Chapter 21 Late Autumn, Early Winter (Part One)

Once the Cold Dew solar term had passed in the ninth month, the drop in temperature grew more marked by the day, and when the heavy rains came down, Jiangning seemed to dissolve into one sheet of mist after another. Late-autumn rain had none of summer's clamor; it carried the chill of the winter about to arrive, and seeped thread by thread into a person's clothes.

As he crossed the wooden bridge opposite the little lane, Ning Yi idly brushed the water spots from his robe. On a rainy day like this a long robe was really a nuisance to wear; Xiao Chan, trotting up from behind, was much better off.

Coming out in the rain, she had left off her skirt, wearing a lake-green blouse with floral trim and a pair of long trousers, her hair done up as always in those cute twin buns, pale blue embroidered shoes on her feet — her whole getup was light as could be.

She must have lingered behind to buy something; now she came flying around the puddles along the roadside under her oilpaper umbrella, like a swallow.

"Son-in-law, son-in-law, wait for me!"

"What is it?"

"I bought something." Having run up in front of Ning Yi, Xiao Chan smiled and produced a small booklet. "I passed that shop over there just now and saw this one was newly out. I didn't think you'd have read it yet, son-in-law, so I bought it."

It was a new vernacular chapbook novel on the market, titled A Strange Romance of Ghosts and Foxes.

Novels of this sort were common enough in this era, their diction simple and easy to follow; some were historical romances, others love stories out of folk legend, and the ones about love between humans and spirits, ghosts and fox-demons were especially numerous. The popular ones were snatched up by storytellers for the teahouses and taverns once they came out.

Ning Yi had been reading a great deal of such fiction lately, and Xiao Chan had taken note; whenever she saw a new one, she bought it and brought it home.

For sheer entertainment these novels could not compare with the stories of the modern world, but they were a matter of picking the tallest among the short; flipping through them when bored passed the time, and since they were written in the old language, they also helped steep him in the feel of this era. Ning Yi took it with a smile now, thumbing through it as he walked, Xiao Chan following along behind and chattering as she went.

"That man at noon said such hateful things. Xiao Chan really wanted to go up and give him a piece of her mind."

"Mm."

"He doesn't know the first thing, he just makes wild guesses, and he dares brag in a tavern that he's some kind of talent. A man like that couldn't even earn a xiucai's cap."

"Mm."

"Son-in-law! Xiao Chan is sticking up for you here. That man was saying bad things about you, you know."

"What does it matter?"

"How does it not matter? That man... hmph. Fine, fine, I know you don't care what vulgar people like that say, but it still upset me to hear it — he was dragging your good name through the mud. If you'd written a poem on the spot to curse him out, son-in-law, I'd have carried it over and hit him right on the head with it!"

"Ha. He doesn't even know me." Ning Yi turned a page of the novel. "I was sitting right next to him."

"That's exactly what makes me so angry..."

The Mid-Autumn poetry gathering was by now nearly a month past, and the talk stirred up by the Shui Diao Ge Tou had been shifting all the while. For the first ten-odd days, praise of the ci had stood at its very peak, and in that same stretch curiosity and gossip about Ning Yi had been at their height. Then... that talk fell off fast, and began to travel in deeper, more particular directions.

After all, talk had its season in the streets and markets. For the great mass of common folk, for perhaps ten days after the Mid-Autumn Festival, they might still play at refinement and follow what had happened at the poetry gathering; after that, other things gradually covered it over. Life itself is busy and hurried, and once people brought the matter up less often, one heard less about it day to day.

More and more of the admiration and the questioning gathered around the successive ranks of scholars and students. The influence of the Shui Diao Ge Tou kept spreading outward — through these men's mouths and letters — but doubts and speculation about Ning Yi stayed inside Jiangning. A scholar in the Eastern Capital, say, hearing the Shui Diao Ge Tou, would admire it no less for the distance, but who exactly Ning Yi was, and whether Ning Yi could have written such a thing, he would hardly take much interest in. After all — it was too far away.

The Wu dynasty resembled the Song: Confucianism had reached its zenith, and men of letters made up a very large share of society. That large share is large only by the measure of the previous thousand years.

Even in the dynasty with the most literati in history, the proportion was far smaller than in the modern age Ning Yi had lived in.

So in less than a month, what could be felt of it had already quieted down — though of course, as at noon today, there was always the chance of overhearing a few men of letters voicing their unflattering doubts while one ate out.

After he had told Old Qin and Old Kang his views that day, Old Kang seemed to feel that his own stirring of the pot at Mid-Autumn had been a bit much, and afterward put in a word for Ning Yi; it was said that certain students who had meant to come and test Ning Yi got a scolding from their teacher.

In the near month since, invitations to all sorts of gatherings had come in numbers, and Ning Yi had ignored every one.

Only three groups of would-be questioners actually turned up at his door: one found him out, and when the other two arrived and saw him lecturing the children on the Analects, they opened with the usual feeler: "They say half the Analects is enough to govern the realm; hearing Brother Ning expound on it today, your attainments must run deep.

How should such-and-such a passage be explained?"

This was the reflex of habit — whatever the other fellow was talking about, you found your opening there. As for the Four Books and other orthodox texts, Ning Yi had been through them several times over and was prepared.

