“Looking at a beauty under the lamp” always carries a touch of romance, but the first thing Xie Jing noticed about this Miss Xiao was the faint sense of familiarity in her features.
He had never patronized the Star-Plucking Tower, so he guessed that she might have been invited to entertain at a banquet hosted by some high official or noble, and he himself happened to be present, making a prior brief acquaintance possible.
“I wouldn’t dare.” The young woman put the pipa aside and motioned for the two to sit down. “One can’t simply claim to be Your Highness’s sister.”
She spoke to Lu Lingcong with a teasing tone that showed familiarity, clearly not being truly formal; at least the “old acquaintance” part could be confirmed.
But when she turned to Xie Jing, she became more proper, acting politely, almost as if addressing a younger brother.
“My surname is Xiao, and my given name is Yao,” she smiled. “I dare not take advantage; Young Master Xie can just call me by my name.”
She poured two cups of wine: “I just broke the clay seal on this and prepared it here for the two of you to have a taste.”
Lu Lingcong laughed and said he knew coming here meant being forced to drink and did not refuse, but after taking the cup he was in no hurry to drink, instead half closing his eyes to sniff it and lifting an eyebrow. “It was sent in the fourth month, why is the jar only being opened now?”
Xie Jing was not suited to heavy drinking, and according to etiquette, he took a small sip; it was mellow and fragrant upon swallowing, and with a lingering aftertaste, he could tell it was the famous Meishan Snow Liquor, yet upon closer taste, it was slightly different from what the Qinhuai Chun tavern usually sold.
“Your Highness only sent this single jar, so of course I had to save it carefully for an honored guest.” Xiao Yao lifted an eyebrow at Xie Jing. “Young Master Xie, have a few more sips. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Xie Jing was stunned for a moment, then realized, “This was—personally brewed by His Highness?”
“From Mount Mei on the southern slopes of Zijin, the core snow water is gathered after the first snowfall following the late rains, mixed with glutinous rice, dozens of petals, and spices, then buried beneath the ‘Pin’ plum in Prince Zhao’s Mansion for three years to mature by the following spring.” Xiao Yao explained, “This one jar of mine was bestowed by His Highness as a favor; how dare I open it easily?”
Lu Lingcong felt a bit embarrassed hearing this: “You make it sound as if I’m incredibly miserly. I brew this every year so how could I possibly begrudge giving up a single jar? Zhiwu, don’t listen to her incitement. I will send someone to deliver it when I return to the mansion. You can have as much as you want.”
It was the first time Xie Jing had heard Lu Lingcong call him by his courtesy name without his surname, and he froze for a moment.
He thoughtfully looked at the wine cup in his hand and, after a while, brought it back to his lips and slowly drank all the wine.
Xiao Yao saw this, gave a “tsk,” and said meaningfully, “In my opinion, Your Highness doesn’t need to rush to send it. When he passes the threshold and enters the mansion in the future, teaching him hand-in-hand how to brew it, that’s when he’ll truly have as much as he wants.”
Xie Jing was almost immune to this blatant teasing, but Lu Lingcong unnaturally changed the subject: “I came to talk about serious matters, and you’re here making things up about people. Is this all the rumormongering work your Xuanshi does now?”
The two words “Xuanshi” startled Xie Jing at once, the haze of wine instantly cleared, and his expression sobered as he turned to look at Xiao Yao.
He then heard the young woman, who appeared to be no older than twenty, casually laugh and say, “I’m the one gossiping, don’t drag others into it,” but when she looked up again, all signs of playfulness had completely vanished.
“Xu Yi once sent a message to the palace,” Xiao Yao said in a low voice, “but the trail went cold as soon as it entered the palace gate. Someone is blocking it above; I could only trace it this far.”
Xie Jing had only seen “Xuanshi” in books, specifically in outdated old fiction that few people read anymore.
It was said that the Xuanshi had existed since the previous dynasty, serving as an intelligence agency for the imperial family, with members from all walks of life who didn’t know each other, reporting directly to the emperor; folk tales made it sound mysterious and terrifying to the common people.
However, during the current emperor’s first reign title Jianning about a decade ago, the Xuanshi suddenly disappeared for unknown reasons. Some said they had angered His Majesty and been dealt with; others said their leader had resigned and disappeared. In any case, their name was no longer heard.
