The air in the room was warm, and the winter snow scene outside lit the room bright both inside and out. Amid the gentle sound of reading aloud, Jin’er would always find herself thinking back to that incident in late autumn.
It had been a night when the fireflies no longer appeared, when the flames through the lantern covers spread a wash of orange-red across the courtyard, set against the garden rocks and greenery within. That late-autumn scenery, to Jin’er, always seemed shrouded in a hazy veil of ambiguity. Yun Zhu’s collapse into illness had been, for her and for Ning Yi both, something that caught them completely off guard.
During that time, Ning Yi was perhaps the first to react. Not long after, one matter after another was stripped away from Yun Zhu’s hands—most of them related to Zhu Ji. Yun Zhu, weak in body at the time, felt somewhat guilty over these matters, but Ning Yi, sitting at her bedside, took on the responsibility with a bitter smile.
“Do you remember what I said to you back then, in front of the little pavilion? Sand you can’t hold onto—you just let it scatter with the wind. Actually… I originally hoped the two of you running a shop together would be something fun. And it really could have been. After what happened with the Su family, wanting to use Zhu Ji as a vehicle to expand the business—that was my mistake. And now I’ve started making the same mistake again…”
Amid Ning Yi’s bitter smile, neither Jin’er nor Yun Zhu understood what exactly he meant by “the same mistake.” But once Ning Yi realized what the problem was, the way he went about solving it was, perhaps, not so extraordinary after all.
After handing off the affairs of Zhu Ji, he sought out the most famous musicians and music masters in the capital, and accompanied Yun Zhu to visit them—not really under the pretext of mutual exchange, but simply wanting to listen to a piece of music together. Among these outings meant to lift her spirits, he would occasionally come to chat with Yun Zhu, reading her stories from books. Bit by bit, Yun Zhu’s mood gradually eased. As for Ning Yi, for her sake he went off and studied a great deal about music theory and the rules of the qin, occasionally coming up with a question to ask Yun Zhu—laughably naive though it might be, it always managed to lighten the mood.
An illness of the heart comes on like a mountain, but leaves like a long, gentle spring rain. Autumn passed into winter, and heavy snow began to fall again over Bianliang. Yun Zhu gradually recovered. As for the matter between her and Jin’er, it was, in these days, simply set aside.
Before the trip to Shandong, the two of them had agreed that once Ning Yi returned, he would give Jin’er an answer. But after he came back, Yun Zhu fell ill, and the two of them spent their time caring for her. When alone together, there was still joking and playfulness between them, but concerning that other matter, Jin’er could tell he felt somewhat guilty about it—she’d even heard him, one day as they chatted in the corridor, say of himself that he was a bit “never satisfied with what he has.”
“Sometimes, I feel like so many things are good, and once I think something is good, I want it. Yun Zhu is good, you’re good too. I never used to think of myself as fickle-hearted, but now maybe I have to admit it. It’s just—I don’t know how to solve this. I promised you something before, and now, for the time being, I can’t keep that promise…”
Ning Yi had been sitting beneath the orange glow of the railing lanterns as he said this, and it came out sounding almost like an apology. Jin’er stood up and gave him a sharp kick on the back with a huff. After that, the two of them never really spoke of it again. Ning Yi had actually been somewhat surprised by Jin’er’s silence on the matter—fortunately, after that day, Jin’er showed no sign of resentment or rejection toward him. When she was around Yun Zhu, she still stayed close by, sometimes bickering and playing around with him just as before.
In November, Ning Yi found time to visit musicians and qin masters, and also called on various craftsmen. By early December, he brought Yun Zhu a guqin he’d had made. The instrument was handmade, of fine material but crude workmanship—it looked as though it had simply been built to stretch some good strings across a block of wood. Though there were some paintings on it that made it passably attractive, in the eyes of Yun Zhu and Jin’er—in the eyes of anyone, really—it was a rather clumsy piece of craftsmanship.
