Five months ago, Pei Shumin received a letter from Shen Mingyu.
Actually, it wasn’t just a letter; there was also a chest of silver ingots and land deeds sent by her. At the time, the village was in an uproar, but he didn’t go to look. He simply stayed in his courtyard, concentrating on doing his own work.
He didn’t want to look, and he couldn’t be bothered to look either.
Yet that group of guards still found their way to his home, shoving over a box of silver and claiming it was given by their Fourth Young Lady. He merely glanced at it, remaining completely unmoved. The only thing he did was unseal the letter written to him.
What did he think Shen Mingyu would write?
He thought she would repent, thought she would say that after she lived a good life for a while longer, she would come back to find him.
As it turned out, facts proved that he had overthought things.
There was nothing in that letter—no repentance, no promises. It was a long, rambling piece that merely urged him to eat well, drink well, and walk his path well, adding that it would be even better if he could find a good marital match. He lived in a daze for half a month, and at this very moment, he finally became certain that she would never come back.
And calling three thousand taels a repayment, of all things.
Did she think he was that desperate for money? When the Marquis of Wu’an came looking for him back then, he had never even thought of returning with them.
He had overestimated her.
What “Mingyu,” what “good Mingyu”—she was nothing more than an unfeeling, fickle, and vanity-loving woman.
Looking back at this sprawling, lengthy letter, he could only find it laughable.
Her handwriting was still the same, written without much fluency, looking like dark, thick, plump caterpillars—childish and funny, yet bearing a slight resemblance to the tail-strokes of his own writing.
He recalled how he had taught her to write stroke by stroke in that thatched cottage. Having taught her for so long, it turned out that what she wrote out was not deep affection, but hypocrisy.
Later on, he decided to forget her. He stopped sinking into depression and began pondering his own way out.
The Zhou family had extended an olive branch to him, and he had considered whether or not to form a marital alliance with them.
After pondering for five days, he decided against it. If he were to pursue an official career, forming an alliance with the Zhou family would indeed be advantageous; relying on his placement in the provincial exams and the Zhou family’s connections, he could surely secure an official post in Pingyang County.
Yet he no longer wanted to pursue an official career. Why should he work so hard to tread that path?
Clearly, there was a wind he could leverage to rise straight to the top.
Later on, he ran about busily, and as the Marquis of Wu’an had previously suggested, he sent a letter to the Prefect of Mizhou.
Nowadays, bureaucratic factions in the capital were diverse and divided. The Marquis of Wu’an had mentioned that the letters sent would pass through layers of transfer, ultimately ending up in who-knows-whose hands. The Prefect of Mizhou, however, belonged to the Emperor’s inner circle, and an outpost set up there was specifically designated for transmitting classified secret orders.
It occurred to him that he truly had a bond of destiny with the Marquis of Wu’an’s family; the daughter their family lost had somehow been picked up by him. Remembering the strict distinctions of status and hierarchy in the words of the Marquis’s concubine back then, Pei Shumin let out a mocking laugh.
During the days of waiting, he reorganized his livelihood, sold the storefront in Pingyang County in exchange for silver, and even learned how to ride a horse.
Uncle Zhao had also tried to persuade him, reminding him how hard he had worked to secure that storefront in the past, and asking why he was selling it off just as the business was growing increasingly prosperous.
Yet he said nothing in reply, only telling Uncle Zhao to take good care of himself. In the future, he might never return to Pingyang again.
Later still came the black-armored guards of the imperial city.
At this moment, Pei Shumin stood amidst the heavy snow, watching them continuously carry old items out from the house.
There were letters he had written and worn, gray cloth garments; all of them were tossed into a bonfire piled high with brushwood.
The fire burned them to ashes, severing the past. From then on, White Cloud Village would no longer hold a person named him.
Finally, the black-armored guards carried out a stack of garments from the house.
This time, they were women’s garments.
Light pink, coarse ramie skirts, a blue cloth headwrap, along with thick winter padded jackets…… densely packed, every single one of them made by her own hands, embroidered with fluttering butterflies.
“Your Highness, should these be burned as well?”
“Burn the lot.”
Pei Shumin swept a glance over them with an indifferent gaze, his fists tightly clenched, leaving deep, red impressions in his palms.
At the hour of midnight, horses galloped across the flatlands.
The wild wind outdoors was fierce and biting, and dark silhouettes flew past the rustling official road. This road was wide and well-paved, the easiest route to take when leaving Pingyang. Yet just as they traveled a dozen li forward, they suddenly heard the heart-rending, mournful wails of a woman.
