Reincarnation is a matter of luck, and Nan Yang’s luck in that department was much like her character—entirely ordinary, not too bad, yet nothing to boast about.
The year her father took her mother into the manor, he was still an unremarkable figure among the many sons of the nobility in the capital. Since her birth, however, her father’s political career had flourished, soaring higher with every step. Now, his travels were marked by the grand displays of a full ceremonial guard, a picture of pride and success.
But while her father’s side of things was thriving, her mother’s life was moving in the opposite direction.
Her mother’s surname was Zhou, known in the manor as Lady Zhou. In her youth, her beauty had been breathtaking. She came from a family of great merchants in Jiangnan; though she was the daughter of a merchant house, she had been raised amidst heaps of gold and fine silks. During her first few years of marriage to her father, she held his exclusive favor. Her treatment had been nearly identical to that of the legal wife, which inflated her sense of pride. Consequently, when the blow eventually fell, she could not endure it and went mad.
Yes, her mother was a concubine. Above her stood a main wife, who was Nan Yang’s legal mother in name.
During those years of exclusive favor, her mother held the reins of the household’s internal affairs. She had carried herself as an equal to the main wife and kept her daughter by her side to raise her. As a small child, Nan Yang had genuinely believed her mother was the mistress of the house.
Once her mother’s fortunes plummeted and she became the “madwoman” everyone in the manor whispered about, Nan Yang was, of course, moved out of her mother’s courtyard.
The main mother had children of her own. Claiming she had too many children under her wing to look after them all, she assigned Nan Yang a secluded courtyard of her own. It was a quiet place, far from everything else.
As a child, Nan Yang had been somewhat favored. But as she grew older year by year, she gradually became nothing more than a piece of background furniture in the manor.
In her fifteenth year, Nan Yang fell ill and was sent to the countryside to recover. The hair-pinning ceremony, which marked a young woman’s coming of age, was thus held in a rural town. Presided over by a clan elder at the main mother’s request, and without her father even showing his face, it passed in a dull and perfunctory manner.
Xin Ao, the wet nurse who had been by Nan Yang’s side since childhood, cried herself hoarse.
The main mistress was no simple soul. After years of repressed resentment, she was taking her revenge for the grievances of the previous generation out on the next. By intentionally holding a concubine’s daughter’s hair-pinning ceremony in the countryside and making it so shabby, she intended to ruin Nan Yang’s entire life!
Nan Yang, however, felt that as long as there was food and drink and no one to bother her, life was manageable.
Compared to being confined all day in a remote courtyard of the main family’s estate, life in this rural town—surrounded by mountains and water with lax gate security—was much better. If she wanted to go out and see the scenery, she could. It was far more pleasant than the deep, walled courtyards of the capital.
If she had any troubles, there were two.
The frequency of the supplies sent from the main house in the capital was decreasing. The main mother seemed to frequently forget that there was a daughter of the Wei Family in the countryside. Sometimes they sent supplies every two months, sometimes every three. The rations were halved and then halved again, until they were eventually reduced to just enough cloth to wear and just enough food to keep from starving.
The second matter occasionally drifted through her mind.
A marriage match her mother had arranged for her during those years of favor had gone silent recently, with no word at all.
The middle of the sixth lunar month. The sun was scorching.
Nan Yang woke up early to the sound of a heated argument.
The carriage from the capital carrying their supplies had arrived before dawn and was set to leave as soon as it was unloaded.
Her wet nurse, Xin Ao—whom Nan Yang usually called A-mu—had hurriedly tallied the grain and oil delivered this time. Driven to madness by the sight, she blocked the manager in the doorway and berated him.
“Look at what you’ve brought! Aged husks and rotten rice—is this fit for a human to eat? The Second Miss was sent to the countryside to recover her health; how can she eat moldy, rotten rice?”
A-mu ripped open a burlap sack, scooped up a handful of moldy grain, and threw it at the manager’s face. “Open your eyes and look! The grain has turned black! Would you eat this? Would you eat this yourself!”
The manager’s surname was Ding. Having a face full of rotten grain thrown at him first thing in the morning, he quickly raised his sleeve to shield himself, his expression sour.
