Leping County, the chill of autumn deepened.
The doors of the Xie family ancestral hall had been tightly shut for three days.
Xie Qingyan, the only legitimate daughter of the Xie family, had been locked inside by her father.
“Without my permission, you are not to take a single step outside.”
Those were the last words Xie Wenyuan had roared at her after smashing his inkstone in the study.
The ancestral hall was cold.
It was a bone-deep chill that seeped up from the stone floor and the rows of black-lacquered ancestral tablets, creeping into the marrow itself.
The air was thick with the solemn, dizzying scent of old incense ash mixed with fine sandalwood.
For a sixteen-year-old girl, this place would have been a prison worse than death.
But for the current Xie Qingyan, it was quiet, and in its own way, free.
She even had the leisure to study the ancestral tablets lined before her, completely indifferent to this punishment.
While she was confined here, her father, Xie Wenyuan, that ambitious yet fragile man, was trapped in a far larger prison of his own.
At dawn, a quarter past the Mao hour.
Xie Wenyuan opened his eyes, his head pounding from last night’s drunkenness and pent-up frustration.
Sitting at the edge of his bed, he stared at the hollow-eyed middle-aged man reflected in the bronze mirror, his bloodshot eyes dragging him back into memory. Once, he had been the top candidate of the second tier in the fifteenth year of the Yuanqi era, honored as the court presenter.
How high-spirited he had been then. He had believed he would enter the Hanlin Academy, rise to the center of power, and bring glory to his family.
But reality?
A single order had sent him, a scholar favored by the emperor, to this remote and impoverished Leping County.
Twenty years had passed in stagnation, without the slightest advancement.
From a passionate young talent, Xie Wenyuan had been ground down by officialdom into a scheming, grasping Seventh-Rank magistrate.
He drew in a deep breath and put on his green official robe.
“Master… please have some breakfast.” Wang Shi stood timidly at the doorway.
“I’m not eating!” Xie Wenyuan snapped, sweeping his sleeve aside.
When he stepped into the county office, into the Qinzhitang hall where he had presided for nearly a decade, he felt the humiliation keenly.
Qinzhitang was where officials conducted daily business and deliberations.
At this hour on ordinary days, it would be filled with greetings, flattery, and absolute deference toward him.
Today, it was deathly silent.
The moment Xie Wenyuan crossed the high threshold, he heard faint whispers—
“…have you heard about the Wang family…”
“…tsk, selling his daughter for advancement…”
“…a disgrace to scholars…”
But the instant his foot landed, every sound vanished.
The deputy magistrates and clerks who usually fawned over him all lowered their heads, pretending to read documents they clearly could not focus on.
A young clerk, who had just lifted a teacup, trembled upon seeing him. With a clatter, the cup tipped, hot tea spilling over his hand, scalding him until he grimaced, yet he dared not make a sound.
Xie Wenyuan’s face turned ashen.
This silence was more unbearable than outright insults.
He could feel the gazes sticking to his back, filled with contempt, mockery, and schadenfreude.
After taking his seat, Xie Wenyuan slammed the wooden block.
“Bang!”
The loud crash made everyone jump to their feet.
“M… my lord…”
Xie Wenyuan’s cold gaze swept slowly across every face in the hall.
“Nothing to do?”
His voice squeezed through clenched teeth.
“I’m asking you!” he suddenly raised his voice. “Do you all have no work left?!”
“My lord, please calm your anger!”
“We… we are handling official matters!”
“Handling matters?” Xie Wenyuan grabbed a stack of documents and hurled them at the registrar’s face. “Last month’s autumn grain records! Still not submitted! Is this how you handle matters?!”
“And you!” he pointed at the clerk who had spilled tea. “The repair funds for the southern canal, you’ve been calculating for three days and still haven’t finished! Are you a pig?!”
Everyone in the hall dropped to their knees in panic, repeatedly begging for his forgiveness.
After court was dismissed, Xie Wenyuan practically fled back to the Xie residence and shut himself in his study.
After grinding the ink, he began to practice calligraphy.
He spread out a sheet of fine rice paper and lifted his favorite purple-tipped brush.
“Endure.” He wanted to write the character for endurance.
But the brush trembled violently as it touched the paper.
The more he tried to endure, the more his anxiety surged like a tide, threatening to drown him.
Two fears haunted Xie Wenyuan.
The first was the accusation of selling his daughter for advancement. Those four words were branded onto his face like a searing iron, and he would never again hold his head high in Leping County or before his colleagues.
The second was what truly filled him with despair.
He had offended Censor Wang of the Capital.
His hand shook even more violently as he crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it aside.
He recalled how, a month ago, Censor Wang’s steward, a servant more arrogant than a Seventh-Rank magistrate, had approached him.
“Magistrate Xie, my master has taken a liking to your daughter.”
“If this matter succeeds, you will be transferred to the Capital and enter Censor Wang’s circle.”
“Enter Censor Wang’s circle…”
Twenty years of stagnation.
He, a court scholar, a favored disciple of the emperor, had wasted two decades in this tiny county. He was already forty-five. If he did not rise now, he never would.
Blinded by the promise of a transfer to the Capital, Xie Wenyuan lost all judgment.
He had not even investigated why the legitimate son of a Third-Rank Censor would lower himself to form an alliance with an obscure magistrate in a remote place. He had thought it a blessing from fate, a final lifeline he must grasp.
And yet, that unfilial daughter of his!
Not only had she defied him with hunger strikes and suicide attempts, she had used such a mutually destructive method to tear apart the fragile cover of the truth.
Incapable…
Eight living widows…
Now the entire Great Zhou knew of the Wang family’s disgrace!
What would Censor Wang think?
What would he do to him?
Xie Wenyuan dared not imagine.
This was no longer just a matter of ruined reputation, it could mean the destruction of his entire family.
The more he thought, the more agitated he became, grief threatening to consume him, anger stabbing at his nerves until his temples throbbed.
He slammed his hand on the table and shouted,
“Someone!”
A servant scrambled in. “M… Master…”
“How is that unfilial girl in the ancestral hall?” he demanded through gritted teeth.
He expected to hear that she was kneeling and begging for forgiveness, but the servant only lowered his head nervously and answered honestly,
“Reporting to Master, Eldest Miss… she is very quiet.”
“….”
“She eats all three meals Chun Cao brings her. Every day inside, she seems to be copying scriptures and practicing calligraphy.”
“Bang!”
Xie Wenyuan swept another inkstone off the table, sending it crashing to the ground.
“Get out!!”
The servant scrambled away in terror.
Quiet?
How could she possibly be quiet?!