The commotion came from not far away, from a dwelling on the right side of the official road.
With the sky full of flying snow and the endless night, Pei Shumin reined in his horse and glanced toward that direction.
The windows cast a dim, yellowish light, and several shadows of women moved back and forth. Pang Congzhi, assuming his master was unaware, lowered his voice to remind him: “That household must have a woman in labor.”
The wails were piercing and desolate. Pei Shumin’s silent gaze reflected the pitch-black night, and a shadow suddenly drifted across his mind. For some reason, he unexpectedly thought of her—a person he ought not to think about.
When she gives birth, will she also scream like this, with such sorrow and pain?
Suddenly, he lowered his gaze and shook his head, mocking himself for being foolish. Even if she gave birth in the future, it would be for some other man; what was there for him to worry about? Pei Shumin gave a self-deprecating tug at the corner of his mouth.
He looked away and rode his horse onward alongside the black-armored soldiers.
Pang Congzhi, however, from the gaze his master had just withdrawn, recalled a certain matter—at the end of last year, the Sovereign received news from the Marquis of Wu’an, which mentioned that the Crown Prince had once taken a wife; because he lived long-term in a village, the woman he married was merely a peasant girl. Yet when he arrived to fetch the Crown Prince, he seemed not to have seen this person anywhere in the courtyard.
Pang Congzhi felt it was strange and, fearing he might have missed a duty, could not help asking: “This subject heard that Your Highness once had a wife; does she need to be brought back to the capital together? His Majesty is broad-minded and grants special leniency; if she can serve Your Highness well, even though she is a peasant girl, she can still be magnanimously granted the rank of a imperial concubine or lady.”
As soon as Pang Congzhi finished speaking, he noticed that the Crown Prince’s expression had not shifted in the slightest.
After a long pause, a cold reply came: “No need. She is not worthy.”
She was utterly unworthy; he loathed even sparing her an extra glance.
“That kind of unfeeling, fickle wretch is nothing worth bringing back.”
The initial snow melted, and the warm winter sun climbed into the azure sky. It was not until the bright sunlight shone through the gauze curtains that Shen Mingyu awakened from her deep slumber.
The Marchioness sat by the bedside, accompanied by a wet nurse holding the infant.
She was using a soft cloth soaked in warm water to gently wipe the sweat from her daughter’s forehead.
When Yu’er went into labor last night, she suffered through the pains for the better part of the night, and as a mother, she too had not slept a wink all night.
Seeing her daughter wake up, she joyfully clasped her hands in prayer: “Thank the heavens, truly thank the heavens…… Yu’er, are you thirsty, are you hungry? If you’re hungry, I’ll have someone bring over the medicinal broth. It’s already stewed and kept warm on the stove.”
The young maiden gazed at these things—her mother, the gauze bed-curtains draped at the head of the bed, the spacious and bright room, the warm sunlight streaming through the windows, and the maidservants busy wiping down the tables and chairs.
She remained in a daze for a moment before her consciousness finally migrated back from that distant, crude thatched hut, moving right into the luxurious Marquis’s manor. She finally realized that after aching for the better part of the night, she had given birth to a child.
“Mother, where is the baby?”
“Right here.” The Marchioness took the child from the wet nurse’s hands and handed it over for her to look at.
She saw the baby sleeping soundly, its soft little face buried in embroidered swaddling clothes, its tiny fingers still twitching slightly. The Marchioness looked at the child with a smile: “Look, how fair and well-behaved it is, how much it looks like you!”
Shen Mingyu lowered her gaze to look, gently touching the swaddling clothes.
This was the child belonging to her and Pei Lang; even now that it had been born, a sense of unfamiliarity still remained.
Though she had carried it for ten months, it felt as though she and this baby were still not very familiar with each other.
Compared to the unfamiliarity between her daughter and the child, the Marchioness appeared far more affectionate.
This baby was very well-behaved; ever since that initial loud cry right after it came out, it had fallen asleep quietly without needing the wet nurse to coax it, and it didn’t fuss at all. Although its features hadn’t fully blossomed yet, it looked adorable. Through the child’s brows and eyes, she could faintly perceive that Yu’er’s husband must have been exceptionally handsome.
The Marchioness carefully handed the baby over to the wet nurse, letting her take it away to sleep. Thinking back to the incident of the swapped children years ago, lingering fears remained, and she gave stern and repeated instructions to Caihuan once more.
