Ye Cunshan’s answer to Yun Cheng came not through words, but through actions and the answer was no.
Once the oil lamp was extinguished, Yun Cheng was practically blind in the dark. Though frustration simmered inside him, there was nothing he could do.
He couldn’t storm out and grab Ye Cunshan to demand an explanation. So, he tossed and turned, tugging at the corners of his blanket until he managed to wrap himself up tightly. Only then did he shut his eyes, trying to sleep.
He had drunk far too much that night, and his emotions shaken for the first time since he’d arrived in this world, were in turmoil.
He counted sheep well into the hundreds before sleep finally came. When he woke, the sun was already high, spilling warm light across the room.
Ye Cunshan was busy with chores. Following Yun Cheng’s earlier suggestion, he tore up the waste paper and soaked it in water.
He had a mind for experimentation; after noticing that the new paper made in the Ye Yan household turned out a little dark, he decided to test things himself.
He divided the pulp into two basins, one batch he rinsed once before soaking again, while the other he left as it was. He wanted to compare the results.
When Yun Cheng came out of the room, Ye Cunshan was sitting by the window, reading.
The man had ears on his back, it seemed, perhaps out of guilt or unease because though he must have heard Yun Cheng moving around, he didn’t turn his head. He simply told him to wash up and eat on his own.
Yun Cheng pursed his lips but obeyed, quietly doing as he was told.
Only when he sat down with his bowl did Ye Cunshan speak again.
“The tailor shop didn’t have any embroidery work,” he said.
Even drunk, Ye Cunshan remembered what had happened the previous night. Judging by Shopkeeper Wang’s expression, he knew the man had been quite satisfied with Yun Cheng’s embroidery.
So he added in a tone meant to comfort, “It’s just that they already have their own embroiderers. That’s all.”
Since the papermaking had gone smoothly, Yun Cheng didn’t feel too disheartened. “It’s fine,” he said lightly.
The porridge that morning was fragrant, rich with minced pork liver, and not a single husk of unthreshed grain floated on the surface. Cooked slowly over a low flame, a thin sheen of rice oil glimmered on top, and the smell was enough to make one’s mouth water.
Noticing that Ye Cunshan was reading The Great Learning, Yun Cheng curbed his curiosity about The Tale of the Goddess and the Demon-Slayer and refrained from interrupting.
After breakfast, he washed the bowls, then returned to his room to store away his new clothes and shoes inside a bamboo chest.
The outfit was expensive; even after a night’s rest, his heart still ached at the thought of its cost. He decided he would save it for the New Year. If something unforeseen happened before then, he could still take it to the tailor’s shop or the pawnshop, sell it at a lower price if he must.
He had already finished sewing himself a cotton jacket out of old fabric, and with the leftover scraps, he planned to make an overcoat and apron. Since the new robe was full-length, he also adjusted its hem and style slightly to better suit himself.
The two of them lived far from the village, and their days passed quietly and simply.
Meanwhile, the Ye Yan household continued basking in the cheerful mood from the previous day.
Ye Yan had been studying for over ten years. Before he married, his discarded paper scraps would be used by Madam Zhao to light the stove, and she would scold him for being wasteful. After his marriage, it was Madam Liu Yun who felt distressed over such “extravagance.”
Between the two women, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law reached an unspoken agreement, they both began saving those scraps of paper, waiting for a day when they might come in handy.
That day had finally come.
Even little Chan-jie joined in, helping to tear the paper into pieces. With the grownups no longer busy every moment of the day, the child was radiant with delight.
Her round face glowed in the evening light as she toddled around the yard, calling “Grandpa,” “Grandma,” “Father,” and “Mother” in her soft milky voice.
The whole family’s laughter spread like ripples in the air, warm and full of contentment.
Madam Zhao said to Liu Yun, “Those two big bundles that Cunshan left behind are quite light, and they smell a bit musky, must be wool, I think. Maybe we should help him out later. That Cheng lad doesn’t seem very handy with his work.”
