Chapter 1318

Luo Mu Zi and Lun Fei seethe privately at losing to a cup of seawater. They keep their composure on the surface. Fairy Tian Lu turns the gathering toward reciting poems to complete the moon festival. Fang Yuan feigns never having heard of the custom. Luo Mu Zi and Lun Fei read this as a fresh chance to humiliate him. Neither knows he carries a store of Earth poems in memory neither could match. ^{ch. 1318}

Qiao Si Liu explains poetry’s place in the festival through a Southern Border legend. A mortal youth loved an old Gu Master’s daughter and was refused outright as unworthy. He pleaded, and the father refused him again, this time mocking him as unable even to brew tea. Taking the taunt as a challenge, the youth turns a stream into tea by three natural principles. He catches a fish to yield a smaller fish and a shrimp, eats the shrimp, and buries his own waste to grow a flower he steeps in the water. The stunned father grants he has passed the first test but still refuses him without a poem. ^{ch. 1318}

Though he has never composed verse, the youth tries. He recites four lines that summon rain and darken the sky as he speaks them. The daughter declares the poem has moved heaven and earth and made her father dance in rage. Unable to retort, the Gu Master grants the second test passed and demands a worthy betrothal gift instead. Owning only a hut, a mat and some rocks, the youth offers all of it. When the Gu Master kicks one rock open in scorn, a moon-shaped Gu worm flies out of it. The daughter calls it gift enough, and the Gu Master, with no answer left, allows the marriage. ^{ch. 1318}

Fang Yuan already knew the tale and finds it interesting. He notes to himself that the old Gu Master never once used his own strength through all three trials. That does not hold together logically, he thinks, and he reads the story instead as a mortal’s pursuit of a better life. Qiao Si Liu ties the legend to the present custom. Southern Border’s Gu Immortals and mortals alike brew tea, recite poems and dissect rocks at the moon festival because of it. ^{ch. 1318}

Fang Yuan thanks her for the story. She tells him to simply call her Si Liu. The familiarity visibly startles Luo Mu Zi, since she treats Wu Yi Hai entirely differently from her other two suitors. Lun Fei pushes to move on to poems, and Qiao Si Liu invites him to go first. He recites a short poem of a lonely youth’s journey that ends on an implicit confession of longing for her. He returns to gaze deeply at her. Qiao Si Liu turns to see whether Fang Yuan reacts with jealousy, but he shows no response and keeps quietly drinking his tea, leaving her visibly disappointed. ^{ch. 1318}