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This was actually a very literary monster, probably a distant relative of Sun Wukong's; they were both born from stone.

Ning Ning nodded and looked at Yun Duanyue beside her. "You got here first. I won't cut in line."

Yun Duanyue still kept her head lowered and didn't look at her. Just being spoken to made the tips of her ears flush an unnatural shade of red. She pressed her lips together.

"This girl can't come up with a matching line."

As they talked, an old, yellowed book appeared in the woman's hands. Amid the rustle of turning pages, Shi Zhongling's unhurried voice rang out. "Let's start with an easy one: demons, ghosts, goblins, and specters."

Ning Ning blurted out, "Pies, pancakes, dumplings, and wontons."

She could clearly feel the smile on Shi Zhongling's lips stiffen for a moment.

But the other party was, after all, a stone steeped in literature, and she had plenty of patience. After a brief pause, she said, "A narrow path, the west wind, a lean horse."

Ning Ning seemed to picture something and rubbed her stomach, letting out a quiet laugh. "A big plate of fatty beef from the eastern lands."

Shi Zhongling: ...

Shi Zhongling was so angry she laughed. "You girl, why does every line of yours have to be about food?"

Ning Ning said with a straight face, "Didn't we agree not to nitpick the tones or imagery? As long as the words match, that's enough."

She sounded quite unapologetic.

It had been a long time since Shi Zhongling had recited poetry and exchanged matching lines with anyone. At last, she had found someone, only for her to turn out to be a troublemaker.

In that case, she would make it a little harder. With more advanced couplets, she refused to believe the girl could keep serving up food and drink while still making the parallel lines neat and proper.

"My third couplet: a crane's foot crossing a cold pond."

The other party really did freeze for a long moment.

This girl probably just had a little cleverness. Once she ran into a harder line, she would inevitably show her true colors—

The thought had barely crossed her mind, not even fully formed, when the girl's crisp voice rang in her ears. "Pork trotters stewing in a hot pot."

Shi Zhongling's face twitched.

"Hot" opposed "cold," "stewing" opposed "crossing," and "pork trotters" opposed "crane's foot." Not only did the radicals and character shapes match, but the words' meanings and parts of speech fit remarkably well, too. Though at first glance, there didn't seem to be anything wrong...

Still, she couldn't help feeling that the first line had been sullied.

—However she looked at it, it reeked of stewed pork trotters, damn it! Were you a cooking pot in your past life? Is your head full of nothing but food, food, food?!

"You—you girl!"

Shi Zhongling gritted her teeth. "The tones and imagery are both wrong. This is more like a Wuqing Dui!"

A Wuqing Dui was an exceptionally unusual form of couplet. It didn't require the upper and lower lines to be related in meaning or symmetrical in grammatical structure; it only required each individual character to match its counterpart. As a result, the couplets tended to look awkward and comical, creating a bizarre, unpredictable sense of contrast.

For instance, Zeng Guofan had written, "Peach and plum trees vie in glory by the government gate; France, Holland, Belgium." During the Republic of China era, there was also, "Three-star brandy; May's yellow-plum weather."

Ultimately, this was merely a lowbrow technique in couplet writing, a word game of quibbling over characters.

"What's wrong with Wuqing Dui? Wuqing Dui are so much fun."

Ning Ning admitted it openly. "Utter poverty versus having nothing, an excuse versus a retort, a sailor versus a ham, wood ear versus a flower's heart—didn't you say the characters only had to match?"

Shi Zhongling was left speechless. Only after taking a deep breath to ease the helpless, stifled frustration in her chest did she continue. "Again! Rhododendron, rhododendron."

Rhododendron was the name of a plant, and the character "映" could also be used on its own as a verb.

After saying this, she lifted her eyes and glared at Ning Ning. "Don't say 'stewed pork trotters, stewed pork trotters' or 'roasted duck feet, roasted duck feet'! The imagery of this couplet has to match."

"...Oh."

Ning Ning had been beaten to the punch, and she felt a little disappointed. Seeing her standing there with a dejected expression, Shi Zhongling couldn't help letting a smug smile curl at the corner of her mouth.

This time, the girl couldn't get away with a clever trick. She must be out of ideas now.

"This couplet is interesting, but my learning is shallow."

As she expected, Ning Ning's voice drifted over softly, and the woman's smile deepened.

The little girl was actually quite entertaining. Though Wuqing Dui was a lowbrow form, it wasn't easy to make every character in it refer to food. If the girl sweetened her words a little later, getting the Heaven Heart Grass might not be impossible.

Thinking this, she nodded in agreement. Unexpectedly, the same voice sounded in her ear at the same time. "—I only thought of two, and both have some flaws."

Shi Zhongling jerked her head up.

"First, 'welcome-spring flower, welcome-spring flower.' Using a flower to match a flower fits the image of the upper line's mountain blossoms in full bloom. Rhododendrons flower in autumn, while welcome-spring flowers bloom in spring, so the two are also far apart in the seasons. Unfortunately, 'spring flower' and 'mountain red' don't quite match in their parts of speech, which is a flaw."

Ning Ning spoke slowly. "Second, 'Yu Meiren, Yu Meiren.' The character 'Yu' can also mean 'to delight,' so the flower delights a beauty. It has a lively, spirited feel, but compared with the previous line, it still falls short."

Shi Zhongling parted her lips slightly and said slowly, "Not bad."

"Since you love matching couplets so much, a gentleman from my hometown once wrote one that was called an unparalleled line with no known response. Would you like to try it?"

Seeing the woman's eyes light up, Ning Ning smiled. "The upper line is: 'The thief stealthily stole things.'"

The line looked like simple, plain language, but it was actually a very interesting word game. The four instances of "steal" carried three different meanings, not to mention the need to consider the repeated words and the sentence's flow.

In the world Ning Ning had originally lived in, people over the course of several centuries had come up with countless matching lines, but the best they had managed was, "History books record, record, record past and present."

As soon as the upper line was given, Shi Zhongling's expression grew serious. She furrowed her brow and lowered her head in thought.

Yet no matter how she racked her brains, she couldn't come up with an answer. After pondering for a moment, she burst into laughter. "Wonderful... wonderful! I thought that having read the Nianhua Dui from cover to cover, I would never again be troubled by matching lines, but I still have a long way to go. So be it. You've bested me today. Take the Heaven Heart Grass."

Ning Ning blushed at the praise and waved her hands repeatedly. "I didn't write that couplet. Besides, I can't match it either. I only borrowed something from those who came before me. I can hardly claim to have won."

Shi Zhongling's expression didn't change. She casually pointed a finger, and the Heaven Heart Grass in the corner floated up into the air, drifting straight into the hands of the little girl not far away.