Beautiful singing drifted from a room in the Fragrant Snow Tower.
"May I ask who played the flute toward violet mist, who spent her fragrant years learning to dance? If we could become paired fish-"
Crash!
A white porcelain wine cup smashed against the floor, sending shards flying and terrifying the singing girls behind the screen.
"Get out. All of you."
Liu Cheng forced those cold words through his clenched teeth. His breathing grew heavier, as though he were struggling to suppress something.
The singing girls trembled, utterly at a loss as to how they had offended this guest.
Yan Youcheng stood and waved them away. "Out, out!"
Once the women had left and shut the door, Yan Youcheng glanced at Liu Cheng's haggard, gloomy face and smiled amiably. "We're here to enjoy ourselves today. Don't get angry over people who have nothing to do with us."
Ever since losing his ox cart, Liu Cheng had shut himself away, neither speaking nor smiling. He spent all day locked in his room, refusing to see not only outsiders but even the servants. Had his elder brother not spent days counseling and comforting him, painstakingly soothing him and devising every possible way to ease his mind, he would never have agreed to come out drinking with Yan Youcheng today.
He had hoped that going out would clear his head and dispel even a fraction of his misery. Who could have expected that the singing girl would happen to sing Wang Yang's poem, touching the very thing Liu Cheng could not bear?
Actually, it was hardly a coincidence. After the prince's banquet, no one in the Liu household had dared mention Wang Yang's name, and Liu Cheng never went outside. Thus, he had no idea that Wang Yang's two poems had already spread