Great Song Dynasty Writer

Chapter 17 "Tianhe Water" [ask for monthly ticket! ]

Ji Yun simply admitted defeat? Could it be that this scholar's talent far surpassed Ji Yun's?
"Young Master Ji, you haven't even finished reading the whole book yet, and you're already jumping to conclusions. That's way too rash."

Ji Yun carefully unfolded the rice paper and did not argue, but just read it in public.

"Everyone, listen now—since the Jianyan era, the dust of the barbarians has covered the sky, the Central Plains has been in turmoil, and I, along with my family, have fled south."

The flower hall gradually became quiet.

Ji Yun's clear voice echoed among the carved beams and painted buildings. When he read "In the winter of the ninth year of Shaoxing, on a snowy night in Qiantang", an old man in a brocade robe in the inner circle suddenly exclaimed "Huh".

"How strange!" the old man twirled his beard, "Jianyan and Shaoxing are both reign titles, but I've never heard of them. Could they be fabricated?"

Ji Yun simply explained: "This is a novelist's story, a fictional way of writing about the future."

Yes, it is just using the mouths of people in the future to write about the catastrophe that has not yet happened.

"Let's read the text."

Ji Yun turned over the preface and revealed the densely packed small regular script at the back.

He cleared his throat and continued reading.

"Floating Life in Jiangzuo, Part One, Tianhe Water"

I first met Ah Si in the first month of the fifth year of Zhenghe.

That year, I first came to the capital with my father-in-law. The official boat was late, so we temporarily moored under the Shuimen Bridge. The floating ice was gnawing at the side of the boat, like broken jade knocking against green porcelain.

Suddenly, I heard the bow of the ship sink slightly, and a barefoot boy jumped up, with a tattered coat wrapped around a coarse earthenware jar. His breath was like frost, and beads of sweat were oozing from his forehead.

"Wenquxinggong, please taste the new wine!"

"Is he actually a bootlegger?" I found this quite strange.

The imperial court implemented the liquor monopoly law②, which prohibited the people from making koji. However, the liquor produced by the government was bland and could not be sold by anyone other than a liquor merchant. Therefore, most people in the market sold home-brewed liquor secretly.

Jia Yan, who was fond of drinking, nodded in agreement, but only warned: "You must dip your nails into the wine without falling off, and don't deceive me with muddy wine."

The young man knocked off the sealing clay, and the aroma of wine startled the crows roosting in the reeds. The moonlight leaked into the mouth of the jar, and actually wove the Milky Way on the surface of the wine.

The father-in-law dipped his nails in the wine and tasted it, clapping his hands and saying, "Does this wine have a name?"

'It is called Tianhe Water.' The tips of the young man's ears are dyed red, 'It is necessary to collect the dew of the Qingming Festival and store it in a lotus flower cellar for three years.'

At that time, I was still a little kid. My father-in-law drank a lot, and I was able to play and have fun with my peers.

I still remember lying in the stern cabin with Ah Si, and he taught me the folded reed pipe to play "Fisherman's Pride". The copper peg at his waist swayed with the waves, and the sound of the music melted the river ice.

Before leaving, he gave me half a sesame cake and stuffed a ball of yeast into my palm: "Bury it under the peach roots. Ten years later, it will be enough to make the immortals drunk."

After listening to Ji Yun reading the first page of the text.

Before anyone could speak, the old man in brocade robe couldn't help but applaud.

"The opening line of this article, 'The floating ice gnaws the side of the boat,' still evokes the spirit of Shishuo. The scene where the young man leaps barefoot from the boat, with its plain and simple brushwork, adds a touch of natural charm. Excellent article! Truly excellent article!"

"That's right." Father Ji, a well-educated bookseller, said, "The most brilliant part is the description of the crows startled by the aroma of wine. It truly captures the Zen state of Wei Zuosi's 'Pine Nuts Falling in the Empty Mountain'. The writing is elegant and the prose is exquisite. It's truly a masterpiece!"

"Dipping nails to test the wine reminds me of Ji Kang forging iron. As for the line 'the surface of the wine weaves the Milky Way,' isn't it a reversal of Li Bai's 'I wonder if it's the Milky Way falling from the sky?' Yet it adds a touch of the earthly world."

Mr. Zhou thought for a moment and followed up with a comment, but the metaphor he used was a little inappropriate.

In fact, everyone present was a knowledgeable scholar. Even if they could not write literary masterpieces themselves, they still had basic literary appreciation skills.

——The story titled "Tianhe Water" at the beginning of "Floating Life in Jiangzuo" is really visibly strong from the perspective of writing style, description, layout, etc.!

It can be said that just based on this opening detail, as long as the subsequent story development is not particularly outrageous, no one will be able to say anything about winning the championship in this literary banquet.

Then, Ji Yun turned the page and continued reading.

The first sentence on the second page of the text made everyone stunned.

"Ten years have been spent in scriptures.

