0059 Five Spicy Dishes (Part 3)
A sudden silence fell over the area downstairs, broken only by the soft sound of skirts brushing the ground.
The moonlight rose from beyond the sky, and the night mist rippled like waves, slowly urging a woman in an apricot-colored gauze dress to emerge from behind the beaded curtains.
The woman covered her face with a fan, her movements as graceful as the lingering fragrance of osmanthus. Dressed in a simple, pure white light, she sat elegantly on a round chair in the center of the red platform, always keeping the fan in front of her.
The young men below the stage erupted in a thunderous uproar. Shu Fu overheard a few words, which were all flirtatious and frivolous remarks, urging her not to be pretentious and to choose one of their patrons as soon as possible.
A young maidservant serving tea stepped forward from beside the woman and said, “Gentlemen, please be quiet for a moment. Since our young lady has won the title of champion at this year’s Flower Festival, she will naturally choose her groom carefully for the next night. As you all know, our young lady is fond of reading and skilled in poetry. Therefore, she has set up a couplet here today. Whoever can respond with a matching couplet will be invited by our young lady to come upstairs.”
As soon as he finished speaking, a huge scroll was suddenly unfurled from the building opposite, which read, "At dawn, I gaze at the moon over Luzhou, the moon hides behind the western mountains, and the morning dew chills the green ant wine."
The maidservant read the half-line of the poem in a clear voice, and Shu Fu upstairs heard it clearly as well.
She tilted her head in thought.
If the purpose was to go out at dawn to see the scenery, why did you look at the moon, which is only visible at night?
It wasn't until the next line, "The moon hides behind the western mountains," that she suddenly realized that the pale moon was not rising, but setting, and that the poet hadn't gotten up early to see the scenery, but had instead spent the entire night without sleep.
The last line, "The morning dew chilled the green ant wine," further confirmed her guess. Green ant wine has a slightly sour taste with a sweet aftertaste and is one of the most popular wines among young women these days. However, it is often warmed up in a clay stove before drinking. Yet, Xi Yunzhu's wine had already been chilled by the morning dew, which shows how long she had been sitting there in silence.
What exactly is it that has caused her so much distress?
Shufu couldn't help but be curious.
Among the audience were not only spoiled young men, but also many talented and romantic scholars. After a moment's thought, one of them volunteered to ask the maid for paper and pen, wrote a sentence, and handed it over, hoping to win the beauty's favor.
However, the beauty glanced at it from behind the fan and immediately shook her head slightly.
The crowd burst into laughter, and the young man angrily turned and left.
One man's failure did not discourage the other men. They all believed that they were the best and the special. So, several more men followed suit and presented their own sequels, but still failed to win the beauty's favor.
Just as the audience was booing and criticizing each other, a young man in brocade robes stepped forward and said, "Miss Yunzhu is very talented, but I also have a reply. Please take a closer look."
After saying that, he stood in front of the large table with paper and pen laid out below the stage, picked up the pen and began to write freely.
Looking at the person from afar, Shu Fu felt that his appearance was quite similar to Li Qiao's.
But wasn't he enjoying a tender moment with his elder sister? Why would he appear in this kind of situation?
Afraid she might be mistaken, she beckoned Cai Cai over, pointed to the person downstairs, and asked, "Do you recognize who that person is?"
Cai Cai squinted for a moment, then said confidently, "This servant recognizes him. He's a prince from the imperial clan, several generations removed from His Majesty's lineage. He's not very familiar with our princess, but he has an extraordinary relationship with her elder brother, the Prince of An."
Shu Fu pondered for a while, but downstairs, some busybodies had already read Li Qiaotian's poem and exclaimed: "The fragrance of incense lingers in the night, the scent of gold surrounds the mountain, the lotus breeze urges the lotus curtains to open. What a fine couplet! The antithesis is perfect, and the artistic conception is quiet and elegant. I'm afraid Miss Yunzhu won't lose it this time, will she?"
