Chapter 23: Rain and Wind
As Yun Yuan placed the last white crabapple branch diagonally into the celadon vase, the copper bells on the eaves were being knocked to pieces by the drizzle. The window screens of Yuanshan Studio were stained with water, turning the old pear tree in the courtyard into a faded ink wash.
Feng Yanyuan's figure kept hiding from her.
She had met him by chance under the corridor the day before yesterday. His wide sleeves swept across the blue brick floor like flowing clouds, and his face was as white as jade. This made her suspect that the paleness she had seen the other day was just an illusion created by the candlelight.
Yun Yuan stroked the embossed "Feng" character on the black iron order. This palm-sized iron plate could actually push open the Feng family's thirty-six gates—from the Xinglin Garden, where the scent of mugwort wafted, to the Hanji Tower, locked year-round with cold iron chains, and even the Huiming Corridor, where poisons were stored.
Feng Jiu had no idea what to do next, but he only said that if she was good at pharmacology, she might as well visit Xinglin Garden more often during her free time.
She looked at the crabapple in the bottle, and vaguely saw the celadon medicine bowl in Xinglin Garden that night. She prepared dose after dose of antidote, and by the time she realized it, the morning light had already stained the corners of her sleeves soaked with the fragrance of medicine. When the old pharmacist came over with the glass cup, she was lost in thought at the cinnabar annotation of "Impermanence Solution" in "Sad Wind Bite". Seventeen discarded prescriptions were piled next to the medicine scale, and the one at the bottom was still stained with peacock gall that had splashed on it the day before. "Girl, are you staying up all night again?" The old man pushed the freshly roasted bitter almonds to her hand, "This medicine is very similar to the crabapple in the third young master's courtyard - it looks delicate, but its roots are in the old blood soil."
The old pharmacist's words were true. This impermanent antidote was clearly a poison wrapped in honey—each time it eased the pain, it buried a deeper root of addiction deep in the blood, silently entwining the heart like a vine.
When Feng Jiu brought the gilded box with twisted branches, twelve pills of various colors lay on the brocade. "Dissolve one pill in water and take it every two weeks." He placed his fingertips on the hilt of the knife. "Too much is poisonous."
This dosage is enough for a spy to last until the plums in Jiangnan turn yellow. Feng Jiu couldn't tell what Master Yuan meant, and she couldn't guess his thoughts.
The rain and fog are getting thicker.
She adjusted her hair in front of the bronze mirror, and suddenly a white piece of clothing passed by in the mirror. When she turned around, she saw only pear tree petals falling on the stone steps outside the window.
Under the eaves of Tingyu Pavilion, a fine drizzle formed a line. Raindrops drummed on the banana leaves, and drops fell into the clear spring beneath them.
Feng Yanyuan stood at the desk and practiced calligraphy. Although he said he was practicing calligraphy, the pen he was using was more than seven feet long. The pen shaft was made of cast iron, as thick as a child's arm, and it shone coldly; the tip of the pen was made of a cluster of snow wolf hair, as thin as a gossamer.
His wrist held a heavy weight, yet the iron pen seemed to move with the lightness of a flower. Just as the tip of the pen was about to touch the hemp paper, it suddenly, like a flying goose touching water, created a small, fly-like calligraphy across the pale yellow paper. The iron strokes and silver hooks held a touch of charm, the contradiction between the soft brush and the iron structure blending seamlessly in this flowing brushstroke.
Seeing the young master pause in his writing, Ruyue hurriedly whispered, "That feathered robe really suits Yuan'er perfectly. It's so dazzling and colorful. Even the crabapple blossoms outside the window seem pale when she puts it on..." She twisted the handkerchief between her fingers, "Young master, do you want..."
"As long as it fits," Feng Yanyuan cut off his words, his stylus suddenly dropping. The tip of the pen moved like a dormant dragon awakening, stamping lines of fine, small regular script across the hemp paper. Though the handwriting was as tiny as an ant colony, each character possessed a powerful presence, the ink penetrating three-quarters of the way through the paper.
Seeing him finally put down his pen, Ruyue couldn't help but curl her lips: "Young Master, you only know how to fight with paper and ink all day long, but the second young master runs to Yuan'er every day." She pursed her lips, "If you keep going like this, I'm afraid even he will be -"
clang!
