Just then, the clear sound of horse hooves approached from afar, shattering the morning light on the bluestone slabs. The Seventh Prince, Xiao Yu, rode his snow-white Hexi steed, his hooves trampling over fallen petals. His moon-white cloak billowed like a sail in the morning breeze, and his gold-inlaid jade bit gleamed coldly in the sunlight. He dismounted, his brocade boots treading on the scattered manuscripts of his poems. He casually tossed a ten-ounce ingot of silver to the servant, which jingled against the bluestone. "You've destroyed my fiancée's stall. How are you going to compensate me?"
The servants, terrified out of their wits, fell to their knees, their foreheads banging against the bluestone slabs with a resounding thud, a sound that blended with the thud of falling copper coins. Liu, riding in a sedan chair carried by eight men, had just arrived. Upon hearing this, she lifted a corner of the curtain, her jade armor clenched into her palm. She caught sight of the mutton-fat jade Pisces pendant at the Seventh Prince's waist. Her eyes rolled back, and she collapsed onto the brocade cushion. The red-gold stepping stone on her head clashed with a hollow sound on the pallet.
Xiao Yu didn't even look at the people in the sedan chair. He walked straight to Shen Weiwan. When he raised his eyebrows, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes curved slightly, like the wings of a butterfly spreading out: "Miss Shen's poems, I want to order ten copies."
Shen Weiwan blinked and deliberately raised her voice so that the people around her could hear. The morning light danced on her eyelashes: "Your Highness, you can make a reservation, but you have to pay a higher price - after all, you are a prince? Ordinary people pay ten cents for a song, and you have to pay twenty cents!"
The onlookers roared with laughter, but the Seventh Prince remained unmoved. Instead, he pulled a heavy purse embroidered with cloud patterns from his sleeve and tossed it into the bamboo basket. The purse landed on the pile of copper coins with a dull thud. "As you wish. I'll give you an extra hundred taels for your exclusive new creation tomorrow. You are not allowed to sell it to anyone else."
As the sun set, Shen Weiwan sat on a bamboo couch in the Linshui Pavilion. The rosewood table before her was piled with silver, more than three hundred taels, making her cheeks glow. Chuntao happily calculated the accounts, her abacus beads ticking rapidly as she hummed the tune of "Aunt's Abacus Poems": "Miss, at this rate, if we carve the poetry collection into woodblocks and print it, we'll definitely earn enough to buy ten boxes of osmanthus duck!"
Chen Weiwan gazed out the window toward the Seventh Prince's residence. The familiar aroma of sweet-scented osmanthus mingled with the fragrance of duck meat, making her stomach growl. A smile played on her lips, and she tapped the manuscript of the poem spread out on the table with her fingertips. The ink words shone golden in the setting sun. "Print it! Not only print it, but also make a print of 'Aunt's Abacus Poem' and pair it with a portrait of Liu squinting her eyes when she's stingy. Let everyone in the capital see her calculating face!"
Meanwhile, at the dressing table in the Liu residence, Liu, looking at her own furiously twisted face in the bronze mirror, suddenly overturned the jewel-encrusted dressing table. Jade headpieces and pearl hairpins were scattered all over the floor, and a red-gold hairpin, the very one she had tried to steal from Shen Weiwan, had fallen to the corner. The pearls on the hairpin were dim in the candlelight. Shen Ruoruo timidly offered her a cup of ginseng tea, but she knocked it over, spilling the ginseng tea onto her embroidered shoes, scalding them so much that she screamed, "Why are you crying? Go! Prepare the sedan chair! Go find your uncle, Minister Liu! I don't believe that with his authority as Minister of Rites, he can't defeat a little bitch who relies on selling sour poems!" As she spoke, her hair in the mirror was disheveled, and the corners of her mouth twitched with anger.
As the night deepened, candlelight flickered in the general's study, and the shadow of Shen Weiwan, bent over her desk, was reflected on the window paper. Chuntao brought a bowl of lotus seed soup and suddenly pointed out the window and exclaimed, "Miss, look!"
In the moat toward the Seventh Prince's residence, lotus lanterns drifted downstream. The warm candlelight reflected on the water, swaying with the waves like scattered stars. Each lantern was inscribed with a poem she had composed in red ink, and the lamp oil created circles of golden-red ripples on the water. On the largest lotus lantern in the front, the words "Aunt's abacus is as precise as a net," were inscribed. The flickering light of the lanterns made Shen Weiwan's cheeks glow slightly, and even her earlobes were tinged with a blush.
She rested her chin on her hand, gazing at her blurry reflection in the lamplight. Suddenly, she felt that this life, wielding poetry like a sword and living each day like a play, seemed a thousand times more exciting than the one she had imagined on the day of her rebirth, standing in the snow, beaten to death by clubs. Meanwhile, at the end of the moat, in the Seventh Prince's residence, Xiao Yu chuckled softly at a lotus lantern engraved with the word "Wan." His fingertips brushed against the freshly dried ink on the surface, where he had handwritten the next line: "The net is broken, but Heaven will collect it." The ink words glowed warmly in the candlelight, like the unwavering tenderness in his eyes.
This night in the capital was destined to be extraordinarily restless, thanks to these floating poetry lanterns. As Liu's sedan hurried to Minister Liu's residence, in a teahouse on Suzaku Street, a storyteller was banging a wake-up stick, spitting and reciting a story about "the general's daughter selling poetry on the street, irritating Madam Liu." The audience cheered and the clinking of coins made the atmosphere more lively than ever.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com