Xiao Jinghong was probably beautiful.
Although Xiaodie was still being cagey, not really giving a clear answer. Her exact words were, "Xiaodie thinks the Second Miss is very, very beautiful... Really, truly beautiful."
But from her stammering and furtive glances, Chen Yi could already see the truth—his wife, Xiao Jinghong, was a rare, peerless beauty!
'However, maybe her beauty is a little different from the conventional sort?'
'As long as she isn't a female version of Zhang Fei,' Chen Yi thought, 'I'd be willing to trade a lifetime of power and fame for it. After all, a live-in son-in-law in the Great Wei Dynasty can't take the imperial exams or become a high official. Power and fame are useless to me. Might as well trade it for something more practical.'
Besides, Chen Yi had no desire to be an official, scrambling for fame and fortune.
Aside from disliking the exhausting effort and political intrigue, he was mostly unwilling to add any more burdens to his life.
In his past life, he'd been a beast of burden, his days filled with nothing but work and study from the moment he opened his eyes. In this life, he just wanted to take it easy.
To paraphrase the old poet Tao, it was all about "picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, leisurely gazing at the southern mountain."
This was the kind of tranquility and detachment Chen Yi wanted.
Before he knew it, a month had passed in the blink of an eye.
Early spring had turned into mid-spring.
The flowers in Spring Lotus Garden grew ever more vibrant, the grass a tender green.
The ten-acre pond was especially delightful to behold, its banks lined with the green shade of willows, pavilions, and kiosks.
'Sitting there fishing and drinking tea, with a gentle breeze blowing... that must feel incredible.'
But Chen Yi could only press his face against the window and stare longingly at the small pavilion, feeling a bit like he was crying behind iron bars.
'If only I could go outside.'
Unfortunately, his wife, Xiao Jinghong, had insisted on having him "protected" for a hundred days.
Chen Yi tilted his head toward the doorway, meeting the gazes of four tall, powerfully built Armored Warriors, and a friendly smile immediately bloomed on his face.
"Beautiful, sunny day today. Perfect for a spring outing, eh?"
Seeing them continue to stare back at him expressionlessly, Chen Yi gave up, got up, removed the wooden support from the casement window, and closed it.
'I wonder what these Armored Warriors ate growing up. Every one of them is about two meters tall, and so muscular.'
Although Chen Yi wasn't short—he was seven chi, or about 1.8 meters tall—compared to them, he perfectly fit the image of a "delicate scholar."
"Young Master, I've finished counting."
Just then, Xiaodie walked over, holding a stack of Yunsong Paper.
Chen Yi asked casually, "How many are there?"
"Eight hundred in total," Xiaodie said with admiration. "Young Master, you've written a full six hundred copies in the past month. That's an average of twenty copies a day, two thousand characters!"
'Two hundred more to go.'
'If I could use a fountain pen or a pencil,' Chen Yi thought, 'I could easily write a hundred copies a day.'
But he was stuck using a brush, and he had to maintain a certain level of calligraphic artistry, so he really couldn't go any faster.
Still, that didn't stop him from feeling smug. "Pretty amazing, aren't I?"
This time, Xiaodie didn't argue, praising him sincerely, "Amazing."
"If you know I'm so amazing, then hurry up and take these to the First Miss," Chen Yi said, rubbing his stomach. "I'm hungry. Remember to bring lunch back."
That blasted Wei Qingzi script, with its emphasis on thick strokes and a wide frame, was somewhat similar to the "brush-wiping" style of the calligrapher Mi Fu from his previous life. It was extremely draining.
"Okay, okay, I'll go right now! Sister Xiao Qin said the head chef is making roast duck for lunch, and it won't be good if it gets cold."
Xiaodie rushed out the door in a flurry, clutching the Yunsong Paper, but not before reminding the Armored Warriors to keep a close watch on Chen Yi.
'This girl.'
Chen Yi smiled and shook his head, then leaned back in his recliner, his eyes twinkling.
An ethereal screen materialized:
Name: Chen Yi
Calligraphy Dao: Minor Success (35/100)
Script: Wei Qing (Skilled · Perfected)
Opportunity: 1
[Daily Intelligence · Yellow-level Top Grade: At the Chou hour, it will rain on Wu Mountain. The Fang Family's young lady, Fang Lichun, will attempt to elope with her lover, Wang Boyuan, here, but they will be caught by her family, who will forcibly end the union. A small amount of Opportunity can be obtained.]
