Chapter 36: 036 Cerebral Hemorrhage

As early as the Song and Yuan dynasties, Jiangxi was already a hotbed of theater.

Zhou Deqing, a man of Jiangxi, single-handedly compiled the *Rhymes of the Central Plains*, ending the chaos in Yuan-dynasty opera composition, and was hailed as the "Ancestor of Opera Rhyme."

Wei Liangfu, a man of Jiangxi, absorbed the tunes of Jiangsu and Zhejiang local theater, reformed the singing style of the Kunshan melody, and created a new vocal style, earning him the title "Founding Father of Kunqu."

Tang Xianzu, a man of Jiangxi and a great master of drama for the ages, needs no further elaboration.

Fei Songnian had two great loves in life: one was fine food, the other was opera.

Nearly eighty years old, his body swollen into a ball, he had no other pleasures left — each day he simply ate his fill and listened to opera.

"A few folds of screen-like hills unfold, faded brows dark and light. Why within these quilts does my tender heart churn without cease..."

Fei Songnian half-reclined in his chair, fingers drumming against his fat belly, singing along with the *dan* actress on stage.

Singing on, his mouth grew dry and his tongue parched. He lifted a single finger slightly, and a household slave immediately thrust the spout of a teapot to his lips.

Moistening his throat, Fei Songnian went back to swaying his head in pleasure.

"Master, Master, terrible news!" A household slave came rushing over in panic.

Fei Songnian frowned. "Has the ancestral home caught fire? What affair dares disturb your master's opera? Stand there obediently — even if heaven itself is falling, wait until I've finished listening!"

The household slave waited anxiously but in the end could not hold back. He unfolded a broadsheet and held it up before Fei Songnian. "Master, you had best read this first."

Fei Songnian glanced at it curiously, then suddenly his eyes bulged wide. Struggling, he sat upright, snatched it into his hands, and read it carefully.

As he read on, he felt his blood and qi surging upward; his whole body nearly fainted.

He had fathered a son past sixty, and in his heart he had always harbored some suspicion. Only as the boy grew older and increasingly resembled his own childhood self had he finally set his mind fully at ease.

And he had taken pride in it, boasting that his blade had not dulled with age!

But this broadsheet claimed that his wife, Lady Zhang, had seduced a grandnephew. If the child were truly some grandnephew's seed, it would be only natural that he resembled him — after all, the Fei clan's descendants all sprang from the same lineage.

Fei Songnian trembled from head to toe and barked, "Where did this thing come from!"

The household slave answered, "It was pasted onto the pillar of the Three Worthies Arch."

The Three Worthies Arch!

The Three Worthies Arch!

That was the memorial arch the Fei clan had specially erected in the busiest district to flaunt their prestige and proclaim that the family had produced a Chief Grand Secretary!

In all of Yanshan County, that was the place with the most people.

An article about his wife seducing a grandnephew had actually been posted at the Three Worthies Arch — had it not been seen by merchants from every province south of the Yangtze?

Boom!

Fei Songnian suddenly collapsed, tumbling from his chair to the ground. Blood seeped from his ears and nose, and his pupils gradually dilated.

"Master!"

"Master, what's wrong?"

"Quick, fetch the physician — the master has fainted!"

A hugely fat man nearing eighty, it was already remarkable he had lived to this age. Now his soaring blood pressure had driven straight into a cerebral hemorrhage.

Before the doctor even arrived, Fei Songnian had already breathed his last.

Neither Zhao Han nor Pang Chunlai had ever imagined that a man could be angered to death on the spot.

"Master, Master, now that you're dead, how am I to live!"

Lady Zhang arrived upon hearing the news, throwing herself down and wailing to heaven and earth. Behind her stood the little tyrant of the private school, classmate Fei Yuanjian.

Fei Yuanjian, on the contrary, felt little grief. The age gap between him and his father had been vast, and he had been carefully raised by a wet nurse from infancy. Moreover, his father had spent all day immersed in the opera troupe; father and son had rarely even shared a meal together.

Fei Yuanjian instinctively swept his gaze over the crowd and noticed that the household slaves around him were all watching him with strange looks.

Right, I should cry — otherwise I'll be unfilial.

