"Interesting. And reasonable."
At some point, Wei Gutong had simply appeared at the head table. He beckoned to Yan Ziyu and Yuan Feifei. "A great vengeance settled is indeed worth celebrating. Come and sit."
So the drums and strings struck up again, and the click of cups resumed across Thousand Willows Manor — though the laughter, the chatter, and the toasts all ran a shade stiff, not quite natural.
Yan Ziyu studied Wang Yu, appraisal and appreciation mixed. "That was considerate of you, Prince Zhao."
Without Wang Yu's intervention the Dings would have died precisely as dead — but the charges would never have been fixed. The Dings might even have gone into memory as a decent house that offended some Central Plains master and was butchered for it.
Instead, Wang Yu's little procedure had nailed the verdict to the record in front of a hundred witnesses: conspiracy with bandits, murder for property. Yuan Feifei's revenge now stood in the open air, clean and complete, beyond one word of gossip.
In a certain light it even gilded the couple's own intervention. Not that Gutong and Ziyu cared for gilding — but they had received the benefit, and the impression it left of Wang Yu was distinctly favorable.
"A trifle!" Wang Yu waved it away. "The Westguard Manor wants its people living in peace and its trade road open — bandits and horse-raiders are its blood enemies.
Conspiring with bandits is denying me face. Denying me face is holding the Westguard Manor in contempt. Holding the Westguard Manor in contempt is setting oneself against the common people of the realm — and he who sets himself against the common people of the realm, dies."
The table: "..."
Everyone seated in that hall was a person of standing in Longshan; they had seen storms enough. And still that speech left them wordless — with a new, deeply concrete understanding of the phrase "twisted-tempered and insufferably arrogant."
What kind of mind — what magnitude of arrogance — does a man need to deliver THAT chain of logic, in public, with a straight face?
Li Yunxiu set Wang Yu's performance beside the real Zhao Yu's capital record and briefly considered advising him to dial it down.
Zhao Yingjie gazed at Wang Yu in open worship, privately concluding that every act of swagger he'd ever performed had been amateur theater.
Qianqian bit down on a smile and watched Wang Yu sidelong, steadily, as if resolved to find out what this man actually was.
Even Yan Ziyu sat momentarily blank. Only Wei Gutong laughed — one short, genuinely entertained laugh.
Wang Yu, for his part, cared not at all. His eyes had gone to the qin at Yan Ziyu's hand — ice-crackle grain, water-ripple figure, nothing like a common instrument. "So this is Icespring's Cry. A fine name."
"And a fine qin."
At the mention of the instrument, Wei Gutong warmed several degrees. "The qin of Yuan Shanggui — a master of masters, a hundred years gone. His 'Ice Mountain, Flowing Spring' alone deserves its place in the histories. I am not his equal."
Li Yunxiu picked it up. "'Ice Mountain, Flowing Spring' — a composition, and a martial art in one. Master Yuan entered the Innate realm through music itself and founded the Yuan line on it. A pity none of his descendants ever completed the art."
Wei Gutong shook his head, displeased, and corrected her. "Innate experts are not rare. A composition to stand beside the ancient 'High Mountain, Flowing Water' — THAT is rare, and will outlive every realm any of us reaches. Weigh those two properly and you'll see which is the treasure."
Li Yunxiu's brow arched; she inclined her head, conceding.
"Set beside the composition, the martial art truly isn't remarkable," Yan Ziyu explained more gently. "Yuan Shanggui reached Innate because he was Yuan Shanggui. His heirs lacked the endowment — so the gate never opened for them again."
Li Yunxiu nodded — and Yan Ziyu went on. "My husband had old ties with the Yuan patriarch. We called at their estate some days ago and found the family exterminated. We followed the traces to the foot of a cliff — and found, against every probability, Feifei alive. That is the whole story of how we came to Longshan."
The martial world kept few true masters of music; Wei Gutong stood first among qin players and the Yuans had transmitted qin arts for a century — of course the houses had known each other.
In fact, the debt ran the other way: years ago it was Wei Gutong who had come knocking, asking to hear "Ice Mountain, Flowing Spring" — and the Yuan patriarch had not only played it for him on the spot but gifted him the score afterward. Strictly accounted, Wei Gutong owed the Yuan family a favor.
Zhao Yingjie observed cheerfully that Ding Xian's real failure had been due diligence: had he researched the Yuans' circle of friends and found Gutong and Ziyu standing in it, he'd never have dared touch them.
"Not necessarily." Yan Ziyu shook her head. "With Rong Qingying whispering behind them? Whatever the Dings' arts were worth, they were never going to withstand her methods."
"Rong Qingying..." Li Yunxiu hesitated. "Forgive my ignorance — the name means nothing to me."
A woman who could trade strokes with Yan Ziyu and lose no ground was Innate, no question. Yet Li Yunxiu had never heard the name — meaning its owner rarely walked the open jianghu at all.
"Have you heard of the Thousand Sounds Sect?" Yan Ziyu asked.
"The Thousand Sounds Sect?" Li Yunxiu turned it over — and understanding arrived. "The Soul-Beguiling Sect? The Demonic Cult branch?"
