"March 10, 8 p.m.-Guan Pingchao invites you to meet him at Sanjiang Pavilion." Readers with some free time, remember to come support Pingchao! My greatest fear is that nobody will turn up-that would be terribly embarrassing. :)
At daybreak, the rain-summoning ceremony in Zhenyang County would begin. Yet that night, Xing Yan tossed and turned, unable to sleep.
The heartfelt words Lord Peng had spoken earlier in the Peng Residence's study kept echoing in his ears. Lying on his bed with his hands crossed behind his head, the youth stared blankly at the dim ceiling, his thoughts surging like waves:
To think that the monster last night had actually consummated a union with Miss Peng!
In the study, he had been occupied with listening to Magistrate Peng's account and had had no time to think it over. Now that his mind had quieted, however, recalling everything he had seen and heard over the past few days gave rise to doubts:
The demon did cast a bewildering mist every time it came, but Miss Runlan... could she really not know she had been violated?
Although the Highest Clarity Hall master lying quietly on his bed had once spent some time among the brothels and possessed a hazy knowledge of relations between men and women, he had yet to reach adulthood. He truly had no way of understanding such intimate matters of women in any great detail. Even so, recalling Miss Peng's many expressions of sorrow over the past few days, and especially that lonely, desolate tune, "Secluded Orchid," the youth, unusually sensitive to music, instinctively felt that her bone-deep grief could not have arisen solely because Lord Peng wanted to marry her off.
At this thought, he could not help carefully reconsidering Lord Peng's proposal. The quiet spring night was