Their family had long dealt with silk-reeling and weaving, so wool was nothing new to them. Liu Yun nodded. “Shall I go and ask him?”
“There’s plenty of paper to tear and too few basins,” Madam Zhao said, glancing at her granddaughter’s busy little hands, “And since your second uncle isn’t weaving baskets today, there’s more than enough help here. Take a few eggs from my room and bring them over.”
“Alright,” Liu Yun agreed.
Their house was at the edge of the village, and to reach Ye Cunshan’s home, she would have to walk through half of it.
As soon as she stepped out, their neighbor Aunt Wang called over the fence. “What’s all the celebration at your place, eh? I could clearly hear laughter from last night till this morning!”
The words were exaggerated, but not entirely untrue, their houses were separated by nothing more than a courtyard wall; any sound carried easily.
Knowing how precious paper was, Liu Yun didn’t want to say too much and attract trouble. So she smiled modestly and said, “Oh, nothing big. Some paper got wet, we thought it was ruined for good this month. But after drying it out by the fire, it turns out it’s still usable. Isn’t that something to be happy about?”
Aunt Wang laughed, proud of her own cleverness. “Heavens, you’ve been working yourself silly! That’s no different from washing clothes. They get wet, you dry them,it’s all the same, isn’t it?”
Liu Yun smiled politely, though she thought to herself, If only it were that simple.
Just as she was about to leave, Aunt Wang grabbed her arm again, peering at the bamboo basket. “Heading to see Ye Cunshan, are you?”
Liu Yun’s patience was wearing thin. She rarely went out, and when it came to social niceties, she wasn’t much better than Yun Cheng.
But since Aunt Wang was an elder around her mother-in-law’s age, it would have been rude to ignore her. She forced a smile, offered a few vague replies, and excused herself, saying she had to hurry to the hills and would need to return soon to cook.
“Speaking of cooking,” Aunt Wang called after her, “didn’t you keep Ye Cunshan and that Cheng boy for dinner last night? And now you’re taking eggs over in broad daylight, aren’t you afraid your brothers-in-law might start gossiping?”
That comment gave Liu Yun pause. But after a moment’s thought, she reasoned that her mother-in-law understood such matters better than she did. Since Madam Zhao had told her to go, there was nothing to fear.
The village had only a few spots where people gathered to chat, and the road to the mountain passed by the river, a lively place full of voices and gossip.
By the time Liu Yun reached it, she’d already heard several retellings of the same stories, yet each one managed to grow a little different.
One tale was about a few idle widowers and layabouts. The previous night, they had been wandering around after dark, when Cheng-ge’er who had been bathing in his yard, screamed in fright.
These same men were the sort who bullied Yun Cheng often, speaking filth and acting worse. When Ye Gen led a few villagers to catch them, they all wept and pleaded, insisting they’d only been working at Ye Cunshan’s place all day and were heading home late, certainly not lurking around to peep at anyone bathing.
When Ye Gen demanded to know if it was true, they nodded furiously, nearly knocking their heads off their necks.
As punishment, they were made to labor at Cheng-ge’er’s house all day, running errands and scrubbing floors. That morning by the riverside, the sight of them being watched over by Cheng-ge’er himself, bamboo switch in hand, drew plenty of laughter from onlookers.
The second bit of gossip revolved around Chen Jinhua, who had been washing clothes alone these past two days. She’d been badmouthing Cunshan’s household, saying that a boy of eleven or twelve had no business acting so spoiled and temperamental.
She even claimed she had really given Ye Cunshan twenty-five taels of silver, and that he’d bought a basket and two large bundles of goods with it, so pleased he couldn’t even smile properly afterward.
Liu Yun glanced over toward the chattering women; one of them was even mimicking Chen Jinhua’s pinched, sour expression and to her surprise, doing quite a convincing job.
