The night wind stirred with a faint rustle, lanterns swaying gently beneath the eaves. In the last days of spring, the night no longer carried any chill—it was, in fact, the most pleasant temperature of all. Ning Yi opened the window to let the air circulate, then ladled out a bowl of soup to feed his wife.
What had happened earlier felt as though it had only just passed. In the night air, the tremors rippling through the various courtyards of the Su estate all seemed to trace back to what Ning Yi had stirred up. Su Tan’er’s mood clearly hadn’t settled from the earlier turbulence, but she asked Ning Yi nothing about it, only lowering her head to drink her soup, or gazing at him with eyes that seemed on the verge of tears. Ning Yi, for his part, still couldn’t quite grasp what was going through her mind.
“That Miss Nie—I’ve known her a very long time. Back then she had a cart and sold flatbread around the city. Old Qin, Consort Kang, and I all knew her. Later when she opened a shop, we all offered her some advice here and there…”
“Mm.”
That was, more or less, as far as the conversation between husband and wife went for now. This sort of thing, after all, only ever grew more complicated the more one tried to explain it. After a while, Xiao Chan brought the baby over for Tan’er to nurse, casting a complicated look at Ning Yi as she did. The baby, halfway through nursing, perhaps sensing the mood of the room, suddenly began to wail. The crying served as a welcome distraction, and the three of them took turns holding and soothing the baby until, after a while, the crying gradually subsided. Laid down on the bed, the baby’s slightly wrinkled little face showed a touch of rosy color in the lamplight, and a peaceful silence settled over the quiet night.
For Ning Yi, what had happened that day had certainly caught him off guard, but it wasn’t entirely without meaning. Whether he went to the capital or stayed in Jiangning, there would always be a group of “family members” utterly incapable of accomplishing anything yet more than capable of ruining things, stabbing him in the back—something he found intolerable either way. Of course, to say he could simply turn on the Su family whenever he pleased, break with them outright and come to blows, would be quite difficult too. Sooner or later, there had to be a warning like this—only then could he truly bring himself to act if it happened again. And after this warning, similar incidents would likely become rarer, perhaps even cease entirely, because if he ever truly became entangled in high-level political struggles, having a group of fools like this behind him would be nothing short of gambling with his entire family’s lives.
And in all this, the one who stood to benefit the most was, in the end, likely Su Yu and the entire Su family. If one thought of the Su family as an enterprise, by this point it had clearly reached a turning point in its succession. Originally, to select an heir, the three branches had each been allowed to govern themselves and produce results—but by now, with power still divided and contested among the three branches, this had become a considerable disadvantage for Su Tan’er. What the old master had been doing these past months was suppressing the factions within the family that didn’t submit to Tan’er, but that alone could only treat the symptoms, not the root cause.
In this matter, Su Yu may not have been entirely satisfied with, or unconditionally trusting of, Ning Yi, but he had seen, in that moment, the best opportunity available. The line “for those without the talent or temperament for it, there’s no need to force the issue anymore” was meant to consolidate the power of the Second and Third Branches entirely into Su Tan’er’s hands. The old man had truly been decisive in that moment, making his decision on the spot—a few lightly spoken words, but all riding on the momentum of Ning Yi’s warning to accomplish far more. Like relieving generals of military power with a cup of wine, the ripples it sent through the Su household were, in truth, many times more severe than Ning Yi’s warning itself. Even Ning Yi couldn’t help but want to applaud.
This was the political wisdom the old man had accumulated over years of managing the Su family—without someone like this in every household, a family could hardly last long, let alone grow to greatness. With Su Yu in charge, there was one thing Ning Yi could take comfort in: once he truly left for the capital, no one would be able to stab him in the back badly enough to cause real trouble, because the old man would surely be able to contain any crisis that threatened to engulf the whole family. Of course, in his final words to Ning Yi, the old man had still made clear a note of displeasure toward him.
Inviting Miss Nie to the house for a face-to-face apology, after Ning Yi himself had admitted to being her backer—there was little room for him to refuse. If Ning Yi and Yun Zhu truly had nothing between them, then the whole affair would blow over with the Su family suffering no consequences at all, and even gaining a well-connected friend in the bargain. But if Ning Yi and Yun Zhu did have something between them, then after receiving an apology from the entire family, it would become immeasurably more complicated for Yun Zhu to ever marry into the Su household. What neither the Second nor Third Branch of the Su family had managed to do, the old man had accomplished with a single offhand remark—checkmating Ning Yi outright. Of course, what even Su Yu hadn’t anticipated was that, at least for the time being, Ning Yi hadn’t formally considered the matter of letting Yun Zhu marry into the family at all.
“What good would it do right now even if I married Yun Zhu?” The next morning, when Yuan Jin’er confronted him about it as he passed by the small building, Ning Yi laid this out plainly. “Tan’er probably wouldn’t mistreat her, but she’d definitely be looked down on in the Su household. Once she’s married in… she wouldn’t even be able to move about freely, let alone go somewhere to clear her head or get away from those people’s stares…”
“But, but…”
“Here, at least, she has you to look after her.”
