After the Cold Dew of September passed, the pace of the falling temperature grew ever more noticeable. When the heavy rains came down, the city of Jiangning seemed wrapped in mist. The rains of deep autumn lacked the clamor of summer showers; instead they carried the chill of approaching winter, seeping bit by bit into one’s clothes.

Crossing the little wooden bridge opposite the narrow lane, Ning Yi reached back and brushed at the water stains that had gotten onto his robe. On a day like this, a long robe was rather a nuisance to wear. By comparison, Xiao Chan, trotting up from behind, fared much better. Out in the rain, she hadn’t worn a skirt — just a top trimmed with lake-green lace paired with long trousers, her hair done up in its usual adorable double buns, pale blue embroidered shoes on her feet. Her whole outfit was light and easy. She must have fallen behind to buy something, for now she came flying over like a swallow, holding up an oil-paper umbrella, skirting one puddle after another.

“Young Master, Young Master, wait for me!”

“What is it?”

“I bought something.” Running up in front of Ning Yi, Xiao Chan smiled and produced a little booklet. “I passed that shop back there and saw this new release. You probably haven’t read it yet, Young Master, so I bought it.”

It was a newly published vernacular storybook, the kind sold on the market these days, titled Strange Bond of Ghosts and Foxes. Such storybooks were fairly common in this era — the language plain and easy to follow, some retelling historical legends, others folk tales of romance, with love stories involving all manner of spirits and ghosts being especially popular. The well-received ones, once published, would often be picked up by storytellers to perform in teahouses and taverns. Ning Yi had been reading a great many of these lately, and Xiao Chan kept it in mind, buying new releases whenever she came across them to bring home.

In terms of entertainment value, these stories naturally couldn’t compare to the stories of the modern age, but they were the best on offer here — good enough to flip through when bored, and being written in the old vernacular, they also helped him blend further into the atmosphere of this era. Ning Yi took it now with a smile, idly flipping through the pages, while Xiao Chan walked along behind him, chattering as she went.

“That man’s words at noon were truly detestable. Xiao Chan really wanted to go over and give him a scolding.”

“Mm.”

“He doesn’t know a single thing and just goes around guessing blindly, and he still dares boast in a restaurant about being some kind of talented scholar. A man like that couldn’t even pass the entrance exam for a xiucai.”

“Mm.”

“Young Master, ah, Xiao Chan is standing up for you here, you know — that man was speaking ill of you!”

“What does it matter?”

“How could it not matter! That person… hmph, fine, fine, I know Young Master doesn’t care what such vulgar people say, but Xiao Chan still felt upset hearing it, since it insults your reputation, Young Master. If you’d written a poem right there to curse him out, Xiao Chan would have gone straight over and smacked him over the head with it!”

“Heh. He doesn’t even know me.” Ning Yi turned a page in the storybook. “I was sitting right next to him.”

“That’s exactly why it’s so infuriating…”

The poetry gathering on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival was now over a month past, and the discussion sparked by that Water Tune Prelude had continued to shift ever since. In the first ten-odd days, praise for the poem had climbed to something like its peak, and curiosity and gossip about Ning Yi had been at their height during that same stretch. Then… the discussion had rapidly cooled, and what remained began moving toward something deeper, more specific.

Such talk, circulating through the streets and marketplaces, inevitably had a shelf life. For most common folk, in the ten days or so after Mid-Autumn they might still affect some cultured interest in what had happened at the gathering, but before long other matters would gradually bury that interest beneath them. Life itself was busy and hurried, and as people mentioned the matter less often, the talk one might overhear about it in ordinary days grew thinner too.

More of the admiration and questioning began concentrating instead among the ranks of scholars and students. The influence of the Water Tune Prelude kept spreading outward through the mouths and letters of these scholars, yet the doubts and speculation about Ning Yi himself stayed confined within Jiangning. A scholar in the eastern capital, say, who heard the Water Tune Prelude, would feel his admiration for it undiminished — but as for who exactly Ning Yi was, or whether he could really have written such a piece, that scholar naturally wouldn’t trouble himself much over it. It was, after all, too far away.

The Wu Dynasty resembled the Song in that Confucian learning had reached its zenith, and scholars held considerable weight in society — considerable, that is, relative to the thousand years before it. Even so, this being the era with more literati than any before it, the proportion was still far smaller than in the modern age Ning Yi had come from. And so, in less than a month, the stir had already quieted down — though, of course, as had happened just that noon, there remained the occasional chance of overhearing a few scholars voicing none-too-flattering doubts while out eating.

After Ning Yi had shared his thoughts with Old Qin and Old Kang that day, Old Kang, perhaps feeling that his own stirring of the pot on the night of Mid-Autumn had been somewhat excessive, had quietly worked to smooth things over afterward. Word had it that several students who’d wanted to come seek instruction from Ning Yi had since been scolded by their teachers. Over this past month, all manner of invitations to gatherings had poured in, every one of them ignored by Ning Yi. Of those who actually came calling to seek instruction, there were only three parties — one arrived to find him out, and the other two, on finding Ning Yi in the middle of teaching the children the Analects, opened with something like: “It’s said that half the Analects can govern the realm — hearing you expound on it today, Brother Ning, your grasp of it must run deep. I wonder how you’d interpret such-and-such passage?”

