Hangzhou Prefecture.
The rain over the Qinhuai River was falling heavily.
Fine threads of rain wove a vast, greyish-white net, enveloping this river of rouge and gold in an airtight shroud.
The pleasure boat "Listening to Rain Pavilion" sat solitary in the heart of the river. There were no sounds of singing girls or lutes; there was only the dull thud of raindrops hitting the roof tiles.
Inside the cabin, Ruinao incense burned, its smoke crawling low across the floor.
In the center of a golden silk phoebe wood table sat an object that was jarringly out of place.
It was a vest tailored from coarse burlap. The fabric was of inferior quality and the stitching was crude, yet it had been dyed a tragic, almost eerie shade of fluorescent green. On the chest of the vest, two words had been brushed in thick, wet ink: Lawful Citizen.
The object was like a glob of phlegm spat into this exquisitely luxurious boat—and into the faces of the four elderly men seated there.
Zhao Chongli, head of the Zhao family, sat in the primary seat, his hand gripping two Baoding iron stress balls. They spun rapidly in his palm, yet they made no sound because he was squeezing them with such force that they were nearly sinking into his flesh.
"Three hundred taels."
Zhao Chongli’s voice sounded as if it were being squeezed through his teeth, carrying a hint of bloodlust. He extended a finger and tapped the green vest.
"The dignity of my Zhao family was ground into the dirt for an entire day, and in the end, this is what we got back. That shade of green is so bright even the turtles at the bottom of the Qinhuai River could see it."
Sitting across from him, Wang Ruhai, head of the Wang family, did not respond.
He simply stared at the purple clay teacup in front of him. The tea inside had gone cold, reflecting his face, which was so dark it looked ready to drip with malice.
Wang Ruhai suddenly raised his hand.
Shatter!
The precious purple clay cup was slammed onto the floor. Shards flew everywhere, and scalding tea soaked the expensive Persian carpet.
"You merely lost face; I’m losing my life!"
Wang Ruhai’s chest heaved violently, and the veins on his neck bulged like earthworms about to burst.
"Wang Gui is still locked in the county magistrate’s dungeon! When I went to bail him out, do you know what the legal secretary at the yamen said? He said that according to the Great Qian Code, I first have to prove that Wang Gui was actually born to his own mother! If his identity cannot be proven, he is a vagrant, a spy!"
Wang Ruhai laughed out of sheer rage, the sound echoing through the hall and making one's skin crawl.
"Absurd! It is the height of the ridiculous! My Wang family’s backer in the capital is the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel—the very ancestor of those who manage the official hats of every bureaucrat in this land! And now, on our own turf, we are being held by the throat by a slip of a girl using a residency document?"
"If word of this gets out, our political rivals in the capital will pile impeachment memorials onto the Emperor’s desk until they cover the Imperial Study. They’ll say the Wang family can’t even manage the lineage of their own household slaves, so how could they manage the lands of Jiangnan?"
The air in the cabin grew so heavy it felt as if it might freeze.
The Four Great Families had occupied Jiangning for a century. They were always the ones setting the rules for others. When had they ever been humiliated like this?
In the setting of this book into which Xu Qinghuan had traveled, the Four Great Families were both officials and merchants, possessing wealth that rivaled the state. They controlled the salt trade and grain transport.
They also held various positions across both local and central government, including but not limited to Ambassadors of the Suzhou Weaving Bureau, Censors of the Court of State Ceremonial, Vice Ministers of the Six Ministries, Councilors of the Governor of Water Transport, Ambassadors of the Songjiang Weaving and Dyeing Bureau, and Secretaries of the Ministry of War.
Their relationship with the imperial finances was inseparable—in truth, the current Emperor wished for nothing more than to slaughter these Jiangnan families.
Unfortunately, His Majesty could not achieve this, and the families could not march north to commit regicide.
More importantly, such a move did not serve the fundamental interests of either side.
It was a complex situation indeed.
Ouyang Feng, who had been sitting silently in the corner, finally moved.
He picked up a folding fan from the table. He didn't open it, but instead used the handle to lightly tap the tabletop. As a kinsman of the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Justice, the Ouyang family was accustomed to hiding their emotions. They preferred to analyze their opponents like venomous snakes.
"Gentlemen, let us all remain calm."
Ouyang Feng’s voice was soft, carrying a chilling sense of reason.
"You only see her arrogance; you haven't seen her blade."
He pointed toward the west of the city, in the direction of the Liu Garden.
"Forty thousand taels of silver to buy a haunted house that no one dared touch. That was her showing her hand to the commoners of Jiangning, telling those peasants that the Xu family has money and fears neither ghosts nor gods."
"In the courtroom, she seized land deeds, incited the tenant farmers, and used the seemingly absurd but logically airtight loop of 'proving your mother is your mother' to detain Wang Gui. That was her showing us her muscle, telling us that she knows the law—and she knows how to use it better than we do."
Ouyang Feng stopped his tapping and scanned the room, a flash of wariness in his eyes.
"This is no uncultured nouveau riche. This is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Every step she takes lands right on the edge of the Great Qian Code. She disgusts us, yet she leaves us unable to find a single fault. If we continue to treat her like a fat sheep for the slaughter, the next ones going inside to wear those green vests will be us."
The faces of Zhao Chongli and Wang Ruhai grew even more unsightly.
They had to admit that Ouyang Feng was right.
Over the past two days, the thugs they had sent to cause trouble had either been bankrupted by mysterious "sanitation regulations" or arrested and forced into road construction to pay off their debts.
The girl simply did not play by the rules.
