Chu Liuxue had never expected that Tao Mian truly was the teacher of an emperor.
Of all his many lies and deceptions, the single claim that sounded most like nonsense had turned out to be the truth.
At present, they were staying in a palace residence originally meant for a consort. Lu Yuandi was a workaholic whose heart held room only for affairs of state and none for personal matters. When her ministers submitted memorials urging her to establish an imperial harem, she rejected every last one and scolded the petitioners for good measure. Later, just to shut them up, she adopted a brother and sister and raised them deep within the palace. She had never once given the children a proper look.
The Son of Heaven was diligent in governance and strict with herself, and praise echoed throughout the palace and beyond. The rivers of blood that had accompanied the new emperor’s ascension were buried beneath black ink on white paper, vanishing like smoke.
A child of Chu Liuxue’s age could only worship the emperor blindly. At this moment they were in a waterside pavilion outside the main hall, where master and disciple sat playing Go. Chu Liuxue’s gaze followed Lu Yuandi’s every movement, yet she could not help stealing glances at the indolent Tao Mian beside her.
Lu Yuandi sat with her back straight as a sword blade, clad in dark purple robes, holding a Go stone in one hand. Opposite her, Tao Mian had no proper posture whatsoever-he had practically melted into his reclining chair. In the span of a quarter hour he shifted positions more than a dozen times, still complained the chair dug into him, and called for someone to bring more soft cushions.
To be this brazen and unrestrained before the Son of Heaven… Chu Liuxue half suspected Lu Yuandi owed him several lives.
The two of them had already been playing for a full half-shichen. Lu Yuandi’s daily affairs were heavy and endless; every visit to see Tao Mian was time she had forcibly carved out, always brief and hurried. Beyond Go, they drank tea and admired flowers. Neither spoke much, yet they seemed to share a peculiar unspoken understanding, quietly keeping each other company.
Chu Liuxue had once asked Tao Mian in private whether Lu Yuandi was always so taciturn.
“Her?” Tao Mian laughed at that. “When she was little, she was even noisier than you.”
At the time, Tao Mian had been idly toying with some expensive little handpiece. After fiddling with it for a while he found it dull and tossed it carelessly into an openwork carved basket. Since arriving at this gilded palace, the Son of Heaven had received him with the highest honors, sending batch after batch of precious gifts before him for him to choose at will. One day Tao Mian remarked offhandedly that he wanted to see wintersweet in bloom. But wintersweet blossomed in the depths of winter and early spring-it was the height of summer now. Where would blooming wintersweet come from?
He had said it without thinking and paid it no mind. Lu Yuandi had not even been present. Yet somehow the words reached the emperor’s ears, and the next morning a whole tree of wintersweet in full bloom had appeared in Tao Mian’s room. Pale yellow petals drifted down into his palm. Tao Mian rubbed one lightly between his fingers, his eyes lowered, thinking thoughts no one could read.
After that, the little Immortal spoke even less.
In Chu Liuxue’s eyes, Tao Mian was a very strange person. He looked plain and unadorned on the outside, yet he was wealthy. If you said he cared nothing for worldly possessions, at certain moments he seemed quite fond of money. After entering the imperial palace he grew stranger still-the emperor all but wished to hand him half her treasury, yet his expression remained placid throughout, and not even the rarest treasures could coax a smile from him.
For Tao Mian now, even speaking to Lu Yuandi required weighing every word. His disciple’s intentions were good, but Tao Mian could sense that behind those intentions lay an abyss-a pair of pitch-black eyes. Lu Yuandi had gained the throne. At last she no longer had to suffer humiliation and abuse. She had gotten what she wanted.
But was this… truly what her heart sought?
Tao Mian did not dare think too deeply about it.
He understood his disciple. If Lu Yuandi wanted to stand above ten thousand, he could give her that.
But what if Lu Yuandi wanted more…
Chu Liuxue noticed that lately, Tao Mian’s lightest and happiest moments were when he played with the four children-herself, Chu Suiyan, and the palace’s only prince and princess. The siblings were twins: the elder brother steady and composed, the younger sister lively and bright, both ten years old.
