WWC | Chapter 13

After leaving the Imperial Academy, Su Tingyan did not rush to look for Zhao Shuyan.

Yujing had a refined establishment called Yunshan Luan, praised as Kyoto’s Peach Blossom Spring and a fairyland of water and clouds.

Talents gathered here, the powerful came and went, and countless scholars and men of letters loved to come here to drink, make friends, and speak freely.

This Yunshan Luan was precisely Lu Xuan’s turf. He often came here as well to drink and sing heartily with his faction, a true den of gold and silver.

Su Tingyan had never once set foot here before, yet today he had come, for the first time, against all expectation.

He had heard that Lu Xuan would also be here today, but when he arrived, Lu Xuan had not yet shown up.

So Su Tingyan found a corner seat for himself. He had come soundlessly, without drawing anyone’s attention, only causing a few attendants and maidservants to sneak glances at him in secret.

It was early winter, and the charcoal fire burned feebly, but the hall was still warm and heavy with scent, making him a little drowsy.

A guqin began to sound in the hall. A maid plucked through *Pingsha Luoyan*, and the music merged with the sound of flowing water beyond the waterside pavilion, lending the room a touch of bleak elegance.

After three rounds of wine were poured, the sheets of xuan paper in the hall were filled with poems and sketches.

Laughter and conversation, accompanied by the fragrance of incense and the sound of strings, drifted across the surface of Qinghe Water and became an elegant winter scene in Yujing.

When Lu Xuan stepped into Yunshan Luan, this was the scene he saw.

The whole room rang with singing and laughter, yet only one person sat alone by the railing in a corner.

He was not wearing official robes. A few flecks of flying frost came off the eaves and melted in the crisp air into white jade-like drops, lightly colliding as they fell and dampening his shoulder a little.

He stood in silent contemplation, gazing into the lake. A few pale lamps burned in the hall, casting his features in a coldness even harsher than the bleak winter, yet his eyes were a warm, luminous green-gray, his fine brows slanting into his temples, like a spring breeze utterly out of place.

In his hand he held a small white jade cup. His knuckles were pale, showing that he had also drunk some wine and was a little tipsy, and he was humming something softly under his breath.

Lu Xuan’s pupils shrank and shrank again before he could stop them.

He had not expected to see Su Tingyan here.

He had even less expected to see Su Tingyan like this.

The Yunshan Luan was growing even livelier, everyone speaking back and forth, discussing poetry and debating affairs of state.

Lu Xuan moved through the crowd and went to the railing, and only then did he hear clearly what Su Tingyan had been muttering.

“Ducklings… it’s winter, and there are still so many ducklings by the lake…”

“One, two, three, four…”

“Seven, eight, ha, there are eleven.”

It was impossible to describe what he felt, but Lu Xuan had never experienced anything like it.

Many notable and elegant people came to his place, and most of them liked to show off their literary talent and put on airs.

Some recited wind and moon poems to display their skill, some discoursed on the state of the realm to prove their insight.

But never had anyone come here to count ducks, especially not this man, the former top scholar who had once won first place with a single stroke and taken the highest honors in the empire.

Lu Xuan suppressed the pounding, surging tremor in his chest and sat beside Su Tingyan without a word, looking together with him at the adorable little ducklings by the lake.

This was his territory. He had sat at this railing countless times before, yet this time, sitting down, he felt the noisy world peel away, and within all that splendor, only the untainted brows and eyes of the person before him could fit.

This winter had unexpectedly brought dead wood back to spring.

His voice went a little hoarse as he asked softly, “Lord Su, do you still remember the scene from back when you passed by Yunshan Luan after taking the top rank?”

Back then, the sound of gongs in the streets and the cheers had nearly echoed through all of Yujing.

The ceremonial procession and military horses came in mighty waves, step by step, and Su Tingyan, the youngest zhuangyuan in Da Zhao’s history, sat steadily on a white horse in a bright red official robe. Youthful, spirited, bold as spring wind, he held the reins lightly in his hand, so handsome it was unforgettable for a lifetime.

Lu Xuan had been on the second floor of Yunshan Luan then, watching quietly, watching the thud of hooves crossing the bluestone road, watching the common people along ten miles of roadway part for him and welcome him, and watching the other man lower his head slightly, clasping his hands in salute to everyone around him.

