Dinner was quieter than lunch had been.
Uncle Fawen and his wife had returned to the city after lunch, leaving the mansion to their two children, Gu Zhen, Gu Mingzhu, and the two guests who were currently occupying separate ends of the eastern guest wing with the focused, unspoken efficiency of two people who had become very good at existing in the same space without occupying the same space.
Canglong was working on his upcoming appointment list whereas Qing was on his tab chacking on a recent client assigned to him when Chenwei arrived with a knock on the door.
Canglong was the first to notice him and was quite surprised to see him at that hour.
Alongside Chenwei was their househelp who brought 3 cup of coffee.
Chenwei pushed a coffee cup towards Qing and another towards Canglong moving towards him.
“Xiaolan is finishing something in the east wing.
She will be down shortly and I am warning you now, she has been in a creative mood since afternoon and nobody has been able to determine the full extent of the damage.”
Canglong looked at his cousin.
“What did she do.”
“I helped,” Chenwei said, with the specific innocence of a man who had absolutely been involved and had decided that confession was less useful than solidarity.
“It was a collaborative effort.
In the spirit of family tradition and the honoring of a significant life milestone.” He picked up his coffee.
“Grandfather approved the general concept.”
Canglong set his cup down.
“Chenwei.”
“The east wing guest room,” Chenwei said, “has been prepared.”
A silence.
Qing, who had been watching this exchange with the quiet attention he applied to all things, looked at Chenwei.
“Prepared?
How?”
Chenwei smiled into his coffee.
Gu Xiaolan appeared twenty minutes later with pine needles in her hair and the bright, slightly unfocused expression of a person emerging from a creative undertaking that had consumed them entirely.
She was small — smaller than Qing had expected from a Gu — with her mother’s fine bone structure and her father’s easy warmth and the specific, luminous quality that some Omegas carried.
She was wearing an oversized painting smock over her clothes and she was carrying what appeared to be the empty wire frame of a decorative lantern.
She saw Qing and stopped.
Then her face did something spectacular.
A complete, unguarded bloom of emotion that moved through delight, nervousness, excitement, and something close to tearfulness in approximately four seconds.
“Qing-ge,” she said.
Her voice came out slightly higher than she had intended.
Qing looked at her as if someone expecting to listen what other has to say them.
She crossed the room and sat beside him.
“I remember you,” she said, examining his face with her Omega’s direct, unself-conscious attention.
“You used to sit near the window at grandfather’s study.
You were always very quiet.
I tried to show you my drawings once and you said they were technically competent.”
“You were eight,” Qing said.
“They were technically competent.”
“I was devastated,” she said cheerfully.
“I went home and practiced perspective for three months.” She paused.
“They got better.”
“That’s great!” Qing appreciated genuinely.
Xiaolan beamed.
Across the table, Canglong was looking at this exchange with the expression of a man watching a weather event he had no operational protocol for.
After sometime, Gu Zhen appeared in the corridor outside the eastern guest wing with the unhurried timing of a man who had been waiting for the correct moment and had decided it had arrived. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
He looked at Qing.
Then at Canglong.
Then at the closed door of the east wing guest room.
“Come,” he said simply.
They followed him.
Gu Mingzhu was already in the corridor, having been summoned by some household communication that had not reached the breakfast room.
She stood with her hands folded and her expression the composed, unreadable surface she had maintained since lunch yesterday.
Gu Zhen ordered another househelp to open the east wing guest room door.
The room beyond it had been transformed.
Red silk draped from the ceiling beams in long, sweeping panels that caught the mountain light coming through the window and turned the whole room a deep, warm rose.
On the bed, a wide, traditional timber-framed bed that had probably been in this mansion for three generations.
Red bedding had been laid with meticulous care, and scattered across it in the old, specific pattern of the marriage blessing were peanuts, red dates, longans, and lotus seeds.
早生贵子.
The traditional wish, encoded in fruit and nuts, for the early blessing of children.
Two red dragon and phoenix candles stood on the side table, unlit but positioned with the precise symmetry of someone who had thought carefully about the arrangement.
Paper-cut double happiness characters were affixed to the window glass.
A small, handwritten blessing scroll, Xiaolan’s brushwork, unmistakably hung above the bed frame.
