The two brothers returned to the Lin Residence and entered the rear courtyard. It was spacious, with many houses.
They began making the equipment for brewing liquor.
If he had been the old Lin Su, he naturally would not have been able to handle such professional work. But now he could. With a push of strength, the thin iron sheet slowly bent into a circle. Then a problem arose: how was it supposed to be welded?
Before Lin Su could find an answer, Lin Jialiang had already found a solution. He pinched the edges on both sides into two grooves, pressed them together in the middle, and—hey—they fit together without so much as a seam.
Lin Su stared at his second brother as if he no longer recognized him.
Ancient people built houses without nails, relying only on mortise-and-tenon joints. Was this the sort of innate talent his second brother possessed without a teacher?
His second brother was sighing too. This thin iron sheet had clearly been a huge iron gate, forcibly flattened. Mr. Bao Shan truly was a Divine Being!
Yes, beyond one mountain lay another mountain!
In about an hour, all the preparations were complete. A strangely shaped iron container stood in the courtyard, along with several long iron pipes. Those pipes had likewise been pinched into shape by Second Brother with brute force. Impressive, right?
Lin Jialiang threw himself into it with enormous enthusiasm. Once everything was ready, he asked Lin Su when they would officially begin.
He had completely forgotten how sternly he had warned his third brother yesterday: a gentleman should stay far from the kitchen, and even farther from a distillery.
People always changed.
Mr. Bao Shan was a Renowned Scholar of the Whole World, yet he cared so deeply about liquor.
This liquor concerned the livelihood of a hundred thousand displaced people by the riverbank, so it made sense for him to care.
But Lin Su told him that making liquor was not so easy. They needed to make fermentation starter, and this Ting Rice had to be steamed repeatedly. Besides, whether it could ultimately be turned into liquor at all remained completely unknown.
The process would take at least seven to ten days.
Lin Su was confident about the fermentation starter. Since he could make sourdough starter overnight, he could naturally make fermentation starter as well. It was merely a matter of selecting ingredients.
But he was not sure whether Ting Rice could produce liquor, because he had no idea what it was made of internally. That was why experimentation was necessary.
For the moment, that settled the matter.
When the brothers emerged from the rear courtyard, they saw an old man in the front courtyard—the manager of Haining Tower. He had brought more food and wine.
Though he never mentioned wanting a poem, how could the brothers fail to understand?
The owner of Haining Tower was chasing after a poem.
Lin Su had promised Ding Hai that he would write Haining Tower a poem about wine within three days. Word had already spread, and even renowned scholars from the capital had traveled thousands of li to witness it for themselves. Ding Hai was feeling a little pressure.
When Madam Lin saw Lin Su approach, she spoke. "San Lang, you promised Haining Tower that you would give them a wine poem tomorrow, didn't you?"
"Yes, Mother!"
"A man cannot stand without trust. Tonight, you should give it proper thought."
"I took a walk outside today and gained quite a lot. I have already thought it through. Manager, we can go now."
The manager was overjoyed. Young Master Lin truly was a Divine Being!
"Please!"
Madam Lin was also overjoyed. Nothing made a mother happier than seeing her son succeed. She had never liked poetry before, but since yesterday, she had suddenly grown especially fond of it. She had copied her son's two poems word by word several times, kept them in her bedroom, and looked at them again and again. The more she looked, the more she liked them...
Only Lin Jialiang's eyes flashed with something unusual. Third Brother, you deliberately said that you had gained much because you went out for a walk. Were you laying the groundwork for going out to play in the future?
As your elder brother, I knew you did not like shutting yourself in to study. But the imperial examinations were like this—whether you liked it or not, you had to do it. What method could keep this peerless genius of a younger brother, who was so restless by nature, in the study?
Unless... unless he was found a beautiful maidservant!
With a maidservant at his side, red sleeves adding fragrance, he might finally be kept in place...
Heaven bore witness: for Lin Jialiang, who had nearly been dulled witless by reading Sage's Teachings, to think of such a method truly took painstaking effort.
Lin Su left, while Lin Jialiang came to his mother's side.
"You are not going to Haining Tower?"
"I will not. As long as Third Brother writes a poem, it will quickly spread throughout the world. Why should I fear being unable to read it?"
"Any poem he writes will spread throughout the world!" Her eyes shone with flowing brilliance, and the pride in her heart was nearly spilling over...
"Mother, is there really no way to turn back Third Brother's marriage arrangement?"
The smile on Madam Lin's face abruptly vanished. She sighed softly. "I hope there is. Half a month ago, San Lang's poetic fame had not yet spread, so they broke off the engagement. But today's San Lang possesses such talent—who in the world does not know his name? Perhaps the Zhou Family will come again tomorrow or the day after..."