At the time, he had thought that this person possessed a brilliant and upright spine, but once sold to the imperial household, he would probably also become calculating and ruthless.

But unexpectedly, years later, he discovered that the other man still carried the world in his heart, still held compassion and unwillingness to harm.

Su Tingyan glanced at him lazily and replied, “I don’t recall passing by here.”

“But Lord Lu, I do remember a poisonous oath I once made in my heart when I first took top honors.”

Lu Xuan smiled and asked, “What oath was it? Would you be willing to tell me?”

Looking at Lu Xuan’s radiant smile, Su Tingyan thought that such an outstanding face, yet housed in the heart and liver of a wolf, a hawk, and a jackal, was truly a pity.

He said slowly, “After decades of bitter study in a cold window, after reading countless volumes, I finally won the top rank one day.”

“I, Su Tingyan, am willing to be a remonstrating minister, to assist a wise ruler, bring peace to the realm, and open an age of prosperity. Even if blood is spilled across the court, even if I stand alone as a solitary minister, I only ask that the path in my heart be worthy of heaven and earth, of ruler, parents, and teacher!”

His voice had gained a little softness and stickiness from the wine, but his words were still clear. The refined official speech rolled off his tongue, drawing away all other sounds in the world until one could hear nothing but him.

This in itself was not even some earth-shattering vow. In fact, every scholar who stepped into officialdom had once held similar ambitions.

But if someone else had said this, Lu Xuan would not only have dismissed it, he would have mocked them mercilessly as well. Yet when Su Tingyan said it, all his sneering contempt got stuck in his throat.

After a moment of silence, Lu Xuan suddenly let out a soft laugh, and for the first time that laugh carried a trace of self-mockery. “Lord Su, in this city of Yujing, especially here in Yunshan Luan, the least valuable thing is an innocent vow like yours.”

Su Tingyan did not care. He looked the other man over from head to toe and asked, “Lord Lu, do you hate me very much?”

Lu Xuan’s throat bobbed once. He only said four words, “Quite the opposite.”

Su Tingyan feigned confusion. “Could it be that you actually like me very much?”

Lu Xuan smiled and said, “Didn’t Lord Su just ask the obvious?”

Only then did Su Tingyan look as though he had suddenly been enlightened. “I know now, Lord Lu. In fact, you hate me to death in your heart, but your hatred for me is the kind of hatred that wants to strip off my official robe right here, tear it to pieces, crush it into a mess, and then swallow me whole. Right?”

Lu Xuan finally could not hold back and laughed again. “No one understands me better than Lord Su!”

“What is it, did Lord Su specially come today to use a beauty trap on me?”

Su Tingyan said in great trouble, “If sleeping with you once could solve all my problems, I really would be willing.”

“But unfortunately, even if you slept me to death, Lord Lu, you still wouldn’t be brought down so easily.”

With just a few words, he tugged at Lu Xuan’s heart until it nearly burst its banks, and Lu Xuan could not help saying, “Lord Su might as well try it. Maybe it will be my life that ends up in your hands?”

Su Tingyan paused. “Lord Lu, you’re joking. What would I want your life for?”

“Can your life bring back those border soldiers and innocent civilians?”

The smile on Lu Xuan’s face froze all at once.

All that was worldly nonchalance, all that flirtatious probing, was ground to dust before Su Tingyan’s light, airy sentence.

It was as if the cold wind had finally pierced the white jade railing and blown straight to the two of them.

He looked at Su Tingyan.

The other man was still slightly drunk, the corners of his eyes flushed red, his gaze shimmering, looking harmless enough.

But the words coming from his mouth were sharp blades of frost, brutally cutting open all the disguises of romantic wind and moon.

The men under him embezzled military pay, manipulated grain prices, formed cliques and sought private gain. He could numb himself to all of that with the rules of officialdom and the struggle between factions.

He had long since grown used to rolling in the mud of power, used to filling his inner emptiness with extravagance and dissipation.

But Su Tingyan deliberately did not mention any of that.

He directly tore away the curtain that had been covering everything in false peace, pointing out to him the soldiers who might freeze to death in the wind and snow because of a single order or silent approval from him, the common people who might have their families ruined and livelihoods destroyed because of the extortion of his subordinates.