It is indeed a good couplet, at least in terms of word choice and artistic conception. However, the excessive use of flowery language makes it lack realism, and it misses the sense of melancholy in Xi Yunzhu's original line.
Although this sentence is indeed much better than the previous ones, if she were Xi Yunzhu herself, she would definitely not like it.
Shu Fu tapped her fingers on the railing, silently commenting on the poem in her heart.
Li Qiao looked at the woman on the stage with an air of certainty, but unexpectedly, another handsome young man stepped forward and said loudly, "Wait a minute, I also have a line here, and I humbly ask the young lady to appreciate it."
Shu Fu looked in the direction of the familiar voice and suddenly let out a laugh.
She wasn't sure about Li Qiao from before, but she would never mistake this person.
—It was undoubtedly her fiancé, Liang Zhiyan, with whom she had not yet canceled their engagement.
Li Qiao was on the fringes of the imperial clan, so Liang Zhiyan did not know him. Even if he did, he might not be afraid of Li Qiao's status as a prince.
After all, he passed the imperial examination at a young age and had a bright future, while Li Qiao only had the title of Prince and no real power. In the next twenty years, it was not certain that either of them would need to curry favor with the other.
He also wanted to compete with Li Qiao for the romantic experience of having a courtesan as his confidante.
"Brother Liang—"
Ignoring his companion's calls, Liang Zhiyan walked straight to the front of the stage and bowed respectfully to Xi Yunzhu.
Without even using paper and pen, he directly replied aloud: "May we form a wish-fulfilling vine, each bead carrying my longing."
Shu Fu frowned slightly, vaguely feeling that the poem was a bit strange, but she couldn't figure it out, so she had to keep it to herself for the time being and continue looking downstairs.
After Liang Zhiyan finished speaking, the room fell silent for a moment, and then someone shouted, "Brother, what kind of couplet is this? It doesn't even have the most basic parallelism. How dare you join in Miss Yunzhu's fun?"
As soon as he finished speaking, he was met with a chorus of agreement.
However, no one expected that Xi Yunzhu, who had been sitting on the stage for a long time, would suddenly open her fan.
The young men below the stage were all stunned and gasped, but she stood up, ignoring everyone else, and stared at Liang Zhiyan for a long time before finally bowing gracefully to him.
“My lord, you are right. I am in awe and wish to entrust my whole life to you.”
The onlookers immediately became noisy, shoving and pushing Liang Zhiyan toward the stage. Only the scholar who had accompanied Liang Zhiyan grabbed his sleeve and said urgently, "Brother Liang, you're being impulsive! Didn't you say you invited me out to discuss how to win back Miss Shu? Why did you impulsively come here to interfere in this romantic affair? If word gets out today and Miss Shu finds out, then there will truly be no saving her!"
Liang Zhiyan's attention was completely drawn to the beauty on the stage. His gaze remained fixed on the stage, and he mumbled incoherently, "What do you mean by 'beyond saving'? It would be 'beyond saving' if I were to turn a blind eye to this matter today!"
"Didn't you realize why Miss Yunzhu asked us to compose poems? On the surface, she's looking for a suitable husband, but in reality, she's politely rejecting those rich and dissolute young men. Only a man like me is worthy of her! If I were to leave now, I would be disregarding the beauty's good intentions!"
"As for Afu..." He hesitated for a moment when Shufu was mentioned, but he was quickly overwhelmed by the overwhelming temptation.
“She knows me in her heart. Even ten Yunzhus wouldn’t be enough to compare with her. Not to mention that she doesn’t know about this now, even if she did, I would explain it to her clearly. The only affection I have for Xi Yunzhu today is because Yunzhu’s talent is somewhat similar to hers. I think that way she won’t blame me too much.”
———
Please don't get too hung up on the rhyme and meter; the above is all my own composition TAT (bows)
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