“…I’m sorry, teacher, for causing you trouble again…”

The midday sun scattered down through the leaves onto the ground; even amid the lush green foliage, it was already growing rather hot. Unlike the uproar and chaos back at the courtyard, what passed here beneath the shade of the trees was simply an ordinary exchange between teacher and student.

Zhou Pei recounted everything that had recently happened to Ning Yi, then apologized to him, a little ashamed of herself. “If I hadn’t said too much, they wouldn’t have egged all these people on to make trouble for you today, and none of this would have…”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re pathetically weak anyway.”

At Zhou Pei’s evident guilt, Ning Yi shook his head with a smile, telling her it was nothing, then went on: “A few words exchanged, a bit of envy stirred up — it wasn’t really that serious to begin with, it’s just that with their family backgrounds and influence, a small push turned it into this kind of spectacle. Little Pei, you don’t need to think too badly of them either — at heart, they probably never meant to truly turn on you; at most it was just a bit of jealousy between peers your own age, and it’ll all blow over before long. As for the business between myself and those scholars, that’s a separate contest altogether. Like I said, they’re pathetically weak — no need to give it too much thought.”

Zhou Pei blinked, not quite following what Ning Yi meant. “But…”

Ning Yi waved a hand with a smile. “Among the young people who came today, quite a few probably have a soft spot for you, don’t they, little Pei?”

Zhou Pei lowered her head. “I… I don’t know…”

“They’re interested in you, that’s why they came to watch the excitement. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to make too much of this business. Of course, having grown up in a princely household, you probably understand these things better than I do. Going forward, you’ll still need to keep dealing with most of these people — don’t act the way you did today, as if you were ready to flip the whole table over. When it’s one against many, the best approach is always to divide them up, isolate part of them, and strike at whichever part is weakest. Whatever gets settled behind the scenes should always stay behind the scenes, never brought out into the open. You’re about to start a family of your own — these things matter a great deal.” He smiled and patted her head. “You do have a bit of a proud, aloof streak in you — that’s not really a good thing.”

Zhou Pei, who had been nodding along with her head bowed, now lifted it, a flicker of confusion crossing her features, not understanding why her teacher had suddenly brought this up.

In truth, ever since leaving that estate with Ning Yi, Zhou Pei’s mind had remained in a fog. Though she’d kept talking, recounting what had happened, responding to her teacher’s words — in reality, all she could hear in her own chest was the pounding, pounding, pounding of her own heart.

She hadn’t even properly looked at the poem itself; even now, she had no idea what her teacher had written.

If this had happened before, it wouldn’t have been like this.

On the way over, her heart had been pounding the whole time, uncertain what she might find, unsure how her teacher would handle it. When she’d first arrived and stood there taking in the scene, though she hadn’t understood why, she had seen clearly enough that her teacher had no wish to “prove himself” to this crowd by writing a poem. That feeling had persisted right up until the moment Ning Yi said “So that’s how it is,” called her over, and said, “Weren’t you saying just the other day how well things were going for you here…”

Watching, wordless, as Ning Yi picked up the brush, something suddenly became clear in the young woman’s heart: this poem her teacher was writing was because of this — because of her.

He had decided, because of what had happened to her, to write a poem that would show this crowd a thing or two. The realization set her heart pounding like a drum, her mind clouding over; as for what her teacher had actually written, she hadn’t even looked, and even if she had, it likely wouldn’t have registered. All the way out, most of what passed between them had been little more than that simple pounding, pounding, and brief, distracted replies. It was only now, hesitating, that she finally lifted her head, sunlight filtering down through the gaps in the trees into her eyes, as she heard Ning Yi’s voice, gentle now, speaking.

