Shen Huaijing moved with ruthless cruelty. He slammed Song Xia down onto the bed, pinning her delicate throat with one hand and leaving her almost unable to breathe.
Song Xia struggled desperately, but her body still lacked any strength beyond what yesterday’s snacks had provided, leaving her able to do little more than claw frantically at Shen Huaijing’s arm.
After scratching a few bloody marks into Shen Huaijing’s arm, Song Xia realized he still showed no sign of letting go. Growing desperate, she lifted her leg and delivered a fierce kick straight toward his lower body.
Likely sensing Song Xia’s aggressive counterattack, Shen Huaijing sidestepped to dodge the kick while simultaneously releasing his grip on her throat.
Released from his stranglehold, Song Xia flipped over onto her stomach on the bed, coughing violently and hacking away. Her extremely lean frame was hunched over the mattress, and the shape of her shoulder blades could be clearly seen right through her clothes.
“You!” Song Xia turned her head to glare at Shen Huaijing with fury, her voice turning hoarse. She had almost been choked to death by him!
“My apologies. I thought you were an assassin,” Shen Huaijing apologized with zero sincerity, stating coldly, “Who told you to climb onto the bed?”
“It was you! You’re the one who threw me onto the bed, weren’t you?! How on earth could there be an assassin in a proper home like this?!” Song Xia was about to explode with rage. Just yesterday she had been plotting how to treat Shen Huaijing’s illness, but now all she wanted to do was kick him to death.
“Who told you to get so close to me?”
“I wanted to see if you were dead!” Song Xia immediately snapped back, only realizing how inappropriate the words were the moment they left her mouth. This wasn’t modern society; talking casually about life and death was a taboo here, especially when speaking to someone already in poor health. If the guy flew into a rage, beat her to death, and buried her somewhere… his family looked like they had quite a bit of influence, after all…
Startled by her own imagination, Song Xia hurriedly patched things up. “No, what I meant was, since I woke up, I wanted to see if you were feeling uncomfortable anywhere so I could take good care of you. I just didn’t expect you to launch a sneak attack!”
After finishing her explanation, Song Xia peeked sideways at Shen Huaijing. Seeing his expression was normal, she immediately jumped off the bed to clean up the tea stains that had spilled across the mattress earlier, firing questions at Shen Huaijing as she tidied up.
“Uhm, Young Master Shen.” Song Xia didn’t know how to address him. Calling him by name felt impolite, and calling him husband made her feel creeped out just thinking about it. In the end, she fell back on how characters addressed each other in television dramas, asking, “How come there doesn’t seem to be anything in this room of ours?”
When Song Xia had been wandering around the room earlier, she noticed some strange things. Though this was supposedly their bridal chamber, other than a few double-happiness characters pasted on the doors and windows and a new quilt placed on the bed, none of the other expected items were anywhere to be found—no red silk lanterns, no lotus seeds, no peanuts, absolutely nothing.
The absence of these things could perhaps be excused by Shen Huaijing’s frail health; perhaps he disliked having too many people decorating his room and disturbing his rest, which was somewhat understandable.
However, Song Xia discovered that apart from that, the room lacked even the standard utensils and implements regular occupants used daily. Even when she had intended to look for a fresh bedsheet to change into earlier, she discovered that the wardrobe contained only a single outfit belonging to Shen Huaijing and nothing else.
The room possessed virtually no traces of daily life.
Puzzled, Song Xia looked over at Shen Huaijing, only to see him sitting cross-legged on the bed, smiling as he watched her. “Because we’re moving house right after getting married, of course.”
Song Xia felt that his smile and tone finally carried a touch of human warmth.
Did moving make him that happy, then?
And what did he mean by moving house right after getting married??
Song Xia soon understood: this was a household division.
Song Xia didn’t mind at all. Moving out was even better; once she left behind this grand, influential scholar’s household and was left with only herself and Shen Huaijing, wouldn’t it be even easier for her to leave later on?
At this thought, Song Xia cheered up as well.
This cheerful mood of Song Xia’s lasted all the way until she sat in a carriage heading toward the outskirts of the city.
