Xu Zijin was jolted awake by a stiff neck.
He couldn’t quite figure how long he’d been asleep.
Outside the window, the sun was dipping westward, and half his face was burning from the heat.
A wisp of gray smoke still curled from the brazier, where a few unburned scraps of paper lay twisted in the ash.
He pushed himself up and felt for the desk.
The stack of ruined xuan paper—gone.
He froze for a moment, thinking he’d moved it during the night. He checked under the inkstone, beside the brush holder, even the cracks in the chair.
Nothing.
“Ah Fu!”
A young servant of fifteen or sixteen came running into the courtyard, still wearing a drowsy, dazed look: “Master, you’re awake? I’ve reheated your porridge three times...”
“Where’s the stack of paper on my desk?” Xu Zijin’s voice trembled. “The ones I ruined last night, piled on the left.”
Ah Fu slapped his forehead, his face immediately brightening with a smile that begged for praise: “Oh, that! Don’t you worry—I took care of it for you early this morning!”
Xu Zijin’s heart sank. “Took care of it where?”
“Sold it!”
Ah Fu reached into his waist pouch, pulled out three copper coins, and presented them like a treasure.
“Top-quality fresh xuan paper goes for two coppers a stack. You wrote so much of it last night and wasted it all—it was just taking up space.
“I took it to the Eastern Market and sold it to Old Man Wang, the scrap dealer. A whole three coppers! Master, that’s called turning waste into profit—I even made back the cost of the paper!”
Xu Zijin stared at the three copper coins, speechless for a long moment.
Since when had he, or the Xu mansion, ever gotten paid so little?
Ah Fu thought his master was dissatisfied with the amount and quickly added, “Old Man Wang is stingy—he weighed it in the sack, by the pound. I haggled with him forever and only squeezed out one extra copper...”
“Do you have any idea what was written on that paper?!” Xu Zijin grabbed him by the shoulder.
Ah Fu shrank back, startled: “J-just your writing, master... all that dense black ink. I couldn’t read much of it...”
Xu Zijin let go and gripped the edge of the table, breathing hard.
In that stack of ruined drafts were sentences he had torn up, rewritten, and torn up again.
“Principle lies within the concrete.”
“Even common men and women can understand and practice it.”
If those words fell into the wrong hands, they could drag the entire Xu household into the imperial prison.
He grabbed his robe and rushed out: “Let’s go! Take me to Old Man Wang!”
...
The scrap stall at the Eastern Market was propped up against the wall.
When Xu Zijin asked about it, Old Man Wang squinted and thought for a long while, then slapped his thigh.
“Oh—that bag of paper full of writing? Long gone.”
“Who bought it?”
“Zhang Apo, from the snack stall.” Old Man Wang held up five fingers. “I bought it for three coppers and sold it to her for five—made two coppers profit. A fair deal. I didn’t cheat your boy.”
Xu Zijin didn’t bother arguing with him. He spun around and ran toward the snack stall.
Zhang Apo was sitting on a low stool, pinching a piece of paper in her hand, folding it in a few moves into a cone-shaped funnel, then scooping in a spoonful of five-spice melon seeds.
The ink marks on that paper—Xu Zijin recognized them from twenty paces away.
“Granny!” He dashed over. “That paper! The ones you’re using for the funnels—how many do you have left?”
Zhang Apo looked up at him, not pausing her work: “Young man, want some seeds? Two coppers a packet.”
“I don’t want seeds! I want that paper!” Xu Zijin stomped in frustration. “Name your price—I’ll buy the whole bag!”
Zhang Apo hugged the stack of paper closer to her chest and eyed him warily: “You want to buy the whole bag just for the paper wrapping? Young man, you’re not here to cause trouble, are you?”
The bamboo basket beside her had once been stuffed with a full pile of paper, but now it was more than half empty.
Xu Zijin’s throat went dry: “How many packets did you sell this morning?”
“Market was busy around noon.” Zhang Apo counted on her fingers. “By morning, at least thirty or forty packs. My five-spice seeds—everyone on this street comes to buy them.”
Thirty or forty.
Which meant the paper funnels with his drafts were now in the hands of thirty or forty shoppers, scattered across every corner of the city as they cracked seeds and tossed them away.
Xu Zijin’s legs gave out, and he nearly fell.
...