“Being recognized for one’s talent — there’s nothing wrong with that. But when it comes to poetry, letters, scholarship, in the end it’s just one of life’s little diversions. You’ve been clever since you were small, little Pei, quick to pick up anything, and you’re happy to keep company with this sort of people — but the world you’ll live in later won’t be made up entirely of people like them. Or perhaps I should say, the things they’re clever at, and the things you value, might not be the same thing at all…”

Ning Yi kept walking as he spoke. “Once I explain it, you’ll understand — but perhaps no one has ever told you this properly before. By rights, it should be your father, the prince… or Kang Mingyuan, who tells you this — it’s not really my place. But Kang Mingyuan himself is rather a proud, aloof man too… Little girls really do grow up too fast, don’t they — perhaps no one’s quite ready for it either…”

Ning Yi looked at her, smiling, and raised his hand, gesturing a couple of times in the air — roughly the height Zhou Pei used to be. “You’re about to be married off soon. Once you are, your dealings with them, with the imperial relatives and nobility, won’t be as simple as attending the occasional poetry gathering. There’s absolutely no avoiding contact with them. Men of letters can afford to be aloof and detached, but in the circles you people move in, you won’t have much freedom to choose your own friends. I’m being practical about this — I just want you to have an easier, happier time of it once you’re married. Before that happens, someone really ought to have told you this properly. You’re clever — you’ll understand once it’s said. And I’ll say it again: whatever gets decided behind the scenes should never be brought out into the open — that’s the rule of the game in your family’s world… Of course, I’m genuinely grateful that you rushed over here like this today.”

Zhou Pei was clever, and once Ning Yi said this much, she understood. Her heart, which had been pounding so hard, now felt as though it had been doused with a basin of warm water — soothing, and yet she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed all the same.

She suddenly understood why her teacher was saying all this — of course it wasn’t because her aloofness had caused him trouble, but because her teacher had, in fact, genuinely brought the matter of her upcoming marriage out into the open. And so, in the spirit of a teacher’s proper role, he was giving her this final piece of guidance.

She understood the rules of her royal family perfectly well, of course, but she also knew that she herself carried this proud, aloof streak. In situations like today’s, when others praised her for her learning, called her a talented woman, her heart would naturally swell with pleasure — and in choosing her friends, she would inevitably look more or less favorably on someone based on that very standard.

Even though she tried to restrain herself in daily life, coming to the capital and standing out so much among her cousins and relatives, as an outsider she couldn’t help but feel a certain giddy pride welling up. Maintaining good manners and courtesy toward everyone didn’t mean that this deep-rooted aloofness never showed through. If it hadn’t, surely it wouldn’t have stirred up such envy in others, or brought her teacher into today’s trouble.

Her teacher had brought this up, of course, not because of the trouble it had caused — but because he had truly come to realize that she was about to be married, about to enter an entirely different kind of life, and it was this realization that had suddenly prompted him to offer her this guidance. Her grandfather, the imperial son-in-law, would never speak of such things — and as for her teacher, he was about to head off to Shandong next, and afterward might well settle permanently in the capital, while she would return to Jiangning to marry, and after that, they might never even see each other again. Perhaps that was exactly why, in what might be one of their last few meetings, he had chosen to give this piece of guidance about her future life to a student who might not even formally count as his own.

Realizing this, her nose stung, and she suddenly felt like crying. The sunlight was dazzling, and the tears fell.

The wind passed through the trees, the leaves rustling like flowing water.

Before she had truly tasted the sweetness of youth, the evening bell had already begun to toll among the hills…

At that very same moment, back at the estate, another small incident was unfolding.

…

While singing Ning Yi’s praises before Ji Wanqing, going so far as to invoke Zhou Bangyan as a foil, tossing out gentle mockery — when Chen Sifeng and Yu Hezhong came over to ask about Ning Yi’s situation, Shishi had simply shaken her head.

Her own impression of Ning Yi had, in fact, kept shifting all along, never quite settling into anything she could fully pin down.

At first, an old childhood acquaintance; later, someone she came to see as remarkably talented. By the time she’d met him again on the Bian River and traveled north together with him, she’d already had some sense that Ning Yi possessed real strategic ability — only to later discover that even then, she had underestimated this old friend from her childhood. After returning to the capital, she had made a point of inquiring further into matters concerning Ning Yi and Jiangning; with how well-connected the Fan Tower’s information network was, once she’d started asking around, a great many scattered details had come back to her, gradually correcting, piece by piece, her impression of him.

