Liu Mingyan's eyebrows quirk. This would, actually, explain some things--the difficulty, expressed in whispers in the dead of night, that some of the wives had bringing him to completion--not to hardness, never to hardness, but--they confessed--sometimes that made it worse, as if he were a jade pillar in truth, giving pleasure automatically without the engagement of his head or heart, without the wives' efforts touching anything true. But--she struggled to understand it then, and she struggles to understand it now. "How is such a thing possible?"