AVRL 40

If Meng Chi had drunk a little more wine, what might have slipped out of his mouth would have been “Teacher Yu, why are you seducing me again?” But fortunately he still retained a bit of reason and didn’t say those words aloud, only using the unfinished painting as an excuse to ask a question.

Standing on the balcony, Yu Tingzhi looked at him for a few seconds: “Come up.”

These three words, carrying a slight tone of command, stirred the competitive streak in Meng Chi’s heart. He arched a brow, turned, and walked into the house.

Not long after, the door to Yu Tingzhi’s room was knocked. He walked over and pulled it open, seeing Meng Chi standing at the doorway, as well as the two palm-sized glass bottles he was carrying in his hands—one green and one red.

“Sister Hong asked me to bring these to you,” Meng Chi leaned his upper body against the doorframe, chin tilted slightly upward as he looked at Yu Tingzhi.

Yu Tingzhi turned sideways, gesturing for him to come in. Meng Chi looked at him for two seconds, then walked inside. As he brushed past Yu Tingzhi’s shoulder, Yu Tingzhi saw a layer of crimson floating on the skin of his neck and also smelled the faint sweet wine scent on him.

Most likely during the meal just now he had drunk a bit more.

The villa’s renovation style was pastoral and leisurely—apart from white it was all natural wood colors: wood-colored floors, wood-colored wardrobe, while the sofa and headboard were both of rattan-and-wood craftsmanship.

The floor-to-ceiling windows connected to the balcony; the light was transparent. White gauze curtains and dark blackout curtains were gathered on both sides, while in the middle hung quite a few rattan hanging decorations that swayed gently with the wind, full of vitality.

This room was very spacious. To the left upon entering was the wardrobe, to the right the bathroom. Beside the wardrobe stood a three-seater sofa, a coffee table, and a simple wet bar; further in was a large bed neatly made up. By the window near the balcony stood a round table, on which rested that unfinished painting.

Meng Chi set the two bottles of wine in his hands on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Yu Tingzhi walked over and asked: “Why is she giving me wine?”

Meng Chi laughed once and said: “She said it’s to thank you for teaching her nephews how to paint.”

Actually that wasn’t the whole of it. Jiang Hong’s main purpose was to play matchmaker for Yu Tingzhi.

After all, during the meal just now Jiang Hong had already inquired of Meng Chi about various aspects of Yu Tingzhi’s information, including age, work, whether he was single, and so on. The moment Meng Chi heard it he knew what scheme Jiang Hong was up to.

Hearing that Meng Chi was going to look for Yu Tingzhi, Jiang Hong had Meng Chi help her probe a bit.

Meng Chi felt helpless. He couldn’t come out of the closet on Yu Tingzhi’s behalf, so he could only be vague, thinking he would find some excuse later to cut off Jiang Hong’s ideas.

“She’s too polite. I didn’t teach much,” Yu Tingzhi walked over to the wet bar, took out two crystal glasses, turned his head and asked Meng Chi, “What do you want to drink?”

Meng Chi turned at the sound and saw the familiar-style crystal glasses in his hands, as well as two or three glass bottles written with English in the cabinet—probably milk, wine, or other beverages.

“Did you bring all these yourself?” Meng Chi asked.

“Mm,” Yu Tingzhi nodded.

Meng Chi was surprised for an instant, then felt it was nothing special. After all, he himself was someone who carried a full set of tea-brewing tools with him whenever he traveled.

Meng Chi clearly knew he couldn’t mix two kinds of alcohol, so he said he would just drink that bottle of peach-blossom wine he had brought.

Yu Tingzhi had no objection. He opened that small pink bottle and poured half a glass for each of them.

Meng Chi turned the wine glass in his hand, his gaze sweeping around the room as he said: “You don’t have any painting things here. Why did you call me up?”

Yu Tingzhi stared at him for a few seconds. When Meng Chi’s gaze turned back and met his, he nodded and said “There are,” then stood up, walked to the wardrobe, and pulled open an independent cabinet door on the right side. Inside were a sketchboard as well as some tube paints, brushes, and other painting tools.

Fine. After all he was a painter—there was no reason to bring cups and wine but not painting things.

“Paint now?” Yu Tingzhi asked him.

Meng Chi arched a brow: “Otherwise what did I come for?”

