In the forest, the words came out almost like ordinary speech, without the usual rise and fall of someone reciting poetry — as if the speaker, lost in thought, occasionally let out a small laugh, making it sound more like idle joking than composition. Had it not been for the fact that the two lines “a waning moon hangs on the sparse wutong tree, the water clock has run dry and all is still as people settle for the night” were clearly not ordinary speech at all, Zhou Bangyan and Li Shishi might have struggled, for a moment, to even recognize this as verse.

The two of them stopped where they were and exchanged a glance. Once the lines had registered, the parallelism was strikingly beautiful — clearly a rare and excellent line, though it wasn’t clear yet whether it was a poem or a lyric. In the sunlit clearing, Yun Zhu leaned against Ning Yi as well, listening quietly.

Years earlier, at the Jinfeng Tower, she had encountered no shortage of literary men, and during her time alone there, she had more than once had someone recite a romantic verse to her, hoping to win her heart. But she had always been too preoccupied with her own circumstances to be moved by such things. Since being with Ning Yi, their time together had always felt easy and unguarded — he rarely carried himself like some great literary talent, occasionally tossing off a crooked verse or an unconventional set of lyrics, and she, having given her heart to him, simply found it charming. She knew well enough that his learning ran deep, but this was the first time the two of them had sat together like an ordinary pair of talented scholar and beauty, seriously composing verse together.

When Ning Yi, after some thought, spoke the line “Who sees the recluse wandering alone, a faint shadow of a solitary swan,” she nodded — she recognized this as a piece in the “Song of Divination” form.

Not far off in the trees, Li Shishi glanced at Zhou Bangyan, then said quietly, “Song of Divination…” She had certainly never heard this particular lyric before; on first hearing it, it was hard to place, but even on a first pass, the quality of it was plain. The mood was deep and distant, yet in Ning Yi’s faintly amused voice, it took on a lighter quality, almost as though he were telling a story.

“Tsk — startled, it turns its head back, bearing a grievance none can understand. Having picked through every cold branch and refused to perch… alone on the cold sandbar.” Yun Zhu was still turning the lines over, savoring them, when Ning Yi spoke the second stanza just as evenly. He paused briefly on the line “having picked through every cold branch and refused to perch,” before continuing on. Yun Zhu thought about it a moment, her eyes reddening slightly, then lifted one hand to rest it over his, stroking her own cheek with it. After a moment, she said softly, “Having picked through every cold branch and refused to perch… alone on the cold sandbar. Liheng, is this lyric for me?”

“Do you like it?”

“I like it.”

“I’m not all that fond of it myself.”

“Hee…”

The two of them spoke softly back and forth, and off in the trees, the other pair had finally managed to piece the whole lyric together in their minds. The “Song of Divination” form ran to only forty-four characters in total, split between two stanzas, and yet within that space it painted a complete picture of cold solitude and quiet longing. Generally speaking, the merit of a lyric was never simply a matter of length — longer lines could naturally convey more — and yet here, in just forty-four characters, from “a waning moon hangs on the sparse wutong tree” all the way to “alone on the cold sandbar,” nearly every line carried an extraordinary density of meaning. The two stanzas mirrored each other in perfect symmetry, yet fused together with total seamlessness.

Ning Yi had composed this almost entirely off the cuff, and yet whether one looked at the precision of the phrasing itself or the way its meaning built and deepened, every part of it testified to a poetic skill that had all but reached its peak. Zhou Bangyan had felt just now that his own “The Court is Ever Long” was a piece few others could easily match; he’d felt inspired writing it, and quietly proud of the result. But turning this “Song of Divination” over in his mind now, he found he didn’t quite know what to feel. He glanced over at Li Shishi, but she, too, was silently repeating the lines to herself, trying hard to commit them to memory, with no attention left to spare for anything else.

Ning Yi and Yun Zhu spoke quietly together for a while, and the other two, still uncertain whether they ought to leave now, hadn’t yet made up their minds when a gentle singing voice rose up beside them. Neither Li Shishi nor Zhou Bangyan knew Yun Zhu well, but they could naturally tell she was a woman; hearing the soft humming of a melody now, Li Shishi realized this woman understood music as well. She’d assumed at first that Yun Zhu meant to sing the “Song of Divination” Ning Yi had just composed, but after a few hummed notes, what that soft, lovely voice began to sing instead was the line: “A thousand regrets, ten thousand regrets…”

The moment she heard that first line, Li Shishi knew exactly which piece this was.

[A woman waits by a river tower for her love’s return, watching ship after ship pass by without ever bringing him back, heartbroken as the evening light lingers on the water.]

This was a late-Tang piece by Wen Tingyun, depicting a woman leaning against a riverside tower, longing for her husband’s return — a piece considered essential repertoire for courtesans of the pleasure quarters, and one Li Shishi knew intimately well. What caught her off guard, though, was that the woman before her now sang it with a voice every bit as smooth and lovely as her own — perhaps even more affecting in how she conveyed the longing and beauty of the singing style. Though there was no instrumental accompaniment at all, the gentle, unhurried performance seemed to draw the whole world into the soft warmth of that voice.

She had no way of knowing, of course, that Yun Zhu had spent these past months studying the modern singing styles Ning Yi favored, blending them with the vocal techniques of this era — preserving the mood proper to the songs of this time while, in terms of sheer beauty and fluidity, singing them far more exquisitely than most others could manage. Had anyone else attempted this style of singing, they might have been dismissed as vulgar or overly sentimental, but Yun Zhu’s own skill had already reached a masterful level, and her performance now came across as entirely natural, without a single flaw.