“Lord Su,” Lu Xuan’s voice lost that velvet texture and turned icy cold, “you’re drunk, and now you’re speaking plainly.”

But Su Tingyan did not take the bait. He only said, “I’ve looked through those old records many times, but the more I read, the more lost I became, the more puzzled.”

“Lord Lu’s crimes go from seizing property and forcing people to their deaths, leaving children bereaved and the old without support, all the way up to selling offices and disordering the government, driving the worthy and capable away while the treacherous and favored rise to power. Outwardly, the border defenses fail, inwardly, famine-stricken people eat their children. And you feel no shame at all. I don’t understand, Lord Lu, I don’t understand how you can sleep at night. Sleeping atop so many lives, is your conscience truly at ease?!”

Lu Xuan ordered another pot of the finest Yulouchun brought over, filled a cup to the brim, and held it to Su Tingyan’s lips.

“You’re wrong, Lord Su. In this world, the poor are just people on the verge of death. Since they’re already about to die, do they still count as people? And if they don’t count as people, do their lives still count as human lives?”

“Every year this world has to lose so many people. A few more or a few less, what does it matter?”

“Why can’t I sleep? If I can’t sleep, I can drink and sing my heart out, raise a cup and talk and laugh. Once I’m drunk, I can sleep. But you, Lord Su, you have noble character and integrity, you’re open and upright. You don’t even dare to get drunk. How soundly do you think you sleep?”

Su Tingyan’s gaze paused. He stared at him fixedly and did not take the cup.

“Lord Lu, what you just said today has really broadened my horizons.”

“So in your eyes, the poor don’t count as people at all? Then do you still remember that you also spent more than ten years studying under a cold window, that you too were a high official who came out of a humble house? Lord Lu, could it be that you and I also don’t count as people?”

Lu Xuan only froze for a moment, then gave a disdainful smile. “The capital is full of dust, and white robes are dyed black.”

“Lord Su, you and I can no longer be compared to how we were back then. The word ‘official’ is made of one mouth above and one mouth below. If you don’t fill the mouth above, how can you feed the mouth below? After all these years as an official, do you really still need Lu to teach you such a simple truth?”

“In a prosperous age, be a gentleman. In a chaotic age, be a villain. I am truly compelled by circumstances, and have no choice but to help His Majesty worry and add bricks and tiles to Yujing.”

Su Tingyan said, “What a fine ‘no choice but to.'”

Lu Xuan lightly pushed his cup forward until it touched Su Tingyan’s, making a crisp clang. “Enough. Today I don’t want to argue with you about right and wrong. For the sake of your noble gentlemanliness and my treacherous villainy, how can we not drink a cup?”

After a few moments of silence, Su Tingyan still chose to take the wine. He was smiling too, but that smile was completely different from Lu Xuan’s.

Rolling the jade cup in his hand, he said, “Truly worthy of Lord Lu’s things. This single white jade dǒulì cup could probably be used to build that lifesaving dam in the three northern states, the one the people had begged for five years and still never received.”

“Holding your cup of wine feels like holding the life and death of countless people gazing hopefully from thousands of miles away.”

With that, he tipped his head back and drank it all in one gulp.

“But drinking is drinking. In the future, never put you and me in the same category again, or you’ll just be insulting me.”

The little mole at the tip of his lip became obvious again because of the wine, like a cinnabar mark pierced open in the red-tinged white of his skin.

Lu Xuan stared at him, and because of that little mole, he forgave the other man’s vicious mouth.

After looking for a long while, he finally could not help leaning close to Su Tingyan’s ear and saying in a low voice, “Su Tingyan, you specially came today to say all these unpleasant things and provoke me. Did you ever consider what the consequences would be?”

“You’d better really have some heaven-defying ability to uproot me completely. Otherwise, one day I will do exactly as you said, strip your official robe off you completely, then tear you apart, ruin you, and swallow you.”

His breath brushed Su Tingyan’s ear, carrying warm wine fragrance and dark, vicious malice.

This was not flirting. It was the most direct declaration of war.

System: [Detected that the inner defenses of攻略对象 Lu Xuan have begun to waver. Favorability fluctuating violently: -100+200-300+600, charm value +1500! Warning: target’s danger level has skyrocketed!]

This was still the first time Lu Xuan had added so much favorability to him, and Su Tingyan was briefly surprised.