Yu Tingzhi laughed once, took out the sketchboard, clipped the paper in place, and after preparing began to examine his model.

Because they were in the place where he was staying, Meng Chi was dressed very casually: a silk-textured rice-white V-neck shirt paired with same-color casual long pants, a smoke-gray long trench coat over it, no socks, and a pair of soft-fur slippers on his feet.

“Take off the outer coat, then go to the bed,” after about a dozen seconds Yu Tingzhi said to Meng Chi.

Meng Chi was stunned. He narrowed his eyes slightly and looked toward Yu Tingzhi, gauging whether he was deliberately teasing him. As for Yu Tingzhi, he met his gaze frankly, his eyes calm without revealing any clue, only tilting his head slightly toward Meng Chi to signal him to do as told.

Fine.

Meng Chi laughed once inwardly and suddenly felt a bit eager to try. He wanted to see just what medicine Yu Tingzhi was selling in his gourd.

After Meng Chi took off the outer coat and climbed onto the bed, Yu Tingzhi said to him “As you like—whatever is comfortable,” then picked up the paintbrush and began to outline on the paper.

Meng Chi had originally felt that being a photography model and being a life-drawing model should be more or less the same, but now he felt there was some difference.

Perhaps because Yu Tingzhi’s gaze upon him was not separated by a lens, or perhaps because the purpose of this life drawing was not so pure to begin with—in short, sitting on Yu Tingzhi’s bed, smelling that familiar oceanic fragrance, Meng Chi actually felt a bit unnaturally tense.

Every time Yu Tingzhi lifted his eyes, Meng Chi felt that gaze as if it had substance, roaming over his body.

After drawing only a few strokes, Yu Tingzhi sensed that Meng Chi was not in the right state. He stopped the paintbrush, looked at him for two seconds, and suddenly opened his mouth: “You still hadn’t finished earlier—why your master was angry.”

Meng Chi hadn’t expected him to suddenly bring this up. After a moment of silence he opened his mouth in a helpless tone: “There are quite a few reasons.”

That night Yang Zhengfeng hadn’t said it outright, but how could Meng Chi fail to grasp the points implied beyond the words?

For example, when Master said their You Ran Tea House didn’t necessarily have to participate in those high-end activities and told him to interact less with Boss Chen, it was knocking sense into him not to climb high branches and attach himself to the powerful. For another example, telling him to put more heart into tea art and not always randomly invent those messy fruit drinks was telling him not to reverse priorities. He also told him to spoil Yang Zile less and not listen to his instigation to go cause trouble together.

These reasons Meng Chi only went through once in his heart. He didn’t plan to pour them all out completely to Yu Tingzhi; he only said casually: “It was because I boiled fruit tea on the performance stage in the shop.”

Yu Tingzhi’s brows lifted very lightly, then slowly settled again. Looking at Meng Chi who was sitting in the middle of the bed supporting himself on his knees, he asked: “Does he feel your attitude toward tea art is frivolous?”

This time it was Meng Chi’s turn to arch a brow. He lifted his eyes toward Yu Tingzhi; a trace of surprised delight appeared in them, as if he hadn’t expected Yu Tingzhi to instantly grasp his meaning.

If Chen Yan had heard these words, he would definitely say his master had a problem and was making a mountain out of a molehill.

As expected, artists were artists—there was commonality in the angles from which they viewed people and matters.

“Yes,” Meng Chi nodded with a smile and said thoughtfully, “My master is different from the grandmaster. He treats tea art very strictly—one can say he holds it in the utmost reverence. He doesn’t like those flashy tea drinks, such as the teas sold in those popular milk-tea shops now. When he sees them he just shakes his head and says this has already made the tea lose its original flavor.”

Meng Chi even imitated Yang Zhengfeng’s tone and said the words “a wanton waste of heavenly gifts,” which made Yu Tingzhi laugh out loud.

“Yang Zile always says he’s an old antique, an old stubborn,” Meng Chi laughed once and continued, “I occasionally feel the same way, but I can understand even more that when it comes to tea art, Master has his own ideas and pursuits.”

Meng Chi thought of the words the grandmaster had said—that Master should now have an answer to “what is tea art.” Thinking about it, Meng Chi felt he perhaps also knew what Master’s answer was.

“Tea, for him,” as he spoke Meng Chi lay back, looking at the ceiling as he finished the next sentence, “is probably—an elegant work of art that cannot be defiled.”