The “Song of Divination” Ning Yi had just composed had, of course, been meant to express sympathy for her steadfastness, taking the line about picking through every cold branch and refusing to perch — but he knew he’d been a bit unfair to her in doing so, so the mood and meaning of the lines had come out somewhat melancholy. Now, in response, she used this “Dreaming of the South” to answer him — singing it with a light, easy beauty rather than any note of resentment, pairing “ship after ship passes and none is his” against his “picking through every cold branch and refusing to perch,” while also conveying her hope that he would return to her soon. Once the song ended, she was left a little shy, leaning against Ning Yi as he wrapped his arms around her.

In her time at the Jinfeng Tower, other talented men had recited praises or professions of affection to her, and though she had always been clever and well-versed in literature herself, she had never felt inclined to respond in kind. Only now, in the midst of real feeling, did she taste something of the romance woven through such literary exchanges — and found, to her quiet surprise, that she felt something like intoxication.

Not far off, the two in the trees, having heard this song, found themselves faintly moved as well — perhaps this really was the sort of scene one read about in old romances, of talented scholars and beauties in the water towns south of the Yangtze.

After a good while, Ning Yi finally laughed. “Trading verses with me now, are you? Ha ha.”

“I just suddenly felt like singing…”

“Mm, that was lovely.”

Ning Yi glanced up at the sunlight filtering down through the leaves. “Still… both of these lyrics carry a rather melancholy mood, don’t they. That won’t do.”

“When you come back, Liheng, I’ll sing you something cheerful.”

“Mm, let me think…” He thought for a moment, and the forest fell quiet around them. It was nearly midday now, sunlight falling across the grass between the trees, small spring flowers dotting the scene here and there. A moment later, what rose up was something of an entirely different mood.

[A lyric describing how delicate clouds weave patterns and shooting stars carry sorrow, as two lovers cross the vast Milky Way to meet only once a year — and yet that single meeting under the gentle dew and golden wind surpasses countless ordinary unions on earth below; how tender their love, how dreamlike their brief time together…]

Off in the trees, Li Shishi and Zhou Bangyan stood frozen in place. They had certainly seen plenty of romance before, and plenty of talented men and women exchanging poetry to express their affection — but never anything like this, tossing out lyric after lyric so casually, as if it were child’s play. Ning Yi, in high spirits now, spoke the lines smoothly: “…Reluctant to look back at the bridge of magpies leading home — yet if the love between two hearts can last forever, why would it need to be together every single day and night.”

This lyric was considerably easier to grasp than the previous “Song of Divination,” and it was also easier to gauge its quality against other work. Zhou Bangyan swallowed silently. Women, generally speaking, were even more easily moved by lyrics of this kind, and Li Shishi’s hand tightened faintly around the collar of her robe. As for Zhou Bangyan, he was himself a writer who specialized in scenes of romantic sentiment, and so he was all the more able to appreciate just how good or how lacking such a lyric truly was. He too had once written a piece for the Qixi festival — and if Ning Yi’s earlier “When Will the Moon Be Bright Again” had already made it pointless for anyone to write another Mid-Autumn lyric, then this new piece, once it got out, would surely mean he himself would never be able to write another Qixi lyric again.

If hearing that first “Song of Divination” had left him without much real sense of how Ning Liheng’s reputation had been earned, this second piece left him thinking of nothing but the sum total of Ning Yi’s five lyrics now.

Over on the other side, Ning Yi laughed. “Come on then, come on — do you like this one? Sing it again, and I’ll write you another one… Mm, this one really is for you.”

He meant to keep going…

Zhou Bangyan and Li Shishi found themselves at a loss for words. Meanwhile, Yun Zhu murmured the lyric over to herself, moved for a long moment. “I’ve already lost — isn’t that enough? Honestly, I liked that earlier ‘Song of Divination’ too…”

“They’re both yours.” Ning Yi thought about it, then added with a touch of hesitation, “Though, actually, that line — ‘if the love between two hearts can last forever, why would it need to be together every single day and night’ — feels a little unkind, in a way. Maybe I should change it…”

“Don’t change it!” Yun Zhu caught his hand, then said, blushing after a moment, “I… I really do like it.”

“You never said you liked it before…”

“You have to actually be moved to write it, though…”

“Well, as long as you like it, that’s all that matters.” Ning Yi said, then, after a moment’s thought, pulled her into an embrace. “Ah — if I ask the world what love truly is, that it makes people pledge their lives to it so completely; these paired wild geese flying south and north together, how many cold winters have their old wings weathered…”

Yun Zhu narrowed her eyes, her heart brimming with sweetness, then suddenly pulled back. “Stop, stop making poems — if you write this many all at once, what happens when you’re away and can’t anymore? I don’t want to hear any more…”

“Huh. No more, then…”

The two of them laughed and joked a while longer, their laughter carrying through the trees.

On the other side, Zhou Bangyan and Li Shishi emerged from the forest, and by the time they came within sight of the crowd again, both their faces had gone rather pale. Li Shishi clutched the front of her robe with one hand, trembling faintly. If that first “Song of Divination” had merely left her stunned, and the second, “Magpie Bridge Immortal,” tossed off so effortlessly, had already left her badly shaken — then by the time the third one came…

“These paired wild geese flying south and north together, how many cold winters have their old wings weathered… how many cold winters have their old wings weathered… what comes after that…”

Her heart pounded, her brow furrowed tight…