Elio’s Notes: The chapter title comes from Li Yu’s Wu Ye Ti, expressing a restlessness so deep that one can neither lie down nor sit in peace.
Ehuang stood frozen beside the incense burner. Half her gauze robe hung crookedly down and trailed across the floor. Her hair, still disordered from waking so suddenly, had not been arranged, and the pale face Li Congjia saw still carried tear marks from her dream. She leaned helplessly against the bookshelf and stared at him.
Her eyes were full of helplessness.
Li Congjia’s hand still carried the heat of the teapot and… the careless force with which Zhao Kuangyin had pulled him about. He had only just forced every tremor in his heart back under control, only to find Ehuang like this now. She looked as though she had suffered an enormous fright. The woman normally brilliant enough to outshine peonies now inspired only tenderness, with none of her usual proud radiance.
“Ehuang? What is wrong?” Li Congjia hurried forward and gathered her into his arms, immediately feeling that her gauze robe was soaked with cold sweat.
As though waking from his embrace, Ehuang quickly smoothed her disordered hair. “I…” Her eyes flicked unnaturally toward the bookshelf, and the rest of her words disappeared. “Nothing… I only had a nightmare.” She lowered her head and stopped looking at him.
“A nightmare?” Li Congjia looked at the scattered sandalwood incense beside her feet. “Why did you not call Liuzhu to add more? Would you like to lie down again?”
Following his gaze, Ehuang looked down and remembered that she had come over to replenish the incense. She gathered the long hem of her gauze robe and crouched, forcing down all the doubt and panic from before. With deliberate ease she said, “I felt dizzy when I first got up and my hand slipped. Liuzhu had come in, but I was afraid she would exaggerate the matter and disturb the whole residence again, so I sent her away. It is nothing serious.” Her fingers remained cold and still trembled slightly. Her pale hands rested upon the dark incense while her long hair spilled downward with the movement, making her seem indescribably languid and fragile.
Li Congjia assumed she was simply exhausted, had slept poorly, and suffered a nightmare. His double-pupiled eye softened with concern as he crouched beside her. “Let me. Go sleep a little longer…” His hand covered her fingertips, intending only to take the incense from her, but stopped abruptly. His eyes instantly darkened like ink.
He put an arm around her shoulders and asked in a low voice that remained gentle, “Why are your hands so cold? Did you touch something icy just now?” With open concern, he wrapped both of her hands inside his sleeves.
In the middle of a spring day, her hands were unnaturally cold, as though she had just been holding ice.
Li Congjia’s expression changed abruptly, though he recovered almost immediately. His gaze moved toward the bookshelf.
As though suddenly remembering something, Ehuang jerked her hands away, moving so quickly it was almost as though she had been stabbed. Li Congjia looked at her in concern. “Ehuang, what is wrong with you today?” Only then did she realize how badly she had exposed herself. Her hands hung frozen before her, uncertain what to do.
“I… am fine. Perhaps my body is cold because I just woke from the dream.” She did not dare look at him. Lowering her eyes, she instead noticed the obvious red mark on Li Congjia’s hand. “You…” Her attention abruptly shifted to him.
“I was careless just now. While speaking with Young Master Zhao, I knocked over the tea.” Li Congjia moved with his usual elegance, hiding the injured hand inside his sleeve so she could no longer inspect it while using the other to help her rise. “What did you dream about that frightened you so badly?” He smiled slightly, deliberately making his tone sound perfectly ordinary as he watched her evasive eyes.
“I dreamed that you fell into the water and disappeared.” Her voice carried a thread of grievance. Believing he would no longer question her, Ehuang did her best to hide the reason her hands were excessively cold. “I kept following you, but you refused to turn around.”
Li Congjia smiled with extraordinary warmth and helped her sit at the bedside. With a lift of his wrist, he drew up the red bed-curtain and caught it with the golden hook nearby. Even such an ordinary movement carried the splendor of that wrist, an elegance impossible for ordinary people to imitate.