Their group departed from the Shen estate in the county town, traveling from dawn until dusk, passing through several county seats and walking for two full days. The further they went, the more remote the surroundings became, until they finally arrived at what could only be described as a dilapidated little village.
Song Xia’s heart had cooled by half once they left the city, and it froze completely solid when she stepped down after two bumpy days of travel to lay eyes on this small mountain village.
Tucked away in a mountain hollow and surrounded on all sides by peaks, the small settlement was connected to the outside world by a single dirt road. The village itself was tiny, appearing to consist of only thirty or forty households. All along their journey, they saw nothing but hilly dirt slopes, and peasants laboring in the fields rolled up their trouser legs and wore straw hats as they stared curiously at the arriving group.
Along the road into the village, a cluster of children swarmed up, following the carriage with curious shouts, until a group of women resting and working nearby yelled at them. Only then did the kids scatter with giggles and shouts. It was an exceptionally ordinary, even rather poor little village.
The group stopped in front of a tile-roofed courtyard that looked noticeably grander than the surrounding village homes.
Sitting in the carriage, Song Xia stared in disbelief at Shen Huaijing. Upon seeing her expression, Shen Huaijing flashed his very first genuine, heartfelt smile, and Song Xia caught a flash of mischievous, successful cunning in the corners of his eyes.
“Young Master Shen, Young Mistress Shen, we’ve delivered you both safely. The house here has already been had repaired by the old master’s orders. You and the young mistress can rest and recover your health here with peace of mind. Food and drink have also been arranged by the madam, and someone will deliver them regularly. The young master will be sent over in a couple of days as well, so don’t worry. If there’s nothing else, we’ll head back first; there are still plenty of matters to attend to at home.”
Right, aside from the two of them being banished back to the countryside, there was also Shen Huaijing’s nine-year-old younger brother, Shen Chunming.
The junior steward who escorted them unloaded the two cartloads of goods into the courtyard and prepared to take his leave. Shen Huaijing offered no polite retention. Seeing Shen Huaijing exchange pleasantries before glancing toward her, Song Xia immediately stepped forward and handed over the small pouch of money she had prepared.
Accepting the coin pouch, the junior steward’s smile turned a fraction more genuine as he added a few reassuring words: “It’s actually quite nice for you two to live out here, Young Mistress. The countryside has great scenery, far away from all those idle gossips, making it ideal for recuperation. You can even raise flowers and birds in your spare time, right? Besides, this village is our clan’s home village; although there are quite a few outsiders, the village chief shares the Shen surname and is a distant relative of ours, so he can look after you if anything comes up later. Furthermore, the master won’t let the two of you stay here forever; you’re bound to be brought back eventually, so put your minds at ease and settle in.”
Song Xia couldn’t catch every nuance of his underlying implications, but she could sense his goodwill, so she politely exchanged a few more courtesies and saw him off.
Song Xia could guess a thing or two from the junior steward’s remarks, but Shen Huaijing showed no inclination to discuss the specific details with her.
Since she couldn’t rely on Shen Huaijing to explain things, Song Xia sighed—she would just take it one step at a time.
With that thought, Song Xia looked up again at the house she would likely be calling home for a long time.
It was a small courtyard featuring a four-room structure with grey bricks and tiled roofing: a main hall split into a large and a small section, alongside two small wing rooms—one designated for storing sundries and the other serving as a kitchen. There was also a water well inside the courtyard, which solved their water supply issue. This house had probably been rebuilt back when the Shen family first made their fortune; it was neat but not large. Because it had been uninhabited for a long time, despite Old Master Shen sending people to clean it up in advance, the place still bore a distinctly dilapidated appearance.
Looking at the tattered, broken tiles along the roof, Song Xia had a nagging suspicion that the Shen steward’s claim about having the place “repaired” contained an awful lot of water.
I wonder if it leaks when it rains? Song Xia thought with a trace of worry.
Shen Huaijing didn’t dwell on such thoughts, simply starting to move their luggage into the house piece by piece. Watching Shen Huaijing laboring away made Song Xia’s teeth ache in secondhand sympathy.