For the next half hour, Xu Zijin became a spectacle in the Eastern Market.
He crouched by the gutter at the street corner, picking up discarded paper funnels that people had thrown away after eating their seeds. One by one, he unfolded them, holding them up to the sun to make out the words.
Some had only half a sentence left: “Water flows downward.” Others were stained with seed shells and spit, reduced to a pulp.
The more he collected, the colder his heart grew.
There was no way to pick them all up. How could one man plug the eyes and mouths of an entire city?
An old vegetable vendor nearby watched a scholar in long robes sifting through trash by the ditch and clicked his tongue: “Poor lad. Read so much, he’s gone mad.”
Xu Zijin didn’t have time for that.
He shoved the dozen or so crumpled paper funnels he had gathered into his sleeve, stood up, and brushed the mud from his knees.
There was no way to retrieve them all.
He stood at the street corner for a moment, then gritted his teeth.
At this point, keeping it a secret was absolutely impossible.
Rather than wait for this disaster to burn its way to his lord’s mansion, he might as well go confess his guilt now. The Lord Count could beat him or kill him—he would take it.
He even had his speech prepared.
Kneel first when you enter. Confess this entire mess without missing a single detail, then beg the Lord Count to consider it was an unintentional mistake. He might just have you tied up and sent to the authorities without dragging the Xu family into it.
Xu Youde was sitting behind his desk, holding a letter in his hand.
The letter was from the northern border, in Xu Qinghuan’s handwriting. He was so engrossed in reading it that he didn’t even look up when Xu Zijin entered.
"Lord Count!" Xu Zijin slammed his forehead heavily against the floor. "I’ve stirred up a catastrophe this time!"
Only then did Xu Youde set down the letter, casting a faint glance at him. "Get up and speak. The floor is cold."
"I dare not rise!" Xu Zijin pressed himself flat to the ground, and spilled everything like beans tumbling from a bamboo tube—how the discarded drafts had been sold for three coppers by Ah Fu, how Old Man Wang had passed them to Zhang Apo, and so on.
As he spoke, his pace quickened, until his voice grew nasal: "Every word on that paper was heretical nonsense! Now it’s scattered through the streets. If someone with ill intent uses it to stir trouble and implicates the Count’s estate... I could die ten thousand deaths and still not atone! I beg you, Lord Count, punish me alone, and never..."
"Sunflower seeds."
Xu Youde suddenly interrupted him.
Xu Zijin froze, jerking his head up: "Huh?"
"Didn’t you say the paper was used to wrap sunflower seeds?" Xu Youde picked up his teacup, leisurely using the lid to skim the floating leaves. "Those seeds—were they sweet?"
Xu Zijin was completely dumbfounded.
He knelt there, mouth gaping, unable to process the question for a long moment. He had prepared an entire bellyful of pleas for forgiveness, but he never expected the old Lord Count’s first question to be about whether the sunflower seeds were sweet.
"I... I didn’t eat any..."
Xu Youde set down the teacup. "Enough. Write down those sixteen characters for me from memory."
There was ink and paper ready on the desk.
Xu Zijin dared not dally. He crawled forward on his knees, stood up, and took the brush to write down those lines.
His hand trembled violently. When he reached the line "Even ordinary men and women can understand and act upon it," the brush tip bled a heavy blot of ink onto the paper.
Xu Youde brought the written copy close to his eyes and read it from start to finish.
The study was so still you could hear the faint crackle of the lamp wick.
Xu Zijin didn’t dare breathe, waiting only for the sentence to fall from above: "Drag him out and beat him to death with clubs."
But Xu Youde laughed instead.
At first, it was low, then it grew more and more hearty, until even the hand skimming the tea leaves shook. He slapped the written copy onto the desk, threw his head back, and laughed for a good while, then pointed at Xu Zijin while catching his breath.
"Do you know," Xu Youde said, laughing until tears gathered at the corners of his eyes, "how much silver Xu Qinghuan has thrown away up north, trying to make a stir with this school of thought?"
Xu Zijin shook his head in bewilderment.
"Before she left for the northern border, she poured thousands of taels of silver into it, one after another."
"At most, people just praised her as a reincarnated Literary Star descending from heaven! Hah, praise like that—it’s a small matter!"
"What’s most infuriating are those old Confucians. Only those two old fossils, Kong Zongyun and his associate, were willing to study it with her."
