Chapter 63 Heavy Snow (Part )

Zhan Mei has been mourning for his father for two years, and white is still the main color in his home.

Zhan’s father passed away in the early spring of the year before last. After Wang Jie became a monk in the winter of the year before last, Zhan Mei left Jinling in a hurry without having time to say goodbye to the sick Zhenyi in person, because he received the news that his father was seriously ill.

Wang Yuanzeng rushed to Xuancheng to attend the funeral and brought with him Zhenyi’s eulogy to Uncle Zhan and Zhenyi’s words of comfort to Brother Zhan.

Although they were far apart, Zhan Mei had often heard about Zhenyi over the past two years. He knew about the Defeng Poetry Society and the poems she had sung with others. Now, holding this booklet, he also knew that she had become somewhat famous in the mathematics circles of Jiangnan.

Zhan Mei could imagine that her second sister was now busy and fulfilled, and was busy doing things she loved, which was really the best thing.

In April, Zhan Mei even heard that Zhenyi was busy arguing with someone. Some scholars openly wrote poems to satirize Zhenyi and others, accusing women of forming associations and spreading poems to the outside world, which was an unhealthy trend. Zhenyi also openly responded to them, saying in the article:

[…Nowadays, many ignorant people often say that women should not recite and chant. Since we are all human beings, we have the same nature. The Six Classics and other books all teach people to correct their nature, understand goodness, cultivate themselves and manage their families. How could they be designed only for men?]

Once this article was spread, it naturally caused a stir, and it also led many women to write poems to follow suit. It became a trend for a while, and the Defeng Poetry Society became even stronger. The sour Confucian scholars who wrote poems to blame and ridicule the society felt that they had not only shot themselves in the foot, but the stone also rolled to others and became a stepping stone for them. How depressing it was.

Along with the chirping of cicadas in the hot summer, Zhenyi’s reputation spread more and more widely. Many people came to her house or wrote to her to ask her to write prefaces or poems. Zhenyi gladly agreed to all of them. Until July, the wife of a prefect in Zhejiang sent someone to bring her a letter and a handwritten Buddhist scripture.

This year, Zhejiang is experiencing drought, and the autumn harvest is doomed to be difficult. This Daotai wants to build a Buddhist temple to pray for the people. His wife, Madam Zhao, also volunteered to donate 500 strings of incense with her private money, and also hand-copied the Buddhist scriptures for blessing, and asked the recently famous Zhenyi to write a preface for it.

A month later, there was still no reply from Zhenyi, so Madam Zhao wrote again to urge her to reply. The letter was full of accusations, asking Zhenyi if she could afford the consequences of delaying the important matter of worshiping Buddha and causing punishment from Buddha, which would implicate innocent people.
Zhenyi had originally turned a blind eye, but as this lady was so persistent and even accused her of an offence, she could no longer remain silent. She wrote back and asked directly: If Madam had a truly kind heart, why would she need to build temples to worship fake gods and Buddhas? Wouldn’t it be more effective to use such a huge sum of money to help the people?
The wife of the Taotai, who had been a devout Buddhist for many years, was very angry. Soon after, Zhenyi was given the arrogant title of “boudoir madman”, and the news spread like wildfire in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas.

This frightened Shuyi, but Zhenyi didn’t care. She peeled water chestnuts while answering: “Big sister, it’s okay. A madman is still a scholar after all.”

Shuyi felt a headache after hearing this and sighed: “You… how can you bear all the criticism outside? This will make it even more difficult to get married… and you always come to me and show up in public like this, what should I do…”

Shuyi wanted to blame her again, but Zhenyi leaned towards her, stretched out her hands to hug her, and raised her face in her arms: “Big sister, what’s wrong with me wanting to see you and Shanjie more often? Let outsiders say what they want. I can’t lose a bit of meat anyway. Why should I suppress my longing for my family just because of a few spit from outsiders? We are in the same city, but we are not allowed to see each other freely? This is completely against human nature.”

Since the death of the third wife and Wang Jie’s becoming a monk, Zhenyi no longer restrained her emotions. Whenever she had free time, she would come to see her elder sister.

Seeing her second sister in her arms being as affectionate and affectionate as when they were little, Shuyi’s heart softened all of a sudden: “Why do you act more and more like a spoiled child as you grow older? Aren’t you afraid of being laughed at…”

Zhenyi: “Let them laugh to the sky, I just want to see my elder sister.”

Shuyi was at her wit’s end, but her heart was warm as if she were immersed in spring water. When people feel happy and relaxed, they will talk about some soft trivial things. Shuyi asked casually: “Why didn’t Juzi come with me today?”

The orange was really old, so old that if he didn’t see the cat for a day, he would suspect that it had curled up in some corner and passed away. It was so old that Wang Yuan said, “The orange is so old, could it be an alien creature? If I present it to the palace as a tribute to the emperor, maybe I can get a high position in return?”

