But only Zhang Ye knew that no one could match this couplet!
In Zhang Ye’s world, it was precisely proven. Some couplets might look difficult, but they were not as hard as people expected when it was matched. For example, using a top radical to make a couplet like 荷花茎藕蓬莲苔 (hé huā jīng ǒu péng lián tái, moss of the lotus flower, lotus root, lotus fruit). It looked extremely complicated at first glance, as their top radicals were all 艹, but with some careful thought, they were all plants, so matching it with 芙蓉芍药蕊芬芳(fú róng sháo yào ruǐ fēn fāng, scent of the buds of the hibiscus and peony) would not be a problem. It could be matched with other words, too.
But some couplets might not appear to have any tricks behind them, and looked about the same as any other couplet, making you think that you could understand it at a glance, but even a lifetime of effort would not allow you to match it!
烟锁池塘柳 (yān suǒ chí táng liǔ, Willow pond locked in smoke) was a couplet that no one could match even in a few lifetimes!
This couplet’s history was quite long. In Zhang Ye’s world, it had been passed down as a Millennial Impossibility. Nearly a thousand years had passed with people succumbing to it. As for this world, they must have never heard of it.