When the Liangshan bandits had raided Jiangning to break someone out of prison, they had struck at the household of the cloth merchant Su family, slaughtering nearly half of the more than two hundred people in the Su household — and in the end, it was a matrilocal son-in-law of the Su family who had fought them off with everything he had, driving back those vicious, murderous Liangshan bandits head-on. She hadn’t been able to learn the finer details of what exactly had happened, and even if she had, such accounts were more often than not embellished beyond recognition. But even this much was enough for her to grasp roughly what had taken place.

Back when they’d traveled north together by boat, Ning Yi had mentioned in passing that after heading north, he intended to make a trip to Shandong. At the time, her own guess had been far too mild — she’d simply assumed he was going there for business, or some minor errand, and had asked around about the situation in Shandong on his behalf. That man… some wandering hero named Yan Qing, wasn’t it, had told her some good things about the people of Liangshan, and she, understanding nothing of the real situation, had gone around innocently singing the praises of these Liangshan “chivalrous outlaws” to others — she had no idea, even now, what he must have felt at the time.

But feelings aside, he had already been laying his plans even then. Later, that night, that girl Jin’er had seemed to fly into quite a temper in front of her — likely, in part, because of her own talk of Liangshan’s righteous heroics. Shishi understood well enough the weight it would carry for someone to single-handedly drive back a band of Liangshan murderers under such circumstances in Jiangning, and later, along the journey on the Bian River, to nearly wipe out the enemy’s men entirely — especially once she’d directly asked the accompanying lieutenant Chen Jingui through her own channels, and confirmed that Ning Yi had, in fact, been the mastermind behind the entire operation. She realized then just how naive her original guesses about him had been.

Piecing things together this way, the picture became quite clear. An ordinary household, if raided and plundered by bandits, would at most report the matter to the authorities. But Liheng, it seemed, meant to pursue this all the way — arriving in the capital and then heading on to Shandong, meaning to strike straight at their base and take his revenge! Chen Jingui hadn’t been in a position to say much about what exactly stood behind Ning Yi now, but Shishi understood well enough that there was, indeed, something backing him — and this trip to the capital was meant to consolidate that support, in preparation for heading east to settle the score.

That was as much of an outline as she could piece together; anything more detailed was beyond her reach, and of course Shishi had no intention of digging any further to find out. During this meeting, she had simply asked a few casual questions, cautioning Ning Yi to be careful on his journey east. He, for his part, hadn’t seemed at all surprised that she’d been able to guess this much, and had answered easily enough.

After all these years in the world of the pleasure quarters, Shishi’s mind had grown sharp and discerning; when dealing with men of middling to upper caliber like Yu Hezhong or Chen Sifeng, she still had to hold something back in her thinking. But this old friend of hers, Ning Yi, clearly operated on the same level as her, if not higher — she had to admit, there were times when a single offhand remark from her would let him grasp exactly what lay behind it; her small schemes, her sense of humor, all of it read accurately, the underlying intent grasped precisely. And because of their bond as childhood friends, she didn’t need to guard herself too carefully around him — which was, in truth, rather nice.

But she had still underestimated a few things.

When she’d suddenly discovered that Ji Wanqing and the others had set their sights on Ning Yi, her astonishment had been mixed with genuine amusement, and no small measure of anticipation. Throughout the whole affair, curious about how it would unfold, the few remarks she’d made had all carried a probing intent — and it was clear that Liheng, on his end, had meant much the same. Once she’d confirmed this, she’d spent the entire time both anticipating the outcome and quietly laughing at the foolishness of Ji Wanqing and the others, for picking the wrong opponent to challenge.