“Give it a rest, Nanny Xin. Do you think driving a carriage to the countryside is some kind of prize? Who even wanted to come this time? The supplies on the carriage weren’t prepared by me. Every debt has its debtor; if you’re so capable, walk back to the capital yourself and throw that rotten grain in the faces of the main mistress’s head nannies. Go throw your tantrum at the main mistress!” He wiped his face and shouted for the driver to begin the return trip.
A-mu grabbed Manager Ding by his topknot and collar, refusing to let go. “Make it clear before you leave! Which shameless old hag by the main mistress’s side handled this carriage of rotten grain? I’ll go back to the capital and fight them to the death!”
Manager Ding cried out in pain, clutching his scalp as they struggled, but he stubbornly refused to give up a name.
Several women who had come with the shipment rushed forward to free Manager Ding, clamoring in a chorus of threats. “Nanny Xin, stop this madness! Manager Ding has to report back to the main mistress about the Second Miss’s recovery in the countryside. If you tear Manager Ding’s fine clothes and make him lose face, he won’t be saying anything good about the Second Miss when he gets back!”
A-mu froze, and the hand gripping Manager Ding’s topknot lost its strength and let go.
Manager Ding scrambled away, clutching his head as he dashed out the door. He climbed onto the carriage and spat fiercely. “She’s been sent to the countryside, yet you’re still treating the Second Miss like a master? Like mother, like daughter! With a madwoman for a mother, who knows when the daughter will catch the same madness? The main family is already generous enough to feed you. You complain about rotten grain? Next time, you won’t even have that!”
A-mu was so angry she chased them out the door, pointing at the receding dust of the carriage. “You heartless, rotten-lunged servants! No matter how neglected she is, the Second Miss is still the biological daughter of the Head of the Wei Family! The blood of the Wei Family flows in her veins! You’ll face divine retribution for slighting your masters—!”
Two gatekeeping hags dragged A-mu back inside and shut the heavy doors.
By the time Nan Yang had put on her shoes and socks and walked into the courtyard, A-mu was still stubbornly sifting through the bags, hoping to find some edible kernels amidst the moldy grain.
Nan Yang reached in and ran her hand through a few handfuls. Choking on the smell of mold, she tied the bag shut and suggested, “Humans can’t eat this. A-mu, let’s sell it to the farmers who raise pigs.”
A-mu’s suppressed tears finally spilled over.
“The last shipment was in early spring. It’s already the sixth month, and only now have they sent another. I’m afraid the next one won’t come until after autumn, maybe even winter. These coming months…”
Choking back sobs, A-mu tossed the rotten grain aside and sat down on the ground.
“To leave the two of us all alone in the countryside… how are we to live?”
Nan Yang sat down beside A-mu and gently squeezed her wet nurse’s trembling shoulder.
“There are two of us in the house, and there are elders and neighbors outside. How are we alone? There is plenty of wild food in the countryside. We can pick mulberry leaves and elm seeds in the spring, and harvest lotus pods and water chestnuts in the summer. Between eating them and selling them, we’ll survive somehow.”
“Oh, my Second Miss, a person of your status shouldn’t be handling such peasant work.” A-mu’s eyes were red, sinking into a sadness she couldn’t escape.
“A young lady like you, in the flower of your youth, should be sitting comfortably at home, reading, drinking tea, and doing embroidery. You should have three or four personal maids attending to your needs and seven or eight servants outside cleaning the courtyard. You should be worry-free, simply waiting to be married… Look at the fabric they sent! This kind of coarse hemp is what farmers and peasant women wear to work in the fields…”
While A-mu continued her lament, Nan Yang got up and took a look around the kitchen.
The rice jar was perpetually empty; even field mice didn’t bother visiting. The millet porridge cooked last night sat in the pot, cooled into a solid mass.
Using a spatula, she cut out two neat square portions—one for A-mu and one for her own breakfast.
A-mu watched in stunned silence as Nan Yang changed into a short-styled coarse tunic, took a bamboo hat from the wall, and put on straw sandals. Her pale, delicate ankles were exposed to the light, making her look like an unrefined country girl. She hung a sickle for cutting grass at her waist and tied the thin string of the bamboo hat around her fair neck.