"Father, oh, Father..." Fei Yuanjian threw himself forward and wailed, but unfortunately his acting was far too poor. Not only could he squeeze out no tears at all, even his expression of grief looked stiff and wooden.

Suddenly, Lady Zhang rose and pointed at the opera stage. "It's all these lowborn wretches! Singing operas, singing operas — all day long they know nothing but singing operas, luring our master's very soul away, and now they've lured his life away too! Someone, go and seize back every bit of silver they swindled from the master, then drive them all out with beatings!"

Fei Songnian had taken eight concubines in his lifetime, seven of whom had been opera performers. Lady Zhang had endured this for decades.

Fei Songnian had always treated the performers well, and the entire troupe regarded him as a kinsman and elder. At this moment, many performers were gathered around, weeping.

Their tears were genuine — they wept both for Fei Songnian's sudden death and for the fact that they would never again find so kind a patron.

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But Lady Zhang's words left the performers dumbstruck. Who had ever heard of seizing back past gratuities?

The household slaves immediately sprang into action, brandishing clubs to drive the performers away and forcing them to hand over their money at once.

"Wah! Wuwuwuwu..."

Lady Zhang collapsed back down and continued her grief-stricken wailing.

Her personal maidservant finally brought over the broadsheet and whispered a reminder: "Madam, do not be in such haste to weep — first take a look at this."

Many household slaves covered their mouths to stifle laughter, some even gloating at the misfortune.

Do not assume that those born into great clans possess much refinement or self-cultivation — abuse of household slaves could be seen everywhere.

During the bondservant uprisings of the late Ming in Jiangnan, there were even household slaves who killed their masters and turned themselves in at the yamen carrying their masters' heads, claiming they could no longer endure the humiliation and wished to perish together with their masters. This shows the degree of bullying they suffered daily.

Lady Zhang, unaware of the truth, wiped her tears and looked. Before she had even finished reading the contents, she felt the heavens spin and the earth reel.

"The madam has fainted too!"

The entire household was thrown into utter chaos.

The performers seized the chance to pack up their costumes and flee. Some household slaves also ran back to their masters' rooms, stealing gold and silver ornaments to hide away.

Fei Yuanjian, being young after all and unable to grasp the situation, curiously picked up that broadsheet.

Then, he was dumbstruck.

Am I really not his biological son?

Then who is my real father?

Madam Zhang soon came to, and the first words out of her eyes were a hoarse, wailing cry: "I don't want to live anymore…"

She rose and made for the pond below the stage, but loyal household slaves held her back by force.

Actually, jumping in would have been no great matter — the water would barely reach the knees; it was just that winter was too cold and she might catch a chill.

……

Hekou Town, a street-side teahouse.

"Have you all heard? Old Master Fei's son isn't his own flesh and blood!"

"Which Old Master Fei?"

"The one who's very fat, keeps a private opera troupe at home, and got a son past sixty."

"Heh, I said it long ago — past sixty, how can a man still sire a son?"

"Who's the adulterer?"

"Must be one of his household slaves."

"Not a household slave — it's his grandnephew."

"The grand-aunt and her grandnephew? And they had a son?"

"Isn't that so?"

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"Aiyo, that deserves a thunderbolt from heaven!"

"More than that. That Madam Zhang is past fifty. Last time I saw her at the dock, she was fair and delicate like a young wife, still powdered and rouged — one look and you knew she lacked womanly virtue. I've heard, oh, she didn't just seduce the grandnephew; she's also had affairs with the household opera troupe."

"Old Master Fei is no proper thing himself — always dressing up in costumes and playing the woman. Do you still remember? At the temple fair early this year, Old Master Fei came out wearing women's opera dress. I hear he favors men — past seventy and still shameless, carrying on hot and heavy with the men in the opera troupe."

"I know, I know — there's a famous lead actor called Li Sheng. I hear he often shares a bed with Old Master Fei and Madam Zhang together."

"Tsk tsk tsk, just hearing it soils the ears."

"……"

Hekou Town was in an uproar; the streets and docks were all abuzz with wild rumors, each telling more embellished than the last.

Pang Chunlai's scandal piece had been written very summarily.

Yet those marketplace gossips automatically filled in the details, even settling on several leading men, from which more than ten different versions branched out.

Traveling merchants coming from south and north, originally weary from their long journeys, at last had something to excite their talk.