Naturally, this remark earned him a cat punch from Orange.

But Orange did gradually feel that it was unable to cope with the situation, so it began to intentionally take care of its body and mind. Seeing that autumn was approaching, it stopped accompanying Zhenyi out. It wanted to hide itself along with all things in the world. It wanted to hide well, live quietly, and try not to attract the attention of the King of Hell.

Orange’s initial goal is to live to eighty years old. It wants to accompany Zhenyi until she is very old.

Orange, who was prepared to live quietly until she was eighty years old, lay lazily on the porch with her hands in her pockets, looking at the persimmon tree in the yard full of fruits. She felt very relieved. The persimmon tree was full of fruits, and Zhenyi was also bearing her fruits.

For an ambitious genius like Zhenyi, who knows how many fruits she will bear by the time she reaches the age of eighty.
Orange was fantasizing and squinting his eyes in a good mood, only to feel that his body was surrounded by fruits.

It was getting dark, and when Zhenyi returned home, Wang Yuan also came back from the soup house to get something. He proudly said that many customers in the soup house had recently asked him about his second sister: “… They all said that our Wang family has a great female teacher!”

In the early autumn evening, a family, with several children, were chatting about trivial matters in the hall.

Wang Xirui was naturally proud of his niece’s talent, but he would always vent his anger on Wang Yuan after a few words. Thinking that his eldest grandson had no talent for studying at all and instead inherited Wang Yuan’s unruly nature, he could not help but scold his son again.

Wang Yuan retorted a few words, and Wang Xirui picked up his cane to hit him. Wang Yuan dodged and unethically dragged Jingyi, who was holding a rattle to coax the twin babies, to stand in front of him: “Father should hit the people from the second house. Jing’er is so brave in studying, which shows that it is the second house that stole all the talent of our first house! My son is also a victim, and you should hit the thief!”

The eldest wife scolded him: “You are old and still using your younger sister as a shield. I think you really deserve a beating!”

Zhenyi slapped her elder brother’s hand away, pulled Jingyi back with a smile, and smoothed the wrinkled shoulders of the grinning Jingyi.

Everyone laughed for a while, and Wang Xirui sighed, “Yes, we have a female teacher in our family… If my father knew about this, he would be pleased.”

Thinking of her grandfather who had passed away many years ago, Zhenyi still had a clear face in her mind.

But madam, madam…

Zhenyi repeated it several times in her mind, but she still felt that it was not very pleasant to the ear.

In this early autumn, Zhenyi officially completed her first mathematical work “A Brief Account of the Calendar and Calculations”. This “A Brief Account of the Calendar and Calculations” consists of five volumes – the one given to Qian Yiji at first was only the first volume. It took Zhenyi more than half a year to compile all five volumes. Behind this was her tireless accumulation, induction, exploration, thinking and practice over the past decade.

This work, which is based on the “Calendar and Calculation”, simplifies the work of predecessors and adds practical applications and supplements, is destined to become a shocking spring thunder.

The person who caused this thunder in the night sky was a girl of only 24 years old.

At the desk under the window, Zhenyi wrote a preface about herself for this book “Calendar and Calculation”. At the end, she wrote neatly, stroke by stroke: [Written by Wang Zhenyi Deqing, a female historian of Jinling, at the age of twenty-four.]

The golden autumn sun fell on Zhenyi’s brows, which seemed to add a bit of spirit and pride to her. She should be a little proud, she was only 24 years old, and she accomplished this as a girl who was not favored.

Zhenyi found the sense of existence and accomplishment she longed for in this. Regardless of whether this book will have the chance to be published and preserved for future generations, at least she did it now.

A breeze came in from the window, blowing up Zhenyi’s preface. Juzi, who was squatting on the desk, raised his paw to hold Zhenyi down with ease.

Zhenyi held up the furry cat’s paw, smeared it with ink, and gently pressed it on the adjacent space of the three words “Wang Zhenyi” in the preface, adding a cat’s paw plum blossom print.

Zhenyi’s “ambition” was far more than just this “A Brief Collection of Calendars and Calculations”. The boxes that almost filled up an entire room were filled with manuscript papers, and each sheet of them was the capital she had accumulated for a great deal.

Zhenyi never stopped looking at and thinking about the stars in the sky above her head. Even the fundamental reason why she was obsessed with mathematics was closely related to astronomy. When she was very young, her grandfather told her: “The study of mathematics can trace the true nature of all things in the world.”

Zhenyi tried to use mathematics as a ladder to discern the mysteries above the vast sky, even if she could only touch the slightest edge.

This is an extremely difficult task. The previous dynasty had strictly prohibited the public from studying astronomy and calendar, which resulted in little progress in astronomy for hundreds of years. Many related precious books were lost among the public… Therefore, it is not as difficult as ascending to heaven for ordinary people to study astronomy nowadays, but it is not much different.