“Is the Second Miss going out again?”
A-mu said in alarm, “Both gatekeeping hags came today. They’re stationed right outside; they definitely won’t let you out.”
“Those two are incredibly lazy. They only showed their faces because someone from the main house was here. Now that Manager Ding is gone, they won’t stay at the gate. They’ve surely gone home.”
As she spoke, Nan Yang walked soundlessly to the closed main gate and gave it a pull.
The gate was locked from the outside with a bronze padlock. There was indeed no one outside.
Relieved, Nan Yang brought out a ladder, leaned it against the perimeter wall, and slowly climbed up.
The Wei Family was a prominent clan in the capital, and the estate they had established in this rural Ping An Town was one of the largest in the area; its walls were correspondingly high. Climbing out was a bit of a chore, so she was usually too lazy to leave.
But she had to go out now. She couldn’t just stay home and starve to death with A-mu.
The houses in town were all self-built and came in all shapes and sizes. The area around the Wei estate was mostly for wealthy families, consisting of orderly brick and tile houses.
The neighbors to the left had a five-year-old son who was currently standing outside his door, holding a bamboo hobbyhorse. His dark eyes went wide as he stared curiously at the girl appearing atop the courtyard wall.
“Sister Wei, are you climbing over the wall again?”
Nan Yang put her index finger to her lips, making a “shushing” gesture. The neighbor’s son realized what she meant and giggled, covering his own mouth.
A moment later, the boy lowered his hand and said to the girl walking past him:
“Sister Wei, today isn’t a good day to go out and play. My mother won’t let me out. She says it’s dangerous outside and that if I run too far, she’ll spank me.”
Nan Yang paused. “What kind of danger? I have to go out and find food today. If I don’t, I’ll go hungry.”
The boy looked horrified and waved his hands repeatedly. “In that case, you’d better go out.”
The neighbor’s wife, hearing the commotion, hurriedly scooped her son back inside. She cast a complex glance at Nan Yang from a distance, then lowered her head to scold her son:
“Don’t be a busybody. Get inside.”
Nan Yang adjusted her bamboo hat and kept walking.
The country paths weren’t sprinkled with water like the city roads. In the summer, the dust flew everywhere. The scent of scorched grass and earth, mixed with the stench of donkey droppings, wafted up, baked by the intense sun.
Even over the walls, she could hear the neighbor’s wife scolding her son from afar.
“That young lady of theirs has the madness; don’t talk to her. Didn’t you see the sickle hanging at her waist?! If she suddenly goes mad in the street and hacks at you a few times with that sickle, your little life will be gone for nothing. The Wei Family is a powerful house; common folk like us can’t afford to cross them, nor can we hide from them. We can only stay away.”
The boy’s voice was crisp and full of surprise. “Sister Wei isn’t a madwoman. She said she was going out to find food, otherwise she’d go hungry. Do people from big families go hungry too?”
“Little fool, you actually believed her? Didn’t you see the big carriage parked outside the Wei house this morning? They unloaded so many bags of grain and crates of fabric! The Wei Family are officials in the capital; how could they lack food? People with the madness just babble nonsense; you can’t believe a word they say…”
Nan Yang patted her stomach and muttered under her breath, “Who has the madness? Who’s babbling? I’m actually starving here. Who’d want to go out in this heat if they weren’t hungry?”
The sun overhead scorched the earth, and even the bamboo hat couldn’t block the rising heat that felt as though it might start a fire. She quickened her pace toward the river.
The rains had been plentiful this year, making it a good year for farming. This little town was nestled between mountains and water. In the height of summer, if one went deep into the river bends, one could pick lotus leaves, harvest water chestnuts, and dig for lotus pods. If luck was on her side, she might even catch a few fresh fish or shrimp in a net.
Remembering the five-year-old neighbor’s warning of “danger,” she kept a closer watch on the road.
As she left the town for the outer river, she noticed that the peddlers who usually shouted through the streets were nowhere to be seen. Even the long rows of village women who typically knelt by the irrigation channels to beat their laundry had vanished.
The rice and wheat in the fields were nearly ripe, large patches of golden stalks swaying in the breeze, yet even the farmers who tended the crops were few and far between. It was unclear where everyone had gone.