Some traveling merchants, passing the memorial archway, even jeered and spat upon it.

A grand-aunt seducing her grandnephew and bearing a bastard child — truly deserving of a thunderbolt from heaven!

The sons of the Fei clan, whether from the main line or the collateral branches, upon hearing the news all hurried away, too ashamed to be pointed at and whispered about in town, and went home one after another to tell their elders.

……

Hanzhu Academy.

Fei Yuanlu stared dumbly at the broadside poster — first in violent rage, then dark brooding, and at last he cursed: "That Pang Weiran is indeed no good thing. I wasted my kindness in taking him in back then!"

"Headmaster, I hear more than a dozen have been posted around the academy. Shall I send someone to take them down?" a servant reminded him.

Fei Yuanlu's face was full of gloom: "You can take back the black words on white paper, but can you take back the rumors from men's hearts? If they've been posted in the academy, they've surely been posted in Hekou Town as well."

Fei Yuanlu went straight to Fei Yinghuan's room and knocked for a long time. Wei Jianxiong came to open the door; Young Master Fei was still inside dressing and yawning.

"The sun is already three poles high, and Meizhong is still sleeping?" Fei Yuanlu said coldly.

Meizhong and Dazhao were both courtesy names of Fei Yinghuan.

Fei Yinghuan chuckled and said, "Uncle, don't be angry. Your nephew was reading last night and lost track of the hour."

Fei Yuanlu handed over the broadside: "Meizhong, take a look at this."

Fei Yinghuan had been bleary-eyed, but after reading two lines he was instantly invigorated and could not help praising it: "Fine writing! It seems plain and straightforward, yet it captures the very essence of the storyteller's art — a few words and the imagination runs wild."

Was this a matter of literary skill?

Fei Yuanlu listened, his forehead covered in black lines.

Faced with such an unreliable junior, Fei Yuanlu very much wanted to plant a kick in him. He suppressed his anger and ordered Wei Jianxiong: "Go out first, and shut the door properly."

Wei Jianxiong closed the door behind him, leaving only the two of them in the room.

Fei Yuanlu said: "This absurd rumor has most likely already spread all over Hekou Town."

Even with Fei Yinghuan's temperament, he could not help staring wide-eyed and exclaiming: "The name of the Fei clan is likely to ring throughout Jiangnan!"

"What 'ring throughout Jiangnan'? You are, after all, the only juren of the Ying generation — can't you speak with a little more seriousness!" Fei Yuanlu felt utterly exhausted.

Fei Yinghuan sat on the edge of the bed, slowly putting on his shoes, and said with a smile: "If your nephew speaks seriously, will that stop the rumors from spreading? Has the Yanshan Fei clan ever lacked for filthy affairs? I say it's good that it's out in the open — we can use this chance to clean up the family's conduct."

Fei Yuanlu's face showed approval: "Though Meizhong's manner is frivolous, he truly is our Fei clan's colt of a thousand li — your thoughts are exactly what I had in mind."

"Uncle, please speak plainly," Fei Yinghuan said, still slowly putting on his shoes.

Fei Yuanlu said: "If we wish to rectify the Fei clan's conduct, we must begin by rectifying Hanzhu Academy. If we wish to rectify Hanzhu Academy, we must reclaim the academy lands and properties seized by the various branches. Look at any great clan under heaven — who seizes their own academy lands? It is sheer shamelessness! Is Meizhong willing to help me?"

Fei Yinghuan laughed: "Your nephew is long accustomed to idleness; I fear I can be of little help."

"Meizhong may serve as Vice Headmaster of Hanzhu Academy," Fei Yuanlu immediately offered.

Fei Yinghuan put on a mournful face: "Uncle, your nephew truly does not wish to get involved. There are far too many messy affairs in the clan — once you're tainted by them, don't expect any peace hereafter."

Fei Yuanlu said: "That old uncle of mine (Fei Songnian) has this time utterly disgraced the Fei name and must give the clan an accounting. He has a rather fine shop front in Hekou — I wonder if Meizhong might take a liking to it?"

"Uncle, say no more. Is your nephew that sort of person?"

Fei Yinghuan's face was full of indignation, and then, with a sense of unshirkable duty, he declared: "Since Uncle wishes to rectify the family's conduct, your nephew will of course lend his full support!"

(End of chapter)