On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, not only was the Chen family bustling with activity, but the surrounding Rongxiang Alley and Zaozi Fang beyond were also coming alive with festivities. Every household hung red crepe silk lanterns and specially hired people to set up lantern gates and pavilions. Each pavilion was adorned with hundreds of various lanterns, and lantern riddles were hung along the riverside street in Zaozi Fang, attracting crowds of people to view them.
Chen Xuan Yue brought a rabbit lantern when he came to pay respects to Jin Chao.
His rabbit lantern featured a mother rabbit in the center with two small rabbits on either side. In the middle was a bowl of white rice soaked in tea oil with lamp wicks buried in it.
Chen Xuan Yue showed it to her, saying excitedly: “…Tonight I’ll set it afloat on the lake!”
Madam Sun smiled upon seeing it: “This rabbit lantern is well-made. I’ve heard that in Ningdu, Jiangxi Province, they celebrate the Lantern Festival by making these rabbit lanterns throughout the entire county. I think the Ninth Young Master’s rabbit lantern looks exactly like those. Where did this lantern come from?”
Madam Song promptly replied: “The Ninth Young Master selected it himself from the storeroom. He’s very fond of it.”
Gu Jin Chao put down the account book in her hand and called him over, patting his head: “Does Xuan Yue want to go see the lantern festival?”
He looked at Gu Jin Chao blankly: “What is a lantern festival?”
Having never left the Chen family residence in his entire life, Chen Xuan Yue naturally didn’t know what a lantern festival was.
Gu Jin Chao explained to him: “The lantern festival is very lively, with all kinds of lanterns. If you want to see it, I’ll have a servant carry you to watch from the doorway for a while. You can’t go out, though.” He was simple-minded and easy to take advantage of; if he got lost, he might not even know how to come back.
Chen Xuan Yue uttered a sound of acknowledgment and shook his head: “Don’t want to see.”
Gu Jin Chao was somewhat surprised, as she had thought Chen Xuan Yue would like such things. He had always shown great interest in crafts and amusements.
Chen Xuan Yue, however, climbed onto the arhat bed like a monkey and began flipping through her account book.
“Aunt, what is this?” Like everything else, he pointed at the account book and questioned Gu Jin Chao.
Gu Jin Chao explained it to him, then softly asked: “Why don’t you want to go see the lantern festival?”
Chen Xuan Yue just shook his head without speaking and continued flipping through Gu Jin Chao’s account book.
Gu Jin Chao remembered that he was afraid of crowded places. He was also afraid of loud noises; the last time Chen Xi played with a waist drum, he was so frightened that he crawled under the bed and wouldn’t come out. When the servants pulled him out, he was covered in dust, looking like a gray-faced mouse, continuously mumbling: “Thunder.”
Chen Xuan Yue had been frightened for quite sometime after that and would take detours whenever he saw Chen Xi.
Madam Tong came in to speak with Gu Jin Chao, so she discussed some matters about the country estate with her, momentarily not paying attention to Chen Xuan Yue.
Chen Xuan Yue picked up a brush, examined it, and made a few marks on the account book.
When Gu Jin Chao turned back, she saw that the account book was scribbled all over by him. Half-amused and half-exasperated, she snatched the brush from his hand: “What are you doing!” Chen Xuan Yue turned around with a smudge of ink on his face, his expression both bewildered and innocent. Gu Jin Chao had Madam Song quickly take him away to play elsewhere, then picked up the account book to review it again. It was from a rice shop in Baodi that had just been submitted, and she hadn’t looked at it yet.
The part that Chen Xuan Yue had scribbled on wasn’t very clear, so Gu Jin Chao had Madam Sun bring her some paper, and she checked each item against the calculations at the back.
This way of calculating didn’t match the front.
There was a problem with this account! Gu Jin Chao was somewhat surprised; if she hadn’t calculated carefully, she wouldn’t have noticed.
Gu Jin Chao recalculated once more to confirm, then called Madam Tong over and said: “Take this account to Luo Yongping and have him question the manager of this rice shop. Such accounting practices certainly aren’t happening for the first time; they must have embezzled quite a sum. Once the truth is verified without mistake, have them compensate for the money they’ve taken… And he doesn’t need to continue as manager anymore.”
Madam Tong took the account book that Gu Jin Chao had prepared and looked at it. This rice shop manager’s accounting was cleverly done; reading line by line, there seemed to be no problem. But calculating backward revealed discrepancies… The income was underreported by a full two hundred taels! She took the account book and went to Guixiang Square where Luo Yongping was located.
