Not many of the old rules had actually been abolished, nor had much of the formal etiquette been dropped. For this residence near Yanhe Lane by Dahuoxing Street, the shift in atmosphere had begun in late autumn, once the master of the house returned.

For the old servants of the Su family who had followed the household north, they likely never imagined that after moving north, the family would become so relaxed in nature. The Su family of Jiangning had been a large household — not quite one of those with especially deep-rooted traditions, but with its own established way of running things nonetheless. When Su Tan’er led the family north and settled here, she’d maintained that same atmosphere, particularly in her husband’s absence — as a woman in her early twenties trying to run the household, she’d needed to command real authority. It was only once Ning Yi returned that everything gradually, imperceptibly began to change.

It wasn’t any dramatic shift — atmosphere is the sort of thing that exists in the most ordinary words and gestures. Ning Yi had always been easygoing at home, sometimes even a bit unruly. Once autumn passed into this winter, Su Tan’er found herself, with some exasperated amusement, falling into step with her husband’s rhythm, adapting to this new way of things. Sometimes his casualness might even undercut her authority as mistress of the house, and at other times, she felt as though she’d been stirred back into her girlhood self, free to laugh and carry on without restraint. But in truth, even back when she really had been a young girl, she never remembered feeling quite this carefree.

Ever since she’d first decided she wanted to go into business, she had always maintained her “mature” bearing. In this world, what kind of demeanor a woman ought to have, what kind of authority a mistress of the house ought to carry, what conduct befitted a wife and mother — these things had always been perfectly clear to her, and she truly had been able to carry them off well.

Ever since marrying Ning Yi — especially once they’d come to understand each other and could truly communicate — there had been many happy days. Of course, ever since heading south to Hangzhou, there had always been a great deal to manage, and later came Fang La’s rebellion, the splitting of the family, and the destruction of her household — the blood feud she carried. She’d never imagined that now, as a mother, she would somehow become even more childlike than before. Sometimes, when her husband teased her, she’d feel a flash of anger and want to chase him down and give him what for; not long ago he’d even dressed her up as a man and dragged her along to a poetry gathering just for the fun of it, and later, wandering the lantern festival and guessing riddles, she’d come to realize that this husband of hers wasn’t actually all-knowing after all.

Whether this was a good feeling or not, she couldn’t quite say. In front of outsiders, when it came to running the cloth business and setting up new workshops, she still worked hard to maintain her dignity as mistress of the house — in the eyes of the household servants, she was probably still seen as the more formidable one compared to the master. But there were some appearances she simply couldn’t keep up sometimes, and she’d had to gradually adapt, experiencing things she’d never experienced before.

“Waaah… don’t bite me, Xi’er, Mama’s washing her face. If you keep drooling on me I’ll have to wash you again too, you know…”

In the lively bedroom, Su Tan’er was washing her face while Ning Xi reached his hands out toward his mother. Xiao Chan carried him over, only to discover he wanted to smear drool on his mother’s face, and quickly shooed him off with a laugh, using a towel. Ning Yi let some air into the room for a while, then closed the window and took the baby with a smile.

“He’s trying to kiss you, not smear drool on you. Our little Xi’er’s giving you a kiss and you won’t even accept it? Come on, give your great father one… eh, no? Got a personality, do you? Try it with your Auntie Xiao Chan then.”

After the morning wash, Xiao Chan and Juan’er carried the basin out and went to oversee breakfast preparations in the kitchen. Tan’er took the baby and sat on the edge of the bed to feed him breakfast. These days, though the household had a wet nurse on hand, Tan’er still nursed the child herself most of the time. Ning Yi sat beside her on the bed, discussing the state of the baby’s second tooth coming in.

“Once he gets two more teeth, he’s really going to start biting me…”

Having just washed her face, Su Tan’er’s complexion was fresh and bare, her hair slightly mussed. Not wanting to be bitten, there was a faint note of melancholy in her voice, though a slight blush colored her cheeks as well. When Xiao Xi had cut his first tooth not long ago, she’d secretly mentioned this to Ning Yi — a baby has no mercy for its mother’s pain. The two of them had been lying together under the covers at the time when she brought it up, and Ning Yi had even tried it out on her, letting her experience what it felt like to be bitten. For Su Tan’er, though she felt whatever Ning Yi did to her was only natural, thinking back on it still made her feel a touch of shame.

