In Dugu Jing's brief twenty years of life, women had mostly come and gone fleetingly. There were indeed moments of astonishment, such as with Fengyu, but these were all fleeting impressions based on looks and temperaments, like blossoms appearing for a moment only to fade. He was like a flower connoisseur, caring little whether the blossoms bloomed high in the clouds or on the roadside. He appreciated them briefly and never kept them in his heart—he had far more important matters to attend to. In Beiman, pleasing anyone was hardly a necessity.
And now, in Beining, he found himself needing to curry favor with a woman's family. Dugu Jing thought disdainfully: "If no marriage alliance is formed, so be it. I'm certainly not begging the Fang Family to marry into mine."