These managers had all come from the Ji family… Gu Jin Chao sighed inwardly. She had trusted and promoted those from the Ji family the most, yet hadn’t expected people’s hearts to change—now they were playing the game of embezzlement with her.
If Chen Xuan Yue hadn’t scribbled on the account book, she wouldn’t have calculated backward…
Thinking about this, Gu Jin Chao couldn’t help but find it strange. It was too coincidental—how did he happen to flip to exactly that page and scribble over the problematic entries? She looked toward Chen Xuan Yue, but he was now playing with his little chick.
He had tied a string to the chick’s foot, preventing it from standing up. Whenever the chick tried to walk, he would pull the string, frustrating the little creature so much that it kept flapping its wings helplessly. When he was done playing, he would cradle the chick in his arms and feed it buckwheat grains.
A suspicion inevitably arose in Gu Jin Chao’s mind.
Master Chen had said that Chen Xuan Yue’s mental disability was incurable… but what if he wasn’t mentally disabled at all? What if his disability was just an act to make Madam Qin lower her guard, so she wouldn’t harm him like she had the previous two concubine-born sons? So when he reached Shaanxi, where no one would harm him anymore, he stopped pretending to be simple-minded and began to show his talents.
These account books had all been reviewed by Luo Yongping or Cao Zi Heng before being given to her. Luo Yongping had been an accountant for many years, and Cao Zi Heng was a man of superior knowledge and strategy, yet neither of them had noticed the discrepancy. Chen Xuan Yue had just casually flipped through it and spotted the problem.
If he was pretending to be simple-minded, deceiving the eyes of all the shrewd people in the Chen household, then he wasn’t just mentally astute—he was also incredibly patient and strategic. But Chen Xuan Yue was only ten years old now. This seemed too improbable.
Perhaps her original conjecture that Chen Xuan Yue had an exceptional talent for martial arts was wrong. His real strength might not be in physical prowess but in intellect and strategy.
While Gu Jin Chao was pondering this, Chen Xi came to play with Chen Xuan Yue.
Chen Xuan Yue was so frightened that he shrank behind Gu Jin Chao, tightly clutching his little yellow chick, his eyes wide open.
Chen Xi stamped her foot in frustration: “Ninth Brother, Xi’er doesn’t have a drum anymore! I won’t scare you.”
Chen Xuan Yue didn’t believe her at all and quickly hid the chick in his clothes. The little chick was squirming inside his garment. He then reached out to cover Gu Jin Chao’s ears, as if worried she might be frightened too.
Gu Jin Chao pulled Chen Xuan Yue in front of her and said with a smile: “If you keep tormenting the little chick like this, it won’t survive for many days.”
After persuading him for a while, explaining that Chen Xi wouldn’t scare him with a waist drum anymore, Chen Xuan Yue finally took out the smothered chick and stroked its feathers soothingly. Children playing with animals only find it amusing, without malice. Yet they often don’t know their strength.
When Gu Jin Chao was young, she had a beautiful Persian cat with snow-white fur, a gift from Ji Can. Back then, she played with the cat by wrapping it in a bamboo mat. By the time she let it out, the cat was nearly dead. She cried desperately, but couldn’t save the cat.
The way Chen Xuan Yue was playing, he would surely kill it sooner or later.
Thinking about this, Gu Jin Chao again felt that Chen Xuan Yue wasn’t pretending to be simple-minded. If he was pretending, he was doing it too well.
Regardless of whether he was pretending or not, she would treat him as usual. If he was truly simple-minded, there was nothing to say; if he was pretending, he must have his reasons.
Logically, now that he was no longer threatened by Madam Qin, there should be no need to continue pretending, but who knew what he was thinking?
Gu Jin Chao harbored doubts but didn’t feel the need to clarify them. She hoped that Chen Xuan Yue was pretending; the child had suffered too much in the past.
In the afternoon, she made tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) with Chen Xuan Yue and Chen Xi. They prepared various fillings—osmanthus red bean paste, sesame with white sugar, hawthorn, and peanut—making many different types of rice balls. Fearing that Chen Xuan Yue might swallow them whole, she put larger silver beans inside, not gold beans.
The two children helped her mix fillings, wrap rice balls, and play happily together.
Chen Xi placed sesame seeds on the tangyuan containing silver beans and seriously told Chen Xuan Yue: “Ninth Brother, these are the ‘wealthy’ tangyuan. When eating, you should eat these ‘wealthy’ ones so you’ll have financial luck all year round. Remember, they’re the ones with sesame seeds—”