Only in private moments like these would the two of them talk about such things. Not long after, once she’d finished dressing to go out, Tan’er would once again become the dignified, composed mistress of the Ning household and the shrewd businesswoman. In truth, though she was already a mother now, with plenty of self-awareness and the weight of many responsibilities on her shoulders, she was really only the age of a girl who, in another life, would have just started college. And yet, at present, she took shouldering half — or even the whole — of a household as simply the natural order of things. If anything, it was the occasional girlish joy that Ning Yi managed to draw out of her that she considered the unexpected bonus…

This kind of feeling sometimes warmed Ning Yi’s heart.

“…Actually, speaking of which, the workshops outside the city are almost finished. If we can land that first order from the Lü family, we’ll probably have plenty to keep us busy through the New Year period. But it’s already starting to snow, and I’m planning to visit the newly hired workers one household at a time. What do you think, husband — should we bring cotton cloth as gifts, or charcoal…”

Gently patting the baby against her chest, after a bit of idle chat, she slipped back into her businesswoman mindset. Ning Yi wasn’t in favor of her running around in the snow, suggesting the manager go instead, but Su Tan’er felt that since their family had only just arrived in Bianliang, the manager didn’t yet carry much standing among the workers, and it would mean more if the head of the household went in person. The two of them discussed it for a while, until noise from outside grew louder, signaling that the young men of the household were back from their morning martial arts practice, and breakfast time was drawing near.

Since coming up from Jiangning, aside from the accountants, stewards, guards, cooks, and servants who’d followed along, plus cousins like Wenting and Wenfang and other extended relatives, along with newly hired servants, the four courtyards housed some fifty-odd people altogether — quite lively. To avoid a repeat of what had happened to the Su family, where a group of young men hadn’t even known how to properly hold a blade, Ning Yi had asked these young men of the household to make a point of training regularly, and had brought in Lu Junyi to help. Over these past months, Lu Junyi had done what he could to teach them various skills, though in practice, it was mostly Yan Qing who oversaw and pushed them to train.

Since returning from Shandong, a number of the Liangshan commanders who had surrendered and been deemed trustworthy — men like Qin Ming and Guan Sheng — had, with Qin Sizhi’s help in clearing their records, been folded into military units on good terms with the Right Chancellor’s residence. Yan Qing was quite capable in his own right, and Ning Yi had suggested he join the Secret Investigation Bureau, but such matters didn’t much concern Yan Qing — he intended to wait until Lu Junyi’s name had been cleared before considering anything else for himself.

Though Ning Yi had promised to help clear Lu Junyi’s name, the follow-up matters proved rather troublesome. The man who had originally helped frame Lu Junyi, Governor Liang, happened to be Cai Jing’s son-in-law. To clear Lu Junyi’s name, Qin Sizhi had gone through several rounds of negotiation with Cai Jing’s side, and both parties had ultimately made concessions — clearing Lu Junyi’s identity had proven simple enough, but recovering his family’s confiscated property afterward was proving far more troublesome. On top of that, Lu Junyi was better suited to military command, while Yan Qing was better suited to intelligence work, and Qin Sizhi, who seemed to have taken quite a liking to Lu Junyi during this period, wanted to wait for a more suitable position to open up before arranging anything for him — so for the time being, the matter had been shelved.

Ning Yi felt somewhat guilty about this, and whenever he had free time, he’d gone to visit Lu Junyi and Yan Qing several times. In truth, both Lu and Yan had probably been inclined to keep a respectful distance from Ning Yi, given how ruthlessly and viciously the man employed his schemes. But after several such visits, they seemed to feel that becoming friends wouldn’t hurt, and before long, Ning Yi had asked Lu Junyi to teach martial arts to Wenting, Wenfang, and the others, which Lu Junyi agreed to.