Ehuang felt inexplicably reassured. He stood directly before her, gently lifting the curtain while speaking and smiling. Perhaps she loved the man before her too deeply, and that was why she spent every day in fear. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she wrapped her arms around Li Congjia’s waist and pulled him closer, slowly burying her face against him. “Congjia.” Li Congjia smiled softly, knowing something still troubled her. The sensation of those ice-cold hands resting against him was exceptionally clear.
What did she know? What had she seen? Unease grew within Li Congjia, though his face remained tranquil. He smoothed the hair she had disordered and asked, “Something wrong?” His gentle tone soothed her.
Nestled against him, Ehuang greedily breathed the faint red sandalwood fragrance as though it possessed some power to settle her heart. This was his mark, his soul. The incense itself was nothing particularly rare, yet no other scent suited him so perfectly. Her arms tightened around him. She murmured only his name. “Congjia…”
Her voice softened Li Congjia’s heart completely. “What is wrong with you? Did one dream truly frighten you this badly?” He stroked her face as though holding a priceless treasure. “I am here, Ehuang.”
Yes. He was still here.
Truly standing in front of her, with real warmth.
Her gaze settled upon the burn mark on his hand. Ehuang wondered whether it hurt and then remembered something. She lifted her face and asked, her beautiful eyes still carrying a trace of melancholy, like a peony after rain. “And you laugh at me. You only went to drink tea with someone and still managed to burn your hand? How careless were you? Did you talk until you broke the pot?” It was only the sort of joke Ehuang often made in private. The two of them had long been accustomed to teasing each other. She could never have expected that one playful retort would make Li Congjia react so strangely.
At last his expression failed him, as though some secret had been exposed. Li Congjia released her, turned his back, and braced both hands on the table without speaking. His double-pupiled eye reflected the red mark upon his hand.
One night.
That man bending down to kiss him atop the high tower. Li Congjia leaping into the man’s arms. The struggle in the side courtyard… Zhao Kuangyin’s words still rang beside his ear.
“I am only interested in you.”
He ought to have been angry. He ought to have been shocked. He ought to have killed him.
Then why did he not want to? Li Congjia had spent the whole walk back asking himself why. Yet in the end, he had always used indifference to deceive his own heart. Only when Ehuang made that joking remark while held in his arms did something suddenly break open. Endless spring flowers required only one rainstorm to cover the ground in fallen red.
That was enough to make his feelings impossible to disguise. He could deceive himself. How could he deceive his wife?
Sweat gathered in his palm. Li Congjia tightly closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, forcing himself to become calm. My elder brother, the Crown Prince. The imperial throne. Struggle. The realm. There were too many things. He had believed he had long since learned to face them calmly and regard them as nothing.
But Li Congjia had forgotten that he too was mortal.
The peaceful life he believed secure had collided with Zhao Kuangyin and shattered completely.
Zhao Kuangyin had been right. Li Congjia was a madman. Yet if everything atop that high tower happened again, what would he do? With horror, Li Congjia realized events might simply repeat themselves. He knew clearly that he had not learned regret. He even began to wonder whether some gu had truly been placed upon his heart.
The two of them were both hesitating because of this heart-gu they had placed upon each other.
That sudden stab of pain made it impossible for Li Congjia to face Ehuang calmly.
“Congjia?” Ehuang feared the sight of his back. It reminded her too much of that unnervingly clear dream.
“Rest for a while. I…” Li Congjia exhaled. He did not dare turn to meet her eyes. After a long silence, he finally forced his emotions into order and turned back with deliberately gentle calm.
Seeing him like this, Ehuang could say nothing more. She pressed all her worry down and lay back. The man in blue-green came over and placed her gauze robe on the nearby stand. Ehuang knew him. If he refused to speak, he would bury everything in his heart. The heavier his expression became, the more she could only pretend to close her eyes. “If you still have things to do, then go. I will sleep for a while.”
Li Congjia watched her lie down peacefully and slowly sat beside her. She was still a woman who could be frightened by a nightmare, afraid he might disappear, someone who needed him.