Not long after I entered Quyuan⑥, the spring snow destroyed the peach trees in the courtyard. The music I had buried in the past had long been eroded by the rain. Only the tribute wine under the corridor was shining with the cold light of corpse wax.

Just then, the servants were noisily escorting a drunk thief into the hall. The man's back was as bent as a shrimp under his tattered coat.

"What else do you have to say?"

The prisoner raised his head, his left eye was covered with a cataract as if he was blind, but his right pupil was still active. He didn't look at me, but turned to glance at the wine jar under the corridor and just laughed.

After laughing, he murmured: "My lord, if you drink, I will not allow you to eat soil?"

Who would want to listen to the words of a lowly person?

At that time, I was just a young man, full of pride and arrogance, and I hastily decided on the case, ordering him to be transferred to the government office and exiled to the army. Later, I saw a servant throwing a coarse pottery jar on the road, and the cracks on the jar looked exactly like the shadow of Hongqiao back then. Only then did I suddenly realize it.

The sound of breaking pottery in the article seemed to become real in the flower hall, and everyone's breathing was held.

The ten-year agreement passed in a flash.

The distiller's yeast, which seemed like a childhood souvenir, had been corroded by the rain of time, leaving only its shell.

The identities of the two also changed from childhood playmates to judge and the judged.

For the protagonist of the article "Tianhe Water", this treatment was just a small act of capriciousness in the power in his hands, but it directly caused a huge turning point in the fate of his childhood playmate Ah Si.

By the time the protagonist of the article realized what he had done, it was too late.

Just like when Ji Yun read the three words "Hongqiao Shadow", everyone almost instantly thought of the childish scene when the protagonist and Ah Si first met as children on the first page.

But it was too late to subconsciously avoid the pain brought about by this split between the past and the present.

The two images of cruelty and beauty were torn so apart that Ji Yun's voice trembled.

Lu Beigu's writing style is so sharp!
It is so much so that the readers feel that the sudden turn of the pen's style is like a cold blade breaking through the air, which makes their hair stand on end.

"This"

Zhou Mingyuan was also stunned. He had seen people writing novels before, but he had never seen anyone write a novel to this level on the spot.

With only a few dozen sentences, the two scenes of childhood and adulthood are outlined.

The story can interweave the fate of two people with completely different backgrounds and engrave it directly and deeply into the readers' hearts.

Ji Yun was continuing to read the third page of the text.

"The years that followed passed like a drunken stupor, the aroma of the wine in the brothel gradually rotted, and the drunken people spent their days in a daze.

Suddenly one day, the sound of drums shook the earth.

The Jin army surrounded the city, and more than 100,000 Pixiu were lined up in battle formation. It was difficult to distinguish the nobles from the humble under their helmets.

All the fine silks and silks in the city were given to the Golden Camp, and the fine wines in the Quyuan were no exception.

After looting all the property and women, the enemy soldiers retreated temporarily, but the Quyuan was already in ruins.

Soon, autumn came and the cavalry attacked again, and the city was broken.

I ran home in a panic. The people on the street were like headless flies. Suddenly, I saw a group of soldiers and horses going against the flow towards the ruins.

I heard the northern dialect singing "Fisherman's Pride": "The sounds of the border from all directions rise up, in the thousands of mountains, the long smoke and the setting sun close the lonely city, a cup of muddy wine, my home is thousands of miles away——"

The one-eyed man in the team used the tip of his knife to pick up the wine from the jar and drank it, mumbling: "Ten years of Tianhe water, it should be mixed with blood to make it taste good."

Hearing this, the maid next to her couldn't help but twitch her nose.

Suddenly her hands went limp, and with a "crack", the wine jug in her hand fell to the ground and shattered into pieces.

The sound of broken porcelain echoed in the flower hall for a long time. The maid knelt down hurriedly to pick up the fragments, but no one spoke out to scold her.

Before Ji Yun turned to the last page of the text, all the guests in the room felt as if they had fallen into a dream, following the words into that chaotic world where the mountains and rivers were broken.

They seemed to see the lonely figure of the one-eyed man holding a glass of wine on the tip of his sword in the bloody setting sun on the top of the city wall.

"That one-eyed soldier is clearly..."

"Ah Si."

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① 酎, that is, re-brewed mellow wine.

② The liquor monopoly system, also known as the liquor sales system, refers to the liquor monopoly system implemented by the government.

③ Dipping nails is a drinking etiquette from the Tang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty. It originally meant dipping the finger into the cup to flick out a drop of wine as a sign of respect when toasting. Later, it evolved into dipping the fingernails after the wine was full to indicate drinking.

④ Toad light, that is, moonlight, because toad is often used to refer to the moon in ancient Chinese culture.

⑤ Copper wine bucket, a common wine-pouring vessel in ancient times.

⑥ Quyuan has a double meaning. Here it specifically refers to the institution that managed the brewing and making of qu in the Song Dynasty, not a place of entertainment.

⑦瞽, meaning blind.

⑧ Finalize, decide the case, convict.

(End of this chapter)