And so, in recent days, every morning before dawn, the young men of the Su household had to go out and train, mainly to build up their physical fitness.

Before long, the side hall where the Su household took its meals grew lively — a fairly spacious hall, likewise heated by a honeycomb briquette stove. By the time Ning Yi and Tan’er arrived, most of the relatives and household stewards had already gathered there. Wenting and Wenfang had already washed up and changed clothes; Su Yanping was pressing an egg against his face, apparently having taken a hit from someone during earlier sparring, but even so, he laughed and joked with the others while holding the egg to his cheek. Only when Ning Yi and his wife entered did everyone settle down a bit and greet them.

“Second Sister.”

“Second Brother-in-law, good morning.”

“Second Brother-in-law, where’s Ning Xi…”

To outsiders unfamiliar with the family’s inner workings, it might seem that the mistress of the house carried far more authority and presence than the master — sometimes even seeming difficult to get along with. But to Wenting, Wenfang, and the others, the true backbone of this household was, in fact, Ning Yi — the man who had single-handedly forced back the Liangshan bandits in Jiangning, and then, within three months, wiped out Liangshan entirely. However amiable he might act afterward, some might find him approachable, but no one would ever think him someone to be trifled with — and as long as he was around, this small family would, for now at least, continue forward with an imposing presence all its own.

“Stop going on about Ning Xi, Ning Xi — Su Wending, you scoundrel, it was you who ran off to tease him yesterday and made him cry, leaving me to comfort him for half the morning.”

Amid Ning Yi’s mock scolding, Xing’er pushed in the small wooden baby carriage, lifting the curtain as she entered. Wending and the others laughed and swarmed over to tease the baby. Su Tan’er pursed her lips, exasperated but amused — this kind of teasing rarely ended well; the child would start out giggling happily enough, but before long would end up crying from the indignity of it all. And having learned from past experience, Xing’er had already turned the baby carriage around and started making her escape, while the household stewards in the room — the older Su family accountants among them — watched the whole scene unfold with amused smiles.

Before long, various breakfast dishes were brought out, and amid the bustle, everyone began deciding what to do with their day. In this household now, Su Wending and a few of the shopkeepers mostly helped Su Tan’er run the cloth business, and had recently gotten most matters in order. Su Wenfang, Su Yanping, and a few others from the family had been assigned by Ning Yi to the large manor outside the city, handling all sorts of miscellaneous tasks — things like ideas for variety performances, the ironworking department’s work crafting tools for making honeycomb briquettes, managing meals for the many workers at the manor, keeping records of rewards, and so on.

The manor Ning Yi had put together was, at this point, still in a state of considerable disarray, with the whole system not yet fully formed. Though wages and rewards were generous, in truth the recruited workers still didn’t have a clear sense of exactly what they were supposed to be doing. On the ironworking side, blacksmiths had been hired to craft items according to instructions; in the papermaking workshop, Su Yanping oversaw workers experimenting with various materials and processes for papermaking, with many of the ideas coming from Ning Yi and everyone else simply implementing them step by step as instructed.

On the kiln side, in fact, just these past few days they’d managed to fire several types of fracture-resistant refractory bricks. Since the materials involved were things Ning Yi had some prior knowledge of, results had come within just a couple of months. The main purpose was to use them as the inner lining for coal stoves.

As it turned out, wrapping a portable honeycomb briquette stove in sheet iron was quite difficult — the cost of forging iron sheeting was too high. Using a bamboo or wooden outer shell instead, wrapped with a few loops of iron wire, meant having to consider the insulation properties as well. So it had taken over two months just to get this simple item ready for sale, and iron wire still accounted for a significant portion of the cost even now.

Beyond these projects, the so-called variety troupe that outsiders saw was, in fact, experimenting with all sorts of strange magic-trick ideas. According to Ning Yi’s original vision, it was meant to be a concentrated brainstorming group, systematically generating creative ideas and plans for various matters — but at present, it was proving very difficult to gather a group of clever people to do this kind of work. Back when he’d run the Bamboo Records shop in Jiangning, Ning Yi had already begun paying attention to performers skilled in variety acts and the like, and now he’d gathered together some passably capable people to help develop ideas for magic tricks and performances for the time being.