All Zhenyi could rely on were some ancient books left by her grandfather, as well as some Western manuscripts she had found over the years. Her observation tools were just a pair of eyes, a simple telescope, and the copper-cast astronomical instruments that were so simple that Juzi felt they were shabby.

Whenever Juzi saw Zhenyi fiddling with those jingling things, he felt that Zhenyi was wronged. Cat often fantasized that if he could bring Zhenyi to the 21st century, he would definitely let Zhenyi use the most advanced and convenient things. As for where the money would come from? Cat had not thought about this question yet, and he was always confident.

Zhenyi recorded the trajectory of the movement of stars observed by the naked eye day after day. Every time Zhenyi bound a stack of manuscript papers together, Juzi knew that another month had passed.

At the end of August, the autumn wind became cooler, and when I woke up, the courtyard was covered with fallen leaves in the early morning.

Jingyi hadn’t even combed her hair before she pulled her sister out of the house, excitedly wanting to write poetry with her.

Zhenyi’s hair was only half combed, but it also went along with Jingyi’s.

Orange squatted on a chair in the main room, looking at the plain backs of the two sisters with their hair loose, writing poems for autumn, and squinted his eyes to rest with pleasure and satisfaction.

In the afternoon, Zhenyi took Jingyi to help in her father’s clinic. In the evening, the three of them went home together in the drizzle. On the way, Jingyi was inspired to write a poem again. Zhenyi smiled and praised her: “This one is good, you can keep it.”

That night, Jingyi, who had received her elder sister’s approval, wrote down this “New Autumn Poem” in beautiful small characters:
[The winding path is covered with green moss, and the distant mountains are illuminated by the evening light.]

Close the book and open the embroidered curtain, take out the silver vase facing the chrysanthemums.

The empty room is far away from the noise and dust, the cool fresh air makes the calligraphy clear.

The evening wind blows after the rain, and the banana leaves make autumn sounds. 】

No matter how Zhenyi looked at her sister who was writing poetry at the desk, she felt that she was too cute and amiable. In order to record today, she walked over and wrote a poem.

Jingyi tilted her head and read the poem written by her elder sister. The title of the poem is: “Written with my second sister in the new autumn——”

The poem goes like this: [The leaves of the phoenix tree are just beginning to fall, and the autumn air is getting darker and darker.

The sleeping crane has a fairy-like spirit, and the chirping cicada arouses the Taoist spirit.

The prosecutor learned to play the piano according to the score because of the medicine.

The quiet interest here is quite satisfying, not caring about the painstaking recitation. 】

Autumn gradually faded away in the sisters’ poems, and as the green and yellow fallen leaves covering the courtyard gave way to winter snow, the big snow season of that year arrived as promised.

Orange put on a thick cotton-padded jacket with floral patterns and squatted on the windowsill, watching Zhenyi and Jingyi playing in the snow in the yard. When Jingyi got tired, Zhenyi broke off a branch and wrote another winter poem for Jingyi in the snow. The poem was titled: “Written with My Second Sister in the Midwinter”

In the snow under the moon, Jingyi was close to her elder sister, reading carefully what her elder sister had written in the snow: “The bright moon seems like snow, the flowing light reflects the blue waves. The cold sound of drums in the building chokes the clear shadows on the trees in the courtyard. Worldly affairs are gone in sorrow, and poetry is more abundant after illness. There is no need to sleep for deep conversation, so why ask how the night is…”

Jingyi also hurriedly wanted to write a poem, but she kept thinking about it while holding the branch, but she couldn’t come up with a satisfactory one. She wrote and crossed out again, making a mess in the snow.

Seeing that she started coughing again, Zhenyi ignored her objections and forcibly pulled her back into the house.

Jingyi protested in a somewhat dissatisfied manner: “Sister, today is the first day of the Big Snow Festival, which is perfect for writing solar terms poems in the snow. If you miss it, you will have to wait another year!”

“Then we can wait another year. Why wait only this year?” Zhenyi pulled her sister into the house unmoved, snatched the branch from her sister’s hand with a smile, and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll give you another branch when there’s a heavy snow next year.”

Chun Er, who was wearing a woman’s bun, brought in the medicine and responded casually, “Yes, yes, yes, writing poetry is not bad this time, but the medicine can’t be bad even once. Taking medicine is much more important than reading and writing poetry!”

Jingyi has been ill since she was born and has been taking medicine for many years.

Wang Xichen walked back home from the clinic in the snow, only to see Zhenyi chatting and laughing as she coaxed her sister to take medicine in the hall illuminated by a bean lamp. Hearing footsteps outside the hall, the two sisters turned their heads and looked over. The two faces called out “Dad” one after the other, and the cat squatting in the chair also gave him a lazily perfunctory “meow”.

Wang Xichen responded with a smile, “Yeah”, and felt that the coldness in his body was immediately removed. He walked into the hall, took the hot tea handed to him by Chun’er, and talked about what happened in the clinic today.

Good evening~
At this point, there are still ten chapters left in this story.