Not long after, Li Wan and the others came out from the Zichen Hall. Now, each of them was holding a copy of Male Virtue. Before they left, His Majesty even instructed them to memorize the entire book and to thoroughly comprehend the spirit that Meng Yanxing infused into it.
Li Wan took another look at Male Virtue and felt like his head was about to explode. If they were guilty, please use the laws of Great Zhou to punish them, not make them memorize this damned thing!
They looked up and exchanged glances, smiled bitterly and sighed—what to do? Go home and write essays, then. The time that the Emperor and Meng Yanxing left for them was not much.
When he returned home, a servant came to inform Li Wan that a colleague was waiting for him in the main hall. Li Wan turned and went to the main hall. As soon as that colleague saw him return, he came forward and curiously asked: “What good thing did the Emperor give you all to read?”
To this, Li Wan only wanted to say hehe. Good thing? Good thing my ass!
The colleague saw that Li Wan was smiling with his skin but not with his flesh [an expression where someone smiles superficially but is not genuinely smiling], and found it quite creepy. He frowned, completely not understanding what Li Wan meant. If you can’t say it, then you can’t say it—but what’s with that expression?
Li Wan also knew he shouldn’t vent his anger on his colleague, so he turned away and said through gritted teeth: “It’s all Meng Yanxing’s good work! He’s really amazing—wrote a grand tome that will be passed down for a hundred generations!”
The colleague widened his eyes upon hearing this and said in great surprise: “That’s not easy—you actually praised Meng Yanxing? Did the sun rise from the west today?”
Li Wan became even angrier. Is this person stupid? Can’t he tell he was being sarcastic?
He sneered coldly, threw the Male Virtue in his hand to the colleague, and said: “Since you’re already here, you might as well take a look at this ‘good stuff’ Meng Yanxing wrote.”
The colleague took Male Virtue from Li Wan with a puzzled face, but after reading just two sections, he wanted to rush out and hit someone. Li Wan had someone stop him. The colleague then blamed Li Wan: “It’s all your fault! Look at what you provoked Meng Yanxing into becoming!”
Upon hearing this, Li Wan—for once in a blue moon—did not retort. He felt that for Meng Yanxing to become what he was now, he might indeed bear some responsibility.
These few great scholars of the present age, once they returned home, immediately began preparing to criticize Nu Jie (Female Virtue) from all kinds of angles.
Nu Jie quoted many words from the sages of the past. To refute the words of the sages was originally a great challenge for them—they didn’t even know where to begin. But just as they were racking their brains on how to begin, they casually flipped open the copy of Male Virtue closest to them. After reading just two lines, the great scholars were instantly filled with literary inspiration, channeling all their disgust for Male Virtue into their articles.
And once those articles came out, they immediately caused a huge sensation in the literary world.
Had these great scholars gone mad? Why were they suddenly criticizing this?
Meng Yanxing hadn’t expected that before his Male Virtue could even begin to be promoted nationwide, a bunch of idiots would already start criticizing Nu Jie. He knew that if Nu Jie turned into waste paper, then Male Virtue had no reason to exist either.
Naturally, Meng Yanxing didn’t want his painstakingly compiled Male Virtue to suffer such a devastating blow before it even saw the light of day. Though he had many students, now that he had become a mere commoner, those students might not be willing to help promote his book.
Just as Meng Yanxing was so anxious his hair was about to fall out, a large group of people came to the Meng residence, requesting that he step out and confront Li Wan and the others.
Confront them? How?
Meng Yanxing had Lady Meng leave the room and sat alone in the study all night. He had originally wanted Male Virtue to become a classic like Nu Jie, passed down through generations. But now, Li Wan and the others were determined to abolish Nu Jie and similar texts, and within that surely lay His Majesty’s intention. How could he go against these people?
Meng Yanxing finally realized he had been tricked. Perhaps His Majesty had never intended to promote Male Virtue at all. But things had come to this—he couldn’t question the Emperor now, asking why things were not as previously agreed.
If the general trend could not be stopped, he could only follow the trend. If handled well, perhaps Male Virtue could still leave a place for itself in the history books.
So early the next morning, Meng Yanxing tidied himself up and walked out of the study in high spirits. He took out his Male Virtue and told the people who came: Everyone should not only read Nu Jie, but even more so, should study Male Virtue.
Only improper and frivolous households would read only Nu Jie (女诫) without learning Male Virtue (男德). A household with strict and proper family values should naturally study both!