Although malnutrition had left her own body thin and small, years of hard labor meant she possessed a fair bit of strength. Combined with the fact that she was a sound, able-bodied modern individual, watching this sickly beauty cough while hauling items evoked a strong sense of guilt.
Hurrying forward, Song Xia intercepted the chair right out of Shen Huaijing’s hands and told him, “Stop moving things around. Look at how your coughing keeps getting worse. Go rest over there for a bit—I’ll carry the rest.”
With that, she cast a glance at the miscellaneous piles of luggage cluttering the courtyard and muttered under her breath, “This Scholar Shen is really lacking in basic decency.”
Song Xia could roughly guess that as an orphan raised under the care of the Shen family, Shen Huaijing’s status was probably somewhat awkward. Since the two of them had married, splitting off into a separate household was understandable. Even so, packing them off to the countryside and dumping their belongings before immediately leaving still felt rather cold and heartless.
Still, he was ultimately Shen Huaijing’s uncle. As a newly wedded wife with a nominal title, she figured it was best to keep her mouth shut.
Sighing, Song Xia rolled up her sleeves, hoisted a chair inside to put it down, and came back out for the next load.
Ignoring her advice, Shen Huaijing continued carrying a few items of his own. Song Xia glanced at what he was moving this time: a few books and a handful of writing brushes.
The items weren’t heavy, so she let him carry them if he wished.
Just then, several women’s voices drifted in from outside the gate.
“Hey, look over there! Did someone arrive?”
“Don’t shove me! With those two big cartloads of goods just now? Someone definitely moved in!”
“Wonder who got sent to live here. This place has stood empty for who knows how many years, strange to see someone living in it this year.”
“Auntie Liu, you’re just drooling over their big tile-roofed house! Why don’t you make your old man open up a couple more mu of fields so he can build you one too!”
“Go on with you! Even if he worked himself to death in the fields, he couldn’t build me a house with tile roofing!”
“Ain’t that the truth, Shan’er? Who’s as blessed as you, marrying into the eldest Shen family and getting to live in a tiled house right off the bat? The rest of us probably don’t have that kind of luck, hmph!”
“Tch! My eldest Shen works his fingers to the bone day and night, while those lazy bums in your households are good for nothing. If you aren’t happy, dump them and find someone else!”
“Well, if you’re willing to let your eldest Shen take another wife, I wouldn’t mind ditching my man and trading up.”
A flurry of cheerful female bantering and laughter drifted from outside the gate.
A moment later, Song Xia saw a woman wearing a silver hairpin in her hair poking her head in through the entrance to peer inside, her gaze quickly locking onto Song Xia and Shen Huaijing.
Song Xia noticed the woman’s gaze pause on Shen Huaijing, a flash of astonished admiration crossing her face, before shifting immediately to herself with a warm, friendly smile as she walked straight in.
“Hey there, sister! I’m from the Big Bull Shen household right next door. I saw people suddenly arriving and figured I’d pop over to see if you needed a hand with anything!” The woman spoke in a straightforward manner, sporting a round face and a welcoming smile that radiated warmth. Song Xia immediately felt a sense of goodwill toward her.
“Thank you, sister-in-law. We just arrived and haven’t had a chance to pay our respects to the neighbors yet,” Song Xia replied in a gentle tone.
“Psh, what respects or no respects! We don’t stand on such ceremony here! Just call me Sister-in-law Shan’er from now on!” Sister-in-law Shan’er waved a hand with a laugh.
“Mm-hmm, Sister-in-law Shan’er. My name is Song Xia; you can call me Xiaxia or little Song,” Song Xia replied, glancing over at Shen Huaijing and hesitating whether to introduce him as well.
Sister-in-law Shan’er’s curious gaze had already darted back and forth between the two of them several times.
Fortunately, Shen Huaijing seemed to catch Song Xia’s hesitation. Cupping his hands in a greeting, he said, “I am Shen Huaijing, Song Xia’s husband.”
“Oh—” Sister-in-law Shan’er’s curiosity was satisfied. She could tell the two of them still seemed somewhat unfamiliar with each other, which made complete sense if they were a newly wedded couple—after all, in arranged marriages where bride and groom had never met, awkwardness between newlyweds was par for the course.
Author’s Note:
None