Lu Yuandi paid the pair little mind, and the palace maids were overly cautious and restrained. The two children rarely met others their own age, let alone an adult as peculiar as Tao Mian, and they quickly grew close to him.
Rather than saying Tao Mian was looking after four children, it was more accurate to say the four children were humoring this grown man and keeping him entertained.
“Stand properly, stand properly. All of you, line up.”
Tao Mian lay sprawled sideways on a noblewoman’s couch, using the black-lacquered gold-painted fan in his hand-worth a small fortune-as though it were some worthless trifle, rapping it sharply twice against the wooden edge of the couch.
The four children lined up neatly by height. Tallest was the young prince, Lu Yuan. Next came Chu Liuxue. Third was the reserved Chu Suiyan. Last was the grinning little princess, Lu Yao.
“Today’s morning lesson is… hmm… the four of you will each tell me a joke.”
Lu Yuan frowned. Chu Liuxue rolled her eyes. Chu Suiyan looked lost. Lu Yao asked blankly what a joke was.
“Hurry up, hurry up. No one’s dismissed until you’ve told one.”
Lu Yuan let out a sigh. He was not someone gifted at humor, but to humor Tao Mian, he racked his brains.
“I’ll go first. Once, a man challenged the wind to a duel. He won, but then he was bedridden for half a month. Why? Because he caught a cold. Ha ha.”
Chu Liuxue could not help shuddering.
With a solemn expression, Tao Mian flicked Lu Yuan on the forehead.
“Young Prince, tacking ‘ha ha’ onto the end of something does not make it funny.”
“Little Daoist Master’s lesson is well received.”
Lu Yuan sighed again, helpless.
Next it was Chu Liuxue’s turn.
Chu Liuxue would sooner have died than tell a joke, but if she refused, Tao Mian really could drag this out until she wished she were dead. So she surrendered.
“There was a frog named Little Yellow. One day it got crushed by a carriage. Right before it died, it cried out ‘gua!’-and from then on it became a little cucumber.”
“…”
No one else even needed to feel awkward-Chu Liuxue herself was already breaking out in a cold sweat.
Tao Mian showed no reaction and turned to Chu Suiyan.
Chu Suiyan twisted all ten fingers together and stammered through a joke.
“One day, a son asked his father: ‘I have a First Uncle, a Second Uncle, a Third Uncle, and a Fifth Uncle. Why is there no Fourth Uncle? Did Fourth Uncle die?’ His father said, ‘That’s right-Fourth Uncle was filial-piety’d to death by you.'”
“…”
The chilly silence made Chu Suiyan uneasy. He looked toward Tao Mian.
Tao Mian suddenly burst out laughing, laughing so hard he nearly doubled over.
Chu Suiyan: ?
Was his joke really that successful?
But then Tao Mian patted Chu Liuxue on the shoulder and said Little Yellow’s “gua” was too funny.
Chu Liuxue: …
“Your reaction time is impressive.”
Last came Lu Yao. The little princess was innocent and carefree. She tilted her head up at Tao Mian and asked:
“Little Tao, I don’t know how to tell a joke. Do I look like one?”
Tao Mian fell silent, then patted Lu Yao on her little head.
“You’re honest enough. This round goes to you.”
Having heard his fill of jokes, Tao Mian seemed to be in a much better mood. He told the children to find places to sit and said that since courtesy demanded reciprocity, he would tell one too.
Tao Mian’s joke had a very long setup.
He said that once upon a time there was a Peach Blossom Mountain, and on the mountain stood a Peach Blossom Temple, and in the Peach Blossom Temple lived a Peach Blossom Immortal, and the Peach Blossom Immortal kept a big white goose.
