Chapter 345

As a top-tier aristocratic school, it's perfectly normal to have a teahouse on campus. It serves both as a demonstration of logistical support and as a place for students majoring in "tea tasting" to practice their skills.

By the way, Sea Continent doesn't have coffee beans, so it doesn't have the coffee shops that are popular with the middle class.

Upon entering the teahouse, Si Huaruo declined the waitress's offer of service and decided to brew the tea herself.

In Si Ming's view, drinking tea is simply putting a few tea leaves in a teacup, pouring in hot water, and swirling the cup a few times. Even the most particular people in ancient times focused on the tea leaves and water, such as the saying "mountain water is best, river water is second best, and well water is last best."

The most famous example is when Li Jiqing, the prefect of the state, met Lu Yu, who was investigating tea matters, on the Yangtze River, and invited him to travel on the same boat. Li Jiqing heard that the Nanling water in the middle of the Yangtze River was excellent for Nanling Water tea, so he ordered his soldiers to take a small boat to fetch the water. Unexpectedly, the soldiers spilled more than half of a bottle of water on the way and secretly scooped up river water from the bank to dilute it.

Lu Yu took a sip and immediately pointed out, "This is water from the river near the shore, not Nanling Water." Li Jiqing ordered his soldiers to fetch more water. After tasting it, Lu Yu smiled and said, "This is Nanling Water from the center of the river." The soldiers who fetched the water had no choice but to admit the truth, and from then on, Lu Yu's title of "Tea Immortal" spread far and wide.

Clearly, he underestimated the art of tea.

In a world where tea culture has not been interrupted but rather passed down as a school of thought, later generations have long since developed many philosophies and ideas related to tea. Although the Lu Lineage, as a representative of the tea ceremony, is only a third-rate school of thought, as long as one dares to think, one can expand one's thinking and create new heights.

For example, the pillars of this traditional teahouse are inscribed with various articles related to tea, such as "Remembering the Source with Tea," "Hosting Guests with Tea," "Making Friends with Tea," "Promoting Social Connections with Tea," "Promoting Integrity with Tea," "Educating People with Tea," "Replacing Alcohol with Tea," "Promoting Health with Tea," "Incorporating Tea into Poetry," "Incorporating Tea into Art," "Incorporating Tea into Painting," "Dancing with Tea," "Singing with Tea," "Promoting Literature with Tea," "Using Tea as a Gift," "Promoting Agriculture with Tea," and "Promoting Trade with Tea"...

"It's biting the cup! It's biting the cup!"

Si Ming had just sat down when he heard excited shouts and a flurry of hurried footsteps coming from the next room. He asked in surprise, "What? It's been canceled? Is it a comic or a novel? Why are you all so gloating?"

"It's not 'cut in half,' it's 'biting the cup,'" Si Huaruo wrote the two characters on the table with her finger dipped in water. "Actually, it's the foam that rises in the tea soup. When it moves in the tea soup, under the refraction of light, it gives the feeling that it's moving along with the rabbit fur pattern on the bottom of the cup, making it look like the tea cup is being bitten. I guess there's a tea competition next door. Being able to 'bite the cup' proves that the tea brewer has a very high level of skill."

Biting the cup is a high-level tea-brewing technique. To use gymnastics as an analogy, it's a set of highly difficult moves. Even Olympic athletes cannot guarantee that they can complete it every time. Moreover, even with the same set of moves, different people will get different scores. Biting the cup is the same.

"Tea competitions? That's a novelty. I've never seen it in Su State. I'd love to see it sometime."

Si Ming himself wasn't interested in learning the complicated tea-making techniques, but he was very interested in watching others make tea.

Tea competitions, also known as "tea battles," were described by Fan Zhongyan in his poem "On Tea Competitions with Zhang Min": "Victory is like ascending to immortality, an unattainable goal; defeat is like surrendering to a general, an endless shame." He regarded tea competitions as the most important and refined pursuit, even more so than scholarship and calligraphy. During the Song Dynasty, from princes and nobles to commoners, everyone took pride in being good at tea.

Si Huaruo took the various teas from the waitress and said, "Although I'm not going to have a tea-tasting competition, I'll still make a fool of myself for once."

Then, under Si Ming's watchful eye, he completed the steps of roasting, grinding, and sifting the tea, followed by boiling water, adding salt, adding the tea leaves, and cultivating the tea...

After the water was boiled, Si Huaruo the teapot in one hand and the emerald green bamboo whisk in the other. She first poured in a small amount of boiling water to mix the tea paste, then carefully stirred the tea powder with the boiling water. She then slowly poured the hot water around the inside of the cup, being careful not to let the water and tea directly touch each other, while constantly stirring with the bamboo whisk.

After a long while, tiny white bubbles began to slowly appear on the surface of the tea soup. Even though Si Ming was a complete novice, after some explanation, he knew that this was the most exciting "flowering" stage.

Unfortunately, although Si Huaruo managed to cover half of the white foam in the cup, the uneven tea dust particles prevented her from covering the entire surface. If she couldn't even do this, she certainly couldn't do the more advanced "biting the cup" technique.

"Sigh, when my mind is in a jumble, I can't brew the tea properly."

Si Huaruo didn't insist, and poured a bowl of tea for Si Ming. After Si Ming found that it didn't seem to have become any better.

