Chapter 3: Home-style Tofu (Part 3)
Early the next morning, when Leng Yue rose and draped her clothes over her shoulders, Jing Yi also woke. Yawning sleepily, he greeted her with a soft "good morning." Leng Yue shot him a dark glare without a word, got out of bed, and went straight to the dressing table, where she began fixing her hair in the mirror.
Jing Yi was taken aback by her glare, his heavy drowsiness fading by half.
He had a feeling...
Something must have happened again last night.
Sitting up in bed, Jing Yi watched Leng Yue's gloomy face in the bronze mirror on the dressing table. Not only was her expression dark, but the shadows under her eyes seemed deeper too.
Leng Yue had always been like this since childhood—if she didn't sleep well at night, the next day, the area under her eyes would inevitably turn bluish.
Something must have happened last night.
What was it?
He still couldn't remember...
But surely, people weren't stuffing corpses under his bed every day, were they?
Jing Yi took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The room held no unpleasant odors.
As he sat on the edge of the bed and bent to put on his shoes, he mustered his courage to peek under the bed. Aside from a chest he had casually shoved under there a couple of days ago, there wasn't even a thin layer of dust beneath the bed.
That chest...
Jing Yi vaguely recalled that, just as he was about to fall asleep last night, Leng Yue seemed to have said something to him about a chest under the bed. Though he hadn't opened his eyes, he had mumbled a response in his drowsiness.
Jing Yi thought that, using the chest as a starting point, he might be able to coax out some details about last night's events in a more amicable manner.
"Xiao Yue..." he called her by the nickname he used before they married, his tone casual and affectionate. He ran a hand through the hair scattered over his shoulders and spoke with morning languor, "I remember... you asked me about the chest under the bed last night, didn't you?"
Leng Yue's hands, which had been tying up her hair, indeed paused. She turned toward him in front of the mirror, her gaze icy as she looked at Jing Yi. "You remember? Then do you recall how you answered?"
Jing Yi thought hard for a moment, then shook his head honestly.
The chest didn't contain anything particularly important anyway, so there was no need for him to have bothered fabricating lies to his bedmate in his half-asleep state.
Right, Leng Yue had thought the same last night. When someone is on the verge of sleep, it's similar to being drunk—they tend to blurt out the truth without realizing it. That's why she had deliberately waited until his breathing slowed before softly asking where the chest under the bed had come from.
But after all her calculations, she hadn't anticipated...
"You told me it was brought down by The Monkey King from the Peach Banquet."
"..."
Jing Yi suddenly felt that this starting point wasn't as amicable as he had imagined, and it would be best to skip over it quickly. "After that... I think there was something else..."
"Mm, there was. There was also you counting peaches by my ear the entire night."
"..."
Leng Yue gritted her teeth and shot a fierce glare at Jing Yi's complicated expression before turning back to the mirror. If she looked at him any longer, she might not be able to resist the impulse to bite him to death.
Jing Yi rubbed his slightly numb scalp and sighed softly, trying to smooth things over. "Actually, there's nothing much in that chest..."
"Mm... you said that last night too. You said it contains Millennial Peaches, and if anyone dares to steal one, The Monkey King will whack them to death with his staff."
"..."Jing Yi felt that only by opening the chest and letting her see its contents could he clear up the misunderstanding about The Monkey King and the Millennial Peach.
He walked back to the bedside, crouched down to move aside the footstool, lifted the drooping bedsheet, and dragged out the large wooden chest sealed carefully with red paper strips from under the bed, pulling it all the way to Leng Yue’s feet.
Gently patting the finely crafted wooden lid, Jing Yi smiled faintly and said, “From now on, if you want to know where things are stored in the house, you don’t have to ask me—just open them and look. After all, my things are yours, and your things…” He paused, his smile deepening, “are still yours.”
Leng Yue watched the doting smile at the corners of his mouth and brows through the mirror, frowned, and sighed helplessly. “Do you even know what’s inside this chest?”
