As Cui Yun had lost both her parents, the responsibility of arranging a marriage fell to the elders of her clan.
Cui Yuanfeng saw nothing amiss with making these arrangements on her behalf. To outsiders, it would merely seem that he was fulfilling his duties as her uncle with utmost devotion, rather than prying into affairs that did not concern him.
He instructed his wife, Wei Yannia, to select a few candidates from families of equal social standing, and then sent a messenger to inform Cui Yun so she could see if any of them caught her eye. If she took a liking to someone, the marriage could be settled early.
Cui Yun had long anticipated that this day would come.
Women could be wed as early as twelve or thirteen years old. Because of the wartime chaos and the subsequent deaths of her parents, her marriage had been delayed until now to accommodate three years of ritual mourning.
Now that the mourning period had concluded, it was only natural for the matter of her betrothal to be placed on the agenda.
She understood perfectly well that Cui Yuanfeng was reminding her that she would have to marry sooner or later. The Cui family estate was not something to be inherited by a woman who would eventually assume another clan’s surname. He was quietly advising her to abandon her struggles.
“Xiao Niangzi.” Seeing a completely bloodless paleness wash over Cui Yun’s face, Xilan and Chaoyan felt their hearts ache for her.
With an expressionless face, Cui Yun laid out the several Cao-tie the preliminary marriage profile sheets that Cui Yuanfeng had sent over, and said to them, “Come and have a look at these as well.”
The two maids approached. The first profile belonged to Wei Zhao, a young noble born into the Xiangyang branch of the prominent Jingzhao Wei clan’s Xiaoyao faction. He was also the nephew of Cui Yuanfeng’s wife, Wei Yannia, and the younger brother of his eldest daughter-in-law. He was twenty-two this year. Although a native of Xiangyang, he had traveled widely in the regions of Chang’an and the Eastern Capital, Luoyang, since his youth to pursue his studies.
The second Cao-tie belonged to Wang Hecheng, a descendant of the wealthy Wang clan of Xiangyang. He was the younger brother of Cui Yuanfeng’s second daughter-in-law, Wang Yi, and had just reached his capping ceremony at twenty years of age. While his lineage was not as illustrious as Wei Zhao’s, his family possessed vast assets, making him a fitting match for Cui Yun in terms of socio-economic standing.
These profiles were arranged strictly by social status and wealth, with the family backgrounds of the subsequent candidates growing progressively worse.
Chaoyan remarked, “Among all these candidates, only Young Master Wei and Young Master Wang possess a status close to Xiao Niangzi’s. As for the rest, how could they possibly be worthy of you?!”
“The remaining ones are likely just there to make up the numbers,” Xilan cut straight to the core of the matter.
Cui Yun agreed in a heavy tone, “Eldest Uncle wants me to choose between Wei Zhao and Wang Hecheng.”
A mocking sneer touched the corners of her lips.
On the surface, Cui Yuanfeng appeared to be acting in her best interests. Yet the reputations of these two men were notorious enough that even she, confined to the inner chambers, had heard rumors of them. Did he and Wei Yannia truly not know what sort of characters they possessed or what they had done?
Take Wei Zhao first: he was indeed a scholar who had traveled to Chang’an and the Eastern Capital under the guise of education. Yet despite years of traveling for his studies, his academic knowledge had barely progressed. Instead, he frequently patronized the pleasure houses of the Pingkang Quarter, leaving behind numerous scandalous love affairs and even fathering an illegitimate son.
Aside from that, he was highly proficient in Cuju football, polo, cockfighting, and gambling games mastering all manner of idle pastimes.
Then there was Wang Hecheng.
The Wang clan was indeed a wealthy family in Xiangyang; at their peak, they had owned hundreds of qing of land and thousands of servants and private retainers. However, that belonged to the generations preceding Wang Hecheng. By the time it reached his generation, the family’s land holdings had dwindled to just over fifty qing.
Naturally, Cui Yun who possessed a mere seven qing of land could not compare to the Wang family. Yet the reason the Wang family estate had deteriorated so rapidly was that its members had fallen victim to the destructive vice of Chupu gambling.
As the only son of the Wang family, Wang Hecheng had lived a life of luxury since childhood, squandering money like dirt. Possessing an excessive love for face, he was frequently hoodwinked into wagering fortunes. When intoxicated, he would make bets with others; on one occasion, he lost ten qing of fertile land and an entire residential compound in a single night, nearly driving his father to the grave.
Neither of these two men could be considered a good match.
However, Cui Yun also understood that this was merely her perspective.
Cui Yuanfeng might not view the two men in the same light. Because he was a man, he perhaps did not consider Wei Zhao’s philandering to be a flaw, nor did he believe that having an illegitimate son warranted public condemnation.
Which of the realm’s talented scholars did not possess a few romantic scandals? They would even view it as a badge of honor, composing poetry to celebrate it.
As for Wang Hecheng, in the eyes of such men, a man remained a youth until the day he died.
“He is merely unsettled; he will change once he establishes a family.”
Once he wed a wife, the burden of guiding the prodigal son back to the righteous path would become the wife’s responsibility.
If he squandered the family estate, it would be deemed a failure on the wife’s part for not fulfilling her duties. The clan elders would then merely sigh and quote, “Marrying a virtuous wife brings few disasters to the husband,” washing their hands completely clean of the matter.
It was not only men who thought this way; even some women, under the continuous conditioning of day-after-day and year-after-year domestication, would develop the exact same mindset.