Of course, he himself is like a cow chewing on a peony; even if there were differences, he wouldn't be able to discern them.

Si Ming shared his thoughts honestly, and Si Huaruo couldn't help but smile, "Tea art and tea flavor are two different things. It's like tightrope walking in acrobatics. Although the performance on stage is very exciting, if we wanted to get from one end to the other, we would just leap over it with light-footed skills. We don't need to use so many tricks."

"It seems that tea ceremony is not for me; our philosophies don't align. It's better to just admire it from afar."

Whether on Earth or in the Su State, the social atmosphere emphasizes efficiency. Si Ming is deeply influenced by this, finding it interesting to watch others do things, but troublesome when he does them himself.

"What shallow and vulgar remarks! I never imagined that the son of the dignified Water Mirror Si Clan would be such a low-class vulgar person."

Amidst the mocking whispers, a girl dressed in elegant attire, carrying a peony-patterned cloth fan, walked in and glanced at Si Ming with disdain.

"Walking in uninvited, it seems the upbringing at the Tea-Tasting Manor is rather lax." Si Huaruo put on a fake smile and replied indifferently, "Why is Lu coming here instead of focusing on rehearsals? Don't make the same mistake as last time, mispronouncing your lines during the actual performance and causing a huge embarrassment. Remember, 'one minute on stage requires ten years of practice off stage' is no joke."

The girl blushed and said resentfully, "Even if I make another mistake, at least I can still go on stage, while someone else probably won't even be able to get on stage. I heard one of your lead actors had a bit of an accident. How about I lend you someone?"

Si Huaruo said unhurriedly, "Let's forget it. I have very strict requirements for theatrical skills here. I prefer quality over quantity. You can keep those half-baked amateur theatrical enthusiasts for yourselves."

Upon hearing this, Si Ming thought to himself, "As expected of a veteran who has argued with Si Jingyu for so many years, she is a master of aristocratic sarcasm. She can still infuriate people without using any vulgar language."

The girl surnamed Lu was indeed so angry that her eyes squinted, but then she suddenly remembered something, quickly calmed herself down, and smiled, "No matter how eloquently you speak, it's useless. In the end, we'll see who's better in action. We'll know in three days. Speaking of which, your Si Clan seems to be having a run of bad luck lately. You just lost a powerful backer and have been plagued by misfortune. I heard that someone even hired experts from the Crimson Eye Society to deal with your Si Clan. You must have offended too many people in the past, which is why everyone is kicking you when you're down."

"The Si Clan was doing just fine, so where did this 'collapse' come from? I never imagined the Lu Lineage, besides their bad habit of uninvited guests, also had such a family tradition of spouting nonsense."

The girl surnamed Lu snorted and said, "You only have time to show off your verbal skills now. Everyone knows that your mother doesn't have a good relationship with the current head of the Si Clan. Do you think that in this critical moment, the Si Clan head will prioritize internal stability over external threats?"

"Besides showing up uninvited and making baseless accusations, are you going to try to sow discord as well?"

"This isn't meant to sow discord, but rather a friendly reminder. There's something I might as well tell you: our Lu Lineage is very likely to propose marriage to your manor soon. Do you think your clan leader will take advantage of the situation and marry off this flower you don't like?"

Si Huaruo was taken aback upon hearing this. Although she felt that the possibility of such a thing happening was very low, she was still aroused with a sense of worry. This worry did not stem from her fear of the clan leader—in fact, in her opinion, the clan leader Si Jingyue was a person who disliked power—but rather from her concern for her own mother.

Based on Si Huaruo's understanding of her mother, she would never miss this critical period and must be plotting some kind of "usurpation" plan. If the plan fails, in order to eliminate potential threats, Si Huaruo, as her daughter, might actually be "exiled" to marry.

However worried she was, she couldn't afford to show weakness in front of her opponent. Si Huaruo straightened her face and was about to retort when she suddenly heard Si Ming beside her ask, "Tea-Tasting Manor, the Lu Lineage, you must be the Lu Lineage disciples who study the art of tea?"

The girl surnamed Lu scoffed, "You don't even know this common sense? Just how ignorant are you?"

Si Ming ignored her and instead asked Si Huaruo, "In the assessment of the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling, which day is the tea tasting?"

Si Huaruo thought for a moment and said, "Five days later."

Si Ming nodded and said to the girl surnamed Lu, "Go back and tell those in your clan who want to compete for this title to prepare handkerchiefs and tissues. After all, it would be such a shame for the legitimate heir of the Lu Lineage to lose to an outsider in their own area of expertise. It would be troublesome if someone couldn't take it and wanted to commit suicide."

"You want to participate in the evaluation too? That's ridiculous. I really don't understand where your confidence comes from. Someone who doesn't even know what 'biting the cup' means actually wants to get the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling?"

"For the vast majority of people in the world, the question when doing something is whether they can or cannot do it. But for a small group of people, the question is whether they want to or not. If they want to, they can definitely do it. Unfortunately, I belong to the latter group."

Si Ming picked up the teapot, held it high, and poured the tea downwards, the water tracing a long path before landing precisely in the teacup. At the same time, he said in a matter-of-fact yet domineering tone, "Five days is more than enough to go from nothing to the peak."

The moment he finished speaking, the teacup was filled to the brim, not a drop more, not a drop less.

"So handsome..."