Until today, for Xie Jing, those two words shifted from a possibly mythical legend into a vast, living net spread tangibly before his eyes.
Judging by Xiao Yao’s brief remarks, this net had not only remained intact but had also grown tighter over the past decade or so as well.
“I knew the problem originated inside the palace walls.” Lu Lingcong was not surprised at all. “You all have been less active inside these past few years, and with capable people gone, it’s normal that you couldn’t trace it further. Put this lead aside for now; I will handle it later.”
Xiao Yao said, “In the future, your words and actions must be more cautious when entering and leaving the Forbidden Palace. At this moment of high tension, if this incident were to happen again, I doubt there would be a second Young Master Xie to rescue you midway.”
Speaking of this, Lu Lingcong remembered the serious matter, grabbed a handful of melon seeds from the plate, and while cracking them, said to Xie Jing, “Whatever you wanted to say in your room, say it now. Since Miss Xiao is here, we should certainly give her a little more trouble.”
Xiao Yao had just blinked when she heard “in your room,” and upon hearing Lu Lingcong’s phrase “a little more trouble,” she immediately rolled her eyes dramatically.
Xie Jing had not been paying attention to the exchange between Lu Lingcong and Xiao Yao, and bringing his focus back to the matter at hand, he asked, “Were the servants at the Mount Tang manor chosen and sent by the Wu family, or were they bought separately in the capital?”
Lu Lingcong did not expect to hear this place’s name now veiled in ambiguity spoken again by Xie Jing after a month, and he nodded in response: “They are people chosen by my maternal uncle’s family.”
Xie Jing curved his fingers and pressed them against his temple: “So Your Highness—”
Lu Lingcong gave a deliberate cough.
Xie Jing had to rephrase: “—So, you haven’t thoroughly vetted the background here, like you did with Prince Zhao’s Mansion.”
“Naturally,” Lu Lingcong understood the implication in his words, “I don’t go there often to begin with.”
“In that case,” Xie Jing said slowly, “is there no hope of relying on you to find the person who might have overheard every word we said in the hot spring for over an hour?”
Hearing this, both Lu Lingcong and Xiao Yao paled, and Lu Lingcong immediately exclaimed, “Impossible!”
Although he had survived the crisis that night and was still shaken, Lu Lingcong had been cautious about everything since moving out of the palace to live alone; if there truly were ears behind the wall, his vigilance would have surely noticed.
The conversation between him and Xie Jing was not whispering intimately, but they had definitely lowered their voices. If someone could truly manage to listen for over an hour without being discovered by Lu Lingcong, there was only one explanation—
This person’s skill was superior to Lu Lingcong’s.
Lu Lingcong had experienced enough of the feeling of the enemy being in the dark while he was in the light, and it was truly unpleasant.
Xie Jing then spoke about the boot that was thrown at the steps of the Xie’s Mansion before Maoshi and briefly repeated his own speculation, which made Lu Lingcong almost immediately stand up: “Why didn’t you say so earlier!?”
“How could I say so earlier?” Xie Jing retorted, “I was locked in the mansion for a month.”
Lu Lingcong, who lived independently, truly forgot this point: “…You could at least write a letter and send a servant boy out, couldn’t you?”
“I don’t trust things written with a brush.” Xie Jing said unhurriedly, “If you are allowed to have the Xuanshi, are others not allowed to have the Liushan Men[mfn]The term “Liushan Men” in pinyin, or “Six Doors” in English, is a collective name for the three judicial offices in ancient China.[/mfn] or the Wude Division?”
Lu Lingcong was speechless, but Xie Jing pursued relentlessly: “Even if I had told you a month ago, so what? Would you go up Mount Tang again and thoroughly investigate all the servants in the manor as you did before? The grass hasn’t even properly grown yet, and you’d have already scared away most of the snakes.”
Silence settled, and after a moment, Lu Lingcong sighed, “I was careless.”
He had lived in the Mount Tang manor before, and all his food and daily necessities had never presented any problems, so he couldn’t even guess whether the so-called insider was there before or after being selected.
Whether it was one person or a group, the fact that they could deceive his uncle Wu Qin that day meant they were extraordinary, and they might very well be from something like the Liushan Men or the Wude Division.