“That’s true enough.” By now Yun Zhu had gone back into the room to fetch something. Jin’er propped her chin on her hand. “But by that logic, that old master of yours sounds pretty formidable—if Sister Yun Zhu goes over there, will she get bullied? Maybe she shouldn’t go at all—just have them come apologize instead.”
“Since… the old master invited me over, I’ll go tomorrow then.” Before Jin’er could finish speaking, Yun Zhu had already come out of the room and sat down on the steps between the two of them. In a long dress, her complexion looked somewhat haggard, but her spirits seemed good. Though she had gone through such an upheaval the previous afternoon, in her own heart she’d always felt herself to be the one at fault in all this—that Ning Yi would step up and defend her the way he had left her hardly able to put into words just what she felt. Shock, perhaps, or warmth—a private sense of fulfillment welling up from within that she couldn’t quite contain.
She hadn’t told Jin’er, but she had spent the entire night in a daze, thinking over and over about everything to do with Ning Yi, hugging her blanket with her eyes open, hardly sleeping at all, tossing and turning. Jin’er had assumed she was upset and hadn’t known how to comfort her, and had ended up feeling rather sorrowful herself for half the night as a result.
Ning Yi seemed somewhat surprised by Yun Zhu’s composure, and after a moment said, “Let me think on it more.”
Jin’er rested her chin on her knees, then glanced around into the distance. “Do you think anyone’s watching us?” Their relationship had already been exposed, and there was no telling whether people had also learned that the three of them met here every morning. In the morning mist, the three of them sitting on the steps seemed wrapped in their own small, separate world.
After parting ways with Yun Zhu and Jin’er, Ning Yi ran into Wenren Buer on his way home. There were evidently eyes and ears from the Consort’s estate planted within the Su household by now—the moment the man approached, he gave a thumbs up. “I heard about what happened last night—impressive, taking down that whole crowd of your family in one go. That Su Wenxing you beat up, he’s not dead, is he?”
“He probably won’t be waking up anytime soon.”
“And you conveniently took care of any future trouble at the same time…” Wenren Buer clicked his tongue in admiration. “You act like you don’t pay attention to anything going on, but you clearly have a firm grasp on your family’s affairs. A man like you would fit right in helping us at the Secret Investigation Bureau, gathering intelligence.”
The two of them stopped by the banks of the Qinhuai River, strolling along. Ning Yi turned and asked, “Did you all look into this at all?”
“Look into what?”
“Who exactly was behind this. Was it the Wu family or the Xue family pulling the strings? Do you have any intelligence on your end?”
“Don’t you already know?” Wenren Buer looked at him, taken aback.
Ning Yi spread his hands. “How would I possibly know? This all happened so fast—I’m no immortal. If Su Wenxing hadn’t jumped out like that, I wouldn’t even have known who was involved… You should have had that servant you caught properly interrogated before letting him go. At the time I thought it wasn’t a big deal…”
Wenren Buer was stunned for a good while. “…You didn’t know anything at all, and you’d been caught with your guard down, at a disadvantage… you cursed them out, turned the accusation right back on them, and beat that man to that state… is that really how it went?”
Ning Yi looked at him as if to say such a childish question was beneath someone in intelligence work, but in the end just turned his palms over. “What else could I have done? If they hadn’t really had something to hide, how could I have overwhelmed them like that—in that moment, that was the only way. Seize the high ground, and the rest is just verbal warfare.”
“I thought you were genuinely furious.”
“I was furious, genuinely furious—precisely because I was so angry, I had to break Su Wenxing’s leg, or just kill him outright. Anger was the motive, but of course you have to stay calm when you actually act. In that situation, if I’d truly lost my head and just started cursing everyone out in a blind rage, I wouldn’t have walked out of there standing today. You think I could really cut down a crowd of Su family guards single-handed?” Ning Yi laughed and patted his shoulder. “Either way, help me look into it, would you.”
“Now I’m genuinely a little afraid of you…” Wenren Buer muttered. “Though the Bureau doesn’t have much manpower for this sort of thing—whatever we can find out about your family’s affairs, we will, but tracing it back this far isn’t likely to turn up much. Be prepared for that.”
“Mm, I know. Just want some idea of where things stand.”
As for the matter itself, Ning Yi had his own ways of looking into it, and even if Wenren Buer’s side turned up nothing, it made no difference to him. After the two finished talking, Ning Yi jogged the rest of the way back to the Su estate. At that very moment, in a teahouse along another road beside the Su estate, several men sat upstairs looking out toward it, the street below quiet, the morning mist thick. Someone came up from downstairs.
“Brother Lin and the others have decided—tomorrow night, when it gets dark, that’s when they’ll move. That’s when there’ll be the most people out, and the city will be easiest to throw into chaos. Tell our people on this end to get ready too.”
“Mm.” Xi Junyu nodded, then looked toward the several brothers in the room. “Then we’ll move tomorrow night as well. Once it’s done, we spread the chaos and fight our way out of the city.”
“Everyone, pass the word along to the others too…” He stood, walked to the railing, leaned against it, and looked down into the hazy courtyard below, then raised his hand and pointed. “That’s the house, right there.”