An early summer thunderstorm, like an overturned celestial river, clattered against the dilapidated carved window lattices of the Li Mansion, leaving water marks of varying depths on the paper. Li Xiu slumped in the crumbling rosewood chair of his study, a few crooked ink characters etched on the rice paper before him. The Hui ink in the inkstone shone with a cold luster, a perfect reflection of his current state of despair. Three days ago, the son of the Minister of Personnel pointed at him on the polo field, calling him a "broken sleeve cripple." Yesterday, the housekeeper lamented that the mansion's dog had brought back half a sesame bun with a note labeled "broken sleeve" attached to it. The laughingstock of the entire capital, now sat there, alive and well, amidst this mess.

"Sir..." The servant huddled behind the door frame, his trembling voice half-swallowed by the thunder, "There's a new joke outside..."

Li Xiu suddenly looked up, his eyes bloodshot, like a broken lantern with a dying flame at both ends: "What are you singing?!"

"You... you wanted to write a blood oath to prove your innocence, but you ended up writing 'qingbai' instead of 'qingbai'..." Before the servant could finish his words, Li Xiu kicked over the entire desk. Half-dried ink splattered onto the white wall, creating a hideous stain in the rainlight, like an abstract painting of weeping blood.

"Qingbai! Qingbai again!" Li Xiu grabbed the wolf-hair brush on the table. His knuckles turned white due to the force, and the bamboo pen holder squeaked from being squeezed. "I, Li Xiu, will write a letter in blood today to let the whole capital city see what innocence means!" He bit his middle finger hard. The moment the blood dripped onto the rice paper, a loud thunder exploded outside the window, shaking the window frame violently.

"I, Li Xiu, swear to heaven—" He roared and stabbed the tip of his pen towards the rice paper, blood and ink mixed together on the wolf-hair brush, "I am definitely not a homosexual..." When he wrote the word "innocent", another thunderclap sounded. He shook his wrist violently, and the tip of his pen drew a hideous arc on the rice paper. The last stroke of the word "white" turned abruptly to the right, connecting with the word "green", and suddenly became the word "green cypress".

"Sir, you wrote it crookedly..." The servant bravely reminded him, but was frightened by Li Xiu's roar and shrank into a ball.

"Shut up!" Li Xiu grabbed the rice paper and tried to rewrite, but he heard a roar of laughter outside the courtyard wall. He stumbled to the window, only to see several urchins with pigtails clinging to the wall, holding a piece of paper aloft and shouting, "Look at Master Li's bloodwritten note! 'I, Li Xiu, am Qingbai'—isn't Qingbai Tower a men's brothel?!"

"What?!" Li Xiu's eyes went dark as he realized that the incorrectly written blood letter had been snatched away through the window. He tried to rush out to grab it, but the servant held him tightly: "Sir! There are only people outside watching the fun. If you go out, you will only bring shame upon yourself!"

[Street farce: The "real hammer" of Qingbai Building]

This "blood letter farce" was like a spark thrown into boiling oil, instantly exploding across the capital. On Suzaku Street in the afternoon, a blind old man selling candied haws (candied haws) rapped his bamboo clappers and sang a new jingle in his hoarse voice: "Mr. Li, your hands are shaking too much. You tried to write about innocence, but you turned into a cypress tree. You met your lover in the cypress tower, and your reputation as a homosexual has been confirmed—"

"Hahaha!" Butcher Wang laughed so hard his fat body shook, and the knife in his hand dropped with a clang on the butcher's counter. "I know Qingbailou! It's the largest men's brothel on West Street. I heard the boys there are more beautiful than the girls!"

The tailor's wife poked at the sole of her shoe, her saliva splattering on the embroidery frame beside her: "I saw the blood letter with my own eyes yesterday! The blood-red words 'Qingbai' were written more brilliantly than rouge! No wonder he kept going to West Street. It turns out he was going to meet his lover!"

In front of the mottled vermilion lacquer gate of the Li Mansion, naughty children, holding copies of the "blood letter" written in charcoal, chased the servant who came out to buy rice and sang: "The lame and gay Mr. Li, looking for a lover in Qingbai Tower, his lover broke his lame leg, and he drank rice soup outside the general's mansion--" A piece of rotten watermelon slammed against the lintel, and red juice flowed down the peeling paint, just like Li Xiu's erroneous blood letter melting in the rain.

[Qinghui Courtyard, General's Mansion: Watching a Play and Passing a Knife]

By the lotus pond in Qinghui Courtyard, Chen Weiwan was fiddling with the rain-soaked lotus leaves with a silver hairpin. She heard Chuntao laughing so hard she was slumping over, her words incoherent: "Miss...you didn't see! Li Xiu smashed everything in the study, even smashing the ancestral jade paperweight! He even beat the servant's face until it was swollen!"

"Oh?" Shen Weiwan raised her fingertips, and crystal water droplets rolled down from the lotus leaf, hitting the water surface and causing ripples. "What's the matter with his blood letter?"

"What a coincidence!" Chuntao wiped the tears from her laughter. "I heard that when he was writing 'Qingbai', there was a thunderclap in the sky, and his hand shook, so he wrote 'Qingbai' instead! And Qingbai happened to be the one on West Street..."

Chen Weiwan put down the silver hairpin, a sly smile appeared on the corner of her mouth, and the arc at the end of her eyes was like a fox that had successfully stolen something fishy: "Really? Then we have to 'congratulate' him properly." Before she finished speaking, a moon-white corner of clothes flashed outside the moon cave door. The seventh prince Xiao Yu walked over, waving a folding fan, and there were still spots of mud on the soles of his shoes.

Xiao Yu sat down at the stone table and pushed an oil-paper package towards her, steam still rising from the edges. "This is a long-established West Street sugar cake, sprinkled with osmanthus flowers right out of the oven." He raised an eyebrow at her, his folding fan making a rhythmic click in his palm. "I heard Li Xiu's blood letter has become the latest street drama in Beijing?"

Shen Weiwan opened the oil-paper package, and the sweet aroma of sesame cake mixed with the fragrance of osmanthus filled her face. "Your Highness is well-informed." She took a bite, and the hot sugar melted on her tongue. "It's a pity, some people want to prove their innocence, but their hands just won't obey."

"Is it that he won't obey his orders, or that he won't obey yours?" Xiao Yu chuckled, the ink bamboo on the fan flickering in the light and shadow. "I think this play is even better than the storyteller you hired last time. At least it didn't cost any money."

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