"If you ask me, it is better that it was called off. With Third Brother's peerless talent, why would he worry about lacking a good woman to match him? The Zhou Family curries favor with the powerful and kicks a man when he is down. They have no trustworthiness at all, and may not be a good match for Third Brother."
"Where under heaven is there no Fragrant Grass? Is that it?" Madam Lin softly recited.
"Mother, you know that line too?"
"Who does not? This morning, the sacred voice spread throughout the Nine Countries and Thirteen Continents. Even a secluded woman like me could see it. This poem... no, this kind of ci—I especially like it. I truly love it. Yet I wonder which Great Confucian created such a miraculous literary path."
Lin Jialiang nearly blurted out a sentence, but stopped himself in time. What he had wanted to say was: if Mother liked it, Third Brother could write more in the future.
"Mother, find Third Brother a... a bedwarming maid!"
"Ah?" Madam Lin was startled and delighted. "Did your third brother ask you to say that?"
This son of hers had once indulged in wine, women, and pleasures, but perhaps because he had still been too young, he had not really gone around defiling flowers and teasing grass. That had once been his only virtue. But things were different now. San Lang was now a Renowned Scholar of the Whole World, and renowned scholars were often not quite normal. Some loved wine, some loved painting, and some saw through the mortal world and became monks. Naturally, she hoped her own son would be normal.
And the sign of being normal was liking women and giving her a big, chubby grandson.
Lin Jialiang's expression became somewhat unnatural. "No! He never said so. I figured it out myself..."
Madam Lin's expression began to turn wrong. Your brother said nothing, yet you figured it out yourself. Was it because you had a Yu Lou of your own, spending every day seeking pleasure in the bedchamber, that you were judging your third brother's intentions by your own? Mother had long wanted to lay down three rules with you. Your focus still had to be on studying; you could not lose your ambition in trivial pleasures...
Lin Jialiang said, "Mother, you will understand once you hear my explanation. Third Brother is good in every way except one: he cannot settle his heart and study. He always wants to go out and wander, to go out and play. I thought that if there were a beautiful bedwarming maid to tie him down, perhaps he could sit still in the study."
Storm clouds churned across Madam Lin's face. "Did you not say just this morning that reading ten thousand volumes was not as good as traveling ten thousand li?"
"Traveling ten thousand li is certainly good, but he cannot spend all his time running around. He cannot read the Four Books and Five Classics on the road. The imperial examinations are incredibly brutal; poetic sentiment alone truly will not do..."
"You have a point. What about Xiao Tao... could Xiao Tao do it?"
"A maidservant who attends the bed is not a position just anyone can fill. She must have read a little, so she can accompany Third Brother in studying. Xiao Tao has never studied, so perhaps she cannot."
"Among women, those who can read are mostly daughters of great families. What daughter of a great family would be willing to warm someone's bed without any status?"
Yes, it was a dead knot.
Mother and son discussed it at length, completely failing to notice that a young woman behind them was nearly in tears. She was Xiao Tao.
Haining Tower was packed with honored guests. When Lin Su entered, Ding Hai personally came forward to welcome him.
The scholars throughout the hall wore all kinds of expressions. Some were full of envy, some full of disdain, some sneered coldly, and several had even opened their folding fans, assuming the posture of men ready to cause trouble at any moment.
Among them were two people Lin Su recognized. They were two of the Ten Beauties of Qu Prefecture.
Young Master Guiyang and Du Yulang.
Yesterday, Lin Su had fiercely slapped Zhang Xiu across the face. In truth, the force of that slap had also swept across these two men's faces.
With the Sage before them, no one dared retaliate against him. But that did not mean these favored sons of heaven had simply let go of the knot in their hearts.
No one was the Poetry Sage's biological son. No one could guarantee that every poem they wrote would be peerless. How many geniuses had occasional flashes of inspiration that shocked the world, only to exhaust their talent later like Jiang Lang and fade into obscurity?
They had come today to search for flaws. So long as there was a flaw in his poem, so long as his work failed to reach the highest level, they would have their chance.
As long as they were given an opportunity, they could spread the accusation that Lin Su had deceived the world and stolen his fame throughout the land overnight.
And they firmly believed that if they smeared him even once, his Literary Root would become unstable, and his poetic talent would rapidly decline until he truly became indistinguishable from the crowd.
Because Lin Su did not understand the Four Books and Five Classics and lacked a proper foundation. Such people were the most likely to bloom like an epiphyllum for a single night.
Among Great Cang Kingdom's younger generation, the appearance of such an absurdly formidable figure could not be tolerated. This was the consensus of young people throughout the Whole World.
In this world, Lin Su was an eighteen-year-old youth.
But in that other world, he had seen through all the ways of human affairs.
How could this pack of feudal natives whose body hair had not even fully grown possibly hide anything from his eyes?
He did not even need to look to know what schemes and twists were churning in their bellies...