It could fairly be said that nothing in the entire manor had yet been set on a proper track, since at present none of the workers there had much sense of initiative or ownership. For now, Ning Yi could only gradually establish a system of rewards and penalties amid the chaos — for instance, with the honeycomb briquettes, once the basic process was worked out, he would pull out a portion of the workers to go build a proper workshop, keeping only the few skilled craftsmen capable of innovation.

Once the papermaking side managed to produce tangible results, Ning Yi would likewise pull out another portion of workers, keeping the innovative craftsmen behind, and so on with the rest, following the same pattern. Building up such a system — with its incentives and guidance — was certainly not something that could be accomplished in a day or two, but fortunately for Ning Yi, the overall framework wasn’t especially complicated either.

As for which corner of the manor currently showed the most initiative and drive, that would probably be the gunpowder division — because the person working there was none other than Liangshan’s “Dragon in the Clouds” Gongsun Sheng. He had been captured when Liangshan fell and had chosen to surrender. After investigating him, Ning Yi discovered that this Liangshan leader, said to be able to summon wind and rain, was in fact most skilled in alchemy — though quite accomplished in martial arts, his true passion lay in all manner of eccentric research.

After asking around for the opinions of Lu Junyi, Yan Qing, Qin Ming, and many others, Ning Yi spent a few days discussing physics and chemistry with this Master Gongsun, showing him black powder and similar substances, and ultimately decided to support his alchemical research — recruiting himself a tech-obsessed specialist, so to speak. Though their respective frameworks of understanding were quite different, at least many of Ning Yi’s ideas were things the man had the capability to investigate further. Substances like sulfuric acid and nitric acid, which Ning Yi had once tinkered with extensively, were well within the capabilities of an alchemist of Gongsun Sheng’s caliber to produce — a solid starting point for the broader chemical research effort.

“Still… Second Brother-in-law, you really shouldn’t have given him that gunpowder formula. Now that Master Gongsun’s been setting off explosions in the courtyard all day, he’s going to blow himself up sooner or later… Second Brother-in-law, you know how those Daoist priests have that trick of throwing gunpowder and lighting it up? Yesterday Master Gongsun threw a handful and it caught his own sleeve on fire — we had to rush over and beat it out, thank goodness he was fine…”

Chewing on a steamed bun, Su Wenfang brought this up, and everyone joined in the discussion, chattering away. Ning Yi drank his soy milk and laughed.

“Heh, it’s fine, just keep an eye on him — let him run his little experiments, no need to interfere… Actually, today I’m going to check on those refractory bricks. Once the process is sorted out, we’ll get them ready to sell for profit… Yanping, get ready to be busy — I’ll tell you how to go about it today. We’ll only run this for a year or two at most, quick in and quick out — the technical barrier on this kind of thing is low, and once it takes off, others will start copying it in no time, and then we’ll just sell it off at a fair price and move on. This is just to give you some hands-on experience, but don’t get careless about it…”

Amid the chatter and laughter, Tan’er ate quietly, smiling as she watched Ning Yi chat idly with her group of cousins. In the cloth business, her style tended to be quite firm and no-nonsense, and she wasn’t particularly skilled at nurturing the people around her. It was only in front of her husband that these young men — who back at the Su family estate had mostly been idle and rather lazy — could show this kind of liveliness.

After a while, Su Yanping said, “I hear Wenyu should be back any day now, and that Wang Shanyue too.”

He had gone north together with Su Wenyu previously, with Su Wenyu staying behind in Shandong to handle matters there. Now that he himself was finally getting to help manage things alongside Ning Yi, he found himself missing his cousin. Ning Yi smiled. “Probably delayed by the heavy snow, but they should arrive in the next couple of days. After the New Year, Zhu Biao from the Zhu Family Manor will be coming too — he’ll be the one training you all in martial arts then. He’s quite formidable, don’t take it lightly.”

