By the fourth lunar month, the snow had melted and the ice had broken up, and the Yangtze had entered its flood season, the river’s waters surging down from upstream in a mighty flow, gathering force as they reached the Jiangning region. Along the shipping lanes now, only vessels with a deep enough draft dared venture out. Even so, the official ship carrying Ning Yi and the others pitched and swayed more than a little, and once underway, anyone prone to seasickness had begun showing symptoms.
“Once we reach the Grand Canal, the ship will sail more steadily—there’s simply nothing to be done about these first two days…”
Most of those traveling on these ships were officials and dignitaries of standing, and when the ship rocked unsteadily, some grew short-tempered, a few even wanting to disembark immediately and continue north by carriage instead. The boatmen could only apologize profusely and explain as best they could. Barely half a day into the voyage, Ning Yi and the others had already witnessed several such incidents. In this era, even people of standing rarely had many opportunities to travel, and there was no effective remedy for motion sickness—if it were an ocean-going vessel, such symptoms would be all the more troublesome, with nothing to do but endure it.
Ning Yi himself fared reasonably well with this sort of thing, but Su Wenyu, traveling with him, suffered badly from seasickness, retching over and over in the cabin at the rear. Ning Yi could only say, “Once you’ve thrown up enough, you’ll get used to it. That’s just how life is.”
Since this trip to the capital was, in the end, only to join the intelligence apparatus, Kang Xian and the others had simply arranged for their group to stay in a cabin further back, with little overlap with the officials and dignitaries up front—Wenren Buer and the others were housed similarly. Ning Yi didn’t mind the difference in treatment given the era, and went on to explain to the others the origin of one’s sense of balance, describing how, near either side of the human brain close to the ears, there existed something called the semicircular canals—what such a structure would look like if dissected—which governed the body’s sense of balance; those prone to motion sickness typically had underdeveloped canals in this area.
Xiao Chan, bringing tea over now and then, knew by now that her master was off explaining things again that no one else could follow. In truth, even when others didn’t understand, Ning Yi rarely bothered to elaborate further. Wenren Buer, Qi Xinyong, Qi Xinyi, and the others had originally assumed he’d read some odd book somewhere or was simply talking nonsense, but hearing him lay it out so coherently, they came to believe there might be something to it after all. They didn’t necessarily believe that the brain’s sense of balance truly came from these “semicircular canals,” but they’d gradually come to feel that Ning Yi genuinely seemed to know something about what was inside the human brain—and hearing him describe how large the brain was when laid flat left them more than a little unsettled.
Even the most inquisitive physician of the age would have had no cause to look into such matters—a coroner examining a corpse, perhaps, might have some occasion to, but certainly would never go so far as to spread a brain out flat just to see how large it truly was. Hearing Ning Yi speak this way, the others couldn’t help but wonder—could he possibly have gone and measured one himself, out of idle curiosity?
In truth, though Ning Yi came across as a refined scholar, his actions frequently defied expectation. Wenren Buer had seen the faintly unsettling, almost manic edge beneath his calm exterior. Qi Xinyong and the others hadn’t dealt with him much, but they’d seen him standing beside Liu Xigua once, and had later heard it was he who’d devised the scheme to open Hangzhou’s city gates. A man like that could hardly be simple. Though it had seemed odd at first to imagine him researching something like this, the more they thought about it, the more they found themselves believing it might really be possible, and couldn’t help feeling a chill of unease, instinctively sitting a little farther from him. Only the youngest of the Qi brothers, Qi Xinhan, occasionally piped up with interest: “Perhaps practicing plum-blossom pile stances or similar arts is good for these semicircular canals?”
Ning Yi chatted with the group over tea for a while like this, then moved on to tales and anecdotes of the martial world, and talked a bit more about Liangshan. At one point he stepped out to fetch hot water, and paused at the doorway, tilting his head to listen for a moment. “Do you all hear a thumping sound—thump, thump, thump, thump?”
Everyone had indeed heard it, and nodded. In truth, with the water rocking the ship even slightly, trunks bumping against each other in nearby rooms could produce just such a sound. Ning Yi thought about it for a moment, then said, “Hmm, that’s not quite it either. It sounds more like someone knocking on the wall…” The others, having just heard him discuss dissecting human brains, felt their expressions shift slightly, assuming his eccentricity had flared up again—but fortunately, after listening a while longer, Ning Yi shook his head. “Maybe I misheard…”
The ship pitched and rolled all through that day’s journey. Wenren Buer and the others went up front to scout out the identities of the other passengers aboard. The Consort’s fleet heading north served various purposes—the Princess Chengguo’s holdings were extensive, and it was periodically necessary for such fleets to travel north and south. This particular trip, naturally, also carried the pretext of offering birthday congratulations to the Empress Dowager, with a good many officials and nobles traveling along—this, too, tied in with the sweeping momentum of the northern campaign. Though everyone spoke of recovering the Sixteen Prefectures as the great cause of the past two centuries of the Wu dynasty, the burden of provisions and military expenses falling on each individual was a very real matter, and naturally some were willing to contribute more, others less, each with their own reasons. Now that the situation in the south had settled, this group of Jiangning figures with connections to the imperial family were using the pretext of the birthday celebration to head north and cultivate some connections of their own.