"From what you say, those two have gone into seclusion again."
Xu Youde picked up the three copper coins still lying on the desk.
These were the "ill-gotten gains" that Xu Zijin had surrendered when he entered.
"And now you!" Xu Youde continued. "With three coppers, you’ve accomplished what she wanted."
Xu Zijin’s mouth opened and closed, his voice floating weakly: "Lord Count... you’re not punishing me?"
Xu Youde walked around the desk and personally helped him to his feet.
"Do you think burning the article would have cleaned things up?" Xu Youde flicked the written copy between his fingers. "If you had actually burned it to ash last night, I’d be racking my brains today over how to get it onto the desks of those stubborn old men."
Xu Zijin’s mind reeled, still unable to process this.
"An article—you can burn a sheet of paper, but can you burn the mouths of everyone under heaven?" Xu Youde shoved the written copy back into his hand. "It escaped from your fire, landed in a sunflower seed stall, and scattered into the hands of the city’s common folk."
Xu Youde lifted his eyelids, revealing the old, ruthless cunning of a man steeped in years of officialdom.
"Let it grow up from the muddy ground on its own. Let it stir trouble in the Imperial Academy, let it storm into the court."
"By the time that happens, the ones who’ll have to face it head-on will be those masters clutching the words of the sages."
"Not our Xu family."
"Us, we just sit back and watch the show."
Cold sweat broke out in layers down Xu Zijin’s back.
This time, it wasn’t fear—it was the shock of this veteran’s ruthless scheming.
He had racked his brains over the sages’ teachings all night and still couldn’t solve this deadlock. The old Lord Count had revived it in just a few words.
That fatal article, in the hands of the Count’s estate, was a burning coal.
But if it had grown out of the streets on its own, then it became a swift blade aimed at the enemy’s nose—with no identifiable owner!
Still... how would it become that blade?
In truth, Xu Youde himself haven’t figured out this part!
On the surface, the old fox looked serene and composed, but inside, a storm was raging.
When I saw those sixteen characters just now, even my calves were trembling! These were words that would dig up the ancestral graves of civil officials!
Can this really turn the situation around?
And what was all that—about help from nobles and the favor of heaven?
Xu Youde’s inner turmoil churned into wild, self-reinforcing logic: Xu Qinghuan always thought ten steps ahead in everything she did.
Since she said to let nature take its course, then this three-copper scrap of paper must be a piece of her carefully calculated plan.
Exactly! The old man only needed to sit calmly like a fisherman, putting on this inscrutable expression—that would do the trick.
"As for that boy Ah Fu..." Xu Youde cleared his throat, privately admiring his own acting skills.
He turned and sat back down, picked up his tea, and took another sip.
"A lucky hit. Credit him with a major contribution! Later, take two taels of silver from the accounts and reward him."
"Reward... reward him?" Xu Zijin was caught between laughter and tears.
"He practically traded every head in our household for melon seeds."
"And a fine trade it was." Xu Youde waved a hand dismissively. "This deal was worth it."
He leaned back into his chair and spread open the letter from the northern frontier once more.
As he read, he tossed out a casual order.
"You go back and rest. Stay put for the next few days."
"And whatever you do, don't go picking up those broken paper funnels off the street anymore. No need to draw attention."
Xu Zijin acknowledged the order, clutching the memory sheet he had written from dictation, and stumbled out in a daze.
Even as he reached the courtyard, he glanced back at the study.
Up to this very moment, he felt as though he had narrowly escaped death.
The Lord Count's mastery was truly unfathomable!
Inside the study,
Xu Youde finished reading the letter, folded his daughter's family letter together with that dictated sheet, and carefully pressed them under the heavy Duanyan inkstone.
With no one else around, the old count finally couldn't hold it in any longer and let out a long, bottomless sigh.
"Hahaha! My acting skills are really improving!"
"Though I've no idea yet how to turn this crisis into safety."
He stroked his beard, his gaze gradually growing immensely bright.
"But Qinghuan has never been wrong before! This wave, the advantage is mine!"
Before the words had fully died away, the hurried footsteps of the steward Xu Fu suddenly sounded from outside the study, and he nearly tripped over the threshold.
"Master! Master!"
"At the gate... someone from Grand Secretary Xu's residence has arrived!"
