In the darkness, only one side of the building let out any light, the sound of the Qinhuai River’s flow carrying with the wind, night mist thick as mountains. Ning Yi looked at her expression, and this time nodded plainly.

“Mm, understood.” After a moment, he thought again, “So what exactly is your relationship with him?”

Nie Yunzhu’s expression had still carried a serious cast, but hearing this, her face went through a complicated shift — she seemed to struggle to hold onto that earnest, weighty look, holding it for a few seconds before finally bursting into laughter.

“Someone I knew back at Jinfeng Pavilion.”

She glanced at Ning Yi. She wasn’t sure why, but when he’d first brought up Gu Yanzhen, her heart had suddenly tightened with nerves — unsure what he’d heard, what he might be thinking, and how best to be honest about it. Yet because of his casual question just now, when she finally said it aloud, her heart carried not a ripple of unease at all — calm and easy, just as it had been when everyone chatted in front of the building before. Ning Yi paused. “You mentioned a few days ago he’s quite a famous talent, isn’t he?”

“It’s strange that Liheng hasn’t heard of him, actually.”

“Forgot.” Ning Yi shook his head. “So what now?”

“I don’t know either. I’ve already thought about asking a few of Er Niu’s relatives to help, but I haven’t worked out the details yet.” Nie Yunzhu propped her chin in her hand, looking a little troubled too. “Originally, I didn’t have many skills to speak of. I just wanted a little cart, sell some pancakes, prove to myself I wasn’t entirely useless — that’s all. I thought the same about the preserved eggs, figured it would take ages before anyone even liked them. Who knew — just these past few days, and I’ve already sold so many, I can’t even keep up with making them. It’s too fast… Mm, I am happy about it, but I really hadn’t thought about what to do next. What do you think, Liheng?”

“The preserved eggs… do you want to keep doing this?”

“I never meant to run a real business in the first place, I only planned to set up a small stall…” A person ought to know herself, and in all her years at Jinfeng Pavilion, Nie Yunzhu had seen her share of genuinely successful merchants. Doing business, selling things — wherever there was profit there was risk, and some things weren’t so easily grasped by her temperament. Still: “It’s just, with business suddenly this good, and me unable to keep up with what’s right in front of me… it does feel a shame to let it go.”

“What comes next is going to get a bit troublesome.”

“Hm?”

“You’ll sell more preserved eggs. You’ll hire some people. In the first month or two, sales will keep expanding — especially once Kang Xian has talked it up at a few dinner parties at his estate — jade eggs, prosperity eggs, whatever you call them, demand will outstrip supply, and you’ll keep expanding to meet it. That’s how it always goes with something new…”

Ning Yi picked up a twig and, while talking idly, sketched away at the ground. “That’s when you’ll find you lack management experience. At first you’ll use people you know a little — Er Niu’s relatives, friends, cobbled into a small workshop — and all sorts of friction will start showing up. Meanwhile, on the other side, people will start copying the preserved eggs. Give it three months, maybe less, and it’ll come out — even if you’re careful about secrecy, it won’t take more than four.”

“The process itself for preserved eggs isn’t especially technical — you haul dry firewood back to burn, buy lime powder, and anyone determined enough could figure it out just by watching. Now that word’s gotten out, and supply can’t keep up, it’ll start spreading among a few restaurants, and someone may already be eyeing it. If your eggs still show unwashed traces of lime powder on the shell, all someone needs to do is experiment using the method for salted duck eggs — not much of a problem. And if you expand into a proper little workshop, exposing your methods becomes even easier.”

“And then it’s simple — a price war. More and more people will know how to make it, they’ll come up with new ways to serve it, you won’t be able to hold the price at twenty coins, you’ll have to drop it, they’ll drop theirs too, more people will jump in, and eventually selling preserved eggs will be about as glamorous as selling flatbread… eh…”

As Ning Yi spoke, he turned to look over at her; Nie Yunzhu, chin still in hand, was already looking back at him too, something like amusement in her eyes. Ning Yi pursed his lips and pointed the twig at her. “By then, you’ll take a hit.”