"So what?" Zhao Chongli gritted his teeth. "Are we just going to let her stay this arrogant? My third brother is the Right Censor-in-Chief at the Censorate. Even if I have to risk everything, I will impeach her for tyrannical governance and abusing the people!"
"Foolish."
An old but immensely authoritative voice rang out.
Xie An, who had been resting with his eyes closed in the high-backed armchair at the head of the table, finally opened them.
The Xie family of Jiangdong was a lineage of scholars and officials for generations.
He was the patriarch of the Xie family.
His family members were active in both the bureaucracy and the literary world.
The Xie family had produced three Imperial Tutors, and currently, the elders of the clan held positions as Grand Secretaries of the Wenyuan Pavilion and Ministers of the Ministry of Rites. In Jiangnan, the Xie family was the very embodiment of the word "rules."
Xie An picked up the lidded teacup beside him and brushed away the floating tea leaves. His movements were slow and deliberate, possessing the arrogance etched into the bones of a great aristocratic family.
"The fish might die, but the net won't necessarily break. However, the Zhao family’s business will likely be the first to be severed."
Xie An set down the teacup, his gaze falling coldly on Zhao Chongli.
"Xu Qinghuan holds an Imperial Edict in her hands; that represents the Emperor’s face. You want to impeach her now? That is slapping the Emperor’s face. Furthermore, she hasn't broken the law. She’s just more of a rogue than you are."
"Then what does Master Xie suggest...?" Wang Ruhai suppressed his anger and asked tentatively.
Xie An stood up, walked to the window, and pushed it open.
The damp, cold wind swirled in with the rain, ruffling his white beard.
"Why use a butcher’s cleaver to kill a pig? It makes a bloody mess and offends the sensibilities."
Xie An turned around, a sharp glint flashing in his clouded old eyes—a light colder than a blade’s edge.
"She has money, she knows the law, and she is ruthless enough. These are her strengths. If you use your weaknesses to clash with her strengths, you will naturally lose quite miserably."
"However, she is, in the end, merely the daughter of a merchant. A peasant who crawled out of some impoverished corner of Yuzhou."
Xie An walked back to the table and reached out to pick up the fluorescent green vest.
He didn't find it filthy. Instead, he gazed at it as if admiring a piece of fine art, a cruel curve tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"She might be able to read the 'Great Qian Code,' but does she understand the 'Guangyun' rhyme dictionary? Does she know how to distinguish between level and oblique tones? Does she know the proper placement of chopsticks at a formal banquet? Does she have any idea how to hold her own against great scholars brimming with classical learning?"
The eyes of the three men sitting there lit up.
They understood exactly what Xie An meant.
In this world, there is a kind of blade that kills without drawing blood; it is called "Etiquette," and it is called "Heritage."
In Jiangnan, a place that obsessed over lineage and cultural pedigree, wealth was not everything. If you did not understand the rites, you were nothing more than a monkey dressed in dragon robes—a laughingstock to all.
"Elder Xie, you mean... to set a trap?" Ouyang Feng asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"It is not a trap. It is a banquet."
Xie An threw the green vest onto the floor and ground his heel into it.
"We shall revive the 'Splendid Banquet'."
Upon hearing those two words, the men present instinctively straightened their backs, their breathing quickening.
The Splendid Banquet.
It was the pinnacle of Jiangnan’s social circles—a field of fame and fortune, but also a brutal shura field. Only the true elite were qualified to take a seat. Over the years, countless arrogant officials from the outside had tried to use this banquet to integrate into Jiangnan’s inner circles. In the end, they invariably made fools of themselves at the table, only to be torn apart by the critiques of scholars and luminaries. They would either resign in shame or become the lapdogs of the great families.
In that arena, one did not compete with blades or spears. One competed with family heritage, refined conversation, and a system of etiquette that was as tedious as it was strictly hierarchical.
"One month from now, right here on the banks of the Qinhuai River."
Xie An’s voice dropped to a low register, sounding like the whisper of a demon crawling out of hell.
"Send an invitation to the County Princess of Anguo. Make it a grand spectacle. Let everyone in Jiangnan know that the Four Great Families are hosting the 'Splendid Banquet' to 'welcome' the new County Princess."
"I want every scholar in the empire to see that this so-called 'Auspicious Omen,' once stripped of her glittering golden coat, is nothing more than an uneducated, boorish village girl."
"When the time comes, we won't even need to lift a finger. The brushes of those scholars will be enough to snap her spine."
Zhao Chongli slammed his hand on the table, the gloom on his face vanishing instantly.
"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!"
"She humiliated my Zhao family in open court. At the Splendid Banquet, I will return that humiliation tenfold—no, a hundredfold—in front of the whole world!"
Wang Ruhai also wore a predatory smile. "The eldest young lady of the Xie family is famous throughout Jiangnan for her talent; she is a master of the zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting. When the time comes, Miss Xie need only show a fraction of her skill to make that Xu Qinghuan—who knows nothing but how to read account books—look like nothing more than mud on the ground."
At the mention of her—
Xie An stroked his beard and smiled, though his eyes grew colder by the second.
"Remember, this time we use a soft knife."
"We will invite her into the game with smiles on our faces, and then... we will watch her cry until she dies."
Note: The "Three Rivers and Five Lakes" of Jiangnan mentioned in the "Yu Gong" and the "Book of Han's Geography" include present-day southern Jiangsu, southern Anhui, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. These areas belong to the ancient Three Rivers basin and the modern Jiangnan region, collectively known as "Sanjiang Jiangnan."
The discussion of Jiangnan in a folk and geographical sense is even more complex. Therefore, the setting of this novel defines the Jiangnan region primarily as the "Economic Jiangnan," roughly corresponding to modern-day Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Readers may treat it as a singular "Jiangnan Prefecture."
