Luoyang.
This was a two-story restaurant, enormous in scale and bustling with people.
Cao Mao sat beside a window on the second floor, watching the varied crowds in the distance.
"When I first came here, this restaurant was only a little courtyard that could hold no more than six people, run by an old man and his child."
"Now that old man is gone, yet the restaurant has grown this large."
Ji Kang sat across from Cao Mao, looking thoroughly interested.
This was his first private outing with the emperor, and he even felt a little excited.
With Unification complete, the famous scholars had become particularly obedient, and their former pessimistic, world-shunning ideas were gradually being stamped out.
Even someone like Ji Kang no longer centered his works on pessimistic subjects.
Sometimes he wrote about Luoyang's prosperity, sometimes about the might of Great Wei's armies, and sometimes, when he was in a particularly good mood, he began writing about mountains, rivers, and lakes.
Many men of letters were influenced by him, and the famous scholars' works also underwent considerable changes.
Of course, Cao Mao had contributed a great deal to this as well. He occasionally wrote poems himself, most of them martial and heroic in spirit.
Cao Mao felt that he had single-handedly curbed the tide of decadence throughout the realm.
Seeing Ji Kang gazing absently out the window, Cao Mao said with a smile, "Yesterday, I read a poem of yours in the palace and was deeply stirred. That is why I brought you here for a meal today."
"In all of Great Wei, when it comes to poetry, none can surpass you."
Ji Kang shook his head. "With Your Majesty here, how could I dare claim first place? Your Majesty possesses Chen Si's talent. It truly puts me