Li Congjia forced every shadow within his heart back into darkness. “Sleep properly. It is all right. I will stay here with you.” His breath brushed lightly across her face, and just as countless times before, they looked like a perfect pair.
Ehuang listened to his calm breathing, the room filled with the fragrance of red sandalwood from his robes. She tried to force herself to sleep peacefully, yet the harder she tried, the less calm she became. All she could do was hide every clue from him and pretend she had fallen asleep.
This day was destined to know no peace. Husband and wife each carried thoughts that could not be spoken. A Tianshui Blue gauze robe that had once seemed proof before Heaven of a match made among immortals had suddenly been torn open overnight. Yet they still had to wear it perfectly, covering the rupture with excessive tenderness.
Was this the day Li Congjia ceased to be the blue-robed youth who had once listened beneath the corridor?
Ehuang had always assumed without hesitation that he was her Congjia. Yet from the very beginning she had forgotten that neither of them lived alone.
He was His Majesty’s Sixth Prince, Li Hongji’s Sixth Brother, the Duke of Anding spoken of by everyone, and the peerless prodigy admired beneath Heaven.
He did not belong only to her.
Were there still other secrets she did not know? The strange ice-cold bottle. The burn hidden beneath his sleeve.
Whose person might he still become?
No light entered the small bedroom within Zhaohua Pavilion. Li Congjia kept the windows shut because she had been frightened into a sweat and might catch cold. He wanted desperately to give her comfort, but now he could not even control his own heart. What support could he offer her?
He still possessed attachments, even after preparing for everything. Since the Crown Prince continued pressing closer step by step, eventually there had to be an end.
But what about her?
The woman on the bed seemed to have fallen deeply asleep. Li Congjia reached out and brushed the hair from her face. With a soft sigh, he spoke almost inaudibly. “I will find the score of the Rainbow Skirt and Feathered Robe Dance for you somehow. Only…” The rest would not come out, remaining instead as a weight buried in his heart that no one could understand.
Too many people were waiting to see how he would end this. They all wanted to know what the openly ambitious Li Hongji would do, and how the detached Sixth Prince would answer him.
It was not complicated. Whenever Li Congjia faced those eyes hidden in darkness, those faces waiting for entertainment, he found them ridiculous. It was only advancing or retreating, taking or giving.
Yielding or refusing to yield.
He still believed in the man who had once gone to his residence carrying a replacement string after Li Congjia retreated into the mountains. Li Congjia was willing to gamble upon that heart. If he lost, everything would become simpler. Why not return?
There was little worth clinging to. Li Congjia had seen too much and grown tired of it. It was not that he failed to understand. He understood too much.
Seeing that Ehuang remained still and apparently slept peacefully, Li Congjia broke his promise to remain beside her. He rose quietly, opened the door, and slowly went alone toward the study.
He wanted to be alone for a while.
Piaopeng spread a sheet of maiguang paper for him. His Majesty had bestowed many more elaborate tribute papers as well: celi paper, hehao paper, pine-flower paper, phoenix-tail paper, fragrant-bark paper, jade-dust paper. Piaopeng had counted them before, all of the finest quality and in quantities too great to remember. Yet the Duke of Anding had only glanced at them, thanked His Majesty, and ordered them sealed away. Only maiguang paper, plain and unadorned, was something Li Congjia genuinely liked to use. Everyone knew Li Congjia’s poetry and prose were peerless, yet they often forgot that his calligraphy was equally remarkable.
Elio’s Notes: These are historical and literary paper names preserved through transliteration or transparent descriptive translation. They are not modern standardized paper types.
He rarely wrote in ordinary times unless something rested upon his heart, whether joy or sorrow. The young page Piaopeng stood before the desk with his head lowered, not daring to speak. He ground the ink himself while repeatedly glancing toward the Duke of Anding standing beside the window.
Ever since that man entered the residence, the Duke of Anding seemed often to sigh when alone. Piaopeng did not know that even Li Congjia himself could not understand why.