“Of course. I was the one who stuffed it under the bed the day before yesterday… It’s just a chest of porcelain sent by a relative.”
Come to think of it, if he filled the space under the bed with chests, there wouldn’t be room for any random clutter in the future.
Hmm, he’d go talk to Uncle Qi about it later.
While Jing Yi was silently estimating how many chests he would need, Leng Yue frowned again and asked, “The seal on the chest hasn’t even been broken. After he delivered it, you didn’t open it to check?”
Jing Yi shook his head. “He runs a porcelain kiln. Every ten days or so, he sends over a chest. It’s been going on for over half a year now, all pretty much the same stuff… When this one arrived, there was an urgent matter at the Dali Temple, so I just tucked it under the bed and left. I haven’t had a chance to look yet.”
Leng Yue furrowed her brows again, tied up the last strand of her hair, and turned around.
The Jing family had lived in the capital for generations, with nearly all members serving as officials there. Jing Yi’s birth mother was Princess Kangning, the current emperor’s cousin, and Leng Yue was familiar with most of the Jing relatives. Those she hadn’t met before had mostly attended their wedding.
How come she didn’t know he had a relative who ran a porcelain kiln?
“Which relative is this?”
“You haven’t met him…” Seeing that she was no longer fixated on The Monkey King and the Millennial Peach, Jing Yi relaxed inwardly and let out a slow sigh. “The third son of my uncle, Prince Yu—Xiao Yunde.”
Leng Yue was taken aback. She truly hadn’t met this one—not only had she not met him, but even his name sounded unfamiliar. “What did he do before he started the porcelain kiln?”
“He…” Jing Yi gave a light yawn, ambled over to the wardrobe, and rummaged leisurely through the clothes as he replied in a casual, conversational tone, “He ran a restaurant, I think it was called Mandarin Duck Tower… It closed after just two months.”
“And then?”
“Then… I heard he saw through the fickleness of human relationships and the harshness of the world, grew weary of mortal affairs, and went to Mount Penglai to cultivate the Dao.”
“So after he got tired of tending the Alchemy Furnace on the immortal mountain, he came back to the capital to fire up a Kiln Furnace at a porcelain kiln?”
“I don’t think he ever tended an Alchemy Furnace…” Having successfully turned the neatly folded clothes in the wardrobe into a mess, Jing Yi contentedly pulled out the ivory-white robe he had tossed aside earlier, closed the wardrobe door, turned around, and said, “I only heard that over half a year ago, Prince Yu dragged him back from a Yangzhou Flower Boat. As soon as he returned, he got married, and right after that, he started firing up the porcelain kiln.”Leng Yue nodded thoughtfully. For a noble-born young master from the capital, this explanation made more sense than being obsessed with alchemy.
"He sends you porcelain every day—are you close with him?"
Jing Yi shook his head while changing clothes, answering casually, "Not close... The porcelain gifts are Prince Yu's idea. All relatives receive them—just a way to gain goodwill. Honestly, all the porcelain inside combined isn't worth as much as one lid of this rosewood box... But my third brother seems quite friendly with him..."
Jing Yi was the fourth son of the Jing family. The eldest, Jing Shi, excelled in classics and served in the Hanlin Academy. The second, Jing Bai, was a medical prodigy who joined the Imperial Hospital in his youth. The third, Jing Qian, mastered multiple foreign languages and served as a Ministry of Rites official.
As for Jing Yi...
Jing Yi had the best looks.
Leng Yue frowned slightly while observing Jing Yi's well-proportioned figure. She would have found it normal if Jing Yi were close to this Xiao Yunde, but Jing Qian—who constantly dealt with foreign envoys and was the most reserved among the four brothers—usually maintained impeccable diplomacy even in greetings. How could he be friendly with such a relative?
"You said 'seems' close to him," Leng Yue emphasized the word "seems," "What does 'seems' mean?"
"'Seems' means... similar to, as if, gives the impression, but not entirely certain."
"..."
"For example... Madam, you're as beautiful as a flower."