Among those aboard the ship were officials, wealthy young heirs, and even scions of the imperial clan. After making inquiries, Wenren Buer quickly determined that none of them were of a rank Ning Yi’s group could easily approach, and it was best to keep a respectful distance. Still, after lunch, someone came to call on Ning Yi—a young man of sixteen or seventeen, handsome in bearing, named Zhuo Yunfeng. Ning Yi had never met him before, but on reflection recalled having heard the name mentioned—apparently a young talent of some renown in Jiangning’s literary circles. Since he’d only recently come to prominence, others speaking of him in front of Ning Yi generally described him as a gifted young scholar destined for great things—he’d only gained a bit of a reputation during the period Ning Yi had been away in Hangzhou.
This Zhuo Yunfeng was also of imperial lineage—his mother a county princess who had married down; though her husband’s family had never amounted to much afterward, the imperial bloodline was nonetheless indelible. This trip to the capital was likely, in part, an attempt to build a reputation and cultivate connections of his own. Upon meeting Ning Yi, he was respectful in his manner, and went on to seek Ning Yi’s views on matters of poetry. Ning Yi hadn’t mentioned his journey to the capital to many people, and had at first assumed the young man had some connection to Kang Xian and had sought him out on that account—but it gradually came out in conversation that the young man was, in fact, an admirer of Zhou Pei, occasionally mentioning the young county princess with evident appreciation. Aside from the particular touch of pride characteristic of young men his age, there was nothing about him one could really point to as a flaw—though a talented, somewhat proud young man was, after all, only to be expected, and hardly worth remarking on further.
After chatting for a while, the young man sat with Ning Yi for a bit, drank a few cups of tea, and then took his leave. Ning Yi found the whole exchange somewhat inconclusive, unable to quite put his finger on what had felt odd about it. In truth, Zhou Pei’s marriage prospects were likely to be settled within the next few months, so this Zhuo Yunfeng heading to the capital now would presumably have little chance of anything coming of it—yet his expression had carried a certain quiet confidence, for reasons Ning Yi couldn’t quite place.
The thought crossed Ning Yi’s mind briefly, then he let it go. In truth, what occupied his thoughts these days was, in the end, still the matter of Liangshan. He wasn’t especially familiar with the situation there, and there was a great deal he needed to work through. At the level of the Wu court, straightforward strategy wasn’t always effective, while covert schemes required a substantial amount of accurate intelligence to support them—but there were indeed one or two things he could offer Qin Siyuan at this point, and refining that central plan was what he needed to focus on over these next few days.
That night, the large ship anchored in port, the wind picking up as darkness fell, the vessel rocking gently. Many of the passengers had already gone ashore to amuse themselves, lodging in inns for the night, but Ning Yi insisted that the handful of Su family retainers who’d come along stay aboard the ship. Once the ship had settled at anchor, though, Ning Yi went over to another large vessel to visit Yun Zhu and Jin’er. Yun Zhu wasn’t prone to seasickness at all, and given Jin’er’s fish-like ease in the water, there was no need to worry about her in the slightest.
That night, after Xiao Chan had fallen asleep, Ning Yi found himself unable to sleep, gazing out at the moon beyond the cabin window. Tan’er and the child back home, the people he’d need to meet in the capital, the things he’d need to say and do, the effects it might all have…
Sorting through his thoughts, he rose from bed and went out to pace along the cabin corridor and the deck. Clouds drifted past the moon, tree shadows swaying dimly along the riverbank, distant lights flickering from the hillside town, reflected in the water—altogether a rather fine scene. Soldiers patrolled the decks of the large ships, keeping watch with considerable vigilance, but with the crowd of nobles and servants who’d gone ashore for the day now absent, it was rather peaceful. Just as he was thinking this, his ears caught that thumping sound again—but when he listened closely, it had already stopped.
He was about to head back to the cabin when, in the moonlight over there, he saw Zhuo Yunfeng coming down from one of the large ships with several servants, exchanging a few words, his brow furrowed tightly, before his gaze swept over toward the other ships. He seemed to be searching for something, weighing where exactly it might be.
Zhuo Yunfeng glanced around a few times, and then, quite by chance, his gaze fell on Ning Yi’s direction—and froze there. An encounter like this, at night, should ordinarily have called for nothing more than a nod of greeting, but Zhuo Yunfeng’s expression turned oddly strained. He stood there, holding Ning Yi’s gaze for a moment, then, from a distance, cupped his hands together in an emphatic salute—looking, oddly enough, as though Ning Yi had just witnessed something momentous, his scheme unmasked, and he were owning up to it before Ning Yi’s face with grim resignation.
This left Ning Yi rather puzzled. Having been on the receiving end of several deliberate schemes by now—men like Gu Yanzhen, Lou Shuweng, and Xi Junyu—he’d grown quite wary of this kind of behavior, which struck him as almost paranoid. He filed the incident away in his mind that night, and the following morning, while practicing his forms at dawn, he found himself still turning over whether he had any actual connection to this Zhuo Yunfeng. As morning mist curled over the river, a thought suddenly struck him, and he turned and headed toward the cargo hold.
The dignitaries housed up front likely had no idea who this young man was, but the steward the Princess Chengguo’s estate had sent along with the fleet certainly knew his identity. Ning Yi lingered near the cabin area for quite a while before finally making up his mind, went and retrieved the key from that steward, and after clearing the area of onlookers, opened the door to one of the cargo holds, leaving the steward to keep watch nearby. Inside sat the tribute goods bound for the capital, packed in large crates, each one sealed with a strip of paper. Ning Yi climbed atop the crates and spent a long while examining them one by one, stamping his foot here, knocking there, until finally, after quite some time, a faint sound came from somewhere within.
Ning Yi shifted aside the crate below, and after a moment, discovered Zhou Pei, curled up inside a large wooden crate beneath, nearly at the point of death…