The idlers huddled into their cotton-padded coats, sniffing beneath the shelter of a wall that blocked the wind.
Quite a few unsuccessful Imperial Academy students stood in the falling snow, stamping their frozen feet alternately.
Around the perimeter were stewards and servants from the various dukes’, marquises’, and princes’ estates, all huddled beside blue-canopied carriages and whispering among themselves.
Everyone wanted to be the first to learn what would happen at the Deer Cry Banquet.
“If you ask me, Xu, the provincial runner-up, is liable to walk in there today and be carried out horizontally.”
Beneath a tea stall, a middle-aged man in a felt hat took a sip of scalding, coarse tea and grinned.
“Those old masters at the Imperial Academy usually dare to point at even court officials and curse them to their faces. And the First Prince is a man who commands troops. With both the civil and military factions joining forces, won’t they swallow that ignorant little whelp alive?”
“Exactly.”
A nearby old scholar pulled his worn cotton robe tighter, white breath streaming from his mouth.
“He’s defied the laws of our ancestors and spouted nonsense about some so-called ‘practical principles.’ If they don’t strip a layer of skin from him today, what will become of the court’s dignity?”
Before he could finish speaking, seven or eight figures in crimson and blue official robes came rushing out from inside.
At the very front was a third-rank vice minister from the Taiyuan Li clan. On ordinary days, he took three pauses for every step he made in the government office. But now he had even forgotten his cane. His foot slipped on the steps, and he nearly pitched headfirst down them.
The attendants behind him had not even had time to raise an umbrella. The old official had already charged headlong into the swirling snow, abandoning his sedan chair and hurrying into a nearby alley with his robes gathered in his hands.
The court officials who poured out after him were even more chaotic.
There were men from the Ministry of Rites, the Censorate, and the Hanlin Academy—compilers, scholars, and academics of every rank.
Officials who normally placed the utmost importance on dignity and decorum now looked as though they had seen a ghost. Some had run their official hats askew, hanging crookedly from one ear. Others had dropped the sable cloaks draped over their shoulders on the steps, yet no one even bent down to retrieve them.
The entire main street descended into disorder.
“What happened? The banquet only just began!”
“Why are all the officials running out?”
The crowd erupted.
A failed Imperial Academy student, stamping his feet beside a snowbank to keep warm, spotted someone stumbling down the steps. It was his fellow townsman and roommate at the examination hall, Zhou Yuan!
The student hurried over, seized Zhou Yuan by the sleeve, and demanded anxiously, “Brother Zhou! Brother Zhou, wait! What happened inside? Why is everything in such chaos?!”
The sudden tug made Zhou Yuan stagger.
His entire body was still trembling. The scholar’s cap had vanished from his head, and his disheveled hair hung over his forehead.
When the wind and snow struck him, he coughed twice, looking as though his soul had left his body.
Zhou Yuan swallowed hard, pointed at the empty entrance of Brightmoon Tower, and spoke in a voice that shook uncontrollably.
“Xu, the provincial runner-up… has returned home. He thanked the First Prince, walked straight out the main gate, and didn’t say another word.”
The crowd fell abruptly silent.
“It’s over!”
The idler from earlier slapped his thigh and cried out, “I told you so! He must have offended His Highness and brought disaster upon himself. Knowing he couldn’t escape death, he fled through the gate!”
“What a calamity! He must have said something treasonous and insulting to the emperor. The constables from the Supreme Court are probably already on their way!”
All around them came sighs and mocking laughter. Everyone agreed that Xu Zijin had completely ruined his own future this time.
A furious roar suddenly rang out.
“What a load of bullshit!”
The crowd jumped and turned to look.
Another examinee who had just burst through the gate stood on the steps above them. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was gasping for breath from sheer excitement.
He shouted down at the scholars filling the street, “What do you know? Wrong! Wrong! You’ve got it all wrong!”
The Imperial Academy student froze, then called back loudly, “Brother, then what actually happened?!”
The examinee sucked in great gulps of air. The cold wind made him cough repeatedly, yet he suddenly burst into laughter.
“Do you know what happened? Senior Doctor Li of the Imperial Academy brought up Yao and Shun, King Wen and King Wu, Confucius and Mencius, and every possible line of orthodox teaching to suppress him! But Xu, the provincial runner-up, questioned him right there in the hall and made him so furious that he spat blood all over the desk! They had to carry him to the back hall in a sedan chair and force ginseng broth down his throat!”
“What?!”
The entire street fell silent in an instant. Disbelief filled every face.
The senior doctor had been angered into unconsciousness?
“Surely the young fellow must have been drinking fake wine and babbling nonsense!” An elderly tribute student stared wide-eyed. “Master Li has studied the classics for sixty years. He is a renowned scholar of our age. How could he possibly be refuted by some young upstart? What does Xu Zijin have to back him up?”
“What does he have to back him up?”
The Jiangnan examinee descended the steps. With every step, his voice rose higher.
“Xu, the provincial runner-up, pointed straight at the faces of every high-ranking official in that hall and asked them: You never stop speaking of the great principles of Heaven and Earth, of the proper bonds between ruler and subject—but have any of you ever found out the price of rice in Jiangning? Refugees are freezing to death outside the city. Do you even see them?!”
“He asked every official present: The women weavers of Jiangning work the treadles day and night, exchanging the cloth they weave with their own hands for rice to feed their families! And you ministers and nobles seated high above them—after spending your whole lives studying commentaries and annotations, have any of you ever supported a single person with your own hands? Have you ever woven a single inch of cloth? Have you ever harvested a single grain of rice?!”