The words Demonic Cult put the whole pretend-festive banquet back into perfect silence — while every guest within earshot leaned one discreet inch closer. Secrets of the martial world were rare currency; a story like this would buy drinks for a year.
Yan Ziyu nodded. "The Thousand Sounds Sect is the Soul-Beguiling Sect. Same house, two names."
"I'd heard 'Thousand Sounds Sect' was what the Cult's own people called it," Li Yunxiu said.
"Not quite." Wei Gutong shook his head. "The Cult called itself the Sacred Cult for centuries. 'Demonic Cult' is recent — the last hundred, two hundred years: too many rotten branches doing dark work under its name, and then forty years ago it waded into the wars of the realm and backed the losing side. One club to the head after another; it has never stood back up."
"Oh?" Li Yunxiu was, in the end, a small-gentry daughter who had read everything and seen the jianghu mostly through paper.
"Take the Thousand Sounds Sect's own last mistress, Mei Yanqiu. I heard her play once," Wei Gutong said. "That was a woman of true refinement — nothing dark or crooked in her."
"The rot is uneven," Yan Ziyu said. "And the worst of it is exactly this Rong Qingying — a sect elder. Her art seduces through the seven emotions, and she has spent decades whispering good men into evil for the pleasure of it. While Mei Yanqiu lived there was a leash on her. Mei Yanqiu is gone."
Wang Yu bared his teeth slightly. "She's that capable — and she still spends her days luring OTHER people into crimes?"
"I couldn't tell you why." Yan Ziyu shook her head. "Perhaps her cultivation requires it. Perhaps the wickedness is its own reward — some people simply like watching others dance on their strings."
The couple plainly had no appetite for further Cult talk, and the table let itself be steered elsewhere.
"Prince Zhao's temperament runs rather against the rumors," Yan Ziyu said, curious. "All these years — surely not the stratagem of the feigned fool?"
Wang Yu laughed out loud. "The capital is stocked exclusively with seat-warming cretins and fops who've never learned the height of the sky. Against material like that, who on earth needs to feign anything?"
The feigned-fool theory would in fact have explained the inconsistencies perfectly — Li Yunxiu had considered deploying it herself.
The trouble was what it implied: that before the age of ten, Zhao Yu had been a schemer deep enough to run a decade-long deception past the entire court. Li Yunxiu didn't believe the original article had that in him — and privately, even the transmigrated Wang Yu wouldn't have claimed he could sustain acting at that level.
So that excuse stayed on the shelf. The better one was simpler: father suddenly dead, a princedom dropped on his shoulders, and a young man growing up very fast — with the "twisted and arrogant" original flavor kept available for seasoning, as needed.
Yan Ziyu pressed no further. It held together well enough: sequestered in the capital, the boy had met no events worth rising to — and with the Westguard Manor at his back, short of open treason, he had never needed to give anyone face in his life.
She found herself nodding. "Your Highness sees clearly."
The table lifted its cups. "His Highness sees clearly!"
Wang Yu laughed, waved them on. "Eat, everyone, eat — no ceremony!"
And with that he picked a slice of pork into Yuan Feifei's bowl. "Man is iron and rice is steel — skip one meal and the body knows it. Your vengeance is taken, Miss Yuan; your family under the Nine Springs can finally rest. Do you imagine they'd want to watch you fasting and grieving over it?"
"Thank you, Your Highness." Yuan Feifei gave her thanks — but the cloud didn't lift. "It was all because of me. If I hadn't brought Ding Xian home to meet them..."
"Ah-ah." Wang Yu waved it down, cutting the self-indictment short. "When tempted to examine your own conscience, consider blaming someone else instead. Particularly when it's actually their fault.
You heard Madam Ziyu: Rong Qingying stood behind the Dings from the start. They had marked your family. If you'd never brought Ding Xian through the door, they'd simply have found another door.
Which turns your account upside down. You survived the cliff, you met your Uncle Wei and Aunt Yan, and you carried your family's vengeance all the way home. By rights you should be standing tall about it."
He delivered the summary judgment: "The Yuan family's fall was never your doing. The Yuan family's vengeance was entirely your doing."
Yuan Feifei blinked at him, faintly stunned. "...Is that how it works?"
It felt wrong somewhere. It also sounded exactly right.
Yan Ziyu stroked the girl's hair. "That is precisely how it works. If some guilt still clung to you before, Rong Qingying's appearance burned the last of it off. None of this was yours to carry."
"Thank you, Auntie," Yuan Feifei said softly.
Li Yunxiu smiled and laid food in the girl's bowl. "Your color's poor, little sister — that's a knot of grief finally coming loose. Eat."
Qianqian added a piece of fish with her own chopsticks, gentle as falling snow. "And tonight, sleep properly."
"If the three of you wouldn't scorn it," Li Yunxiu offered, "stay at the Manor. It beats any inn."
Wei Gutong nodded. "Then we'll trouble you."
***
The wedding feast of Thousand Willows Manor wound down in a glow of general celebration, entirely satisfactory to everyone present — with three abstentions from the host family, who expressed no opinion.
Zhao Yingjie stayed behind with two guards to manage the aftermath: directing the manor hands as they laid out the three Dings for burial, then inventorying the Ding collateral lines and the family's lands and wealth — pending, in due course, formal transfer (read: acquisition).