He came to out of a haze and saw white mosquito netting. His head ached dully, and he had no idea what sort of place this was, so he shut his eyes and thought for a long while before letting out a faint sigh.
He wasn't dead.
So I'm under house arrest now?
He pushed off the quilt and sat up. He must have been unconscious a long time, because his body still wouldn't coordinate properly with him. He looked down: the cut of the clothes was bizarre, and the cloth was cheap. Only once he was on his feet on the floor of the room did he discover more things that didn't fit.
An old-fashioned house, an old-fashioned bed, table and chairs and stools—the materials and workmanship were good, but the whole room was furnished in antique style. There were some fine-looking porcelains too, but not one modern electronic device existed anywhere. What the hell are you playing at, Tang Mingyuan? Thinking of that bespectacled fellow, he cursed inwardly. And then...
This hand had changed as well. His own hand... didn't look like his own.
He looked at the two pale hands for a moment, then sat down at the table, undid his clothes, and examined himself. This body... had no bullet holes. What kind of joke is this? He distinctly remembered all those bullets flying at him—front and back, one wave after another. Had he been given plastic surgery? No. This body wasn't even his; every feature showed that, and once he looked into the bronze mirror, the image he saw there confirmed it beyond any doubt.
Tang Mingyuan, what the hell was he up to? He had once been one of the wealthiest men in the world. A man who had built himself up from nothing to that height would hardly be knocked down by a few small puzzles.
With modern technology backing it, any possibility had to be on the table. His body altered, then—some sweeping, thoroughgoing, full-body reconstruction? To what end?
What was the purpose? To make him admit he was someone else and stop contesting things? The fellow had always been indecisive; doing something like this to save his own skin wasn't impossible.
But why arrange a room like this one?
His head was wrapped in bandages and still throbbed faintly. He pushed the door open and bright sunlight poured in, making him raise a hand to shield his eyes. He was on the second floor of a wooden building; looking out from the doorway, below and off into the distance lay courtyard after courtyard and garden after garden, with buildings of every kind scattered among them—Suzhou-and-Hangzhou style gardens, ponds and rockeries, spreading away before his eyes in dazzling beauty.
No towering buildings. Not a single modern feature to be seen.
He drew a breath and let it out. Quite a production. Tang Mingyuan, how much did this little show set you back? He looked for a few moments, then turned and walked off along the veranda, and at once a voice piped up: "Son-in-law, you—" Oh. Extras.
He was in a bad mood just then and had no interest in tangling with these people. When the pretty maid came toward him, he glanced at her and simply pointed. He had once been the man of power who single-handedly raised up a financial empire of that size; the moment he truly let that aura show, one look and one gesture were enough. The woman in her maid's dress gave a start and stopped where she stood, stammering, "Son-in-law, you're awake..."
He walked past the maid, and after a few steps turned back, lazily picking up the robe she was holding—apparently meant for him. He shook it out and said, rather exasperated, "How do you put this thing on?" Then, recalling that the maid seemed to be speaking the local Jiangnan dialect, he switched to it as well: "How do you wear this?"
"S-Son-in-law, let me help you..." The maid hurried to dress him in the robe, her eyes studying him with puzzlement. Tsk. Not bad acting... As she dressed him, she called down toward the courtyard: "The son-in-law is awake! The son-in-law is awake!" And so more people began coming over from the various courtyards.
With the robe on, he shouldered past the maids and serving boys who were arriving, crossed the courtyard, and headed outside without a backward glance.
In the end... he was still headed off and brought back.
Ten days later, he sat on the veranda watching fireworks bloom in the sky outside and let out a sigh.
He had gone out again after that. In a city that big there was no trace of anything modern—no building, no person. The mountains and marshes and lakes beyond the walls all told him this was the ancient past; it could not be anything else. Even if he threw the entire strength of a financial empire at it, no one could build a world this seamless. And this many actors could never be that perfect. This wasn't The Truman Show, and he wasn't Truman, locked in a studio since birth.