And yet this out-of-tune qin moved Yun Zhu to both laughter and tears for a good while.
That evening, when Ning Yi was leaving, Jin’er walked out after him and gave him a kick. Ning Yi turned back in confusion to see her standing there with her head lowered.
“Ning Yi, I’m not very clever, and I don’t understand everything that’s going through your head. But Sister Yun Zhu and I both came from the pleasure quarters. Becoming someone’s concubine, or being kept by a man outside his household—these are normal things, things we ought to be happy about. If a man treats us well, that’s something extra; if he’s just so-so, well, at least we have somewhere to belong. You say you feel like a lot of things are good, so you want them—but aren’t all men like that? They see a woman they like, and they take her into their household. I don’t know exactly what’s in your head, but how we choose to live our lives is our business too. Sister Yun Zhu got sick—lots of people get sick, but illness always gets better eventually. Neither of us thinks this is your fault. You don’t need to keep thinking about it so much.”
Ning Yi was struck momentarily still by these words. As he reached out to touch Jin’er’s head, she stepped closer and threw her arms around him. He could feel the fragrant warmth and softness of her body, her chest pressed against his.
Ning Yi held her.
“I know you won’t really take what I said to heart, will you?”
Jin’er spoke into his embrace, her tone carrying no trace of resentment. Ning Yi smiled faintly. However carefree and thoughtless she might seem on the surface, this woman in front of him had a clever, perceptive heart of her own. When she turned that gentleness toward him, his own worries and true feelings weren’t something he could easily hide from her.
“I… I do understand what you’re saying. It’s just that I feel like it’s my responsibility…”
“Mm…” Jin’er nodded softly, nestling further into his arms. “Actually, Sister Yun Zhu and I both know—we’re happy, really. Even though the night you said those things to me, I felt a bit like crying… I just think, if you keep on like this, it’ll wear you down.”
“A man has to be a little hard on himself sometimes. But I’ve kept in mind everything you said.”
“Good, then…”
In the days since, Ning Yi had kept returning to the feeling of that evening—the woman in his arms, the words she’d spoken. Though he still couldn’t quite let go of his inability to resolve the matter, his mood, at least, had grown much lighter.
That day, he spent time with Yun Zhu and Jin’er reading and chatting, and listened to Yun Zhu play a tune on the guqin he had made. Though the instrument’s quality was terrible, under her fingers the tone still came out beautifully. Yun Zhu joked that she ought to write a book on how to coax good music out of a bad qin—but for all her joking, she treasured that poorly-made instrument dearly.
Afterward, Ning Yi picked up a leg of ham and headed home. By the time he reached the courtyard that had, by now, effectively become the “Ning household,” Su Wenyu was there chatting with Tan’er and the others about recent events. After dinner, Ning Yi spent a while talking with Su Wenyu about the camp in Shandong. When he returned to the courtyard where they lived, the lamplight was warm and peaceful; Tan’er was holding Ning Xi, watching the snowman they’d built in the yard from the window. Ning Yi went into the room and spent a while playing with his wife and child. Su Tan’er, sitting on his lap with her arms around him, said in a low voice, “What did you do to Wenyu out there in Shandong, to leave him so shaken up…”
“What do you mean?”
“When he got back, he wanted to hold Xi’er. He looked gentle enough, but he ended up scaring her into tears. Wenyu looked embarrassed about it—I could tell he’s not quite the same as before. I’ve never seen anything happen in the space of a few months that could change a wealthy young master like that… If he’d spent time in prison, maybe that could change a person’s temperament, but this isn’t like that either…”
“Hard to say.” Ning Yi shook his head. “It’s not that I can’t say—it’s just that there’s no real point in it. It shouldn’t happen again going forward. That thing was… something that could overturn a person’s whole outlook on life…”
“Then never mind, let’s not let the child hear about it.” Tan’er pursed her lips, resting her cheek against Ning Xi’s small face with a smile, while Ning Yi kept playing with the baby, making her giggle and wriggle with delight.