Nie Yunzhu was thinking of something else. “Actually, Liheng is quite formidable at this sort of thing, aren’t you?”

“Hm? What sort of thing?”

“Business.”

Ning Yi fell silent a moment, then said, “I’m the reincarnation of some old business-savvy demon spirit — should I tell you that too?”

Nie Yunzhu pressed her lips together in a soft laugh, then smoothed the hair by her ear. “Actually, I’ve been wanting to ask — the preserved eggs suddenly selling so well, does that have something to do with you, Liheng?”

“We made a wager, had to do something about it — couldn’t just sit around and lose, could I.” Ning Yi laughed. “It really was my idea at the start. Looking at it now, though, it ran into some complications and backfired a bit, ended up adding to your burden. If I’d known, I’d have just gotten a few idle people to spread word here and there and left it at that. Actually, since I figured you couldn’t handle too much volume, I specifically told Old Kang not to go promoting it wildly at the Consort’s estate…”

“So that’s really how it was.” She murmured this, a trace of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Liheng found some shills?”

Ning Yi nodded.

“But Liheng… doesn’t know Gu Yanzhen, does he?”

“Ran into Li Pin one morning, mentioned it offhand. He said he had a few friends who were bored anyway and could help out — talented types, I suppose. I don’t know them myself; that Gu Yanzhen might well have been among them. When I made the wager with Old Kang, we agreed not to use my name to promote it… eh, remember you told me the next day that you’d sold six eggs? Ha — four of those were me buying them.”

Nie Yunzhu narrowed her eyes, a look of sudden understanding on her face. “Ah… I did wonder why a restaurant errand boy suddenly came to buy four preserved eggs, when Liheng had only just gotten the cart set up, on the very first day… so that’s… heh…”

In the pre-dawn dark, stars still hung in the sky. Nie Yunzhu tilted her head back and laughed, many things suddenly falling clear in her mind.

“What does Liheng think I should do?”

“If you find it interesting, grow it. If you don’t, stop. It’s up to whether you think it’s worth doing.”

“Actually it does feel rather satisfying — makes me feel quite capable. But I also know I don’t really know how to run a business. Liheng… will you teach me?”

A brief silence; Ning Yi glanced at her. “…All right.”

On a morning in March of the eighth year of the Jinghan reign of the Wu Dynasty, this quiet reply rang out in the mist before dawn along the banks of the Qinhuai. What followed was only a string of small, ordinary matters — food and drink, chains of stalls, high-proof liquor, supply chains, all manner of odds and ends — the two of them talking on the steps of the little riverside building as they always did, the actual subject matter no longer really mattering. Behind them, in the room of the little building, the maid named Hutao leaned against the window and sighed, quietly worrying over her mistress in her heart.

The white mist drifted and dispersed, the sun rose, and the crowds of Jiangning stirred into motion. We speed up its passing, hasten the sun’s arc across the sky, and only let our fingers off when it draws near noon. Nie Yunzhu was now walking aimlessly along a street lined with shops in the city, a small bundle in hand — Hutao and Er Niu were currently minding the stall.

By her usual habit these past days, she would have hurried straight back by now, mulling over how to boost production of the preserved eggs, weighing where to buy firewood in the afternoon at the best price. But today was different. Since morning, she’d been wrapped tightly in some kind of mood, her thoughts churning without the slightest sign of settling even now.

Ever since Hutao had said to her, “Miss, you can’t marry him” — or perhaps even earlier, from the moment she’d first noticed certain feelings stirring in herself — through these recent days of Gu Yanzhen’s persistence, together with the suddenly expanding preserved-egg business and its mounting burdens, her state of mind had, in truth, remained somewhat unsettled throughout. But today was different. The whole morning she’d been happy, her spirits light, every cloud swept clean away.

From a distance she spotted the banner of a Su family cloth shop — such signboards were a common sight, with several branches of the Su family shops scattered across Jiangning. In the past, because of her connection to Ning Yi, she’d never paid them much mind, but this time she stood by the roadside and watched quietly for a good while, watching customers come and go, the business brisk.

