Several days had passed since his meeting with the Khitan merchant Yelü Qi at Luyin Pavilion, but Second Prince Zhao Tingyue remained as restless as an ant on a hot pan, consumed by anxiety and finding every single day as long as a year.
He had long since sent men to secretly investigate the other man's background, yet to this day, they had found nothing at all. Seeing that the man was wrapped in such deep mystery, and knowing that the prices Yelü Qi was privately offering to the noble families of the Imperial City far exceeded the market rate by nearly tenfold—according to his informants, no fewer than ten people had met with Yelü Qi in private over the past few days, and several were already champing at the bit. Among these aristocrats, the most likely contenders to snatch this lucrative deal were Gu Linyuan, the wealthiest young master of West City, and Prince Zhao Tingyue himself.
Lately, Gu Linyuan had been repeatedly inviting the man to drink wine across the four cities of the Central Plains, tour night markets, compose poetry, and listen to music. This display of hedonism and refined pretense seemed aimed at exhausting every possible means to secure the deal, as if he would never stop until he got it.
Chapter 116