Steeped in the modern age of exploding knowledge, he could speak a passage off the cuff and seize on the heart of it to set men thinking, and even when he took some unorthodox angle, the other man could hardly refute him on the spot.

These visitors had naturally brought other questions along, obscure ones among them, but given Ning Yi's poise and presence — a woman like Nie Yunzhu had been drawn along in his wake — what could a pack of scholars do? Once he had finished answering on the Analects, the rest of their questions never got a chance to be asked.

Ning Yi dealt with them a while and then took his leave, and the onlookers came away thinking him learned or unfathomable; afterward, when they thought it over, most of their questions had never come out.

Besides such group provocations, there were also those who came alone. A fellow by the name of Li Pin turned up every day; he seemed greatly taken with the stories Ning Yi tossed off and came to sit in.

A few days ago, after the lesson, he did put some questions to Ning Yi — mainly his views on those stories, which he wanted to discuss — and in practice every one of those questions came back around to the meaning of the Analects.

He meant no challenge, so Ning Yi talked with him for a good half hour and more. After that, the man stopped coming.

As far as Ning Yi was concerned, so long as no one could prove him an ignoramus, the doubts from outside about the Shui Diao Ge Tou could never harden into a real stain on his name. When the day came that he needed the reputation, proving it would be simple. What could be done at any time need not be done now, and such matters he did not trouble himself over.

Among the doubts from outside there also drifted, faintly, a rumor that a Daoist had chanted the poem and Ning Yi had plagiarized it. Few believed it, and where it had started was naturally impossible to trace; but Ning Yi had expected as much, and on hearing it, only smiled and let it lie.

As for the chalk, less than half a month after that day's talk, Kang Xian had a batch made, and of quite good quality. So the upgrade from whiteboard to blackboard was completed in a mere ten-odd days, which made the lessons considerably more convenient. The concrete results were of course not visible at once; his class followed the same course as before — read the text, explain the meaning, tell a story. That was all. Still, the growth in the children's enthusiasm for study was plain to see.

Only, that lively atmosphere in the classroom was likely a rare thing in this era. The students loved it; the teachers mostly shook their heads. Su Chonghua made another indirect remark, and this time Ning Yi discussed the matter with him a while — that this way of teaching might have its benefits — and he said no more.

For one thing, Ning Yi now wore the title of a talent, with the halo of the Shui Diao Ge Tou around him, and Su Chonghua was in no position to rein him in; for another, the academy had never produced any results anyway, and things could hardly get worse, so let him be and see what came of it.

Lessons in the morning, and in the afternoon he wandered — or went to Old Qin's to play chess as before, though only when it was not raining.

Xiao Chan still followed him most of the time, and had taken to sitting in on the lessons at the academy too — she rather liked Ning Yi's stories, which came in all sorts of odd and wonderful varieties; once she got home, she could show off by retelling them to her two sisters.

Ning Yi thought she was trailing him a little more closely than before, perhaps on Su Tan'er's instructions — after all, he had written a Shui Diao Ge Tou, and such a thing was only to be expected. He understood it well enough and did not mind.

Naturally, what puzzled him more was that his wife had probably found some reason or other to explain why he had written that ci. In the first few days, there had been a good many of those appraising looks at meals; then it changed.

She bent herself to her work again, her carriage coming and going every day, and at meals and in conversation she returned to her old manner, with no more probing in what she said.

That rather interested him: What reason did she settle on, anyway — and how did she come to accept and understand it? I really can't get a handle on her...

Beyond these habits of life, unchanged from before, Ning Yi occasionally inquired after news of martial arts and inner cultivation.

The Su family kept a staff of guards, and one of them was said to be very good at external body-hardening arts — though it amounted to no more than the hard qigong of a modern army: he could crack bricks and stone with his head.

As for the more wondrous inner cultivation, from what he had heard so far it ought to exist in this era; masters of some of the famous great sects might have it. But getting to learn it would be another matter entirely.

For the moment Ning Yi had only begun gathering information on the subject — and it was the subject that interested him most. In this era, holding office, doing business, even rebelling — all were systems he had already played through in the modern world; nothing but people interacting with people. Only martial arts was new.

If there were truly a chance, he really did want to come into contact with inner cultivation and the like — he only hoped it was not fake the way it was in the modern world. He was not greedy; being able to leap about a zhang straight up would do. Of course... two zhang would not bother him either...

To practice martial arts one needed a good body, and hunting up some hero to teach him right now was hardly reliable; keeping his feet on solid ground was the proper way. So on mornings when it did not rain, his daily exercise went on, and he doubled the intensity with an eye to getting the greatest effect. Sit-ups, push-ups, long-distance runs. A few days ago, passing the house where Nie Yunzhu lived, the woman in her plain dress had stood there and seen him; when he came closer, she gathered her skirts and made a curtsy. "Young Master Ning."

Ning Yi, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath, managed to force out a smile and waved a hand — he could not even get out the word "hey." Then... he just went running past.

Leaving Nie Yunzhu standing where she was, blank for quite a while.

She had... only just managed, after no small effort, to make up her mind to come out and greet him, too...