After hearing the poem, Xie Minghe fell silent for a time, simply staring fixedly at the other man.
Zhang Xing, meanwhile, felt uncomfortable all over at the mere thought of being rinsed in the river. A moment later, something occurred to him, and he hastened to explain:
"Please forgive me, sir. That 'bygone kingdom' wasn't referring to anything in particular. In literary usage, one can employ allusions to convey a particular meaning, or strip away the mystique and return words to their original sense... A bygone kingdom simply means a kingdom that once existed here. There's no specific target. Thinking of a bygone kingdom is merely thinking of its scenery and its people... Besides, we don't have literary inquisitions these days. Surely you needn't dwell on it so much, Master Xie?"
"That isn't what troubles me." Xie Minghe finally spoke, though with something of a sigh. "Your poem... was passable, barely passable... But mountains encircle the bygone kingdom, mountains encircle the bygone kingdom, returning in loneliness. Returning in loneliness... Zhang Sanlang, you really are, really are... How did you ever come to be called the Desperate Third Son? Do you know why I left this place back then, preferring to wander Ba and Chu for years rather than return home?"
Zhang Xing stood with his hands at his sides and answered seriously, "I can more or less guess... Given your age, Master Xie, it could only have been the destruction of Chen, or Yang Bin's suppression of the Jiangdong rebellion afterward... Too much killing left certain things in the past... That's why I didn't kill anyone this time. And we really were short of grain. I feared that large-scale requisitions from the common people would cause a rebellion."
Xie Minghe shook his head. "A broken mirror can be made whole