Mutual Envy

Li Nuo's reasoning was so thorough.

Song Jiaren didn't know what to say.

He was like a child, simple-minded and frank.

Looking at Li Nuo, Song Jiaren suddenly realized something and asked, "Have you remembered something from before?"

Li Nuo paused slightly, then said, "Just this one thing."

Song Jiaren said nothing more.

Sometimes he was so clever it was almost ridiculous, and sometimes he was so childlike. No wonder Mu'er liked him so much. The two of them were both children, so of course they got along.

Just then, Song Mu'er looked up at Li Nuo and said, "Brother Li Nuo, let's go kick the shuttlecock, okay..."

Li Nuo patted her head and said, "Go play with Sister Jiaren. Your brother has to read..."

Song Mu'er didn't pester him. She put away the shuttlecock and said obediently, "Then I won't play. I haven't finished my arithmetic homework yet. Brother Li Nuo, you can read, and I'll do my homework beside you, okay?"

Li Nuo smiled and said, "Of course."

Looking at how obedient Mu'er was, he couldn't help thinking that they had the same parents, looked exactly alike, and had grown up in the same place. How could Song Mu'er and Song Ninger have such different personalities...

One was obedient and sensible, always smiling; the other was willful and spoiled, and could only cry. By comparison, of course he liked Mu'er more.

Besides, wasn't his wife the same? She spent all day with Mu'er...

Wasn't he supposed to follow his wife's lead?

The room was a little dim. Li Nuo was reading in the pavilion in the courtyard, while Song Mu'er took a small booklet out of her bag. She chewed on her pen, then on her finger, and her delicate brows gradually knitted together...

Li Nuo was reading the Great Xia Codex. While mediating disputes and judging cases that day, he had realized that Great Xia's laws differed greatly from those of the modern era. Many of its statutes were steeped in feudal thinking.

Applying modern legal standards to a case would sometimes run counter to Great Xia's laws.

A large part of the reason was ritual propriety. Take marriage, for example: in later generations, marriage was a matter of personal choice, but here, a man and woman needed their parents' approval and a matchmaker's arrangement for their union to accord with propriety, gain public acceptance, and receive legal protection. Otherwise, they were eloping, and the law did not protect those who eloped. If an eloping couple were caught and brought back, their families had some discretion over how to deal with them.

Another part of the reason was the distinction between high and low status.

In later generations, everyone was equal before the law... at least on the surface.

But here, people were divided into all sorts of ranks. The sovereign's authority outweighed that of ministers, officials' authority outweighed the people's, and masters' authority outweighed servants'. In practice, a master who beat a servant to death might only have to pay a few strings of copper coins or some silver, while a servant who defied a superior could expect the death penalty by hanging at the very least. The powerful could oppress commoners and escape punishment to some extent, while commoners who offended the powerful received harsher sentences.

However, from the Legalist classics, Li Nuo also realized that the great Legalists seemed to follow something other than the laws of any particular dynasty.

Every dynasty had its own laws, and even within one dynasty, the laws kept changing with the times and circumstances. Not all laws were right and just, and it was common for decrees to change overnight.

What the Legalists followed was not Written Law, but Heart's Law.

Everyone had a set of scales in their heart. When Legalists enforced the law, they upheld Heart's Law, rather than clinging to the statutes of one dynasty or another. Sometimes they even went against the written law. Different Legalist Disciples all understood the word "law" differently.

"Heart's Law..."

Li Nuo gazed ahead, murmuring those three words as he pondered their deeper meaning.

Cultivating "law" was really cultivating the "heart." Didn't that mean he could simply do whatever he himself believed was right, without consulting the law at all? There were plenty of Great Xia's laws that Li Nuo couldn't stomach. Under those circumstances, practicing law meant breaking the law.

Strictly speaking, Li Nuo was breaking the law every day.

After all, he held no official post. Hearing cases and passing judgments already violated Great Xia's laws.

But to a Legalist Disciple, Heart's Law was greater than Written Law.

As long as he acted entirely according to his heart and upheld the justice within it, sooner or later he would enter the Legalist school.

Song Jiaren was wiping down the long sword in her hands in the courtyard when she suddenly turned to look at Li Nuo.

For a brief moment, she had sensed a strange aura around him.