After everyone had cleared out and quieted down, maidservants came in to change the hot water, and Jiang Lan continued to soak a towel to help her daughter wipe herself.
Even though she hadn’t experienced the pain of childbirth for over a dozen years, recalling last night’s agonizing cries reawakened memories of her own past labors. While wiping, she asked with a heart full of distress: “Yu’er, is giving birth tiring?”
Shen Mingyu nodded, then hurriedly shook her head. Jiang Lan smiled: “What’s this? Both tiring and not tiring at all.”
Carrying the child had been very tiring. Shen Mingyu recalled the later months of her pregnancy, especially when the sixth month arrived, when her lower back and spine would always ache. Afterward, her legs swelled and needed people to massage them, and she slept with anxiety about crushing her belly. Later still, as the months grew larger and the belly grew heavier, walking too much made her legs and feet hurt.
Those things aside, the rare delicacies of mountain and sea she enjoyed hadn’t lasted long before turning into plain medicinal broths—that was the most unbearable part.
However, now that the precious baby was born, it felt as though a heavy burden had been lifted; instead, she felt much lighter.
Half an hour later, after consuming her medicinal broth, her daughter lay back down to rest.
Jiang Lan lowered the gauze bed-curtains for her, stepped out of the room on tiptoe, and the maidservants likewise quietly withdrew on their own, leaving only those keeping watch in the outer parlor.
With the bitter cold of the twelfth lunar month freezing everything, Caihuan handed over a gold-inlaid beast-shaped hand warmer baked with charcoal cakes. Jiang Lan tucked it into her sleeves, feeling the chilly, biting wind rush toward her face.
She thought of a matter: “That’s right, how has Yan’er been doing lately?”
Caihuan replied: “The Third Young Lady still stays inside her own courtyard every day, doing some needlework, practicing calligraphy or painting, or playing leaf-cards with the maidservants. There is nothing unusual.”
Jiang Lan nodded: “It looks as though she has settled her mind. In a few days, we can have the matrons come over to teach her household management affairs. Her marriage is also fast approaching; have people keep an eye on things and make sure no clever tricks are pulled.”
Caihuan acknowledged the order. “Mistress, there is one more matter.”
“This servant heard news coming from the Marquis’s side—there is great joyous news: General Wei Guo is returning to the capital, and Grand Madam Qi is coming back along with him. They will be able to reach the capital in five days.”
Grand Madam Qi was the mother of General Wei Guo, as well as Jiang Lan’s lifelong bosom friend. Jiang Lan was exceedingly delighted; she had heard earlier that they were returning, but after waiting several months without seeing any trace, now that they were truly coming back, it was happening so swiftly.
With her daughter found and even Grand Madam Qi returning home, Jiang Lan had never felt such joy before. She felt that fortune was smiling upon them this season; they had truly weathered the dark clouds to see the bright moon at last.
Turning around, she instructed the maidservants: “All of you go to the storehouses to pick out things—we want the finest gifts. As soon as Lady Qi returns to the capital, we will pay a formal visit.”
As day and night alternated, evening darkness descended.
Four days later, at the hour of戌 (戌時, 7 PM to 9 PM), inside a room of the servant quarters at the southeast corner of the Marquis’s manor, several carriage drivers were drinking alcohol and chatting idly, the entire room reeking heavily of wine.
Suddenly, the cold wind shrank back, and amidst the fluttering snow and wind, a man wearing short coarse-cloth garments pushed open the door.
He had just finished feeding grass to the horses in the stables, and as soon as he stepped inside, he heard someone shouting. That burly carriage driver called out: “Huai’en, did you help me buy back the wine?”
“Bought it.”
The man in short cloth garments took a wineskin out from his bosom and handed it over to him.
The other man uttered a word of thanks, tipped his head back to gulp down the wine, chewed peanuts as a snack to accompany his drink, and urged the other two brothers beside him: “The three of us must get to sleep a bit earlier tonight; tomorrow the Marchioness is going out, and Steward Xue has scheduled us to drive the carriages.”
“Why is the Marchioness going out?” The short-garmented man asked abruptly.
That man scratched his head and casually blurted out: “Seemingly heard it’s to go see Grand Madam Qi, going to General Dingguo’s residence.”
The short-garmented man gave a faint “oh,” his expression as normal as ever, and together with the carriage drivers, he continued using his chopsticks to pick at the drinking snacks.