The moon shone bright and the stars were few. It was already deep into the night...
In a pavilion in the Fan Residence garden, pear blossoms lay all around like snow. After learning that Zhang Tie had left Blessed Sea City aboard an airship at dusk, Fan Jizheng had begun drinking alone in the garden, until he was thoroughly drunk.
"First Snow, Clear Skies" truly deserved to be called one of You Province's finest. Ordinary liquor, no matter how strong one's tolerance, would leave a person drunk beyond all sense if they drank too much. But "First Snow, Clear Skies" was different. Its marvel lay in the fact that no matter how much one drank, one would remain in a state between drunkenness and sobriety—an icy heart in a jade pot, one's mind clear, yet feeling as though one were floating among immortals.
For those who loved the cup, this was the most ideal state. This was what it meant to be an immortal in wine—one fraction less was bland, one fraction more was chaos. It described precisely this state.
After breaking off the engagement with the Zhang Family, the Fan Family elders had left. Fan Jizheng was miserable, so he began drinking himself into oblivion in his own garden.
After leaving the Fan Residence, Zhang Tie had gone directly to the Moral Society in Blessed Sea City. Not long afterward, the Moral Society's building had collapsed. Rumors flew wildly, claiming that Zhang Tie had stomped his feet a few times outside the Moral Society's gates, and after he left, the Moral Society's pavilion had come crashing down.
The Moral Society had swallowed bitter medicine in silence. They could not even find grounds to sue Zhang Tie, and doing so would only humiliate themselves. No one had seen Zhang Tie