“Whatever the case, after going through something different, he’s finally starting to grow into something more, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s true.”
While husband and wife spoke of this in their warm room, over in the bustling capital of Bianliang, in the study of the Right Chancellor’s residence with its lit lamps, Qin Siyuan was privately questioning Wang Shanyue about everything that had happened in Shandong. From the courtyard outside came the sound of children running and calling out. When the conversation turned to the camp, Wang Shanyue hesitated slightly.
“…Honestly, it’s hard to describe. Ning Liheng treated the matter with great seriousness. I went to see it myself, and I also saw the state Su Wenyu of the Su family was in afterward… it was, frankly, deeply strange…”
The candlelight flickered as Wang Shanyue stood there, recounting the details.
“…At first, it seemed like they simply had the men obey orders from above—simple training all day. At night, they’d have the men talk about bad things they’d done in the past. A few monks were brought in to tell stories, going on about cause and effect, karma and retribution—but the stories themselves were quite simple, nothing very deep… The whole overall process was, in fact, just that simple. It’s just that on one hand, the camp was run under extremely strict discipline, and on the other hand, Ning Liheng turned confessing one’s sins into a kind of reward…”
“…Whoever spoke most sincerely, most eloquently, most convincingly—he’d let that person live a little better, and even put him in charge of managing the others… At first, he personally supervised things himself, picking out the ones who confessed. In the beginning, perhaps some men were only pretending to confess, putting on an act of storytelling—but as time passed, things gradually changed. Life in that camp was very monotonous; the days must have felt like they crawled by. Within the span of a single month, he had the entire system running on its own, and after that, for the most part, he let them manage themselves…”
“When people are in an environment like that, it’s very hard to keep up a pretense wholeheartedly, to keep lying to yourself and others. Everyone started listening to each other’s stories, competing to be the first to confess their own wrongdoings, to explain why they’d done wrong—and even if it started as pretense, they’d say they deeply regretted it. And the more they said it, the more they lost control of what they truly believed, because in that place, confessing your faults had become a kind of honor… A person can’t keep living in an environment they don’t agree with forever—either they change the environment, or… they change themselves. That’s something Liheng once said. He called it something like a syndrome, something about being ‘torn apart,’ or some such name.”
“…It’s a bit like a group of bandits who kidnap a bunch of people. At first, the captives are afraid of the bandits, but over time, they actually start to feel a kind of fondness for them instead. If the bandits treat them even a little kindly, the captives are more inclined to think of them as good people… not because they truly believe that, but because people have to deceive themselves—they can’t bear to live constantly in a state of fear, so they turn it around and give themselves a reason to believe the situation is bearable…”
“…Then, in the second month, after Liheng left, things grew more and more intense. Those who confessed grew ever more sincere in their manner, but the ones who seemed dangerous began quietly urging others not to go along with it, and there were several uprisings as a result. My men, and the men from Zhu Family Manor, went in a few times, but in truth, most of the unrest was suppressed from within—by the very men who had confessed, stopping others who they felt had wronged them…”
“At the time, the squad leaders Ning Yi had picked out from among them were the group heads. One of these group leaders, when a man under him tried to kill someone and flee, inciting others to riot, stepped in to stop him. And having stopped him, he wouldn’t let anyone else lay a hand on the man either, saying that the man’s stubborn refusal to see reason was also his own fault as leader—and in the end, he killed himself in front of that very man…”
“By the third month, the situation had escalated to the point where over a hundred men had been sent away, and more than thirty had died—twelve of them by suicide… In just three months’ time, the overall state of the camp had become one where everyone felt themselves to be steeped in sin. Some of the very men who, only months before, had been wielding blades to kill without hesitation, were now weeping openly, wanting nothing more than to do good. But to an outsider looking in, it was truly… utterly terrifying. Fortunately, Liheng called a halt to it around this time, and sent in over three hundred children to learn skills from them, in a kind of master-apprentice arrangement…”