Read Chapter 14: — YIFENG AGAIN

Mufeng's fascination with old Suzhou furniture returned through Cimo Hall.

He began drawing the pieces not as antiques but as living design problems. Ming-style furniture had elegance because structure and proportion did the work that ornament often tried to do. What would happen, he wondered, if those principles were carried into contemporary homes without becoming nostalgic reproductions?

He called the idea the Yifeng Collection, resurrecting the name of his failed company.

The first designs were beautiful and dead.

Professor Zhou Jinan, a scholar of Chinese architectural and furniture history introduced by Yonghe, told him so.

"You're designing an idea of tradition," Zhou said. "Not tradition."

Mufeng bristled.

"What's the difference?"

"Time. Use. Restraint. A chair is not good because it looks ancient. It is good because someone understood bodies, wood, tools and proportion. You are copying the answer without asking the old question."

Mufeng started again.

He travelled, measured historic interiors, studied joints, timber movement and carving. He sat in old chairs until guards asked him to leave. He sketched door patterns and window lattices. He learned to stop treating history as decoration.

Months later, Zhou looked at the new designs and smiled.

"Now they breathe."

The problem was money.

Mufeng refused to sell Cimo Hall to finance a factory. He also refused offers that demanded control of the collection.

He approached He Jiaxuan's brother, He Jiahua, a wealthy businessman whose family was connected to the Hua family by marriage. Jiahua kept him waiting for hours, listened politely, and declined.

"Find another investor."

Mufeng walked out furious enough to be calm.

Yonghe found him beside the canal.

"You'll survive."

"I dislike how often people say that to me."

"Because you keep arranging situations that require it."

He laughed.

Then his phone rang.

Hua Suxian wanted to discuss the Yifeng Collection.

The company Mufeng had tried to leave was offering him the manufacturing platform his dream required.

He hesitated.

Yonghe said, "Going back is not the same as going backward."

That distinction changed everything.