A palace servant returning with charcoal saw He Yu standing in the courtyard looking up and following her gaze.
“Tsk… Jade sister, is that… Director Deng?”
He Yu’s neck was already stiff, and she nodded wordlessly, still staring upward.
The servant put down his charcoal basket and whispered in He Yu’s ear, “I heard the court eunuchs in the Ceremonial Office don’t dare act up in front of the Director anymore. Our Lady Wan got the Director to come to fix our roof?”
He Yu continued nodding.
She had been surprised when Deng Ying first arrived with the Palace Construction Office workers, but since Yang Wan had gone to pick up Yi Lang from his studies, she couldn’t say anything and could only watch from the courtyard. Who knew they would climb up to the roof and not come down—she had been standing there for half an hour.
“My goodness, we truly have a golden Buddha watching over us.”
He even chanted “Amitabha” after saying this.
“Jade sister, you don’t know—when I went to the Fuel Conservation Office today, even the seal keeper there was polite to us.”
He Yu finally spoke, “Don’t talk nonsense. Lady Wan doesn’t like hearing such things, and besides, Keeper Chen has always been kind, never playing favorites.”
“Who’s playing favorites?”
The people in the courtyard started and turned to bow.
Yi Lang led Yang Wan by the hand into the courtyard, glanced up at the side hall’s roof ridge, then turned to Yang Wan saying, “Aunt, I’m going to change clothes.”
“Alright.”
Yang Wan gestured for He Yu and the others to follow him, while she walked to the corridor pillar and looked up at Deng Ying, “Too high up to bow now, aren’t you?”
“It’s proper protocol not to bow while working with tiles and wood.”
The wind was strong at that height. Deng Ying hadn’t worn his official headpiece that day, only binding his hair with a gray cloth band. Standing between the tower buildings, he appeared graceful and light.
Yang Wan loved this scene, and couldn’t help saying sincerely, “You should always be like this, looking down at us from above.”
Having heard this, Deng Ying bent to steady the ladder resting against the bracket arms.
“Want to come up and see?”
“Won’t I fall?”
Though she asked this, she was already eagerly climbing up.
“Slowly, step carefully.”
The workers also came to hold the ladder.
Reaching the last rung, Yang Wan found herself without a handhold and hesitated, “It’s… quite high, can I make it up?”
Deng Ying knelt on one knee and extended his hand to Yang Wan, “Raise your arm, I’ll hold it—try to push yourself up slowly.”
Like his gentle nature, Deng Ying often told Yang Wan to “go slowly.”
Little did he know, she was the one who most wanted to “go slowly.”
“Come. Step up.”
Yang Wan gripped Deng Ying’s arm with one hand and pushed against the tiled roof with the other, finally climbing onto the ridge.
Deng Ying bent to brush the dust from her knees, “Getting down might be even harder.”
Yang Wan tried crouching down, “Did you climb up by yourself?”
Deng Ying smiled, “What else?”
“You’re so good at climbing heights.”
Deng Ying laughed at this comment, glancing somewhat meaningfully at the nearby workers.
“Let me help you sit down.”
“Mm.”
Yang Wan sat by the sloping ridge and said to Deng Ying, “Yesterday when it was leaking, I thought I was dreaming—how could a palace building leak?”
Deng Ying replied, “Up until I left, there were over a thousand rooms in the imperial city. Not every place could be built as perfectly as when we constructed the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Take the glazed roof tiles—the three main halls mostly use tiles fired in the imperial kiln near the capital, but the tiles on this side hall of Chengqian Palace…”
He bent down to pick up a broken piece from the debris and handed it to Yang Wan.
Looking down, Yang Wan saw written on it: “Produced by Wu Kiln of Pingzhou, First Year of Zhening Reign.”
“So this tile kiln was owned by the Wu family.”
“Yes, I only learned that today. This is the royal residence, an extremely complex project that took a very long time. I only participated for ten years. Even Master, while overseeing repairs to various palace buildings, gradually learned where the original bricks and tiles came from, and what the craftsmen were thinking.”
Yang Wan hugged her knees and closed her eyes against the high wind.
“So even bricks and wood can teach people—is that what you mean?”
“Mm, Master said similar things to me.”
Yang Wan nodded, “Master Zhang was wonderful. If he were still here, I would serve him well. Ask him to feel at ease entrusting his good student to me.”
As she finished speaking, she patted her somewhat sore knees, making the jade pendants at her waist clink delicately together.
She said she would ask Zhang Zhanchun to entrust Deng Ying to her.
Following her words, Deng Ying suddenly remembered the jade pendant carved with floating green lotus that Bai Huan had given him at Guangji Temple.