In her mind, the things Ning Yi had said today kept echoing — the nod, the word “all right” he’d spoken, and what came after.

“…But there’s one thing you have to remember — I want you to remember, whenever you decide to go a step further, exactly why you’re doing it. Even if the money’s modest right now, you’re happy, aren’t you — you just wanted a little pancake stall, to prove to yourself that you’re capable of getting things done. That’s the Yunzhu I know. If someday you find yourself moving too fast, remember how you feel right now. Stop when you need to stop, step back when you need to step back, don’t force it — otherwise, in the end, you might chase the branches and forget the root, forget what you actually wanted. Sand you can’t hold — just let it scatter from your hand. Even if you came back to right where you are now, you’d have lost nothing…”

After she’d nodded, the rest of what Liheng said had been fairly offhand — he’d drawn idle little sketches on the ground with the twig, seeming unconcerned or simply practiced at it, “maybe” this, “maybe” that. Only that one passage he’d spoken with real weight, and afterward gave a faint, almost self-mocking smile, as though something had crossed his mind. Nie Yunzhu had held on to those words, though what she’d felt at the time wasn’t quite what Ning Yi had meant by them.

Certain things, certain feelings, had taken shape quietly, without Ning Yi even knowing. In fact, just yesterday morning, Ning Yi had gone with Su Tan’er and the others out for a spring outing, having a bite to eat while Chan’er and Juan’er flew kites. There’d been a good crowd of outing-goers, and Ning Yi hadn’t noticed, but Nie Yunzhu and Hutao had spotted them from a distance.

At the time, Nie Yunzhu and Hutao had gone with a fellow villager of Er Niu’s to buy duck eggs out in the countryside, and on the way back, they’d caught sight of Ning Yi and Su Tan’er over there. It was the first time Nie Yunzhu had ever seen Su Tan’er — watching from a distance as the two of them talked on the grass, a complicated feeling she couldn’t quite put into words had risen in her. That morning, when she and Ning Yi had crossed paths, she’d already been wrapped in a low mood, and then Ning Yi had suddenly asked about Gu Yanzhen — in that instant, she’d genuinely felt as though something had twisted tight around her.

Fortunately, that feeling had released itself soon after, but seeing Ning Yi kept bringing back thoughts of yesterday’s grassy field, of Su Tan’er, dressed in fine clothes, young and beautiful. And yet, gradually, other feelings kept rising up too — especially after Ning Yi had nodded and admitted he was the one behind the preserved eggs. The thought, which had been forming for some time now, suddenly sharpened into clarity. Just as everyone outside kept saying — a man like this, why would he marry in as a matrilocal son-in-law?

Setting the reasons aside for now, Nie Yunzhu suddenly found herself wondering: Liheng had a gift for poetry, a gift for business — living out his days now in such an unhurried, indifferent manner — was he really happy, every single day? She’d never known much about the Su household before, and after buying her freedom she’d had even less access to news of it — she only knew the Su family was very wealthy, worlds apart from an ordinary commoner like herself now. Later, once Ning Yi became famous for his two lyrics, she’d caught wind of a few things — that Liheng had no real head for business, while the Su family’s young lady was formidable at it, might even take over the family business one day. But Liheng did have a talent for business — with ability like that, and yet stuck in the role of a matrilocal husband, forced to hide his light forever behind Su Tan’er — what must he really think of that?

Liheng had handled the whole preserved-egg matter so casually — could it be, in part, that he too couldn’t stand to stay idle, unable to act openly within the household, so he’d done it outside, almost in passing?

And then, suddenly, she understood what she herself might be able to do.

Perhaps she could become his instrument — let Liheng prove, through her, that he was more capable than that Su Tan’er. If it could ever come to that…

At her core, she was still a woman of a quiet, gentle disposition. Some things weren’t good to dwell on. She held the little bundle to her chest, gently bit her lower lip, and walked on past the entrance of the Su family cloth shop, turning her head to glance inside as she went. Then, pressing her lips together, she thought, with something almost childish in it: someday, her own shop would be far, far bigger than this one.