"...What's good about that comparison?"
"What's good... Flowers have vibrant colors, fragrant scents, and soft textures—perfect for describing your beauty."
"..."
After finishing dressing, Jing Yi looked up and realized his mistake. Judging by Leng Yue's iron-dark expression, the error was beyond redemption. He abruptly changed the subject, "Why are you asking all this?"
This wasn't entirely random. Early in the morning, Leng Yue suddenly showing such interest in his most eccentric relative was indeed puzzling.
Leng Yue raised an eyebrow and glanced at the tightly sealed box at her feet. "On our wedding night, I grew tired of waiting in the room and wandered around examining things... I already inspected this box that night and resealed it exactly as before. Your relative seemed distracted while packing—he put the wrong items inside. It's not porcelain."
"Not porcelain?" Jing Yi stared blankly at the box, then inexplicably asked, "Not Millennial Peaches either?"
"..."
Leng Yue rolled her eyes and ignored him. Jing Yi walked over, removed the red sealing paper himself, and lifted the lid to look inside.
It indeed wasn't porcelain.
But neither were they Millennial Peaches—instead, they were the collection of calligraphy and painting scrolls he'd accumulated over years.
These scrolls should have been stored in the box beside his study desk. How did they end up here?
If these scrolls were here, then what was currently in the study box must be...
The charred corpse.
As this realization dawned, Jing Yi also caught a faint scent of burnt meat emanating from the box. His hand trembled, and the lid slammed shut with a "thud."Without the heavy scent of alcohol from yesterday to prop him up, all he could feel now was the churning and swirling deep in his stomach.
This sensation was far less satisfying than simply throwing up outright—even the relentless dry heaving from yesterday would have been blissful...
Jing Yi looked at the crate that should have been filled with porcelain, feeling utterly helpless.
No one had told him yesterday that the charred corpse was discovered in this crate under the bed...
He had lost count of how many crates like this had been delivered before. Every previous time, he would open them in front of the delivery person, lavishly praise the contents, and then find a place to discard them. But this time, he hadn’t opened it, hadn’t thrown it away, and of all times, this was the one that delivered something different...
Xiao Yunde really was something else. If he was going to fire porcelain, he should have done it properly. What kind of state would the porcelain have to be in for the packer to be unable to tell which was porcelain and which was a charred corpse...
And it was also the crate’s fault for being so well-made and sealed so tightly. If he had returned a little earlier on his wedding night, before Leng Yue had a chance to open it, who knows how long it would have taken for the smell to seep out. By then, it probably wouldn’t have been the aroma of roasted meat anymore...
Thinking about it this way, the charred corpse in the study with its roasted meat scent even seemed a little endearing.
Leng Yue waited until he had finished staring blankly at the crate and turned to her with a "what do we do now" expression before asking, "Was the crate delivered by Xiao Yunde himself?"
Jing Yi shook his head, his voice faint and unsteady. "It was delivered by a worker from the porcelain kiln..."
"Was it the same worker who delivers porcelain to you every time?"
Jing Yi shook his head.
"Have you ever seen this worker before?"
Jing Yi shook his head again.
Leng Yue frowned, stood up without another word, straightened her clothes, pushed the crate back under the bed, and called two maids to assist with washing up. After everything was tidied, she said to Jing Yi calmly in front of the two maids:
"Let’s go to the study. Show me the Biographies of Exemplary Women you copied yesterday."
The names of the four Jing brothers are Jing Shi, Jing Bai, Jing Qian, and Jing Yi. The characters 竍 (shi), 竡 (bai), and 竏 (qian) are old phonetic translations for "ten liters," "hundred liters," and "thousand liters," respectively. I’m not sure exactly when they originated, but the main reason I used them here is that far too many readers have misread or mispronounced Xiao Jingzi’s name (I refuse to admit that I’m terrible at naming characters... - -#). If you remember them in order—"ten," "hundred," "thousand," "billion"—doesn’t that make it easier to remember? (Please go easy on me, Master Jing... - -#)
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