Flower Stealing Master

Song Qingshu could feel the conversation closing in on dangerous ground. He acted quickly. “Old Ancestress — the journey these past days has completely worn me out. I’m so tired I could lie down right here and sleep.” He produced a convincing yawn for emphasis.

Grandmother Jia was immediately flustered. “My precious — then sleep here! I’ll have the maidservants make up a bed at once.”

Song Qingshu felt his skin crawl at the prospect. “Please don’t trouble yourself — I’d rather sleep in my own room.”

Grandmother Jia smiled. “I know you never sleep well anywhere but your own bed — you’re right, you’ll rest better there. Xiren — take your young master home.”

“Yes, Old Ancestress.” The maidservant from earlier came in with a quiet smile, and Song Qingshu took his leave of Grandmother Jia and followed her out.

Watching Xiren’s graceful, delicate figure ahead of him, Song Qingshu filed away what he remembered of her. Of the many women who appeared in Dream of the Red Chamber, he couldn’t recall all of them, but certain distinctive figures had stayed with him. Xiren was Baoyu’s head personal maidservant — born with the surname Hua, she had been renamed by Baoyu after the phrase “the fragrance of flowers assails the senses.” She not only managed every aspect of his daily life, but had also served as his first initiation into intimacy. Knowing that the household intended her to become Baoyu’s concubine, she had eventually yielded to him — and yet no one had foreseen the fall of the Jia household, after which she married another man entirely.

Song Qingshu studied her unobtrusively. The slight looseness about her brows confirmed that she was no longer untouched. He smiled inwardly. ‘In the original novel, Baoyu treated women with exceptional respect and still drew her in. The Baoyu of this world, going by what those isle servants said, is considerably less fastidious — he would hardly have left someone this close to him alone.’

‘This does make things difficult.’

Xiren attended to Baoyu’s daily needs, and the two had been physically intimate — fooling her would be considerably harder than fooling everyone else.

“What is the Young Master troubled about?” Xiren’s eyes were sharp; she caught the small crease in his brow without any difficulty.

“Nothing,” Song Qingshu said lightly. ‘Hardly something I can tell you.’

“I can guess without being told — it’s the Master, isn’t it? You’re worried he’ll scold you.” Xiren laughed softly. “Don’t worry — he may seem stern, but he truly loves you. He would never make you suffer.”

Song Qingshu made an easy reply, while noting privately that the father-son dynamic here seemed consistent with the novel — except that in this world, the stern patriarch Jia Zheng had become Jia Sidao.

It struck him as curious. In Dream of the Red Chamber, Jia Zheng’s elder brother was named Jia She — and Jia Sidao’s own father had been named Jia She as well, with almost the same pronunciation and very similar characters. Add to that the presence of the Jia, Shi, Wang, and Xue clans, all mapped precisely onto the novel’s four great families — coincidence seemed increasingly insufficient as an explanation. Could it be that Dream of the Red Chamber had not actually been, as the scholars of his previous life theorised, a veiled account of the Cao family in the Qing dynasty — but a portrait of Jia Sidao’s Southern Song household?

Song Qingshu shook his head. In this world the Qing and the Southern Song co-existed in one era, divided by the river. There was no point pulling on that thread any further. Better to deal with what was in front of him.

Halfway along the path, a young manservant came running after them, slightly breathless. “Young Master — the Master has returned and wishes to see you.”

Xiren covered her mouth with a laugh. “The very thing you feared. You really do have a sixth sense, Young Master.”

Song Qingshu smiled without explaining the misunderstanding. “You all go on ahead — I’ll find my own way back.” He wasn’t worried about getting lost — there were servants everywhere in this household, and he could always pull one aside for directions. And such a person would have no intimate knowledge of Baoyu to notice anything amiss.

“…Very well.” Xiren watched him go with puzzled eyes. ‘Normally the mere mention of seeing the Master makes him look like a mouse that’s spotted a cat. What’s come over him today? Something about him feels off since he came back — but I can’t quite place what.’

Song Qingshu followed the manservant to a study, where the boy promptly bowed himself out and left him to walk in alone. He felt a mixture of nerves and anticipation — nerves at the risk of exposure, and a genuine curiosity at finally meeting one of history’s most notorious minister-villains in person.

“Stop hovering in the doorway and come in.” A voice of considerable authority came from inside.

Song Qingshu went still inwardly. He had not made any particular noise, yet the man had detected him from across the room. ‘A martial artist?’

The possibility immediately sharpened his caution. He suppressed his cultivation completely, allowing not a trace of true qi to surface — not out of any fear of Jia Sidao, for with the Supreme Mysteries Scripture fully mastered, Song Qingshu could handle almost anything — but because his purpose here was to learn the secrets behind the Isle of Heroes. Revealing himself prematurely would mean the mission had failed.

He entered carefully, offered a greeting in Baoyu’s manner, and took a quick measure of the man before him as he did. A stern face, and the most immediately striking feature: a thin moustache in two neat strokes beneath his nose. On an ordinary man such a moustache might have suggested a weasel-faced schemer, but on Jia Sidao it somehow only added to an air of considerable presence.

‘Long years at the peak of power, combined with formidable martial arts — they really do refine a man.’ Jia Sidao was concealing his cultivation carefully, but Song Qingshu’s current perception was too finely developed to miss the signs entirely. He could sense that the man’s martial arts were deep — though probing further without revealing his own level was impossible, so he left it at that.

Jia Sidao made small talk for a short while, asking domestic questions that Song Qingshu answered with careful vagueness. Then his tone shifted. “I hear you were attacked on the island.”

Here it is.

“Yes,” Song Qingshu said.

“Did you see the assailant’s face?”

“No. He was masked.”

Song Qingshu was also genuinely curious: why would anyone want Jia Baoyu dead — and on the Isle of Heroes, of all places? Everything he had gathered suggested an exceptionally close relationship between Jia Sidao and the isle.

“As I expected.” Jia Sidao gave a cold sound, a faint undercurrent of killing intent in his voice. After a pause: “How did you manage to survive?”

Song Qingshu began to answer. Jia Sidao cut across him in a flat voice: “Don’t repeat what you told Zhang San. Whoever moved against you had absolute confidence before they struck — I do not believe you had the ability to happen to avoid the blow.”

A father always knows his own son best. Jia Baoyu had his talents, but fighting prowess was clearly not among them. Song Qingshu had prepared for this, however, and answered without missing a beat. “One of the women in the room came to my defence.”

“One of the two women you brought back with you?” Jia Sidao said with a pointed emphasis, and gave a weighty sound.

Song Qingshu produced an appropriately sheepish expression, while privately wondering whether the two women had gotten away as planned.

“Don’t imagine I don’t see what you were thinking,” Jia Sidao said. “A pretty face, and that was enough for you.” He gave him a flat look. “I’ll tell you this — not long after, she and the other one escaped. Your plan to install a beauty in a private residence has come to nothing. Do you still intend to defend her?”

“What?” Song Qingshu arranged his face into an expression of startled indignation, while inwardly he felt a quiet surge of satisfaction.

“Enough. I will deal with that matter myself. You are dismissed.” Jia Sidao paused.

Song Qingshu let out an inward breath of relief — and at the door was stopped by Jia Sidao’s voice.

“Wait.”

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