She shrugged and went back to fielding the pleasantries of the other guests.
Cen Xuanyue had rendered service during the war by preparing medicines and saving lives, and had recently been promoted into the Ministry of Personnel. She was seated beside Chen Baoxiang now, and was feeling rather reflective: “The same kind of banquet, the same faces in attendance — and yet it can’t have been more than half a year, and yet it feels like a very long time has passed.”
Chen Baoxiang raised her cup and clinked it lightly against hers: “Time just moves faster than horses run.”
“Aren’t you trying to say that time flies like a white steed passing a crack in the wall?” Pei Ruheng interjected.
Chen Baoxiang glanced at him with a complicated expression.
Strange that she’d never noticed before how much he talked. If she could say something plainly and it could be understood, what was the point of trotting out classical allusions?
Cen Xuanyue paid Pei Ruheng little attention, and leaned in to chat with her quietly: “When you asked me that day whether the civil officials or the military had the upper hand at court, I thought you were asking idly — I never imagined you’d actually become a military marquis. This cup is for you — and thank you, for the help.”
Chen Baoxiang played dumb: “What help?”
“The Cen Family has no merit from supporting the new Emperor’s rise. My healing and tending the wounded were simply what my post required. Without someone with the Emperor’s favor speaking a good word for me, how could I have suddenly caught His Majesty’s eye and been promoted into the Ministry of Personnel?”
Cen Xuanyue looked at her with quiet depth. “At that banquet all those months ago, of all those who saw my disappointment at being kept from an official post, you were the only one who cared.”
Young women at a young people’s banquet were mostly preoccupied with who fancied whom and whose hairpin was prettier than whose.
Cen Xuanyue would never forget the Chen Baoxiang of that evening — clear, bright eyes fixed on her, opening with: “I’d like to ask you something, Miss. In this dynasty of ours, can women still hold official posts?”
The bright voice crossed through time, carrying with it the fragrant warmth of roasted lamb, and settled lightly on the jade marquis coronet she now wore.
Chen Baoxiang laughed softly, stopped concealing it, and clinked cups with her again.
At that banquet, Pei Ruheng had thought she was being territorial, Lu Qingrong had thought she was being fanciful — and only Cen Xuanyue had listened, and quietly wished her a brilliant future.
Later, she had only asked someone to write a single letter on her behalf, without a single word of flattery in it, yet Cen Xuanyue had personally tutored Zhang Yinyue in pharmacology and looked after and promoted her on multiple occasions.
Everyone needs to encounter a benefactor before they can grow and rise.
Cen Xuanyue had been Zhang Yinyue’s benefactor — so naturally, someone had to speak up for her in turn.
·
The banquet stretched on for a very long time. Chen Baoxiang also got a taste of what Zhang Zhixu had felt before — the sheer number of people coming to curry favor with her was truly staggering; it was all she could do to keep up with them.
By the time she finally extracted herself from the crowd, Zhang Zhixu had been waiting in the back courtyard for quite some time.
“Heavens, what an education.” She plonked herself down beside him with feeling, thoroughly indignant: “How does anyone have the nerve to claim distant kinship with me on the strength of sharing a surname? Even bolder than I was in my worst days.”
“And the people from the Ministry of Justice — shameless — wanting to play drinking games with me.”
“And those merchants who somehow managed to get in — the nerve of them, talking business is one thing, but actually trying to play matchmaker with me.”
She grumbled on and on, then rubbed her stomach: “And I barely ate anything. What should I find to fill up with now?”
“How about ‘not bad~’?” The person beside her spoke.
Chen Baoxiang: ?
She looked blankly at Zhang Zhixu: “What is ‘not bad’?”
Zhang Zhixu paused, rolled his eyes, and repeated in her exact tone of voice: “Just — ‘not bad~'”
The realization hit her a beat behind — and then her eyes went wide, and she burst into laughter, slapping her thigh: “Zhang Fengqing, you’re doing it again!”
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