The water’s light rippled on, the night cool as water, unnamed insects chirping among the leaves and grasses along the bank. It was growing late, and the people aboard the boat had already gone to bed for the night. Warm yellow light spilled from a window on the second floor of the pleasure boat, where two women had returned to their room and were having a bedtime chat.

“So that’s how it happened—that’s how your husband made his name?”

“Roughly… that’s about the shape of it. Just a few poems he was pressed into writing. When people call him the top talent of Jiangning, he doesn’t think much of it either… heh, he really is an odd sort of person…”

“Since ancient times, it’s always taken an extraordinary man to accomplish extraordinary things… but does he truly have no interest in the imperial examinations?”

“He says he doesn’t, though honestly, I’ve never pressed him too hard about it…”

“How did you two even meet, sister?”

“We only got to know each other after we were married.”

“How could that be…”

The lamplight was dim, the conversation made up of scattered fragments. It was already late, and Su Tan’er and Lou Shuwan kept their voices soft as they discussed matters concerning Ning Yi.

It would have been impossible for absolutely no one at tonight’s banquet to have heard the name Ning Liheng before. Even with information traveling slowly in this age, the community of scholars across the whole country was, after all, not so vast. A few poems, passed from mouth to mouth among the women of the brothels, meant that the name Ning Liheng had likely reached most ears at least once or twice—and scholars of this era prided themselves on their broad knowledge and sharp memory. After Ning Yi’s brief self-introduction, it wasn’t surprising that some found the name familiar.

But first impressions carry a powerful weight of their own. With Lin Tingzhi and Lou Shuwan present as a reference point—another couple where the husband had married into the wife’s family—it was easy for people’s minds to leap to certain conclusions. Meanwhile, Lin Tingzhi, eager to show off, had made a point of letting everyone know about Lou Shuwan’s family background, hinting that this dignified, elegant married woman had been won over by his literary talent and now favored him. Since her friend shared a similar background, anyone hoping to make an impression could naturally try their luck with her instead. In this way, the group’s attention fixed on Su Tan’er, and their minds simply filtered right past her husband, Ning Yi.

More often than not, the low status of a man who’d married into his wife’s family wasn’t something that needed to be spoken aloud. In the vast majority of such households, even if the wife’s conduct was openly indiscreet, the husband would rarely dare voice his anger. Such men held a status akin to a hired hand or household servant; occasionally, one with more spirit, forced into such a marriage against his will, might find such a situation unbearable—and stories of men who, unable to swallow their humiliation, murdered their wife and her entire family, were not unheard of.

Such cases were, of course, extremely rare. Though the era of the Wu dynasty still preached the virtues of the “three obediences and four virtues,” the very foundation of such marriages was inherently unequal, and with everyone around them regarding the couple as fundamentally unequal, it was only natural that affection between husband and wife rarely flourished. If the wife had held her husband in contempt from the very start, and the husband proved unable to distinguish himself, dissatisfaction would only accumulate over time—and it was not uncommon, in such cases, for the wife to eventually take a lover outside the marriage.

For a woman like Lou Shuwan—with her family’s wealth and standing—to have open or hidden entanglements with young scholars and men of talent was hardly considered strange. She was young, beautiful, wealthy, and possessed considerable grace besides; any scholar who managed to win her favor would only be seen as coming out ahead, never at a loss. In this era, it was considered rather elegant for great households to exchange concubines and mistresses as gifts; seducing another man’s wife, once it made the rounds in one’s social circle, was regarded as little more than proof of one’s charm—a romantic escapade worth boasting about. The region south of the Yangtze had never lacked for songs and verses celebrating such affairs.

And so, after the initial introductions, only one or two people harbored any real suspicion; the rest had little interest in paying attention to a man who’d married into his wife’s family, and no one thought to ask further questions at the time. It was only after Ning Yi and Su Tan’er had left, and the formal banquet had broken up, that someone finally turned to ask Lin Tingzhi about the couple’s background—or asked Su Wending and Su Wenfang about their family’s standing back in Jiangning. Only through this discussion did someone finally remark: “That Ning Liheng from earlier—strange, he shares a name with the author of that ‘Prelude to Water Melody’ poem.”

The woman named Qing’er aboard the boat laughed as well. “I was just thinking the same thing—and they’re both from Jiangning, too, what a coincidence.” Given her profession, she was more sensitive to such things, though she didn’t seriously believe the merchant family’s live-in son-in-law could really be some great poet. Still, she turned to the two Su brothers and asked, “Young Master Wending, Young Master Wenfang, back in Jiangning, have you two ever met that Master Ning?”