It was too quiet.
The empty ridges between the fields possessed an unusual stillness, a silence that made one feel uneasy.
The riverside was also strangely quiet.
Few families in the entire town owned boats. Every summer, when aquatic products were abundant, every family kept their boats under tight watch. Whether they went into the deep bays themselves for a good harvest or rented them out, no boat was ever wasted for a single day.
Today, however, there was no one at the water’s edge to watch the boats, and no one using them. Over a dozen small boats were tied haphazardly at the water’s edge, bobbing up and down with the waves.
Nan Yang waited for half a day but couldn’t find a boat owner. She shouted a few times toward her surroundings, but when no one answered, she untied the rope of one boat and jumped on.
To her surprise, as soon as the small boat moved and before she had even rowed ten feet, someone on the bank began to shout. “You girl on the boat! Who gave you permission to touch my family’s boat?”
It turned out there were still two or three women keeping watch over the boats. Because the sun was too intense, the women had hidden themselves far away in the shade of the trees. She hadn’t seen them, and they hadn’t noticed her.
Nan Yang was prepared. She counted out ten large coins from her purse and waved them toward the bank. “I’m not using your boat for free! Ten coins for an hour’s rental, and I’ll share some of the lotus pods I bring back with you, Sister!”
The woman on the bank shouted, “I don’t care about ten coins, come back! Things haven’t been peaceful around town these last two days!”
Nan Yang didn’t respond. She thought to herself that while she hadn’t seen any lack of peace on her way there, the millet porridge in her pot had definitely reached its end. The moldy grain sent from the capital was black; even pigs wouldn’t eat it, and she didn’t know if A-mu would be able to sell it to the farmers. There were six months left in the year; how were they to survive?
She rowed silently.
The small boat was designed for lotus picking—sharp at the bow and slender in the body. With a few strokes of the wooden oars, the bow cut through the water, turning up white waves like a small arrow heading into the deep bay.
Having been warned everywhere today that things were “unsettled,” Nan Yang rowed slowly, paying extra attention to her surroundings.
The boat glided smoothly into the depths of the lotus pond.
The sun approached noon. Wearing a large lotus leaf on her head, she filled the bow of the boat with lotus pods. She peeled and ate her fill of the plump lotus seeds. Her vision was filled with lotus flowers and flowing water, while fish darted beneath the leaves.
Aside from the sunlight being too bright and making her eyes ache, she didn’t see anything “unsettled.”
So, what kind of rumors had started to make the townspeople lock their doors and hide?
Her full stomach felt warm. Nan Yang felt a little sleepy, thinking that compared to the danger of starving to death behind closed doors, going out occasionally wasn’t actually that dangerous.
Once she returned home with her half-sack of lotus pods, no matter how dangerous it was outside, she just wouldn’t leave the house again…
Just as that thought crossed her mind, her slowly moving oar struck something unusual.
Something was drifting with the current, floating toward the boat. A faint scent of blood reached her nose.
Nan Yang instinctively turned her head, looking toward the large object bobbing beside the boat.
The moment she saw it clearly, she gasped sharply.
A dead horse was floating in the water.
It was a horse covered in wounds. Its limbs were sturdy, but its flesh was torn open, and ghastly white ribs protruded from its chest. It didn’t look like it had drowned; rather, it looked as if it had fallen from a great height and died.
The horse had clearly died recently; the blood flowing from the carcass was still seeping into the water in thin threads, clouding the clear surface.
The thing that had gently tapped against her wooden oar with the current was the horse’s mangled head.
Nan Yang stared thoughtfully for a while at the tragically dead horse in the water. Her gaze then moved across the surface, past the vast expanse of lotus flowers and leaves, toward the high ground on the opposite side of the pond.
She wasn’t sure if it was an illusion… but there seemed to be a figure lying motionless at the water’s edge.
The author has something to say:
Nan Yang: What dangerous thing is coming?
Male Lead: The horse dies before the person even appears…
Happy new story launch! Thank you all for waiting.
This is a light, restorative story, probably a mid-length novel. The style of the first chapter is the style of the whole book.