Chaoyan had walked straight into the trap Cui Yuanfeng had set. She chimed in, “Young Master Wei and Young Master Wang each have their own merits. Young Master Wei possesses an excellent family background, and although he currently holds no official rank, there are plenty of brilliant men who only pass the imperial examinations at thirty. As for Young Master Wang, his family is wealthy and he has no illegitimate children. With Xiao Niangzi’s capabilities, you would surely manage him perfectly, bearing him a legitimate eldest son…”
Xilan cast a glance at her naive companion, thinking to herself: If Xiao Niangzi’s ambitions were entirely confined to the inner households, why would she bother going against Cui Yuanfeng at all?
Furthermore, Cui Yuanfeng’s actions were clearly a form of threat intended to demean the young mistress, implying she was only worthy of such flawed individuals.
Cui Yun merely offered a faint smile, refraining from stating her stance.
Nanny Du arrived to test Cui Yun’s attitude.
Instead of addressing the marriages, Cui Yun shifted the topic to the matter of the copper coins, saying, “I know the Cui family has a habit of collecting coins, and the household must have accumulated a significant amount of copper cash. I wonder if Nanny Du could spare some to exchange with me for grain and cloth?”
Believing she had gained the upper hand over Cui Yun, Nanny Du displayed a smug smile and replied, “Hoarding coins is the Master’s personal habit. If Xiao Niangzi wishes to exchange grain for cash, you might as well discuss it directly with the Master.”
To truly beg Cui Yuanfeng would mean that Cui Yun was capitulating to him not only surrendering in the fight for the family estate, but also yielding on the matter of her marriage.
Cui Yun was left with only two choices: either ignore the villagers’ pleas for help, or find an alternative method to obtain coin.
She quickly thought of the Buddhist monasteries.
Many monasteries required massive amounts of copper to cast Buddhist statues. Lacking access to copper mines and raw copper products, circulating copper coins became their primary material source.
The main source of a monastery’s wealth came from the “incense and oil money” donated by the common people when they offered prayers.
In addition, monasteries operated Zhiku pawnshops that provided pawning and lending services.
Monasteries were exempt from taxation, meaning they naturally accumulated substantial amounts of copper cash.
With a plan taking shape in her mind, Cui Yun no longer bothered to engage in superficial pleasantries with Nanny Du.
She picked up her brush to write a reply to Cui Yuanfeng. She opened the letter by stating that her deceased father and mother had appeared to her in a dream, weeping that they could not meet their ancestors on the road to the Yellow Springs. She surmised this was because they had not been buried in their ancestral lands, and thus she wished to relocate their tombs back to the clan plot.
Having described this dream, she bared her blade, declaring that since it was a mandate from her parents via a dream, a pious child must fulfill this filial duty. Only after resolving her parents’ unfulfilled wishes could, she discuss marriage, as befitted true filial piety.
It was blatantly obvious that this was merely an excuse Cui Yun had concocted. However, Cui Yuanfeng could hardly force her to violate ancestral filial piety. Furthermore, once the tombs of Cui Yun’s parents were moved back to the ancestral burial grounds in Dengzhou, she would run out of excuses to delay the betrothal.
He could afford to wait.
Using the pretext of paying her respects to the Buddha, Cui Yun traveled to the nearby Guangning Temple to negotiate a currency exchange, but the excursion did not proceed smoothly.
The monks constantly spoke of “the Buddha’s mercy” and “saving all living beings,” yet they accumulated wealth ruthlessly and actively dealt in high-interest loans. Knowing they would lose out by exchanging hard cash for the villagers’ grain and cloth, why would they ever agree to the trade?
They wouldn’t decline outright; instead, they tactfully suggested that Cui Yun obtain the coins through pawning her goods.
However, the cash offered through pawning fell far below the actual value of the items. For instance, if one dan of rice was worth 150 coins, pawning it would only yield 140 coins.
The villagers had refused to trade with the Meng family precisely because the Mengs exploited them so severely; how did this pawning system differ from the Meng family’s extortionate exchange rates?
Cui Yun visited twice, only to be politely rejected both times.
She left Guangning Temple in low spirits. As she walked beneath the Bodhi tree near the temple entrance, she crossed paths with Zhang Zhaoge.
Zhang Zhaoge stood tall and straight, clad in green casual attire. Without the structure of her military armor, her frame appeared somewhat slender and thin in the winter cold. However, having personally witnessed how those slender arms could draw a full bow to slay bandits, Cui Yun was well aware of the strength concealed beneath that delicate exterior.
“Is Cui Qi-niang here to pay respects to the Buddha?” Zhang Zhaoge was the first to ask.
“Yes,” Cui Yun replied, unconsciously tilting her head. She asked in return, “Is Vice-General Zhang here for the same?”
Zhang Zhaoge pointed to a bundle of soiled clothing and said, “I came here on my day off to take a bath.”
She did not own a private residence, and living in the military camp provided little convenience, forcing her to frequent the monasteries that possessed public bathhouses.
A monastery’s bathhouse was generally not open to the public. However, since she held an official military rank and had paid a small fee, the Abbot had permitted her to use it.
Even so, despite possessing a system cheat, she could not bring herself to comfortably share a bathhouse pool with a crowd of men. Consequently, she always chose to visit during the hours when the monks were at their busiest.
Cui Yun caught a whiff of a clean, refreshing fragrance emanating from her. The scent was entirely unfamiliar, belonging neither to traditional bath beans, soap pods, nor any known body powders.
She thought to herself that Vice-General Zhang’s features already made it easy for others to mistake her for a woman. Now that she had even applied scented powder to her body, that sense of contradiction grew increasingly pronounced.