Su Wending said, “You mean… my brother-in-law, just now?”

“Oh! I mean the Master Ning who wrote ‘Prelude to Water Melody’ and ‘Green Jade Cup.’ Not long ago, Qing’er sang those tunes every day, and I’ve long wanted to meet the romantic figure behind them. Since I can’t meet him myself, if you two ever run into him back in Jiangning, do put in a good word for me with him.”

Su Wending and Su Wenfang stared blankly. “Um, yes… that’s… our brother-in-law.”

For a moment, the expressions around the boat ran the full gamut, most of them frozen in shock, followed by a wave of murmured whispers. Some, like Lou Shuwan, who hadn’t paid much attention at first, only now came over to ask questions once they realized what was happening. In truth, Su Wending and Su Wenfang had been harboring a bit of mischief all along—they’d expected that once their brother-in-law gave his name among so many scholars, everyone would exclaim in recognition, and they themselves would bask in the reflected glory. Instead, no one had reacted at all—until now, this delayed reaction, which left them thoroughly satisfied. Wearing expressions of perfect innocence, they said their goodbyes and headed home to boast to their sister and brother-in-law.

As for Lou Shuwan and Lin Tingzhi, they too returned not long after. Lin Tingzhi, wary of pressing Ning Yi too much, held his questions back, but Lou Shuwan was different. She herself had never had much enthusiasm for poetry and prose—what truly drew her was the atmosphere of refinement and excitement that surrounded such things: the annual literary gatherings of the Suzhou-Hangzhou region, the crowds of admirers, one scholar after another composing verses while the audience applauded and looked on in admiration…

She was a clever woman, and with a little study, could tell good poetry from bad. But unlike Su Tan’er, who—beyond her business dealings—genuinely longed to immerse herself in the literary arts themselves, hoping not just to judge good from bad but to become, in her own way, a woman of refined taste, even if her natural gifts and her position as a woman made that difficult, leaving her sometimes feeling that she reeked of nothing but commerce and lacked any true elegance, and thus admiring those literary men all the more—Lou Shuwan cared more for the surface impression that poetry conveyed. Whether she was truly cultured mattered less than whether others perceived her that way. She had no real sense of just how impressive the title “top talent of Jiangning” actually was, but hearing it invoked the idea of titles like “top talent of Hangzhou” or “top talent of Suzhou-Hangzhou”—and men who earned such titles, rich or poor, were invariably the center of attention wherever they went, whether by winning first place at some literary gathering, or being praised and favored by great scholars and officials. Some passed the imperial examinations and quickly rose to become local officials; even those who fared poorly in the examination hall remained, in the Suzhou-Hangzhou region, figures everyone looked up to.

Lou Shuwan could only imagine, based on this vague impression, what the “top talent of Jiangning” might actually be like—but no matter how she tried, she simply couldn’t reconcile that image with Ning Yi’s status as a man who’d married into his wife’s family. Puzzling over it the whole way back, she still found it awkward to ask outright once they’d returned. Fortunately, she was skilled in the art of conversation, and only after chatting for a while did she finally steer things around to the subject, her tone calm and unhurried.

Ning Yi, for his part, had little interest in discussing such matters. His literary reputation had, after all, been something of a fraud from the start. He felt no particular unease about this; in front of his wife’s family—Su Tan’er, Xiao Chan, Nie Yunzhu, and the others—he was happy enough to play the great literary genius if it made them laugh or feel proud of him. But putting on such airs in front of an outsider like Lou Shuwan felt entirely unnecessary, given his current state of mind and temperament. So he simply said his talent wasn’t much, and that others had overpraised him—and left it at that.

Lou Shuwan was left to assume he’d taken some offense at her rudeness toward him over the past couple of days, and so it wasn’t until late at night that she finally brought the matter up with Su Tan’er.

Even so, as their conversation wound down through the second half of the night, and Su Tan’er finally drifted off to sleep, Lou Shuwan’s mind was still full of questions. She couldn’t understand how such a great talent had come to marry Su Tan’er, nor why Ning Yi possessed such an odd temperament. The next morning, when she woke and saw Ning Yi practicing his boxing on the deck, she could only conclude that he must be one of those truly unconventional talents, versed in all six classical arts, who admired the ways of wandering knights. And when Lin Tingzhi saw Ning Yi practicing martial arts again, the complicated look on his face—as if he wanted to say something but held back—was equally difficult to read.

The pleasure boat set off again early that morning. The waterway from Jiaxing to Hangzhou still stretched nearly two hundred li, but with favorable winds and currents, even at a modest pace, by afternoon the waterway had grown increasingly busy. Villages and travelers along the canal’s banks grew noticeably more numerous, and here and there, gardens and estates nestled among the nearby tea hills and groves—all signs that Hangzhou was near.