Xie Jing was secretly guessing whether Lu Lingcong and the Xuanshi were master and subordinate or allies and unconsciously reached out to feel the plate but found it empty—he looked up and saw that the last handful of melon seeds had already been claimed by Lu Lingcong, so he had to settle for a small piece of pastry instead.
“The Star-Plucking Tower is the best place to admire the moon,” was indeed true; although the terrace was not high up, it offered a perfect view of the moon at the treetop and the moon in the water echoing each other, casting a bright, flowing yellow light.
Specks of lamplight flickered on the river from afar; Xie Jing watched carefully, and as they drew nearer, he realized they were hundreds of small, exquisite lotus lanterns, which momentarily reminded him of the fireflies seen everywhere during summer at his old home in Chenliu.
“The young women are releasing river lanterns upstream to pray for good marriages.” His memory was interrupted. “If you also want to release one, I’ll go get a lantern for you.”
Xie Jing abruptly turned his face, ready to retort, but Lu Lingcong laughed and said, “Hold out your hand.”
He held out his hand as instructed, half in disbelief, and saw Lu Lingcong gently grasp the back of it with one hand while carefully pouring something into his palm with the other.
As Lu Lingcong withdrew his hand, Xie Jing looked down to see a pile of shelled melon seeds, glistening white, heaped into a small mound in his palm.
“That’s a privilege even my younger sister never got to enjoy,” Lu Lingcong said, lifting his chin at him. “Eating them all at once is the most satisfying.”
Xie Jing had actually wanted to ask if this would be tainted with “your esteemed spittle,” but Xiao Yao’s unrestrained, soft laugh made him swallow the question.
Finally, he lowered his gaze, avoided looking at Lu Lingcong, raised his hand to his mouth, tilted his head back, and swallowed the melon seeds as if drinking wine, then lightly flicked any remaining seeds from his palm into his mouth with the tip of his tongue.
Lu Lingcong watched him from across the table and laughed as well. Xie Jing’s face showed slight annoyance: “What are you laughing at?”
“Laughing that you eat like a sparrow—”
He suddenly stopped here before staring at the melon seed shells on the table for a moment, then suddenly muttered softly, “Wait—it wasn’t a sparrow.”
Xie Jing frowned and then saw Lu Lingcong suddenly slap the table, stating solemnly, “It wasn’t the sparrow; it was the homing pigeon!”
Xiao Yao was startled by his action and quickly urged him to explain.
That day, in the main bedroom of Mount Tang Manor, Xie Jing joked about “His Highness becoming His Majesty,” and Lu Lingcong, worried someone might overhear and cause trouble, cast a glance out the window. Fortunately, there was no one else there except for a young maid playing with a “sparrow” in the corridor. He was relieved, took out the melon seeds he had just grabbed from the table, and waved to beckon the “sparrow” to tease it—
His mind wasn’t focused at the time, so the object before him was just a vague silhouette. Lu Lingcong only knew he was teasing a bird that could chirp and hop and didn’t concern himself with whether it was a sparrow, a magpie, or something else entirely.
Recalling it now, the “sparrow” that lightly landed on the window lattice and deftly pecked at the food was clearly a grayish-brown homing pigeon!
This also explained why the other party knew who the boot belonged to with astonishing speed—it was likely that shortly after the servants in the entire courtyard saw that the person on Lu Lingcong’s back was Xie Jing that night, this little fellow had already flown silently out of the Mount Tang Manor with the message.
Lu Lingcong was so certain not only because he often spent time in the Imperial Guard barracks outside the city and was familiar with all sorts of weapons and tools, but also because he had personally raised a small homing pigeon in his childhood—although it had only been useful a few times when he was extremely bored and called Li Qi into the palace to play.
Xie Jing hadn’t expected that his occasional craving for melon seeds could lead to this whole series of revelations. After a long pause of thought, he asked, “Could it be that young maid?”
Xiao Yao knitted her brows: “No one can say for sure right now. The enemy is in the dark, and we are in the light. All we can do is keep a close watch on every suspicious target and wait for the situation to develop.”
The moon hung high and the night deepened as Lu Lingcong gave Xiao Yao a few more instructions.
Listening to their words and tone, Xie Jing found it difficult to precisely define the relationship between Lu Lingcong and the “Xuanshi.” As for the relationship between Lu Lingcong and Xiao Yao, he was even more clueless.