But when she looked over, the feeling was gone.

A moment later, Li Nuo gradually came back to himself.

The book said that every Legalist Disciple had a path of their own. Someone who clung too tightly to Written Law would find it difficult to achieve great things. Li Nuo seemed to understand this. The law was supposed to uphold fairness and justice, but most of the time it served only as a tool for protecting the rulers' interests. In the end, Legalists were bound to clash with the ruling class, which was why their great practitioners had never met with a good end.

"Brother Li Nuo, how do I solve this problem?"

Song Mu'er's sweet voice interrupted Li Nuo's thoughts. He answered casually, "Your brother's thinking about something. Go ask your Sister Jiaren—huh, where is your Sister Jiaren?"

Li Nuo turned to look. His wife, who had just been standing there, had suddenly disappeared.

His wife was no help, so Li Nuo could only take Song Mu'er's booklet. This page had many problems, all simple mixed calculations with numbers under a thousand. Song Mu'er had done all the others; only the last one remained.

"We have pheasants and rabbits in one cage. There are twenty-seven heads and seventy-two feet. How many pheasants and how many rabbits are there?"

It was a simple Pheasant and Rabbit Problem. All he had to do was set up two linear equations with two unknowns.

Li Nuo picked up a pen and explained as he wrote, "Let's assume there are 'A' pheasants and 'B' rabbits. From the problem, we know that 'A' plus 'B' equals twenty-seven, and twice 'A' plus four times 'B' equals seventy-two. If we multiply both sides of the first equation by two, we get twice 'A' plus twice 'B' equals fifty-four. Then we subtract that from the second equation to get twice 'B' equals eighteen, so B equals nine and A equals eighteen. That means eighteen pheasants and nine rabbits..."

After finishing, Li Nuo looked at Song Mu'er and asked, "Do you understand?"

Song Mu'er's eyes were clear as she shook her head without hesitation. "No."

Li Nuo scratched his head. He'd been thinking about his own affairs and had forgotten that Mu'er was only six. Equations were still beyond her for now. He thought for a moment, then said, "We're having spicy rabbit legs and braised chicken legs for dinner. If we take one leg from every rabbit and chicken, how many legs will be left in the cage?"

Song Mu'er answered without thinking, "Seventy-two minus twenty-seven leaves forty-five legs."

Li Nuo continued, "There are a lot of people in our family, so one leg each isn't enough. We'll have to take another leg from each of them. How many legs will be left in the cage now?"

Song Mu'er replied, "Forty-five minus twenty-seven leaves eighteen legs."

Li Nuo continued to guide her. "Rabbits have four legs, while chickens have only two. All the chickens' legs have been made into braised chicken legs, and the rabbits each have two legs left. So how many rabbits are there?"

Song Mu'er suddenly understood and exclaimed happily, "I know! Half of eighteen is nine, so there are nine rabbits. Twenty-seven minus nine is eighteen, so the answer is eighteen chickens and nine rabbits!"

On the roof of the little courtyard, Song Jiaren counted on her fingers, astonished. "So that's how you work it out..."

When she'd been Mu'er's age, her family had also hired an arithmetic tutor for her. She vaguely remembered a problem about putting chickens and rabbits in the same cage. She hadn't liked arithmetic back then and had always sneaked off to practice martial arts. Only now did she realize that the problem she'd thought was impossibly difficult had actually been so simple...

If her arithmetic tutor had taught her that way back then, she wouldn't have driven him away in frustration.

Arithmetic was far harder for her than martial arts.

So when Li Nuo mentioned her, she'd jumped straight onto the roof.

Song Jiaren glanced down at the figure in the pavilion.

Solving cases, composing poetry, doing arithmetic.

Those were all things she couldn't do.

Watching him explain the problem to Mu'er, she secretly envied him. "He's amazing..."

Li Nuo finished explaining the problem to Mu'er and looked around. At last, he spotted his wife on the roof. Song Jiaren glanced at him, then leaped down, landing lightly on the ground.

Li Nuo watched as she jumped from a roof two zhang high. Her movements were fluid and graceful, and she landed without making a sound. He secretly envied her. "Amazing!"

If he tried jumping down from somewhere that high, he'd break both his legs at best...