The examinee’s eyes were red as he shouted hoarsely, “Xu, the provincial runner-up, even said that the calluses on the weavers’ hands are thicker than all the volumes of moral doctrine piled upon the desks of those officials!”
“That line… is truly well said!”
Someone among the scholars began breathing heavily.
The Imperial Academy student clutched Zhou Yuan’s arm and cried out urgently, “What happened next? When the old master asked about his teachers and his orthodoxy, how did he answer?!”
“How did he answer?”
Standing beneath the swirling snow, the Jiangnan examinee lifted his head and gazed at the gloomy sky.
“To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth.”
The clamor along the street suddenly died down by half.
“To establish the destiny of the common people.”
The whispers all around them vanished completely. Every person stood staring at him in a daze.
The Jiangnan examinee flung his sleeve and roared,
“To continue the lost teachings of the ancient sages!”
“To bring peace to all generations to come!!”
The wind and snow continued to howl, but the street before Brightmoon Tower sank into absolute silence.
Snow pattered down onto everyone’s shoulders.
The old scholar who had been leaning on his wooden staff stood utterly rigid. His mouth hung open, and a faint rasp escaped his throat, yet he could not piece together a single complete sentence.
His eyes twitched violently, the whites webbed with blood vessels.
To establish the mind. To establish the destiny of the people. To continue the lost teachings. To bring peace to all generations.
He had studied the classics and histories for fifty years, worn through more than a dozen sets of commentaries, and written of benevolence, morality, and the Mandate of Heaven in his essays day after day.
But… what kind of vision was this?
What kind of audacity was this—so outrageous, yet so vast and magnificent that one could not even summon the thought of refuting it?
“Did… did Xu Zijin really say that?” a failed scholar murmured blankly. “The teachings of the ancient sages have been severed for fourteen hundred years. He intends to reconnect them… and he still wants to bring peace to all generations…”
“He’s mad… the whole world is going mad!”
A young scholar in a blue brocade cotton robe shuddered at the edge of the crowd.
He was a junior member of the Jiangnan Xie clan.
His face went pale. Then, as though suddenly awakened from a nightmare, he shoved aside the fellow student blocking his way and shouted in a frenzy:
“Move! Let me through! I’m not taking the examination anymore… This message has to reach Jiangnan! It has to go now!”
The people beside him staggered from the impact.
“Brother Xie, have you lost your mind?!”
“You don’t know a damn thing!” The aristocratic young man did not even have time to pick up the fox-fur hat that had fallen from his head. “Once these four lines are out, Xu Zijin’s new learning will be unstoppable! The course of the world’s literary tradition is about to change! I have to get to the relay station. Prepare the fastest horse at once and send word back to the old residence in Jinling! Hurry!!”
Like a madman, he plunged into the snowstorm filling the main street and vanished in the blink of an eye.
One stone had stirred a thousand ripples.
The spies and stewards scattered throughout the street all came to their senses. One after another, they shoved their way outward, while the cracks of whips and angry shouts merged into a single uproar across the snow-covered ground. They raced toward the residences of the various ministries and noble houses like men possessed.
Meanwhile, beneath the eaves of a teahouse at the edge of the crowd, the Fat Shopkeeper of Shulin Studio had eyes that gleamed frighteningly bright. Greed and trembling excitement warred in his gaze.
“To establish the mind… to establish one’s destiny… to carry on the lost teachings… to bring peace to all under Heaven…”
The Fat Shopkeeper slapped his thick thigh.
Beside him, the account clerk—shivering violently from the cold—whined, “Ow! Shopkeeper, you’ve already slapped my leg several times…”
The Fat Shopkeeper spun around and seized him by the collar. “Shut up! Back to the shop! Move!”
The clerk began to tremble even harder. “S-Shopkeeper, what are we going back for? The snow is coming down so heavily…”
“What do you know? It’s a huge deal! The deal of a lifetime!”
The Fat Shopkeeper shoved the clerk forward and dashed outside, kicking up a string of muddy splashes. He roared, “Bring out the two finest sets of jujube-wood movable type in the shop! Drag out every sheet of rice paper in the storeroom! Not a single person is allowed to sleep tonight—we’re setting the type through the night!”
“Print only these words! And carve the entire exchange from the main street onto the page exactly as it happened! I want ten thousand copies printed before dawn!”
The news sprouted wings. Through the swirling goose-feather snow, it sped straight toward every corner of the great Qian capital.
…
Beyond the main street, at the Residence of the Earl of Chengyi.
Xie Yunwan still held half a cup of warm tea in her hands, her thoughts lingering on the few astonishing words Xu Qinghuan had spoken moments ago.
“In the first month, we gather flowers, oh—but there are no flowers to gather~”
The off-key rustic tune outside the courtyard had only just faded when Xu Fu knocked softly on the door. “Miss, a letter seems to have arrived. It’s from the north, I believe?”
Xu Qinghuan was reclining against a couch and was just about to answer.
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps crushing the snow came from the courtyard entrance.
Xie Yunwan instinctively turned her head toward the doorway.
A slender, upright figure appeared in her line of sight.
The instant Xu Zijin saw Xie Yunwan, a look of surprise flashed across his face. His footsteps halted involuntarily, one foot suspended in midair.
But in the next moment, the corners of Xu Zijin’s lips lifted, and joy hid within his brows and eyes.
Their gazes met.