The clang of the iron pestle returning to its sheath cut off the second half of the sentence.
Feng Yanyuan's white sleeves brushed across the inkstone, stirring up a lingering scent of pinewood. He looked at the rain on the eaves, which had now transformed into droplets, pattering against the banana leaves.
The rain that day was just as continuous as today.
He was only ten years old at the time. When his mistress brought him food and gently urged him to eat, he raised his hand and flipped the food box over his hypocritical face.
The father was furious and imposed family punishment.
He knelt on the bluestone bricks of the ancestral hall, his thin undershirt torn into pieces by the whip wind, but he stubbornly refused to say a word.
When the fiftieth lash fell, there was a sudden, crisp snap. My father snatched the blood-soaked whip and kicked the executioner away.
When he was picked up, he saw his father's red eyes.
He will always remember his father's expression at that moment - after the mask of majesty was shattered, what was revealed was the heart-wrenching pain.
My mother, too, swallowed the Impermanence Pill. Every two weeks, the celadon medicine bottle would appear by her pillow. At first, she swallowed it obediently, until one snowy night, when she suddenly overturned the cup. Her screams, the venom taking effect, pierced the three courtyards. My father, holding her, knelt in the snow, forcing the antidote between her bitten, bleeding lips. But she spat out black blood, which splattered all over his face.
"She didn't want us." As his father wiped his tears, the scabby bite marks on his palms still oozed blood. Under the candlelight in the mourning hall, he watched as his father broke his mother's favorite jade hairpin in two, burying one piece with him and pinning the other to his lapel forever.
He accepted his father's words silently, but there was always a child who refused to compromise in his heart - how could the child who listened to the "Book of Songs" on his mother's lap believe that the person who made perfume with delicate hands had evil intentions?
But what could a ten-year-old do? Even the crescent-shaped red sandalwood bench where his mother often sat had been chopped up for firewood, and the peonies in the garden had vanished overnight. He could only watch as time, like sandpaper, eroded away layer by layer the evidence of his mother's existence. The iron railings on the eaves whimpered every night, whether they were mourning the dead or mocking his powerlessness.
For many years, he had always believed that it was his mistress who framed his mother - it was nothing more than a few illegible letters from home, a map of unknown origin, and a bone-gnawing poison of forced confession.
But the truth shattered his memory like thunder—the fatal defense map had been seized by his most revered grandfather. The handwriting on the edge of the map was identical to the character for "wind" his mother had used when she taught him to copy calligraphy. Every stroke of the yellowed confession in the case file was in his mother's signature "flying swallow carrying mud" technique, even the slightly upward stroke at the end, identical to the one she'd used when she'd annotated the Book of Songs. Even the poison order in the case file bore his father's personal seal—"Impermanence" wasn't a tactic used by his mistress to extract a confession, but rather his father's obsession with keeping him alive.
The most ironic thing is that the reason my mother was able to be imprisoned in Yurongyuan instead of the water dungeon was because the mistress, out of compassion as a fellow mother, knelt in front of the ancestral hall to beg for her final dignity.
It turned out that those last moments he spent with his mother, which he cherished - the afternoons when they read together by the window, the evenings when she taught him how to tune the strings - were all a ray of light stolen for him by the woman he had hated for ten years.
A cold wind blew by, and the copper bells on the eaves jingled.
It turns out that what hurt the most was never the truth, but the sudden realization: the bowl of medicine that his mother pushed away that year also pushed away his little hand.
The boy's memories are like a magic mirror, shattered in an instant, leaving only endless darkness. His mother was a spy. The Feng family's tolerance, his father's attempts to keep him, even his final moments with his young son, could not shake his mother's faith. She would rather endure the gnawing torture of impermanence than betray her master. She would even overthrow the Feng family for the benefit of a certain regime, killing everyone along with him. The Feng family was not important to her, his father was not important, and even he was not important. He didn't know how to remember her, nor how to think of himself. If the mother he remembered wasn't real, then what else was real?
"The rain has just stopped and Master Xuan is here again." Ruyue muttered softly and gently put down the teacup in her hand.