Though Hangzhou was not yet the nation’s capital at this point in time, it had, as one end of the Grand Canal, always been an extraordinarily prosperous metropolis. By evening, the city’s buildings sprawled layer upon layer before them, and in the distance, a bustling cargo dock came into view—rivaling even Jiangning in scale.

After that, nothing further complicated matters. Lou Shuwan had her own hands unload the goods from the boat, and pressed Ning Yi and his wife to stay temporarily at the Lou family estate, since the group had traveled so far and presumably had nowhere else settled yet. Though their future business dealings might well depend on the Lou family’s local standing, Su Tan’er still shook her head and declined. In truth, the Su family already had some holdings in Hangzhou—only two modest shops set up somewhat casually, but as for lodging, she had arranged, from the very start of preparing for the journey south, to have someone come ahead and rent a small courtyard house; the search for a more permanent residence would take place over the coming days, alongside their sightseeing.

With so many people from the Su household making the trip, there were naturally plans to expand the business here, and moving everyone into someone else’s home right away wasn’t necessarily a good sign to project. Lou Shuwan, after a brief attempt at persuasion, let the matter drop. She was curious about Ning Yi, but her curiosity went no further than that. The next day, Ning Yi and Su Tan’er visited the Lou household, shared a meal, and met the current head of the family, Lou Jinlin.

The man was somewhat older than Su Boyong, likely just past fifty, his hair and beard streaked with gray, but he carried himself with great vigor, his features dignified and bold, his gaze sharp. When he settled into stillness, he projected an imposing presence. From his appearance and manner of speech, this was clearly a true titan of the business world. The Lou family’s foundations ran deeper than the Su family’s—though still a merchant house, it had settled into a genuinely stable family tradition. Lou Jinlin had likely been raised in comfort and privilege from childhood, but he was no mediocrity; he possessed real talent and skill, having weathered genuine, fierce battles in the marketplace to cultivate this kind of commanding, almost aristocratic presence.

Toward Su Tan’er, he adopted a warm, affectionate manner, treating her as an elder would a younger relative, his attitude relatively gentle. But toward Ning Yi, the head of the Lou family displayed more than a little suspicion and hostility. Over the meal, he posed several rather pointed questions, then narrowed his eyes, regarding Ning Yi with a faint, unreadable smile—the look, one might say, of a lion watching its prey.

Ning Yi could more or less guess where this hostility came from. Judging by the conversation during the visit, Lou Shuwan had evidently already told her father everything that had happened along the journey. Having heard his daughter’s account, Lou Jinlin likely felt she’d been made a fool of by Ning Yi and Su Tan’er’s little game of playing the pig to eat the tiger. He probably harbored little suspicion toward Su Tan’er herself, but upon learning of Ning Yi’s true identity, he instinctively wanted to take his measure.

Unlike Lou Jinlin, in his previous life Ning Yi had built himself up from nothing, and along the way had encountered no shortage of genuine business titans with deep family pedigrees. When such men sized up a younger person with wariness or a testing gaze, it was typically with just this kind of look. It wasn’t that young people who received such a look would genuinely feel afraid—but under that kind of gaze and presence, most ordinary people would inevitably lose their composure. Some, mindful of the other party’s power, would instinctively act deferential; others would stubbornly put on a brave front, or even adopt a somewhat arrogant, overbearing attitude—which, in truth, was itself a sign of losing one’s footing. To someone experienced in reading people, it was easy enough to see straight through to a person’s true depth. This wasn’t something that could be learned from books—only the kind of insight cultivated through years of judging character.

Under Lou Jinlin’s scrutiny, Ning Yi found himself almost fondly amused, nearly nostalgic. In his former life, the people who’d once looked at him this way had, one by one, eventually been surpassed by him—some rivals, some allies. Having built himself up from nothing, fighting his way up through endless struggle, though he’d since mellowed and grown more restrained, his edge, when he chose to show it, remained just as sharp. His farewell conversation with Tang Mingyuan, back then, had carried much the same quality—at his core, only weariness and a kind of wistful resignation, never quite able to cultivate that languid, lion-like ease.

Naturally, Lou Jinlin’s presence couldn’t put much pressure on him now. Smiling, he studied Lou Jinlin’s expression a few times, then simply adopted the easy manner of casual conversation, answering as he normally would, without adjusting his tone in the slightest. Whatever conclusions Lou Jinlin drew from all this afterward, well—that was none of his concern.