In the first lesson, Master had told him what tea art was.

He said the term “tea art” first appeared in the Tang dynasty, and only in the Song dynasty did it usher in its popular period, with standardized ceremonial procedures. After that it continuously evolved, with higher standards required for the tea, the water, and the environment, circulating all the way to the present and developing into modern tea art.

He said that in the broad sense, tea art was, as Yu Tingzhi had said, a form of expression of tea culture—for example, studying the learning related to tea leaves, the principles and theories of a series of things such as the production, manufacture, management, and methods of drinking tea leaves, and so on.

He said that in the narrow sense, tea art referred to the techniques of how to brew a pot of good tea, as well as the art of how to enjoy a cup of good tea—it was the embodiment of elegant artistic conception throughout the entire process of tasting tea.

Through ceremonial and standardized tea-art performances, tea masters transmitted and explained tea-leaf knowledge, appreciated and savored one by one the color, fragrance, taste, and form of the tea leaves, upheld the spirit of tea people, cultivated the body and mind, and attained the Way through self-reflection.

That last passage Meng Chi remembered most clearly, because countless of his senior and junior fellow disciples had failed to achieve it.

Some of them gave up halfway and went to seek other paths; some obtained certificates and left, becoming emotionless tea-brewing machines in some tea house; some achieved mastery in the craft, won awards in competitions, yet entered the flashy circle of fame and fortune, not to mention any cultivating of body and mind.

“Then what about you?” Yu Tingzhi, who had been listening quietly the whole time, suddenly asked. “What is your pursuit of tea art?”

Meng Chi returned to himself from his memories. Only then did he discover that Yu Tingzhi had already walked to the bedside and was kneeling on one knee at the edge of the bed, looking down at him from above.

“Me, ah.” Meng Chi thought of that night when he returned from Master’s house, of the words Yang Zile had said—“What’s the point of learning tea? Isn’t it just to make money?”

On this point alone, Meng Chi and Yang Zile shared a resonance of thought.

Perhaps because the eyes with which Yu Tingzhi looked at him were too focused, as if there was something inside them that could tempt the soul, Meng Chi, as if possessed by a ghost, revealed what was in his heart: “Actually I’m a vulgar person. At the very beginning, following Master to learn tea art was just so I’d have a place to stay, and then I could also make money.”

At this, Meng Chi gave a light laugh, revealing a bit of self-mockery: “Even now, this idea hasn’t changed.”

The alcohol made Meng Chi’s emotions overflow. His eyes were hazy; a faint melancholy clouded his brows. As the drunkenness surfaced, his cheeks were further covered with a layer of crimson. Under the light, the color of his lips was especially vivid; when he slightly lifted the corners of his mouth, it presented a kind of ambiguous, teasing meaning.

Especially since he was still lying on Yu Tingzhi’s bed. Yu Tingzhi, who was looking down at him with lowered eyes, found his gaze unconsciously growing heavy.

Hearing Meng Chi’s answer, a bit of a smile surfaced on his face. Meng Chi saw it, slightly arched a brow, and asked: “Are you laughing at me?”

Without waiting for Yu Tingzhi to answer, he slightly narrowed his eyes again and said in a sarcastic tone: “Figures. An artist like you who’s like a heavenly immortal would of course look down on vulgar thoughts like mine.”

Yu Tingzhi looked at him for a few seconds, then slightly leaned down, both hands braced on either side of Meng Chi, enclosing him beneath himself.

Meng Chi’s vision darkened; he could only see Yu Tingzhi’s bright yet deep pair of eyes. He heard Yu Tingzhi deny in a voice lower than usual: “I’m not an artist. I’m also a vulgar person.”

As he spoke, warm breath brushed across Meng Chi’s face, merging with his own breathing. The wine scent and the oceanic fragrance mixed together, gradually fermenting and brewing an ambiguous atmosphere.

“You’re greedy for money; I’m just lustful. I called you up not because I wanted to paint you.” Yu Tingzhi gazed at Meng Chi’s somewhat hazy eyes and continued, “I want to fuck you, Meng Chi.”

After a silent exchange of gazes that lasted only an instant, Meng Chi grabbed the front of Yu Tingzhi’s bathrobe with one hand, pulling him toward himself while lifting his head to kiss his lips.

“Then fuck me.”