Feng Yanyuan was pulled out of her thoughts and looked up to see Feng Yanxuan striding towards her on the wet cobblestones, his sleeves still stained with the scent of rain. He paused briefly in front of Yunyuan's house, perhaps noticing she wasn't inside. He suddenly looked up at Tingyu Pavilion, a bright smile playing on his lips, and then he quickly strode towards her.
"It's been raining for most of the day, and it's finally stopped!"
The sound arrived before the person arrived. Feng Yanxuan entered the pavilion, carrying the refreshing air of a spring rain. His eyes fell on the hemp paper with wet ink on the desk. Without hesitation, he leaned in for a closer look. "Sure enough, he's practicing calligraphy again." Suddenly, he raised an eyebrow and smiled. "The strokes are so loose... Has something been bothering you lately?"
Feng Yanyuan was about to put away the calligraphy on the desk, but Feng Yanxuan snatched it away first.
"Alas, I have been so poorly blessed since childhood..." Feng Yanxuan was muttering when his voice suddenly stopped.
Feng Yanyuan snatched the paper back, crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the trash can.
"Ruyue," Feng Yanxuan frowned, "Take this calligraphy and burn it. Don't leave even a scrap of paper."
Although Ruyue didn't understand what was going on, she still responded respectfully with a "yes" and hurriedly retreated with the paper ball in her hand.
Feng Yanxuan grabbed his brother's wrist and asked, "What are you doing?" He lowered his voice and asked, "What did father say to you again? The princess and the prince are coming, and you're here copying Ji Shuye's 'Poem of Hidden Anger'?"
Feng Yanyuan looked indifferent: "She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Feng Yanxuan smiled bitterly. "Now, whenever my father sees me, he keeps talking about 'dog hole'. How can he talk about anything else?"
"Yun Yuan didn't even mention this to you..." Feng Yanyuan's eyes turned cold. "When the grain shop owner turned away the customer, he said, 'My valuables are worthless, but I'm worthless,' and 'I have no business in the world'?"
Feng Yanxuan was stunned at first, then burst out laughing. "So that's how it is. These bandits actually dared to use Ji Shuye's poem as a codeword." He casually fiddled with the pen holder on the desk. "This world is really like this—those who talk about being noble and upright do dirty things, while those who are servile and despicable discuss elegant literature."
Feng Yanyuan had no idea about the world and just replied indifferently, "It's a good poem." Just as he was about to take a new piece of calligraphy to copy, Feng Yanxuan held down his iron pestle pen with a palm.
"Stop writing. I have something to talk to you about. The princess is going to host a banquet tomorrow. From what I know about Her Highness, she probably wouldn't be interested in those old-fashioned people, but if someone as elegant and graceful as you is present, she would definitely want to meet you."
"The princess is here to see you, why are you pulling me?"
Feng Yanxuan pleaded helplessly: "We are brothers, please don't stand by and watch someone die!"
"Second brother has always been an expert in this field. The little princess is only a girl in her teens, so why is she so scared?"
"This is no ordinary girl. Not to mention who's behind her, even her stubborn temper is too much for me to handle. I can accompany her for a while, but I can't bear it for a few days. If she likes you, we can share this blessing together."
"Since you've been blessed, Second Brother, just go all out and enjoy it. Perhaps you can even become a royal consort. Being timid here will only backfire and bring disaster upon yourself."
"How did I offend her? I just caught a little rabbit for her while hunting with Prince Langya, and she remembered me! Oh, being too handsome is really troublesome!"
Feng Yanyuan laughed and said, "Did Second Brother really not crawl through the dog hole in the palace?"
Feng Yanxuan glared and said, "Father, it's fine if you say that to me, but you must not say that to me! Who sent me a message asking me to keep her safe?!"
Feng Yanyuan's face darkened slightly as he replied, "Second brother is right. I owe you this time, so I should help you. Tomorrow, I'll let Yuan'er go to the banquet with me."
Feng Yanxuan was stunned. He looked at Feng Yanyuan's indifferent expression for a long while, then suddenly frowned and said, "Third Brother, you have such a cruel heart!"
Feng Yanyuan's gaze swept across the pavilion and fell in the direction of Yun Yuan's house.
A sudden gust of wind blew up, and the wind chimes on the eaves tinkled, startling a pair of spring swallows that were carrying mud.
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