He had also more or less figured out his present identity. He was Ning Yi, courtesy name Liheng, at present a live-in son-in-law of the Su family, wealthy merchants of Jiangning. It was a rather inglorious identity, but since it was his, there was nothing to be done—and even for a live-in son-in-law, the situation here, judging by the past few days, was really rather complicated.
The Su family was one of the best-known merchant houses in Jiangning. The man who currently ran it, Su Boyong of the eldest branch, had no sons, only a daughter named Su Tan'er. He had not yet laid eyes on this wife of his. It was said that on the wedding day a batch of cloth in the Su family's stock had run into trouble and Su Tan'er had rushed off to deal with it—put plainly, it was clear she did not accept this marriage. She had, in effect, run away from the wedding.
As for himself—Ning Yi—it was said that his grandfather's generation had been thick as brothers with the present Old Master Su, and the two had agreed to betroth their unborn children. Who could have guessed both would be born boys? So the betrothal promise was handed down to the next generation, and Ning Yi's family had declined through misfortune.
By Ning Yi's time his parents were both dead. He had studied a little, enough to be called a man of letters, though in truth his learning was probably nothing much; what he was, was honest and plain, and Old Master Su had taken a liking to him and made him a live-in son-in-law.
Whether Ning Yi had been willing back then, or forced into it, was something the present Ning Yi could no longer trace. It was only clear that plenty of people had been unhappy about the match.
On the wedding day the bride ran off, yet the ceremony was still forced to go on; and then, it was said, a young man from a wealthy family who also had his eye on Su Tan'er had caught him from behind with a brick to the head, leaving him unconscious for days before he woke.
Over the past few days he had played the part of a man still muddled from that brick, and had met a great many members of the Su family, Old Master Su among them once. The situation was complicated, but to him it had been plain at a glance.
Old Master Su was in good health and was still the true holder of power in the Su household.
They say you can tell the third generation by how they eat, the fourth by how they dress, and the fifth by their writing; the Su family had now reached the fifth generation in Su Tan'er and her brothers, and the quality was plainly uneven.
The most promising of them, the one with the greatest gift for business, turned out to be the daughter, Su Tan'er.
If those elder cousins had been a little more capable, if Su Tan'er had not been the eldest branch's daughter, if Su Tan'er had had no gift or stomach for business, perhaps everything would have been different. But as things stood, Old Master Su was plainly grooming Su Tan'er as his successor.
As for why he had picked a live-in son-in-law like this one, some old friendship between the previous generations may have counted for a little, but the main thing was surely that the former Ning Yi had been docile and honest enough that anyone at all could keep him under their thumb without effort.
For that very reason, the other branches were naturally none too pleased about the standing of this live-in son-in-law. They had long taken pleasure in introducing suitors to Su Tan'er, hoping some rich young gentleman would marry her off and make her water poured out of the door, no threat to the household at all.
Who could have known Old Master Su would seize on an old betrothal promise and force a live-in husband on her? Naturally, Ning Yi had become a thorn in everyone's eye. Whether that brick to the head that night had come from one of them was, to put it mildly, hard to say.
He thought back on his previous life.
Secret wars in the marketplace, scheming and knifing in the dark—it seemed he had spent that whole life on such things. Even after building up a vast commercial empire, he'd still had to guard against infighting, and in the end he had been sold out and taken out by his own brother. Looking at these things now, he couldn't help finding them funny. Really, I don't want to touch any of that again—least of all these small-time little scraps...
Sort out what needed sorting out, save up a little silver, and then leave. That was his thinking. He had no real notion of what being a live-in son-in-law entailed, and he didn't much care about matters of title, but being watched at every hour of the day was somewhat disagreeable.
As for this world, he still couldn't quite make it out.
Jiangning—in the Song dynasty, that had been the name for Nanjing. But this was not the Song dynasty, and over the past few days the thing that puzzled him most was the question of history. The history books he had seen always seemed to diverge somewhat from the world he had come from.
The present dynasty was called Wu, and like the Southern Song it had its capital at Lin'an. Certain details of history seemed to have started shifting around the time of the Sui; by the Tang the divergences were already large.
