Look at what Bo Yi had done with the poems he had collected!
He had actually turned them into work chants.
Zi Shou admitted that these poems had their uses for labor, but none of them belonged at a banquet.
Singing work chants in front of a gathering of princes and nobles?
They would slap a charge of violating ritual propriety on you straightaway.
Did he even know what decadent music was?!
"Yo, yo, the deer cry, feeding on the wild wormwood; I have honored guests, so strike the zithers and blow the reed pipes; blow the pipes and sound their reeds, bring forth baskets of gifts; those who show me kindness point me toward the great way."
Percussion rang out, and Zi Shou felt that something was off.
The nobles showed no particular reaction. If anything, they seemed rather curious.
After a while, the Peng Family Head bowed to Bo Yi and asked, "May I ask, my lord, what poem is this?"
Bo Yi replied, "Deer Cry."
Then he continued performing.
The loafers and street toughs of the Dark Phoenix Guard did not care. They simply thought the tune sounded pleasant and interesting.
The educated nobles and ministers, however, sank into thought.
This poem was no ordinary piece.
It opened by evoking the cries of deer: out in the open wilderness, a herd of deer leisurely grazed on wild grass, occasionally calling out, their cries answering one another in a harmonious, pleasing chorus.
From the outset, it created a warm and harmonious atmosphere, just like the banquet the king and his ministers were sharing now.
In these times, relations between king and ministers were constrained by ritual, with strict distinctions of rank. Yet the banquet and this Deer Cry steadily softened those distinctions, easing their somewhat stiff and tense