[Evaluation: You have not gone, you have not heard, you have not seen. Opportunity falls from the heavens, yet you do not take it. Truly, you are a lazy soul by nature.]
After reading it, Chen Yi thought, 'The content of this Daily Intelligence is getting weirder and weirder.'
Over the past month, the contents of the Daily Intelligence had ranged from something as minor as an argument within the Xiao Mansion to something as major as a bully seizing fertile land in Shu State. It all made him feel that the Opportunities offered by the "Daily Intelligence" were a bit... peculiar.
Take today's incident, for example—a rich young lady eloping with a poor scholar. The scene would probably play out like this:
The Fang family members would ignore their daughter's wails and drag her away by force.
Meanwhile, her lover, Wang Boyuan, would struggle to grab his beloved's hand, only to be knocked unconscious with a club and left to fall in the wind and rain.
The imagery was incredibly striking—heart-wrenching and lamentable.
When the time came, Chen Yi wondered if he should just eat melon seeds and watch the show, or be moved by their true love and lend a hand.
'Daily Intelligence? I'd say Daily Gossip is more like it.'
If he weren't under house arrest with Armored Warriors guarding the door, he would have definitely gone to see what this Daily Intelligence business was all about.
With that thought, Chen Yi allocated the Opportunity point to his Calligraphy Dao and focused his mind on the "Calligraphy Script" column.
'Eight hundred copies of the family rules, a total of eighty thousand characters, was enough to raise my Wei Qingzi script to Skilled Level Perfection... Not bad.'
Although Minor Achievement in Calligraphy Dao didn't directly give him calligraphic experience or the pen strength of someone who had been writing for decades, it did enhance his understanding of Calligraphy as he wrote. It provided clear guidance on everything from the simplest strokes and character structures to the composition, use of white space, and overall artistic intent of each piece, greatly accelerating his growth in the Calligraphy Dao.
He had achieved a level of calligraphic artistry in just a month and a half that might take others years, or even decades, to reach.
'It's a shame that Minor Achievement Calligraphy Dao can only raise a script to Skilled Level Perfection. If I could break through again, I'd at least be considered a famous calligrapher in the Wei Dynasty.'
After that thought, Chen Yi found a book and began to flip through it.
Lately, aside from copying the family rules, he had spent his free time reading. Most were history books, with a few storybooks or miscellaneous travelogues thrown in.
According to the books, 250 years had passed since the Great Wei overthrew the Qianyang Dynasty. The current Emperor Anhe was the thirteenth emperor of the Great Wei.
For the first fifty years, the Wei Dynasty was constantly at war, expanding its territory.
This was followed by two hundred years of peace, which included the Prosperous Era of Rongping and the Reign of Huijing. Nations from all over came to pay tribute, pushing the prestige of the Great Wei to its peak.
But all things follow the cycle of rising to a peak and then declining. In recent years, several neighboring countries had grown powerful, leading to friction and conflict with the Wei Dynasty.
For example, twenty-five years ago, the Southern Barbarians raised an army and marched north. It took the Xiao Family, led by Duke Dingyuan, five years of brutal fighting to repel them.
The brutality of that war could be described by the saying, "to injure the enemy a thousand, one must first lose eight hundred." Nearly every household in the major towns and villages of Shu State held a funeral.
It was after that war that the Xiao Mansion began its decline.
Although there had been no similar large-scale wars in the last twenty years, the various tribes of the Barbarian Race would raid from time to time, and every so often, a member of the Xiao family would fall heroically in battle.
No wonder even a woman like his wife, Xiao Jinghong, would choose to don armor and go to battle.
'These barbarian lands, these neighboring states... it's all so reactive, back and forth.'
'How can there ever be lasting peace without slaughtering them and wiping out their entire race?'
Chen Yi had always believed in the saying: "Those not of our race are sure to have different hearts."
When dealing with the Barbarian Race or the Buddha Country to the west, the only way to secure peace was to do as Huo Qubing did to the Northern Desert Xiongnu: slaughter them until they were terrified to their very core.
"Heh, I'm getting ahead of myself."
"I'm just an idle, live-in son-in-law. All I need to do is live out my days in peace."
With that, Chen Yi set the book down and stared at the door, his eyes filled with longing.
'Xiaodie, if you don't come back soon, I'm really going to starve to death.'
...
Jiaxing Garden. The name meant "a harmonious family prospers in all things."
Twenty years ago, Old Marquis Xiao had specially sought out an enlightened master of the Dao to inscribe the characters and rename the courtyard.