Su Wending spread his hands with a grin. “We’re pretty formidable ourselves these days!” Everyone laughed along in agreement. Ning Yi shook his head with a smile. “Bunch of scoundrels — just wait, you’re all in for a beating.”

Since returning to Bianliang, Ning Yi had in fact kept up quite a bit of contact with the Wang family. The Wang family had once been renowned for ink-making, but after coming to the capital, following the deaths of Wang Qisong and other Wang men, much of that ink-making expertise had been lost, and the family now mostly dealt in selling old books and similar odds and ends. Ning Yi had been in touch with them for a while, and Su Tan’er had paid several visits as well, hoping they might take up some business in printing and publishing — with Ning Yi able to help draw up plans and assist with management, the two families working together. After all, this was an age that belonged to scholars, not merchants — books published under the Wang name carried a very different weight than those published under the Ning name. Even if some messy business were to come up later, with the Wang family’s reputation standing in front, which official would dare interfere? Still, these matters would need to wait until Wang Shanyue returned before anything could be formally settled.

The family finished a lively breakfast together and each went their separate ways. Tan’er changed into her outdoor clothes, draped a fox-fur cloak over her shoulders, and sat in Ning Yi’s lap with the baby in her arms, chatting for a while. Nestled amid the soft fox fur, her small face occasionally broke into a smile as pure and innocent as a young girl’s. Before long, the carriage was ready outside, and Xing’er came in, with Su Yanping already there looking for Ning Yi as well. As she was carried out, waving her little hand in farewell, Su Tan’er turned back with a smile and waved too — but as she stepped through the courtyard gate, the sunlight fell across her fair profile, and she had already returned from that girlish smile to the composed bearing that had always belonged to Su Tan’er…

…

The outskirts of Bianliang.

For half the morning, Zuo Houwen sat in his carriage, watching the figure of a woman moving in and out of the courtyard across the way — a new workshop for a cloth business. Over recent days, items had steadily been delivered and carried inside. Though it was snowing today, the work continued all the same; a batch of looms was being delivered, and workers carried them in through the gate. A woman in a fox-fur cloak, who appeared to be the proprietor, moved back and forth, watching over things and giving directions. She wore her hair in a married woman’s bun, but her features were fresh and lovely, and judging by appearance alone, she seemed quite young — yet her bearing carried a weight that shouldn’t be underestimated. She smiled as she worked, spoke little, yet carried an unmistakable presence of her own; often, just a few crisp, decisive words were enough to have people following her instructions.

Youthful grace mingled with a mature, composed air, blending together like a proudly blooming narcissus amid the falling snow.

He was already past forty. The cloth business under his name was only a small venture, and he’d merely stopped by on a whim to take a look, never expecting to see such a striking woman. He couldn’t help but have his carriage pull to a stop. He had seen women of merchant families before — some who’d taken over running the household after their husband’s death — but this woman before him seemed different somehow. Amid the falling snow, she appeared far too young and fresh-faced, and far too composed — not the forced composure typical of an ordinary merchant’s wife struggling to hold things together.

“Who is that?” Setting down the Book of Songs in his hand, he asked the workshop manager.

“New arrival, sir. The cloth business is apparently called the Su Company, but I hear the family surname is actually Ning — that woman calls herself Madam Ning.”

“Su Company? Ning family? How strange. Is her husband dead? Letting a woman go out and show her face like that?”

“Doesn’t seem so, sir. He’s come by a few times — a scholar, it seems…”

“I see…” Zuo Houwen frowned slightly, more or less understanding now — a scholar married into a merchant family, not an uncommon arrangement, though a scholar willing to go along with such a thing showed rather limited backbone. “Next time, ask for their name… Steward Liu, let’s head back. Once we’re back, check whether there’s been any card sent over from this Ning household…”

At the same time, in a certain manor outside the city, Ning Yi was crouched on the ground with Su Yanping, examining the fired refractory brick samples. Before long, someone came bearing a card, saying there was an invitation from the Chancellor’s residence — Wang Shanyue and Su Wenyu had returned.