Su Tan’er, however, had noticed Lou Jinlin’s attitude, and on the way home after the visit, she looked somewhat put out. “That family—we go to visit them out of good will, and they still put on that kind of face. Husband… didn’t you notice anything?”

She looked at Ning Yi, asking a bit hesitantly. During the earlier conversation, Lou Jinlin’s questions about Ning Yi’s background had grown rather pointed, and his expression alone had been enough to put pressure on anyone. Yet Ning Yi had simply answered casually between bites of food—two of the more sensitive questions, touching on matters of marital affection he preferred not to discuss, he’d turned around into questions of his own, as if it were nothing at all. Under such circumstances, she herself couldn’t have stayed nearly so composed—yet somehow, he’d managed to seize the advantage right there on the old man’s own home turf, and then hand that advantage right back to him afterward, as if it cost him nothing.

Ning Yi merely shook his head, his manner calm. “His daughter was, in a way, taken in a bit by us. It’s not surprising he’d react this way. That old gentleman is genuinely formidable—unless it’s necessary, it’s best not to go making an enemy of someone like him.”

Tan’er nodded. “I understand.” She herself had grown up steeped in business and social dealings, and wasn’t necessarily any less capable than Ning Yi in that regard—at least, based on what she’d seen so far, it was hard to say who truly had the upper hand between them, since she herself was an exceptionally gifted and accomplished merchant. But hearing Ning Yi’s casual, almost cautionary words, she felt no resistance in her heart at all—only a docile nod, and a quiet sense of contentment.

Even so, no one would have thought her beneath Ning Yi for it. As the sun set and their carriage rolled along, bathed in its light, they looked, for all the world, like a young and perfectly attuned couple, husband leading and wife following in easy harmony. Ning Yi thought about this and found himself smiling, and a moment later, she smiled too.

The carriage rolled on through streets that were, to them, both beautiful and unfamiliar—already the streets of Hangzhou…

This visit had only included meeting Lou Jinlin, Lou Shuwan, and her husband; Lou Shuwan’s two elder brothers had not been home. It was a courtesy visit, without much deeper purpose, and neither side was likely to leave much of a lasting impression on the other. Lou Shuwan’s husband, though also a talented scholar, kept an extremely low profile within the Lou household given his status as a man married into the family. Of course, someone of his standing, in the presence of a family head like Lou Jinlin, had little choice but to keep a low profile regardless.

The day after the visit, rain began to fall. Lou Shuwan came by the small courtyard house where the Su family was temporarily staying. She had originally planned to play the gracious host and take everyone sightseeing around Hangzhou, but the heavy rain forced her to cancel those plans. The rain continued the following day, so Lou Shuwan went off to attend to business matters at home instead. By the time the skies finally cleared, she still hadn’t returned, sending only a household servant to lead Su Tan’er and the others around to look at various properties and storefronts, explaining only that the young mistress had urgent matters to attend to and couldn’t come herself, and asking for their understanding.

Having only just settled in Hangzhou, the Su family found itself with a fair number of properties already in the area, along with several shopfronts and estates ceded by the Wu family—all scattered too far apart, making formal acquisition and organization quite a troublesome affair. Su Tan’er had originally imagined this trip as a leisurely journey alongside her husband, but with so many miscellaneous matters tangled together, Ning Yi, for his part, found these days rather entertaining regardless.

After a few more days, they finally settled on a courtyard estate within the city and bought it outright, then began planning and furnishing it. The property was located near Taiping Lane. Though expensive, Ning Yi had been the one to insist on the purchase. By his reckoning, if the capital were ever to move south, a nine-li imperial city would eventually rise not far from here, and by then, this area—whether they chose to sell it or keep it for themselves—would become prime, invaluable real estate. He had no intention of competing with any powerful officials for the land; with even the slightest connections, selling it later could still bring in a substantial profit.

The streets surrounding the estate were fairly prosperous, well-suited for business, while the neighborhood just beside it was residential, suitable for family living. At the mouth of the lane stood a modest martial arts hall, its occupants forever grunting and shouting through their drills—though Ning Yi, having lived long in major cities, found the noise no bother at all, and rather amusing besides. It occurred to him, since he had nothing pressing to do, that he might as well join the hall and find some sparring practice.

He’d always had a fondness for the mystique of internal energy cultivation, harboring something of a longing for the world of martial heroes—more a fascination with the unknown and marvelous than any real enthusiasm for actual combat. He had no illusions about becoming some blade-wielding figure of the martial world. But having been through a few incidents, and with time on his hands now, it seemed like it might do him some good to practice a bit.

Of course, no sooner had he casually mentioned the idea than he met with firm, resolute opposition from his normally compliant wife and maids…