In the doorway, nobody spoke for a moment.
Gu Mingzhu’s hands, folded at her waist, tightened against each other.
Her face remained entirely correct.
Only the very slight, very controlled movement of her throat betrayed the internal effort this was currently requiring.
Canglong stood very still.
He looked at the bed.
At the peanuts and dates arranged across the red bedding in their ancient, specific pattern.
At the dragon and phoenix candles.
At Xiaolan’s blessing scroll above the frame.
Then he looked at Qing.
Qing was looking at the room with the expression of a man doing a very rapid internal calculation that had not yet produced a satisfactory result.
Behind them both, Chenwei appeared in the corridor with his coffee cup and the serene expression of a man who had done something he considered genuinely kind and was prepared to stand behind it.
“We followed the traditional protocol,” he said helpfully.
“Xiaolan sourced the dates from the old market in the lower district.
Apparently they are the correct variety.
She was very specific about the variety.”
“The variety,” Canglong said.
His voice was extremely controlled.
“Of dates,” Chenwei confirmed.
“For the blessing.
Grandfather,” he looked at Gu Zhen “you said you approved the concept.”
Gu Zhen looked at the room.
His expression was entirely unreadable in the way that very old, very experienced men’s expressions became unreadable when they were privately finding something funnier than they intended to show.
“I approved,” he said, “the honoring of family tradition.”
“This is family tradition,” Chenwei said.
“It is,” Gu Zhen agreed.
Another silence.
Gu Zhen turned to face Qing and Canglong with the full, unhurried authority of a man who had commanded armies and raised generations and made the hard calls and intended to make several more before he was finished. New chapters come out on NovelPing first.
“This marriage,” he said, his voice dropping into the register that left no space for qualification, “was made before this family and this city.
It will be maintained before this family and this city.” His eyes moved to Canglong, steady, direct, carrying the specific weight of a man who loved his grandson and had hurt him and was not going to pretend otherwise.
“With honesty.
With commitment.
With the full observance of what this alliance requires.” Then to Qing, and something shifted in his gaze, something that was not a command but something older and quieter.
“Both of you.”
Qing held the old general’s gaze.
“Yes, General Gu,” he said.
Canglong said nothing for a moment.
The muscle near his temple moved once.
“Yes, Grandfather,” he said finally.
The word came out the way words came out when they were being chosen carefully from a much larger and considerably less manageable set of words.
Gu Zhen nodded.
He looked at the room one more time.
“The candles,” he said to Xiaolan, who had appeared at the corridor’s edge with her lantern frame and pine needles still in her hair, “should be lit at dusk.”
Xiaolan’s face went immediately, helplessly radiant.
“Yes, Grandfather.”
Gu Mingzhu turned from the doorway with the precise, deliberate movement of a woman relocating herself to a different room before her composure made any decisions she hadn’t authorized.
In the corridor, Chenwei caught Qing’s eye.
He said nothing.
Just looked at him with an expression that was warm and direct and carried underneath the humor of the situation, something genuine.
Something that said, without words, that the decoration had not been a joke.
That it had been a choice.
That Qing was here and that meant something regardless of how he got here.
Qing looked back at him for a moment.
Then he looked at the bed covered in dates and peanuts and lotus seeds.
Then at Canglong, who was looking at the same bed with the expression of a man who had survived fifteen years of active warfare and was now genuinely uncertain whether this qualified as a more challenging situation.
“The dates,” Qing said, very quietly, “are apparently the correct variety.”
Canglong turned to look at him.
Qing’s face was completely straight.
Something moved at the very corner of Canglong’s mouth.
Not a smile.
Not even close to a smile.
Just the specific, involuntary movement of a facial muscle that had not been used in a very long time encountering something it didn’t have a category for.
It lasted less than a second.
Then it was gone.
Canglong walked into the room and began systematically moving the dates and peanuts to the side table with the focused, methodical energy of a man who had found a task and intended to complete it before anyone could comment on the expression that had just crossed his face.
Qing watched him for a moment.
Then he walked in and picked up the blessing scroll from the side table to read Xiaolan’s brushwork properly.
It was good.
Her perspective had definitely improved!
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