0060 Five Spicy Dishes (Part Four)

At this point, Liang Zhiyan was almost swept up by the crowd and brought in front of Xi Yunzhu.

At this moment, Li Qiao spoke up: "Since this young man is going to be Miss Yunzhu's first groom, then wedding wine is naturally indispensable. I will present you with a cup of Ninglu wine, please accept it with a smile."

As soon as he finished speaking, he picked up the gourd cup filled with fragrant wine from the table and splashed it directly at the person opposite him.

Inspired by this, the other young men also poured wine at Liang Zhiyan to vent their resentment at having their beauties taken away.

"How rude of you! Stop, stop now!" Liang Zhiyan was startled and hurriedly covered his face with his sleeve.

Normally, being splashed with wine while trying to win over a beautiful woman would be considered a romantic affair, and he would have accepted it without complaint, but these past few days have been different.

Li Qiao's intention was three parts joke and three parts revenge, but seeing Liang Zhiyan's resistance, he became somewhat curious: "I only splashed some wine on you, why are you acting so coy!"

He reached out and tugged at Liang Zhiyan's sleeve. Liang Zhiyan struggled twice, but being thin and weak, he was no match for the strength in the other's hand and was forced to pry open the hand covering his face, revealing the mottled appearance on his face.

The wine had dissolved the makeup covering his scars, revealing several ambiguous bright red scratches. These were the marks left by Fu'er during their intimate moments on the night they returned from Xiangji Temple.

Everyone was stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter: "What is 'dao'? It turns out to be a few roguish scars."

Someone said to Xi Yunzhu on the stage, "Miss, you've misjudged him this time! This is no upright young man; who knows how many absurd things he's done behind the scenes."

Xi Yunzhu watched the farce unfolding below the stage, her expression changing several times. She suddenly stood up, turned around, and left the scene.

...

Since it was Shu Fu's first time visiting Kuai Zai Ge, Li Miao gave the madam, who was tidying up the room, a detailed explanation. When she came to find Shu Fu, she saw the girl leaning against the railing, her gaze fixed on the downstairs, seemingly lost in thought.

She followed Shu Fu's gaze downwards and met Liang Zhiyan's disheveled and embarrassed state, covered in alcohol.

Li Miao stepped forward, took Shu Fu's hand, and gently called her, "A Fu."

Shufu snapped out of her daze: "Is it done?"

Li Miao nodded and pulled her across the bridge leading to another pavilion: "Kuai Zai Pavilion is divided into two buildings, one in front and one in back. This one is for male guests, and the one opposite is for female guests."

Shu Fu nodded to indicate that she understood. She pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say something, but after hesitating for a moment, she ultimately did not speak.

But Li Miao kept a close eye on her reaction, and halfway through the journey, he suddenly asked, "Are you still heartbroken over Liang Zhiyan?"

Shu Fu immediately focused: "How could that be? I stopped caring about him a long time ago."

"Then why are you looking so gloomy and miserable?"

Shu Fu thought for a moment and slowly said, "Actually, I wasn't looking at Liang Zhiyan just now, but at Miss Xi Yunzhu."

How is she?

“I watched her for a long time. The ink characters on her gauze dress were not just randomly written. They were a line from Qu Yuan’s ‘Ode to the Orange’: ‘Standing alone in the world, unyielding and unmoved.’ The velvet flower in her hair was also a replica of a red lotus. Even the round fan in her hand was decorated with a bamboo pattern.”

Every single item represents something noble and pure.

"You pity her?" Li Miao asked.

“It’s not her, it’s them,” Shu Fu added the word “they” to Li Miao’s palm. “I suddenly remembered that in the policy essay I gave you before, I omitted mentioning the situation of women like Miss Xi Yunzhu, and I feel very guilty. I also think that if even I can overlook them, then it is even more difficult for people in the world to understand their hardships. Miao Miao, I am so sad.”

Li Miao held her hand and walked for a while, then suddenly laughed and said, "What's there to feel guilty about? No one is born knowing how to do everything perfectly. I brought you here first because I wanted to brainstorm. If one person can't think of everything, can't many of us think of everything?"

“Let me tell you about someone,” she said slowly. “Her name is Qin Mi. She wrote down things you hadn’t thought of, but they only scratched the surface and didn’t offer any effective solutions. Yet you filled in the gaps in those solutions she hadn’t considered. If you two were to meet, you would surely hit it off.”

“She and her mother have been staying in Liangzhou all these years, and you have not seen her. This time, when my aunt celebrates her 40th birthday, she will definitely go back to Chang'an with her mother to celebrate her birthday.”

Shu Fu's eyes lit up, and she wanted to ask more questions, but Li Miao pressed her hand down, indicating that someone was passing by behind her.

She quickly stepped aside, not seeing what the person looked like, but only feeling a whiff of intoxicating alcohol waft past.

“I will introduce you to them later, but there are too many people and too much noise in the Kuai Zai Pavilion, so we won’t talk about this tonight.”

...

Li Miao asked the madam for two rooms, numbered A and B, and took Shu Fu to room A first.

"Have something to eat here first. The pimp will bring some people over in a bit. Pick one you like... a few will do. Then you can go to room B to spend the night."

Shu Fu sat down on the low armchair as instructed, and Li Miao then asked Cai Cai to hand her two cushions to help her relax.

"Sit on the cushion, so the hard bench won't hurt you."

She nodded, having already made up her mind.

No matter how many young men came over, she shook her head and said she didn't like them. Li Miao was the type to prefer nothing to something, so he would never force her to have them. She would say that she had already seen the world by coming here today and just wanted to go back to the manor as soon as possible.

Just then, footsteps sounded outside the door, and a short, kind-looking pimp pushed the door open and entered, followed by a large group of handsome young men.

Shu Fu secretly counted them and found there were ten people.

The first two were clearly familiar with Li Miao, and without saying a word, they went up together and flanked Li Miao from the left and right.

The pimp led the other eight men to Shufu's table and turned his head to ask them to greet Shufu.