This was something of a reflexive move — latch onto whatever the other party happens to be discussing and build a question from it. As for the Four Books and similar canonical texts, Ning Yi had been through them several times and was reasonably well prepared; steeped as he’d been in an age of information overload, even an offhand remark from him could strike at the heart of a matter and leave people with something to chew on, and even when he took an unorthodox angle, his questioners found it hard to argue back on the spot. These visitors, having come prepared, naturally had further questions in reserve, some quite obscure — but with Ning Yi’s presence and command of the room, even someone like Nie Yunzhu could be swept along by him, let alone a band of scholars. By the time he finished answering on the Analects, there was no opening left to raise the rest. Ning Yi would handle things for a while and then take his leave, leaving the others with the impression that he was either extraordinarily learned or simply too deep to fathom — only afterward realizing that most of their prepared questions had never actually gotten asked.

Besides this sort of organized challenge, there were also those who came privately. One fellow named Li Pin came by nearly every day, seemingly drawn by the offhand stories Ning Yi told, and would sit in to listen. A few days earlier, after class, he’d asked Ning Yi some questions — mainly his own thoughts on those stories, framed as seeking guidance — though in truth every question still circled back to the meaning of the Analects. He hadn’t come with any intention to provoke, so Ning Yi spent over an hour talking with him. After that, the man stopped coming.

As far as Ning Yi was concerned, so long as no one could actually pin down proof of his lacking real learning, the outside world’s suspicions over the Water Tune Prelude could never truly harden into infamy. Whenever the day came that he needed that reputation, proving himself would be simple enough. Since it was something he could do at any time, there was no need to bother with it now — a matter he didn’t take to heart.

Among the doubts circulating outside, there also drifted, faintly, a rumor that Ning Yi had plagiarized the poem from some Daoist priest reciting verse. Few believed it, and as for where it had originated, there was of course no way to trace it. But Ning Yi had expected something like this from the start, and on hearing it, merely smiled it off with indifference.

As for the chalk — within half a month of first mentioning the idea, Kang Xian’s people had already produced a batch, and the quality was quite good. The progression from whiteboard to blackboard had thus been completed in just over ten days, making teaching considerably more convenient. The concrete results weren’t yet apparent, and his teaching routine remained the same: reading aloud, explaining meaning, telling stories. Just that. Still, the marked rise in the children’s enthusiasm for learning was plain to see.

It was only that this sort of lively classroom atmosphere was probably a rare sight in this era. The students loved it; the teachers, for the most part, shook their heads. Su Chonghua had brought the matter up obliquely once more, and this time Ning Yi discussed with him for a while why this style of teaching might actually have its benefits, after which the man let the matter drop. Partly this was because Ning Yi now carried the reputation of a talented scholar, haloed by the Water Tune Prelude, making it awkward to rein him in; partly it was because the academy had never achieved much of anything regardless, so it could hardly get worse — might as well let him do as he pleased and see what came of it.

Mornings were spent teaching; afternoons, wandering about, or going as always to play chess at Old Qin’s — provided it wasn’t raining, of course.

Xiao Chan still tagged along with him most of the time, and had even taken to sitting in on his classes at the academy — she rather liked hearing Ning Yi tell his stories, all sorts of strange and curious tales, which she could then boast about to her two sworn sisters once back home. Ning Yi suspected that her clinging a little closer these days might be at Su Tan’er’s suggestion — understandable enough, given that he’d written a Water Tune Prelude himself, and such things were only to be expected. He had considerable sympathy for it and didn’t mind in the least.

What did leave him rather puzzled, though, was that his wife did seem to have found some explanation to satisfy herself as to why he’d written that lyric. In the first few days, over meals, her scrutinizing gaze had been rather frequent. Later, it shifted — she returned to focusing on her work, the carriage coming and going each day, meals and conversation resuming their old rhythm, no more testing undertones in her words. This left Ning Yi rather curious: just what reason had she landed on, and accepted, and come to terms with… He really couldn’t get a read on it…

Aside from this life, otherwise unchanged from before, Ning Yi would occasionally ask around about martial arts or internal cultivation. The Su family kept a number of house guards, and it was said one of them had excellent hard-style training — though that amounted to nothing more than the level of hard qigong in a modern military unit, capable of splitting a brick against one’s skull. As for the more marvelous kind of internal cultivation, from what he’d gathered so far, this era did seem to have it — some famous masters from well-known sects might possess it — though learning it would be exceedingly difficult.

For now, Ning Yi had only begun gathering information on the subject — it was, in fact, what interested him most. In this era, whether becoming an official, going into trade, or even rebellion, all of it was simply the same set of systems he’d already seen played out back in the modern world — people interacting with people, nothing more. Only martial arts held any real novelty. If the chance ever arose, he genuinely wanted to try his hand at internal cultivation — he only hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be as fake as it had been in the modern world. He wasn’t greedy; being able to leap something like ten feet from a standstill would do just fine. Though… he wouldn’t mind twenty feet either…

To practice martial arts, one needed a solid body first, and hoping to find some great martial hero to take him on as a student right now wasn’t realistic — steady, grounded effort was the proper path. So on mornings without rain, his daily exercise routine continued, and with an eye toward maximizing results, he’d doubled the intensity: sit-ups, push-ups, long-distance running. A few days earlier, passing by the house where Nie Yunzhu lived, he’d found the woman, dressed in plain, simple clothing, standing there watching him. As he ran closer, she gathered her sleeves and offered a bow. “Young Master Ning.”

Ning Yi, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath, managed to force out something like a smile, waved a hand — not even managing to get out a “hey” — and then… just ran right past like that…

Leaving Nie Yunzhu standing there, stunned, for a good long while.

She had, after all… worked up so much courage just to come out and say hello…