Well, Liu Yun thought, I suppose it’s not entirely unlike her.
Amused and exasperated, she walked on, hardly noticing how much time had passed. She reached Ye Cunshan’s home feeling oddly unhurried, unlike her usual brief, businesslike visits.
From outside the courtyard, she called out, “Cunshan! Cheng-ge’er!”
There was no tea in the house except for a bit of roasted barley tea from before, so Ye Cunshan brewed a bowl of that as a courtesy.
Liu Yun set down the eggs and explained, “If it’s wool you’re cleaning, I can lend a hand.”
Ye Cunshan had worked with wool before but had long since given up on it, it took too much time and yielded too little profit. He waved off her offer and tried to return the eggs. “Give them to Chan-jie instead. The child’s so thin.”
Liu Yun flushed with embarrassment.
Ye Cunshan smiled mildly. “There’ll be other times when I’ll need to trouble your family.”
After a few rounds of polite back-and-forth, Liu Yun finally used her mother-in-law as an excuse. “Oh, I can’t take them back now. If someone sees me carry them there and back, what will they say? Mother will scold me for being stingy and disobedient.”
Seeing the sun climb higher, she added, “I’ll help you clean some this afternoon anyway. The wool’s soaking, and I’ve nothing better to do.”
Ye Cunshan chuckled. “Since when is your household ever idle?”
The Liu family was nothing if not diligent, once the novelty of papermaking passed and the scraps were dealt with, they’d be busy again earning what little they could.
He thought the family too kind for their own good, and instead of bringing up how Ye Yan had once taught him in his early days of schooling, he simply said, “Let’s go together to fetch the bundles.”
“I’ll go,” Yun Cheng volunteered.
He wasn’t good in the kitchen, and waiting around while Ye Cunshan went back and forth only made him feel awkward and useless.
To Liu Yun, both men seemed earnest and proper, and she couldn’t very well stop him. So they set off together down the mountain path.
By midday, most villagers were home for lunch, and the roads were quiet. Only when they passed by Cheng-ge’er’s house did they meet trouble, Zhang Xiaohui and his gang sat squatting by the gate, gnawing on coarse-grain pancakes, glaring at Yun Cheng as though they wanted to devour him alive.
Liu Yun promptly stepped in front of the boy and snapped, “Still thinking about going up the mountain to work, are you?”
The three men shrank back at once, the savory smell of chicken soup drifting from the yard behind them.
Only then did Yun Cheng learn what had happened the night before. He sighed. “Typical bullies, only brave when they think they can get away with it.”
Liu Yun’s household had fallen on hard times too. If not for Ye Yan’s early promise, how his old teacher had once praised him for his scholarly talent and said he might one day become a xiucai, no one would show them any respect.
People might even call her “the scholar’s wife” with some degree of courtesy, but in truth, her sallow face and thin frame won little deference.
Even being older and a daughter-in-law didn’t spare her from the sly mockery of their clan.
She had half a mind to say that Ye Cunshan could read and had already passed the preliminary exam, if he succeeded in the next, their household would stand tall at last. Then even if he were away, no one would dare harass Yun Cheng when left alone.
But as soon as she thought of the expenses of the examinations, the travel, the books, the endless copying, her enthusiasm faltered. Paper could be reused again and again, but no amount of thrift could bridge that gap.
Her excitement from the past two days quietly faded.
“Cunshan and my husband usually buy their study books together,” she said after a pause. “They pool their silver to get the ones needed for the exams, then copy each other’s. I forgot to mention earlier, tell him that Yan-ge bought two new books recently. Ask if he wants to copy them too.”
“What are their titles?” Yun Cheng asked, curious.
Liu Yun smiled sheepishly. She was illiterate. When she first married, she had tried to learn to read alongside her husband, but the burden of daily life soon crushed that ambition.
Now, she could barely recognize the names of the three people in her household and even those, only with effort.