The critical essays written by several other great Confucian scholars in the literary world paled in comparison to the damage brought by Meng Yanxing’s Male Virtue—so small as to be almost negligible.
It could be said: with the release of Male Virtue, who could compete? Meng Yanxing was definitely insane! But he had His Majesty backing him, so the entire literary world was instantly thrown into chaos. In the end, in order to avoid being shackled by Male Virtue, these men had no choice but to abandon Nu Jie as well.
This affair first spread through the literary circles and the aristocratic clans, and then from those families to the wealthy households who liked to pose as refined and cultured. From top to bottom, Nu Jie was finally disdained—but there was still a long road ahead.
Some men, passing by the gates of the Meng residence and thinking of those disgusting passages in Male Virtue, couldn’t help but spit at the ground, even if they didn’t ambush Meng Yanxing with a sack. Fortunately, after being angered so many times, Meng Yanxing’s mindset had improved a great deal. At least he wouldn’t randomly have a stroke anymore. Now, what he was gambling on was whether he might leave behind a shred of good reputation hundreds or thousands of years in the future.
During this period, Meng Fu also wrote a book. It was about a romantic, unrestrained, immensely talented scholar who, after getting drunk, transmigrated into the body of a woman in the inner courtyard. The inspiration came from her and His Majesty, but the story was vastly different.
In the story, the protagonist once called out with a wave of his arm and had dozens of friends respond. They composed poetry and drank wine together, rode horses to trample spring blossoms, and lived joyfully. But now, having become a woman of the inner courtyard, he suffered endless grievances. Not only could he not go out and enjoy himself freely, but even the slightest breach of etiquette in the household would result in scoldings from his husband and the elders. No one cared how he felt. His great talent and lofty ambitions had nowhere to be used. No one asked what was in his heart—only that he do well as the head matron of the house.
He racked his brain trying to secretly contact old friends, hoping they could help him escape that hellish place. But he was discovered, and nearly handed over to the authorities for punishment.
To live a better life and gain more freedom, the protagonist had no choice but to join the other women in the courtyard in competing for favor. Perhaps because a man understands a man’s heart better, the protagonist truly stood out from among the women and regained his husband’s favor. Yet before he could carry out his plans, the family’s old madam grew displeased with his improper conduct and frivolous behavior. After ridiculing him thoroughly, she placed him under house arrest.
Not long after, the latter half of his Ten Strategies for Governing the Nation, written with painstaking effort in the boudoir, was discovered. The household assumed he had engaged in an illicit relationship with “himself,” secretly passing on writings—and they locked him in the dark room at the back of the estate, never allowing him to come out again.
On the tenth day of being confined in that dark room, the protagonist used a jade bracelet to trade with a servant for a pot of sangluo wine. Drunk, he accidentally knocked over the candleholder, sparking a fire that engulfed the dark room and burned him to ash.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in his own body. When an old friend came to visit, he casually mentioned that a wealthy merchant’s wife in the western part of the city had been found to have a secret affair—with articles she’d treasured written in the protagonist’s handwriting. It was a pity—she had died in a fire just the night before. They winked and snickered, treating the whole thing as a joke. They didn’t believe such a romantic affair would stain the protagonist’s reputation. In fact, they even wanted him to write a mourning elegy for her.
Listening to his friend’s laughter, the protagonist also slowly smiled.
In the dreamlike fleeting life, who could tell what was real and what was false?
Meng Fu had carefully observed the officials’ expressions while reading Male Virtue. Some of the movements and expressions from the early part of her protagonist’s transformation were based on them. That fury, that shame—it leapt vividly from the page.
The language of this tale was even sharper than Night Talks at Mount Qi, and also more humorous. Meng Fu titled the book Record of Sangluo.
Sangluo was the name of the wine, the name the protagonist took on after becoming a woman, the ninth lunar month, and also the beginning and ending of the story.
These were all matters of later times. And the beginning of it all was merely because His Majesty had been locked in the courtyard by Meng Yanxing and forced to listen to servants outside reading Nu Jie aloud.
After Spring Festival came the Lantern Festival.
The Lantern Festival is a day of family reunion. There was no palace banquet today. Meng Fu and His Majesty went to Cining Palace to dine, and afterward kept the Empress Dowager company by playing pai jiu.
The Empress Dowager had played pai jiu with the palace staff for a long time. Now seasoned and experienced, she played with great skill. Though Meng Fu and the little prince didn’t have much experience, they could count and calculate cards, so they played fairly well too.