She had already, in her mind, prepared herself for the possibility that Liheng might end up debating the whole crowd of scholars one by one, dismantling their challenges point by point, matching every one of them with fine verse after fine verse. The only thing she’d been weighing in her own mind was whether to bring out her own “Huanxi Sha” to add a final flourish to it all. But even she hadn’t imagined that things would end this way — with a single poem sweeping the entire gathering off its feet, and the man walking off without a backward glance. That he would casually produce… a poem like this.

When it came to Liheng, she realized, she had still underestimated him — and thinking of this left her feelings tangled in a way she found hard to put into words.

If, after seeing him and Yun Zhu together at that poetry gathering back in Jiangning, she had thought this friend of hers was, after all, a romantic figure of real and dazzling talent — then this time, looking at Ning Yi, she truly felt a sense of overwhelming, formidable presence and pressure emanating from a truly extraordinary talent, far greater and more astonishing than anything she had previously imagined, the sort of feeling that came crashing down before everyone’s eyes all at once.

In this regard, perhaps he really had reached the point where… he no longer needed to hold anyone else in particularly high regard.

That other line — singing girls aboard, drifting with the waves wherever they might go — she found herself turning it over again and again as well. But in truth, the feeling it left her with wasn’t one of closeness, but rather a slight sense of distance. She wasn’t sure whether the line was meant to refer to her in some way, but regardless, if one truly pressed the meaning of that particular word for “singing girl,” there was, after all, a faint tinge of the derogatory to it — not much, perhaps, in this era, and carrying something of an elegant air as well, but still carrying, somewhere within it, a note of disparagement, or at least a sense of being placed a rung lower.

Shishi didn’t mind when friends like Yu Hezhong or Chen Sifeng used her name to make a reputation for themselves, but in this moment, that single line had, in its own way, opened up a small distance between herself and Ning Yi. This old friend, whom she might once have thought of as someone she’d been accommodating toward, even stooping a little to keep close, had suddenly, with that one line, risen a notch above her — carrying, faintly, even a sense of standing above her altogether. She didn’t feel angry about it exactly, but inwardly, she found herself experiencing an extremely tangled emotion, one even she found difficult to fully sort out or name.

Something new, and yet not entirely unwelcome…

Even as she sorted through her own feelings, some among the gathered crowd had already begun to recover themselves, and, unwilling to simply accept defeat, began casting about for reasons to find fault with Ning Yi one way or another. Few dared say the poem itself was lacking, but before long, someone raised the question of why Ning Yi had refused to write at first and then suddenly agreed — perhaps, this person suggested, the poem had been obtained by the young county mistress from somewhere else entirely. This speculation drew a few nods of agreement, though the elders present had yet to say a word.

Shishi paid none of this any mind. However fierce the arguments raged now, by evening, once word got around, everyone would see clearly enough who had played the fool and who had lost face. They might scrape together some far-fetched objection here and there, but could they really claim that the speed with which news traveled from the Fan Tower was somehow fabricated? If Ji Wanqing had wanted to publicly humiliate her in a setting like this, Mother would surely be furious once she found out. Tang Yue and Fu Qiushuang, who’d been called over without knowing what was going on, would no doubt catch an earful from Mother as well afterward — truly, several birds with one stone.

As she mused idly on all this, her gaze suddenly caught sight of a figure approaching. She was hesitating over whether to rise and greet him when the dignified, vigorous-looking elderly man had already walked over, cupping his hands in a bow. Before Yan Lingzhong and the others, catching sight of him, could even rise to their feet, his words had already carried across the entire gathering.

“Regarding this matter, I can personally vouch for Liheng.”

The remark was clearly aimed at those who had suggested the poem might not truly be Ning Yi’s own work. No sooner had he said this than the crowd, still deep in discussion, turned to look — and fell utterly silent in astonishment.

Ah, so that’s how it is…

Shishi thought to herself, and another small piece of the puzzle regarding Ning Yi slotted into place.

So this elderly gentleman was the power standing behind Liheng’s arrival in the capital?

Or was it… someone else, someone standing even further behind him, of even higher standing still?