“I’ll show them to you when we get there,” she said.
And before long, they arrived.
As usual, Ye Yan came out around lunchtime, carrying little Chan-jie in his arms and stretching his back. Hearing that they’d come for new books for Ye Cunshan, his expression froze for a moment. “Go help Mother with the cooking,” he told Liu Yun stiffly. “I’ll fetch them.”
Yun Cheng hadn’t yet learned the unspoken distance that existed between men in this era, so he followed him to the doorway.
Ye Yan’s desk stood just inside the entrance, right by the bed. Upon it lay two books, boldly displayed, Dream Journey to the Immortal Palace and The Blossoms of This World.
Yun Cheng glanced at them, his curiosity sparking, but instead of blurting questions like a fool, he chose a subtler approach. “Cousin,” he asked casually, “can I ask you something? Has Cunshan ever written a storybook himself?”
✦ ✧ ✦
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
The translator sacrificed sleep for this chapter. A coffee offering seems reasonable.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
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ChaptersChapter 1 · I Shall Go With YouChapter 2 · You Are ResponsibleChapter 3 · Just make A DoChapter 4 · You Have To Hold MeChapter 5 · Live A Good LifeChapter 6 · Meet The ParentsChapter 7 · Lucky for My husbandChapter 8 · ThreatenChapter 9 · Turning Waste paper into NewChapter 10 · New Paper!Chapter 11 · He will look good in thisChapter 12 · Too HonestChapter 13 · Make Him HappyChapter 14 · WorshipChapter 15 · Feeling Sorry for moneyChapter 16 · I’m so reluctant to leave you.Chapter 17 · My feelings for him are no longer pure.Chapter 18 · Thinking about helping him in some wayChapter 19 · Buy one for my husbandChapter 20 · Cause troubleChapter 21 · Aftermath of the incidentChapter 22 · He led him home obediently.Chapter 23 · Why are you hugging me?Chapter 24 Part 1 · Sweet TalkingChapter 24 Part 2 · Sweet TalkingChapter 25 · You are my drean ManChapter 26 · I don’t fall for flirtingChapter 27 Part 1 · Teaching You How to Like MeChapter 27 Part 2 · Teaching You How to Like MeChapter 28 Part 1 · Picking up kid from schoolChapter 28 Part 2 · Picking up kid from schoolChapter 29 Part 1 · I Have a FriendChapter 29 Part 2 · I Have a FriendChapter 30 Part 1 · Pampering My HusbandChapter 30 Part 2 · Pampering My HusbandChapter 31 Part 1 · Don’t compare yourself with othersChapter 31 Part 2 · Don’t compare yourself with othersChapter 32 Part 1 · Come here and kiss me yourselfChapter 32 Part 2 · Come here and kiss me yourselfChapter 33 Part 1 · Let me explainChapter 33 Part 2 · Let me explainChapter 34 Part 1 · Little SecretChapter 34 Part 2 · Little SecretChapter 35 Part 1 · Going to the New Year MarketChapter 35 Part 2 · Going to the New Year MarketChapter 36 Part 1 · Please coax his little husbandChapter 36 Part 2 · Please coax his little husbandChapter 37 Part 1 · I want you to pamper meChapter 37 Part 2 · I want you to pamper meChapter 38 Part 1 · He wants to marry into the family!Chapter 38 Part 2 · He wants to marry into the family!Chapter 39 Part 1 · This is a separate priceChapter 39 Part 2 · This is a separate priceChapter 40 Part 1 · Husband, children, and a warm bedChapter 40 Part 2 · Husband, children, and a warm bedChapter 41 Part 1 · Biting SpringChapter 41 Part 2 · Biting SpringChapter 42 