Piaopeng only knew that the Duke of Anding’s thoughts were beyond servants like them. Even looking across all beneath Heaven, Piaopeng would not dare claim that anyone truly understood him. People in the streets always said he had been raised amid embroidered luxury and knew nothing of hardship, spending each day composing poetry and lyrics because he understood neither the difficulties of the world nor the treachery of human hearts. If anyone truly pressed him, he would never dare fight for anything and would only hide in the mountains.
But Piaopeng knew he was nothing like that.
Li Congjia’s heart was far clearer than outsiders imagined. Like the Tianshui Blue upon his body, it was transparent to an extreme and therefore impossible to see through.
What could they possibly understand? If only they had seen his calligraphy.
Though still young, Piaopeng understood that a person capable of writing such characters could never be a timid or weak man. Li Congjia had first studied Liu Gongquan from childhood, then absorbed the essence of Yan Zhenqing, Ouyang Xun, Chu Suiliang, Wang Xizhi, Wei Shuo, and others before ultimately developing a style of his own.
Elio’s Notes: These are major figures in the Chinese calligraphic tradition. The passage traces Li Congjia’s fictional training through several canonical models before emphasizing that his mature hand became distinctly his own.
His large characters resembled cut bamboo and timber; his small characters resembled gathered needles and nails. Whenever Piaopeng watched from afar, the writing almost seemed beyond ordinary brush strength. Yet it remained graceful, thin to an extreme, with restrained force of character powerful enough to move mountains and stone.
Anyone who knew only the Duke of Anding’s everyday temperament would find it almost impossible to imagine those slender wrists capable of trembling the brush with force, vigorous as winter pine and frost-covered bamboo.
How could such a pair of wrists move so effortlessly between beauty, elegance, and resilience?
Too many people understood only the graceful splendor of his lifted wrist. They did not understand the vast atmosphere held inside a single written character.
What moved the Duke of Anding to take up the brush today?
Piaopeng did not understand. He could only sigh privately. His master never said much, always wearing that faint smile. If a servant made some mistake, Li Congjia merely waved it aside. Madam often complained that the Duke of Anding spoiled the servants until they had no sense of rules and would embarrass the household before others. Yet his master never became angry.
The greatest recent joy had been his marriage to Madam. On that day, the Duke of Anding finally seemed touched by the smoke and dust of ordinary human life. Everyone could see his happiness.
Joy in that double-pupiled eye was extraordinarily rare.
Unless something earth-shattering occurred, he was always a man as calm as distant mountains. Yet when something truly earth-shattering did occur, he only became more tranquil. He never said anything or revealed anything in his expression. That year, the Duke of Anding instructed Piaopeng to arrange several scrolls and prepare brushes and ink. Piaopeng had even assumed they were visiting someone’s residence. Instead, dressed lightly and traveling without ceremony, Li Congjia simply withdrew into the mountains. Before leaving, his tone had been completely ordinary.
He had only gone to the Crown Prince’s residence beforehand. When he returned, no one could tell whether he was happy or upset. He only ordered Xiangquan sealed away. Other than that, he said nothing and seemed to care about nothing. Then he disappeared for several months, worrying His Majesty sick. Everything he did seemed perfectly natural to him, without surprise, as though even joy and sorrow were things to be entrusted only to calligraphy and painting.
Who could truly reach him?
Piaopeng moved as quietly as possible. The Duke of Anding had said he wanted to write alone in peace. Piaopeng slowly closed the door and waited outside beneath the corridor.
Inside, Li Congjia stared at the sheet of maiguang paper for a long time without knowing how to begin.
His heart was not calm. Even practicing the brush, he could not steady his hand.
A spreading blot of ink appeared starkly upon the paper. Suddenly Li Congjia found it almost funny. This version of himself was so unfamiliar.
Rare irritation and unrest seized him. Li Congjia abruptly lifted the inkstone and slammed it down onto the paper. Ink scattered everywhere, dark and impossible to see through, just like his own eyes.
At that same moment in Zhaohua Pavilion, Ehuang, supposedly asleep, opened her eyes.