It was getting late. Lu Lingcong looked up at the dimly lit upstream of the river and asked Xie Jing, “Up ahead, turn past Taoyedu Crossing, cross Wende Bridge, and there’s a small white gate by the water; just two steps ashore will bring you into Wuyi Lane—shall we take a boat back?”
Xie Jing thought, indeed, His Highness Prince Zhao was exceptionally familiar with this pleasure quarter.
He pointed towards the front courtyard: “What about your side concubine?”
Lu Lingcong smiled radiantly: “She will go wait for me in the place we came from; just give two instructions and she will understand. Yi Yun is the Prince’s Mansion’s number one beauty who understands one’s feelings.”
Xie Jing watched Lu Lingcong go to tend the white horse. Beside him, Xiao Yao signaled a servant, apparently arranging a reliable boatman for them.
After she finished giving instructions, Xie Jing softly asked a question that had been buried in his heart all evening: “Does he really brew wine himself?”
Hearing this, Xiao Yao’s somewhat serious expression finally softened, and she laughed: “Our Highness is a heaven-sent genius with exquisite skill. Besides what is offered to the palace, most of it is kept for himself, with only one or two jars occasionally leaving the Prince’s Mansion.
If the clay seal bears Prince Zhao’s Mansion’s stamp, it is certainly top-grade. Even an empty jar is worth treasuring.”
She then beckoned mysteriously, signaling for Xie Jing to lean in: “In the future, when Young Master Xie oversees the internal affairs of the Prince’s Mansion, remember our past friendship and don’t be as stingy as His Highness. Just one extra jar a year would be enough for me.”
Inside the Star-Plucking Tower, soft songs still drifted away with the lamplight, sending the small boat rocking gently and unhurriedly in the embrace of the Qinhuai River.
Lu Lingcong rested his elbow on the cushion, leaned back against the bow of the boat, stretched out, crossed his legs, and whistled a broken tune.
Xie Jing sat upright on the other side of a small table, separated from him, but perhaps due to the heat, his collar was slightly open, faintly revealing a small, delicate tip of his collarbone.
Xie Jing looked back at the stern of the boat, lowered his voice, and asked, “How do you plan to handle that lead in the palace you just mentioned?”
Lu Lingcong stopped whistling: “Well—the West Palace is out of the question; I absolutely cannot let my mother and Zhenzhen know. Among the palace maids and female officials, I didn’t frequent the palace much before establishing my mansion, so I’m not very familiar with them. There is a steward, Zhong Zhao, at the Shenlong Palace, but the issue itself originated there, so that won’t quite work either; and the Linhai Palace is not even worth mentioning, I avoid it as much as I can.”
Before Xie Jing could respond, Lu Lingcong suddenly let out a puzzled “eh,” turned his gaze back, and fixed his eyes on him: “Don’t you go in and out of the Linhai Palace every day now?”
Xie Jing raised an almost invisible pair of alert ears and said, “I can’t do the work of the Xuanshi.”
Lu Lingcong sneered, “Ai, fine, I know, I know you literati too well. His Majesty assigns you a task, and it’s as if you’ve sold yourself to the imperial family; even if you are unwilling, you can’t be disloyal or unrighteous either, right?”
Xie Jing glared at him, but that was indeed the principle.
“But don’t be so rigid either, try to see it differently. The people in Linhai Palace are imperial family, I am also an imperial family, and you will be an imperial family in the future too. We’ll all be family sooner or later, so why draw such clear lines? Isn’t that too distant?”
Xie Jing’s brow furrowed into a deeper frown. Just as he was about to refuse, he saw Lu Lingcong wave his hand: “Don’t rush, I won’t force you. How about this, everyone has a ‘useless bird,’ right? I’ll give you one when we get back. If you have anything you want to tell me, you can send it through the bird. As for what you say, that’s entirely up to you, alright?”
Xie Jing’s frown lines deepened even further: “You wouldn’t be sending that parrot, would you?”
Lu Lingcong hadn’t expected him to remember that point and laughed: “Do you want it? That’s fine too. You can teach it the words directly—if you have patience.”
His eyes sparkled like stars while fixing on Xie Jing, making the latter reluctantly look away and fall silent, with no time left to carefully observe whether the Milky Way truly stretched far and wide across the heavens.