In fact, just now he had even suspected that Lu Xuan’s favorability might drop below 200, and that he was planning to kill him outright.

Lu Xuan had wanted to see even the slightest flicker of fear in Su Tingyan’s expression, but unfortunately, there was none at all.

Su Tingyan merely turned his head slightly away and lifted a hand to rub his ear, which had started to itch. “Then I’ll be waiting, Lord Lu.”

Ice on the eaves melted into water, and water again condensed into mist. Faint and hazy, the frost vapor fell lightly from the tiles with a soft sound.

Along with that drip, Su Tingyan’s jade chopstick-like fingers pressed against Lu Xuan’s chin, and that forcefulness was completely unlike his usual quiet, gentle demeanor.

He looked at Lu Xuan calmly and said, “I’d like to see just how wide Lord Lu’s little cherry mouth can open, to swallow someone as big as me.”

Being pinched like that, Lu Xuan only felt that the pair of eyes across from him had instantly turned into a sword made of water. The direction of that blade was both restrained and unrestrained, as if it only exposed its sharp edge when necessary.

He thought that there probably wasn’t anyone in this world who could properly listen to Su Tingyan speak, because no one could fail to be bewitched by those eyes.

After he finished speaking, Su Tingyan neatly let go and stood up, one hand on the table.

Lu Xuan had long since forgotten himself. Still wanting more, he touched the place on his own face where Su Tingyan had just touched him. Even after being called a little cherry mouth, he was not annoyed at all. His head was full of only one thing: if there were a chance, he really wanted to taste Su Tingyan’s mouth himself. It was so poisonous, who knew if he would die after tasting it.

After finishing with Lu Xuan, Su Tingyan also lost any mood to linger.

“The wine has been drunk, the words have been spoken, and the ducks…” He paused and glanced out the window. “The ducks have also been counted. This one from the Cabinet will take his leave.”

Lu Xuan remained seated in place, unmoving, only tilting his head up to look at him, his brow and eyes lightly arched, his breath like waves.

“Lord Su is leaving already?” His voice was wanton, and beneath its laziness ran hidden currents. “Won’t you stay and chat with me properly?”

Su Tingyan waved a hand and walked out a little unsteadily, not turning back again.

“I didn’t come here to chat. I came here to anger you.”

The qin music inside had already stopped. No one recited poetry anymore, no one discussed paintings anymore. Everyone held their breath and watched as they saw off the departing Grand Secretary of the Central Palace Hall, none daring to stop him, none daring to step forward and speak to him.

Lu Xuan sat quietly until Su Tingyan had completely left Yunshan Luan, and only then did he curl his lips slightly and smash the cup in his hand hard onto the floor.

After a moment, the singer began again: “Songs will end, incense will fade, the bloom of worldly things will wither away. Alas, if one does not linger, it will be hard to find them again.”

Su Tingyan walked out of the gates of Yunshan Luan, and the cold air hit him full in the face. He had not been drunk to begin with, and now he was completely sober.

Qinghai had already prepared the carriage and was waiting at the entrance. Seeing him come out, he hurried over to support him. “My lord, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Su Tingyan let out a cloud of stale breath. “Take me home first.”

On the carriage, even the system could not help asking him, [Player, why did you go and provoke him? It’s not a good thing for the danger value to go up!]

“I couldn’t help it.” Su Tingyan said to the system in his heart.

He had only roughly flipped through those old account books, yet he was already gnashing his teeth at the utterly unforgivable Lu faction.

If reason had not been restraining him, he would already have been smashing those rotten accounts right into Lu Xuan’s face.

Su Tingyan said, “People like Lu Xuan can’t be truly moved by ordinary probing or goodwill. Only by stimulating him, making him angry, making him lose control, can you make him unable to remain calm any longer.”

He believed that after tonight, Lu Xuan definitely would not be able to keep his composure the way he had before.

He was going to make the other man understand that he had completely chosen to stand against him. Either you die, or I do.

Wherever the Lu faction went to cover mouths, wherever they went to erase evidence of corruption, he would go there and investigate it.

Author’s Note:

———————-

Su Tingyan: insulting people.

Lu Xuan: going at me.

Ah, the final moments dropped too hard, so I’m not worrying about word count anymore. Updates will go back to daily. Starting tomorrow, updates will be posted promptly at 4 p.m.~