Murong Qinchen took a troop of guards hunting in the Taihang Mountains early that morning, bagging several small deer, brown eared pheasants, and wild hares. When she returned at dusk, she learned that envoys from Jiangdong had arrived and Chen Caozhi was accompanying the imperial emissaries at the provincial governor's offices. Presumably he would not be returning to Ice Well Terrace for dinner, so Murong Qinchen ate alone, bathed, and then practiced large characters in the study. She copied from the thick stack of large-character Analects copybooks Chen Caozhi had specially written for her in the Han clerical script of the Zhang Qian Stele. Each day she copied one passage, asking Chen Caozhi about any characters she did not recognize. At night, he would also explain the passage's meaning to her in detail-
Before the New Year, Chen Caozhi had received family letters brought by Huang Xiaotong and kept them on the desk in his study ever since. Every day he took them out and read them through, looking as though he enjoyed it immensely. But Murong Qinchen could not recognize a single character and had no idea what the letters said. Fifteen this year, she felt for the first time in her life that the frustration of illiteracy surpassed even blindness. She also saw Chen Caozhi working on official documents until late every night while she sat idly beside him. Sometimes he casually asked her to fetch a particular file, and she stared blankly, unable to identify it. Chen Caozhi would smile-he had mistaken Murong Qinchen sitting beside him for Xiao Chan, whom he was accustomed to asking for things-and immediately rise to find it himself-
Thus Murong Qinchen resolved to learn to read. Chen Caozhi was busy during the day, however, and had time to teach her only