After the Tang came a free-for-all of warlords, a pattern much like the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and then the Wu. There were a few more famous men and a few more poems in circulation—and a few fewer.
Li Bai, for instance, wrote some fine verse and was called the Poetry Immortal, but he died young in Chang'an in a sword duel.
Du Fu took office, made a mess of things out of sheer pedantry, and had his head cut off by the emperor—that one he had only dug up with great effort, a single small line buried in the histories.
What is this supposed to be, quantum mechanics? Alternate universes?
Thinking it over, he couldn't help finding it marvelous.
The Wu dynasty was much like the Song—prosperous enough—but it might well end up conquered by outside peoples the way the Song had been. The history he knew was a complete mess now, and he couldn't be bothered to think about it. What he had to do was keep his head down, learn his way around this world, and then slip out of this big clan; after that... open some small business, travel about a bit. As for the rest, he would deal with it when he ran into it.
He was just turning these things over when a clamor rose from the courtyard outside. Today was a festival day, and he had come back from the front of the house not long ago; something must have happened again. Before much time had passed, the maid he had first seen after being reborn, Xiao Chan, came running all the way up, her round little face flushed red: "Son-in-law, Son-in-law, the Young Miss is back, the Young Miss is back!"
That his wife would come home sooner or later was something he had thought of from the start; she could hardly run off from her own wedding and never return just because her husband had married into the family.
This blank stretch of ten days to half a month was probably her way of warning him to see the situation clearly. This eldest daughter had a forceful character, and he had nothing to complain about there. Xiao Chan came over, called him, and then tugged him downstairs.
On the path between the front court and the rear court, he saw from a distance a crowd of people coming toward them, and among them the woman at their head, in a red cloak, stood out sharply. That would be her.
Around the woman were several brothers of the second and third branches, along with Su family maids and stewards. The woman at their head was tall and graceful, with an oval face; her long black hair was bound up with a ribbon and hung straight to her waist. Laughing and talking with the others, she handed her bright red cloak to a servant beside her. Coming closer, she saw Ning Yi and Xiao Chan. First a flicker of something appraising crossed her face; then she gave a slight bow: "Husband."
Whether or not this counted as the first time the two of them had met, Su Tan'er's manner was perfectly natural, as though her running off on the wedding day had never happened at all. Like an old married couple of many years, she walked over and took Ning Yi's arm as a matter of course, then turned, smiling, to the others: "Second Brother, that white tiger pelt you've been longing for—Tan'er has gone and found it for you this time, so you can't blame me anymore, all right..."
Ning Yi watched with interest as the woman beside him spoke with these people, handling everything to perfection, planting flawless hints in what sounded like the most casual remarks, giving each of them something to occupy them; only then did she turn back to him in perfect conjugal harmony: "Husband, let's go home." With three maids in tow, she and Ning Yi walked back toward their own courtyard.
The woman was beautiful, with all the air of a delicate lady from the water towns of Jiangnan. There had been a forcefulness underneath everything she did just now, yet she folded that quality—like ink on a scroll, like the line of a painted brow—perfectly into her words and her manner. Judged from a purely objective, professional standpoint, Ning Yi couldn't help feeling a measure of admiration. But with that manner aimed at him, he found it rather funny.
Along the way came a few more greetings that looked intimate and in fact kept their distance, and Ning Yi answered a few of them blandly enough. When they reached the courtyard and no outsiders were watching, Su Tan'er let go of his arm, quite naturally: "Husband, your injury hasn't healed yet. Rest well for the next few days; if there's anything you need, just tell Xiao Chan..."
The courtyard held two small two-story buildings. The bridal chamber across the way, still pasted with big red double-happiness characters, was probably Su Tan'er's own boudoir; since waking up, Ning Yi had been living in the other one and had never once been up there.
Now that Su Tan'er had finished speaking, she gave another small bow and took her maids back to her room. Ning Yi smiled and waved a hand by way of farewell. In his heart he understood that if he was going to live here, this was likely how things would be arranged for a very long time to come.