Part 1 · Isn’t managing you the important thing?Chapter 42 Part 2 · Isn’t managing you the important thing?Chapter 43 · Shameless!Chapter 44 Part 1 · Head of the HouseholdChapter 44 Part 2 · Head of the HouseholdChapter 45 · DatingChapter 45 Part 2 · DatingChapter 46 · You Were the One Who Got HookedChapter 47 · I Like Being Looked AfterChapter 48 · A Weighty AffectionChapter 49 · Go On, Say It AgainChapter 50 · There’s plenty of time in the futureChapter 51 · Karma and RetributionChapter 52 · Playing the “Villain”Chapter 53 · I’ll Be Very Gentle!Chapter 54 · Rural RomanceChapter 55 · Don’t CryChapter 56 · Unable to Afford TuitionChapter 57 · Coax MeChapter 58 · Do You Want Me to Keep You Company?Chapter 59 · You’re Not Good EnoughChapter 60 · WoofChapter 61 Part 1 · Are the Words “I Love You” Too Hot for Your Mouth?Chapter 61 Part 2 · Are the Words “I Love You” Too Hot for Your Mouth?Chapter 62 · My skin gets itchy if I don’t take care of it for a day.Chapter 63 · ClingyChapter 64 · Night TalkChapter 65 · Top Scholar TransmigrationChapter 66 · Imperial examinationsChapter 67 · Exams Over!Chapter 68 · You’re making fun of me as soon as you get back?Chapter 69 · Shameless!Chapter 70 · Truly unbelievableChapter 71 · One taelChapter 72 · Did you draw one for my brother?Chapter 73 · Bad LuckChapter 74 · Look like youChapter 75 · You’re so clingyChapter 76 · Careful your elder brother doesn’t beat you upChapter 77 · If you’re going to hit me, then just hit meChapter 78 · Cheng GegeChapter 79 · Thank you, DidiChapter 80 · Poor scholars from humble backgrounds usually have strong prideChapter 81 · Twenty two?Chapter 82 · Have you started preparing a new book yet?Chapter 83 · We’re PoorChapter 84 · I Still can’t believeChapter 85 Part 1 · But What happened in the end?Chapter 85 Part 2 · But What happened in the End?Chapter 86 · I’m a little kidChapter 87 · The person in this painting is my younger brotherChapter 88 · Yun Xiaocheng Even Has This SkillChapter 89 Part 1 · Preparations Before DepartureChapter 89 Part 2 · Preparations Before DepartureChapter 90 Part 1 · On the Road, a Transitional ChapterChapter 90 Part 2 · On the Road, a Transitional ChapterChapter 91 Part 1 · NarrativeChapter 91 Part 2 · NarrativeChapter 92 · Narrative, transitional chapterChapter 93 · Make you happyChapter 94 Part 1 · Burial and AdmonitionChapter 94 Part 2 · Burial and AdmonitionChapter 95 · Song Jin said she was very good to Cheng HuilanChapter 96 · She has a good older brother.Chapter 97 · Simplicity is the bestChapter 98 · HomecomingChapter 99 Part 1 · Going homeChapter 99 Part 2 · Going HomeChapter 100 Part 1 · AugustChapter 100 Part 2 · AugustChapter 101 Part 1 · How come you’re pregnant but still have such a slim waist?Chapter 101 Part 2 · How come you’re pregnant but still have such a slim waist?Chapter 102 · This is the love you have for me.Chapter 103 Part 1 · SeptemberChapter 103 Part 2 · SeptemberChapter 103 Part 3 · SeptemberChapter 104 Part 1 · Ye Xiaoshan, you’re so shamelessChapter 104 Part 2 · Ye Xiaoshan, you’re so shamelessChapter 105 · Ye Xiaoshan, what are you doing?Chapter 106 Part 1 · Daily lifeChapter 106 Part 2 · Daily lifeChapter 107 · The novel has many plotsChapter 108 Part 1 · Daily life + novel plotChapter 108 Part 2 · Daily life + novel plotChapter 109 · Monthly Exams and Daily RoutineChapter 110 · Mainly exams