As long as he had somewhere to stay, Cheng Linzhi agreed.
They had thought theirs was merely a chance encounter, and Wen Yanping and Cheng Linzhi would have nothing more to do with each other.
But when they attended a banquet, they met again.
Before the Metropolitan Examination, many powerful nobles and officials would court the provincial graduates who had come to the Capital to sit the exam.
If any of the graduates they courted actually passed, wouldn't winning them over in advance give their own faction another source of support?
This was something many powerful nobles and officials did before the Metropolitan Examination.
Wen Yanping had never attended a banquet like this before, and he went out of curiosity.
Such banquets mostly revolved around composing poems and matching couplets.
Wen Yanping shone brilliantly at this banquet and won praise from many people.
Cheng Linzhi stood in the distance, watching Wen Yanping with envy. Surrounded by everyone, he was so striking, so dazzling...
Wen Yanping never noticed the look in Cheng Linzhi's eyes.
After this banquet, Wen Yanping rarely attended gatherings of this kind again.
Whenever another banquet invitation arrived, he declined on the grounds that he needed to review his studies.
Without Wen Yanping around, Cheng Linzhi had a few chances to distinguish himself and became someone people remembered.
Later, Liu Siyuan, a Counsellor Grandee of the Subordinate Fourth Rank, held a banquet and invited Wen Yanping.
Wen Yanping had not wanted to go, but the attendant who delivered the invitation repeatedly urged him to attend, saying that Lord Liu had invited many scholars so they could get to know one another.
This was the first invitation he had received from a fourth-rank official.
Wen Yanping decided to send someone to investigate the situation before making a decision.
Before