, then leaned in slightly and said, low, “Miss Wang, you don’t strike me as someone who admits defeat easily.”

Li Shishi lifted her head, looking at him with a blink, her eyes bright, then said softly, “I’ll… put up a proper fight!”

“Ha, see you in a bit, then.”

“…See you in a bit.” The young woman named Li Shishi gave a small wave.

Following the maid Chunmei back toward the front of the estate, Ning Yi found himself thinking this meeting had turned out to be quite interesting after all. Anyone who reached the top in some field was never a simple person, and this Li Shishi in particular struck him as remarkably complex. That first meeting at Sanlian Lane, when she’d dressed as a man to go back and see the place where she’d once lived, had given him one impression — warm, unguarded.

Meeting her again just now, she’d carried that same neighborly warmth from before, and once everyone had sat down together, that warmth had also taken on a certain refined elegance. Her parting words just now, feigning retreat to advance, had clearly been false — Ning Yi had put on the air of having seen through her, and her claim that she’d “put up a proper fight” had come off playful, with a certain quiet resolve to it — but even that attitude, he suspected, might not have been entirely genuine either.

Such thoroughness on every front — truly impressive depth to her. To become the capital’s foremost courtesan took more than fine looks alone; watching her converse and laugh with others was like watching a genuinely delightful performance. Ning Yi couldn’t help but shake his head — the men who’d fallen for her and chased her all the way down here really were, in a way, rather pitiable.

Not that this Shishi was cold-hearted by nature — being able to manage people this well was often simply a natural gift, the ability to see through another person’s thoughts and desires at a glance. Given the profession she was in, there wasn’t much more to say about it — except that if she ever truly fell for someone, she likely wouldn’t put the man she loved in a position like this.

Meanwhile, having sent Ning Yi off, Shishi turned back, clenching her fists slightly. “So infuriating.” Only then did she head back inside.

Walking back into the pavilion, Yu Hezhong was still recounting his morning’s meeting with “little Ning,” mentioning that he might know Liu Qingdi, though Liu Qingdi hadn’t seemed to think much of him, and bringing up again how the three of them — himself, little Ning, and Shishi — had once all lived on the same lane. The others regarded him with looks reserved for fools. Shishi came back and sat down, and at the sight of it all couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

“Oh, right — while I was down by the river just now, I noticed quite a number of Jiangning scholars arriving, more than just one or two. Brother Zhou, Brother Tang, have the two of you settled on how to handle it? I heard, by the way, that the one they’re calling Jiangning’s foremost talent these days, this Ning Liheng, is coming too — what does Brother Zhou make of his writing? Last time Shishi sang his Prelude to Water Music, I heard it myself — it stunned the whole room, genuinely fine poetry, that.”

Yu Hezhong said this with great seriousness. His own literary talent, while not on par with Zhou Bangyan, Tang Weiyan, or Fang Wenyang, was still decent enough that he could recognize good work when he heard it — though he hadn’t actually looked into the reputation of Jiangning’s talents these past few days. As for Ning Liheng, he knew the name and nothing more. Bringing up the Prelude to Water Music now, feigning an innocent question, was really just meant to put pressure on Zhou Bangyan — aren’t you supposed to be so impressive? Don’t forget, there’s someone even more formidable waiting here. But no sooner had he finished asking than the others’ expressions turned even stranger.

Zhou Bangyan glanced at him, then picked up the teapot to pour himself a cup. “An army may be deprived of its commanding general, but a common man cannot be deprived of his will. Our fighting spirit’s already spent — how are we supposed to go challenge him now?”

“Eh?” Yu Hezhong didn’t understand.

Shishi covered her mouth, suppressing a laugh, beside him. Xu Dongmo glanced at him sideways. “Hezhong, do you honestly not know little Ning’s identity?”

“I know it. I went with Shishi to Sanlian Lane that day, and that’s when we ran into him again — you can ask Shishi to confirm it.”

“Then Hezhong doesn’t know that the bookworm you and Shishi keep talking about from back then — his name is Ning Yi, courtesy name Liheng?”

“What? He’s got the courtesy name Liheng too? What a coincidence—” Yu Hezhong stopped mid-sentence, finally catching up, blinking, before shrinking back and looking at Shishi. “N-no way. Little Ning is that Ning Liheng?”

Shishi nodded.

“Then… the two of you already had your match just now? And you lost?”

Yu Hezhong looked around at Zhou Bangyan and the other three. They’d talked about wanting to challenge Ning Liheng, and now, seeing them like this, it seemed to him that the man had just walked in, they’d opened their mouths to provoke him, and in that short span of time these four — top-tier talents of the capital, no less — had somehow already lost. Just how formidable was this little Ning, exactly? He was thoroughly stunned.

Tang Weiyan shook his head. “How were we supposed to challenge him? The man walked in and immediately had the upper hand — hearing us discuss how we planned to give the Jiangning scholars a hard time, how could we possibly turn around and try the exact same trick on him right after?” He shook his head again, clearly annoyed. “And how does it end up like this — he says he won’t cause trouble for us, and somehow it feels like he’s already won. Ugh, it really doesn’t sit right with me.”

The group of them found the whole thing a mixture of frustration and amusement. Fang Wenyang said, “I’d heard some things about this Ning Liheng before — he doesn’t usually take part in literary gatherings in Jiangning, but apparently once — last year or the year before — at the Jiangning courtesan pageant, some well-known scholars were composing poems, and he happened to pass by, sat down, and none of them dared put brush to paper after that. The Prelude to Water Music, the Green Jade Cup, Calming the Waves — those three poems…” He thought for a moment. “They really are difficult to follow. Still, if there’s a chance later, I’d like to seek his guidance myself. You won’t mind, will you, Shishi?”

Shishi smiled. “That’s your scholars’ business — why ask a girl like me?”

As they spoke, her thoughts drifted back to that first meeting — that day he’d been carrying a tattered old book, his clothes somewhat dirty and disheveled, as if he’d just finished some manual labor. It was said that the life of a matrilocal son-in-law wasn’t usually an easy one, some treated little better than hired hands, made to do all sorts of chores for their wife’s family. But apparently the family he’d married into was fairly well off, given that they’d even provided him with such a pretty maidservant — an ordinary household couldn’t have afforded that. And with the reputation he now carried, it seemed unlikely anyone would dare give him a hard time regardless.

Then again — with talent like his, why had he chosen to become a matrilocal son-in-law in the first place? It really was a curious question, one that left her wanting to know more.

Just after the introductions, she’d found it hard to reconcile “little Ning” in her mind with any solid image — “little Ning” belonged to distant memory, just that boy with his book, while “Ning Liheng” felt too abstract, paired with the Prelude to Water Music, hard to connect to the person standing before her just now. As these thoughts passed through her mind, the two images gradually began, little by little, to merge into one…

Meanwhile, Ning Yi had by now reached the front of the estate, where he found Yun Zhu and Jin’er, and asked them about the reason for their argument with Liu Qingdi earlier.