The big white goose was a long-lived goose. It lived for over two hundred years, and the immortal could never bring himself to stew it for a tonic, so he let it spend its days bullying cats and picking fights with dogs until it gradually became the local tyrant of the village. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
One day, the villagers bought a little female goose. The little female goose was thin and dingy gray-clearly a malnourished goose. But the big white goose did not mind. It stopped bullying the cats. It stopped pecking at the dogs. It divided more than half its feed, carried it outside the goose pen, and stood guard beside the little female goose, watching it eat slowly.
The little female goose’s feathers gradually grew fuller, and its body became round and plump. The big white goose looked on with satisfaction at the little goose it had raised, and thought: there was nothing better than this.
To live safely and happily-what more could one possibly ask for?
Later, the little female goose vanished from the village, leaving behind an empty pen. It had probably been sold, or perhaps stewed by its owner, or maybe it had transformed into a graceful young woman and drifted far away. The big white goose knew nothing. It was heartbroken, and for days it had no appetite. The immortal was sad too, and let it go outside to clear its head.
The big white goose returned home after seven days and pulled itself together, as though nothing had happened.
Soon, another little goose arrived in the village. The immortal told the big white goose not to go see it, but the big white goose went in secret. As before, it split its food in half and gave some to the newcomer.
Lu Yao was a curious child, and she raised her hand first.
“Little Tao, Little Tao! What did the big white goose see during those seven days?”
Lu Yuan thought for a moment.
“Could it have discovered that the previous little goose found a good home? Though it was only a goose-farmers buy geese either for eggs or for meat…”
Chu Suiyan, caught up in the mood, began thinking too.
“It came back after seven days, so it couldn’t have gone far. Perhaps it did something? Like rescuing that goose.”
Of the four children, Chu Liuxue was the calmest.
“Perhaps it simply came to terms with it.”
Tao Mian narrowed his eyes slightly. His fingers gently cradled a sprig of wintersweet-its life force already spent. This was not the season it should have bloomed. It had blossomed by mistake.
Tao Mian said the goose had seen nothing.
The children cried out that that was impossible-Little Daoist Master was making things up again to fool them. Tao Mian braced both hands against the children as they surged forward one after another, shouting for them to let him finish.
Tao Mian said the goose had not found its goose, nor had it found any other goose. In short, when it reached the very edge of Peach Blossom Mountain’s lands, there was not a single goose feather in sight.
No goose. Only a single fragile petal, drifting down onto its orange-red beak.
That petal was not beautiful. Its edges had yellowed, and one corner was torn away. In the flourishing season of spring it looked so unremarkable-destined to crumble into mud, or drift away with the current. An utterly ordinary end, no different from all the other flowers on the mountain.
But what was the goose thinking?
The goose was thinking that this petal, too, had once been a bud. That it had once bloomed beneath the clear sky. It thought: since withering and parting were inevitable, then at the very least, let it-in some single moment-have passed by that flower in bloom.
Three of the children listened in bewilderment; they could not yet grasp what Tao Mian meant. Only Chu Liuxue, after a long silence, asked: geese cannot speak-had the immortal made it all up? Had the immortal truly kept a goose? And the one standing beneath the falling blossoms-was it the goose, or the immortal?
Tao Mian only smiled faintly and said nothing.
Chu Liuxue discovered that ever since that inexplicable joke-telling gathering, Tao Mian’s mood had miraculously improved. Inside this cage woven of gold thread and jade, he was content and at ease, as though he had returned to Peach Blossom Mountain.
The calm, self-possessed Son of Heaven, on the other hand, had lost her composure. She seemed to have grown anxious and uncertain, fearful of both gain and loss. She began demanding to see Tao Mian more and more often-from half a shichen to a full shichen… even half the day would be spent here.
It was still the same Go and tea, yet Lu Yuandi was distracted and unsettled-so much so that even a child like Chu Liuxue could tell.
“Yuandi, calm your heart.”
Tao Mian often reminded her softly like this.
Then everything took a sudden turn for the worse, and no one understood the cause or what had led to it. Just like that, Tao Mian was locked away by Lu Yuandi-thrown into the imperial prison.