Chapter 10: The Tycoon Heir's 'Expense-Account Banquet'

The Heaven-class private room of Taibai Tower was the most extravagant gold-burning den in the whole capital.

By now the table was laden with delicacies beyond counting: minced fish dressed in golden sauce, venison roasted over a gilded stove, clear-soup bird's nest stewed to silk, and Western-regions wine chilled over ice. This single banquet was worth more than half a year's salary for a junior official of the Hanlin Academy.

Xie Wei sat in a red-sandalwood chair, looking at this feast of extreme extravagance, and his already-cool face sank several degrees further.

"Young Master Su." Xie Wei kept both hands folded in his sleeves; he had not so much as touched a chopstick. "I owe you exactly one hundred coppers. You drag me here by force to feast on such wanton luxury—what is your design? I cannot pay for this table."

Su Mian, at that moment, was stuffing a glistening piece of tender venison into his mouth with zero table manners, eyes narrowed in bliss, and answered through the mouthful:

"Who said you were paying? This young master came with the bill."

With that, Su Mian snapped his fingers. The elderly steward promptly presented, all smiles, a gold-stamped ledger and opened it before Xie Wei.

"Look here, Lord Xie. The Great Qi Code states, plain as day: laborers in long service take their meals from the master's house. So this dinner counts as this young master's 'advance' on your laborer's board." Su Mian swallowed his venison, smiling like a fox. "Though, given your wooden performance at the Hanlin Academy today, this young master will have to dock your monthly salary."

Xie Wei's brows knotted hard, his temples throbbing again. "Dock my salary? Today I reviewed three archives and copied ten documents in the yamen, without a single error. By any measure of the court's evaluations, I rate top of the top. Where does 'docking' come from?"

Neck stiff, he produced the third backbone maxim in the grind-hound's repertoire:

"A minister who eats the sovereign's rice must give his all, to the death! Today's work leaves me shameless before heaven and earth, shameless before the court!"

Xie Wei's voice rang clear, carrying that bone-deep resolution of a scholar who would hit the south wall and not turn back.

Su Mian sighed, unhurriedly ladled out a bowl of steaming fresh fish soup, and set it down heavily in front of Xie Wei, landing the third salted-fish strike:

"Spare me the death-and-exhaustion. Being worn out is what being alive tastes like. If you want true rest, a coffin is the most restful bed there is. You wrestle with the court every day—but have you considered that, in the eyes of the great officials above, your 'total devotion' reads as 'this donkey holds up well; add two more millstones tomorrow'? You are shameless before the court. Can the court guarantee that wildly pounding chest of yours lives past thirty?"

Living past thirty.

That bizarre, bone-chilling doomed-to-die-young talk again.

Xie Wei shuddered all over, staring hard at the white steam rising off the fish soup. His lips trembled—and not one word of rebuttal came.

He wanted to refute this heresy of Su Mian's. But his stomach—protesting wildly from extreme hunger—and the saliva flooding his mouth at the smell of fresh fish were all telling him the honest truth: Su Mian was right. He was about to run out.

"That's enough. Stop holding up the sky." Watching him war between principle and hunger, ears red, Su Mian's gaze went soft, and he pressed a pair of long white-jade chopsticks into his hand:

"Teaching the ancients the proper way to slack off—isn't that more interesting than placing first in the examinations? Today's first lesson: drink the soup. Eat your fill, and tomorrow you'll have the strength to keep battling this young master, your creditor, with all your wits. Chopsticks. Go."

Xie Wei held the warm, smooth jade chopsticks, looking at Su Mian's peach-blossom eyes, unusually gentle in the candlelight.

Outside the window lay the ten thousand lights of the capital. And inside this extravagant room, for the first time, he felt no anxiety in the deep of night, no lonely cold. He drew a deep breath, finally set down all his guard, and—half in surrender—picked up a piece of venison.

Fine. Just for tonight, he would go easy on himself.

Watching the proud grind-hound finally start eating, Su Mian's mouth curled into a victorious smile.

Curing a grind-hound, after all: dueling epigrams was only the tactic. This steaming feast was the hardest-hitting hidden weapon of tenderness there was.