It was separated from Chen Yi's Spring Lotus Garden by only a single wall and was currently the residence of the Xiao Family's First Miss, Xiao Wan'er, and the Young Master, Xiao Wuge.
Compared to Spring Lotus Garden, Jiaxing Garden was a bit smaller.
A three-story wooden building stood on both the east and west sides. With trees in front and a garden behind, it was surrounded by green shade. At a glance, it could be described as serene and pleasant.
At that moment, inside the west wing, a little farther away...
Xiaodie tiptoed over and placed the Yunsong Paper on the table. With her head bowed obediently, she said, "Miss, all the family rules the Young Master copied today are here."
"Mm." From the study, separated by a curtain, a voice asked, "Xiaodie, has he shown any signs of trying to escape lately?"
The voice was gentle and clear, like the soft, drizzling rain of a Jiangnan water village, but it carried a hint of weakness, lacking in strength.
Xiaodie shook her head. "No. Recently, the Young Master has either been copying the family rules or reading. He hasn't written any more poems like the last one."
After a moment's thought, she added, "But... but Xiaodie can tell he must be feeling cooped up. He often stares at that pond."
A soft laugh came from the study.
"That's only natural. If it were me, cooped up in a room all day, I'd get bored too."
The voice grew closer.
The curtain was lifted, and a woman with a graceful figure emerged.
She was exceptionally beautiful, with a delicate, melon-seed-shaped face, brows like distant mountains, and eyes like starlight. She looked like a fairy who had fallen to the mortal realm.
But even now, on the cusp of summer, she was still wrapped in a thick cloak.
However, beneath her jade-like skin, one could discern a sickly pallor. She looked slightly weary and pale.
This was none other than the First Miss of the Xiao Family, Xiao Wan'er.
"Later, go give him a message. Tell him that once he finishes copying the thousand copies of the family rules, he'll be allowed to move about freely within Spring Lotus Garden."
Xiaodie hesitated. "But..."
"Don't worry, I'll write a letter to inform Jinghong. She won't blame you," Xiao Wan'er said as she picked up the sheets of Yunsong Paper from the table and looked them over one by one. Her tone was one of gentle complaint:
"It's been a month and a half since her wedding. She can't keep avoiding him like this forever."
Xiaodie shrank back. When it came to matters concerning the Second Miss, she didn't dare speak out of turn.
"Go and tell my brother-in-law what I said. As long as he stays quietly in the mansion, the Xiao family will not mistreat him."
"Yes, I'll go right away."
After Xiaodie left, Xiao Wan'er's gaze fell upon one of the copied texts, and a hint of surprise appeared on her delicate face.
"His calligraphic skill is truly extraordinary."
With Xiao Wan'er's discerning eye, it wasn't difficult to see the strength in Chen Yi's brushwork.
The principle is that "Calligraphy" is like "Painting." To appreciate calligraphy is like viewing an ink-wash painting; one must examine the pen technique, brush strength, structure, and even the use of negative space between the lines.
From the first copy of the family rules Chen Yi wrote to the eight-hundredth, a faint trace of spirit had begun to emerge from his characters—just as Mr. Ju Yi of Jinling Academy had once commented:
"Chen Qingzhou's characters possess a great deal of Spiritual Qi; they are the spirited expression of a young talent."
Although Xiao Wan'er didn't see "spirited expression," she did see a carefree ease and a tranquil acceptance of his circumstances, which gave his work the air of a true master.
"If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, it would be hard to imagine it came from Chen Yi's hand."
With such skill in calligraphy, and with the literary talent glimpsed from his poem, "Shu State Ode: Marrying into the Xiao Sect," it wasn't hard to understand why he had chosen to run away from the wedding...
'I just wonder if Jinghong will see him in a new light after she finds out.'
After all, for one's husband to flee on the wedding day—any woman would find that difficult to forgive.
Especially since he was a son-in-law marrying into the Xiao family, and especially since... Jinghong was such a proud person.
After some thought, Xiao Wan'er sat down at the table, picked up her brush, dipped it in ink, and wrote a few lines of elegant, small characters on a sheet of paper:
"For Jinghong's eyes only. To see these words is to see me:
You have been inspecting the Three Towns of Shu State for over a month now. All is well at home.
Grandfather's condition has improved. Several old friends have visited recently, which has lifted his spirits considerably...
Also, our brother-in-law has shown signs of repentance. I wished for you to be aware. —Xiao Wan'er."