Fine by me. I won't touch you, and you don't come bother me. If it stays this idle, and I never get dragged into this family's scheming, then whether I go or stay doesn't matter much. Life in the old days—pretty leisurely.
On the other side, Su Tan'er returned to her boudoir.
It was not a particularly singular room. At least, by its owner's conduct and character, it was a young lady's chamber utterly ordinary from any angle: red and green decorations, all sorts of little trinkets, a little less needlework than usual and a few more books—though even this probably fell within the normal range.
The newlywed girl, eighteen years old this year, stood by the window for a while, then undid the ribbons binding her hair, and watched for a time the man sitting across the way on the other building, watching the fireworks. She gave a faint sigh, and then closed the window: "Xing'er, come in a moment. Juan'er, go and have Chan'er come over."
Before long, when Chan'er came into the room, Xing'er was bustling about arranging the little objects that had been moved around to make the place up as a bridal chamber, as the Young Miss directed, while Su Tan'er was wiping her face with a towel. When she took the towel away, Xiao Chan hurried over, took it from her, and put it back by the washbasin: "Young Miss."
"How has the son-in-law been these past few days?"
"Mm, the son-in-law's injury has healed, but he seems a stranger to a great many things. The doctor said it may be because of the blow to his head—he's forgotten some things."
"Forgotten things?"
"Mm, that's what the doctor said." Xiao Chan nodded. "These past few days the son-in-law has been walking all over, too. I had someone follow him. I hear he doesn't go looking for anyone—he just walks and looks, in the city and out of it. It really does seem... like he's forgotten a great many things."
"Let him be. Anything else?"
"The son-in-law has been running these past few days."
"Running?"
"Mm. He goes out before it's light and runs slowly along the Qinhuai River. He says it's to exercise. And in his room he does strange things..." Xiao Chan pushed her hands forward and drew them back, her little face full of puzzlement. "On the floor, like this, pushing himself up. He says that's exercise too. This maid thinks it's very strange."
Imagining the motion, the three of them—mistress and maids—stood in the room with question marks all over their faces. Then Su Tan'er shook her head: "Exercise... let him be. Anything else?"
"Nothing else. These past days the son-in-law has met the Eldest Master, the Master, the eldest young master, the second young master—all quite amiably... Mm, the son-in-law is amiable with everyone, except... oh, yes..."
"What?"
"Chan'er doesn't know if it was her imagination, but the day the son-in-law first woke up, when he walked out of his room, his eyes were so frightening... no, not frightening exactly, just very... very..." The little maid tilted her head back, searching for the word. "Very commanding. About like the Eldest Master... no, that's not quite it either. But he just looked once, and Chan'er didn't dare move at all. Maybe... maybe Chan'er saw wrong..."
The girl's voice trailed off smaller and smaller. Su Tan'er thought for a moment, then laughed. When Grandfather had first said he wanted Ning Yi to marry in, she had in fact gone to look the man over, and even sent people to investigate him.
Grandfather had chosen him first because of the betrothal pact made by the previous generation, and second because the man's character was simply weak—she could keep him under her thumb with no effort at all.
His family was poor as could be; he was called a scholar, but he hadn't read much, and he did not even have the usual scholar's aloof pride. What commanding presence could he possibly have?
It must have been a mistake—the man had been beaten and had just woken up, and the look of him had frightened Xiao Chan, that was all.
And yet...
Thinking back to their meeting just now and the handful of words they had exchanged, he did seem a little different from the man she had seen before. When she had come over and taken his arm and spoken to him, she had expected him to be flustered and awkward for a while—yet he had simply come along, light as a drifting cloud.
"Well, that's fine. He probably understands the situation in his heart, and that's enough. So long as he keeps quiet and behaves, the Master has already agreed that I may go on this way... so let it be." She sighed. "But you few must be respectful to the son-in-law. And you're not to go gossiping about his business and mine outside. No matter what, so long as he does nothing to harm the Su family, he is my husband. Understand?"
Sometimes one painted the future in glorious colors, but in the end one still had to accept one's fate—women especially. She was already far better off than most women. For the time being, this matter could only just...
Accept it.