A night of autumn rain made the wind even colder the next day. Zhao Su Rui, wrapped in a cotton quilt and sitting on a wen chair, looked utterly dejected. He felt not only the chill of the wind but an even deeper coldness in his heart, so much so that he didn’t even want to speak.
Though his entire body was sweltering under the covers, his lower abdomen felt icy cold. Because of that one spot, the blood flowing through his body seemed to have frozen, sluggish and thick. His limbs felt weak, and even his mind seemed to be working poorly.
How was he supposed to live like this?
Leaning back in the chair, Zhao Su Rui stared blankly at a painting on the wall. A Chi entered carrying a food box and a copper pot, but he didn’t even glance at her, merely saying lightly:
“How long will this… last?”
He thought he appeared calm and composed, but in A Chi’s eyes, he looked like a plump quail lamenting the passing of spring after overeating.
Seeing how pitiful her young mistress looked, A Chi first poured a bowl of thick, steaming liquid from the copper pot. “Young mistress, drink some Four Substances Soup. Take good care of yourself, and you’ll be better in four or five days.”
Four or five days?!
Zhao Su Rui caught a whiff of the medicinal scent and glared at the bowl of hot soup. “What is this?”
“It’s to replenish your blood. The more you drink, the faster you’ll recover,” A Chi said, opening the food box and taking out a plate of shredded chicken leg, a plate of cabbage with black fungus, a few steamed buns made with brown sugar, and a bowl of plain porridge with red beans.
Zhao Su Rui eyed the dishes with dissatisfaction, pursed his lips, and then frowned at the bowl of herbal-scented soup.
“Replenish blood? What can a bowl of soup like this possibly do? You might as well have Tu Nan make me a braised pork knuckle.”
Hearing this, A Chi tried to persuade him: “Young mistress, it’s better to eat lightly during your monthly cycle, or else… it won’t smell pleasant.”
What wouldn’t smell pleasant?
Zhao Su Rui was momentarily confused, then glanced downward and realized what A Chi meant. He sneered coldly. “When soldiers are wounded in battle, everyone knows to give them meat to help them recover faster. I’m going to be bleeding for four or five days, and you’re telling me to eat lightly?”
A surge of agitation made Zhao Su Rui feel his anger inexplicably flare by three parts.
“What kind of nonsense is this?!”
A Chi stood to the side, utterly stunned.
She had served her young mistress for ten years, watching her transform from a talented, carefree daughter of a scholarly family into a restrained, placid young mistress of a marquis’ household. When she had to copy sutras for her in-laws just a month after entering the household, she endured it. When a courtesan followed her newlywed husband back from Nanjing, she endured it. When concubine after concubine entered the household and bore child after child, she endured it.
She had even endured it when Xie Feng’an asked her to compose poems for him to take to Nanjing.
But the first time A Chi saw her young mistress fly into such a rage was over a braised pork knuckle. She didn’t know whether her shock was due to her mistress’s anger or the pork knuckle itself.
A mere pork knuckle! And yet it seemed to carry the weight of the heavens in grievance!
The more Zhao Su Rui thought about it, the angrier he became. He tilted his head back and glared furiously at A Chi. “Bleeding for days, weak and exhausted, and I can’t even eat meat? If this were happening to a man who doesn’t have a monthly cycle, how absurd would that be? I’m injured too—why didn’t you tell me to eat lightly a few days ago?”
Beyond his rage, Zhao Su Rui felt an inexplicable sense of grievance.
Him! The Zhaode Emperor! Undefeated in northern expeditions and western campaigns! His civil and military achievements shone brightly in the annals of history! Yet now, merely because of this monthly affair, he couldn’t even eat braised pork knuckle?!
This was deceiving the sovereign!
This was treason!
“Go summon Tu Nan! I not only want to eat braised pork knuckle, I want it stewed rich and dark with thick sauce!”
Zhao Su Rui’s thunderous fury appeared to A Chi as her young mistress red-eyed, raising her voice in a spoiled tantrum.
Her heart ached terribly: “Young mistress, don’t be angry. You can eat whatever you want. It’s just a matter of giving the order. Why get so worked up? Be careful not to harm your health!”
“Braised pork knuckle!”
“Yes, yes, this servant will immediately summon Tu Nan to prepare braised pork knuckle for you.”
Watching A Chi’s retreating figure, Zhao Su Rui felt so stifled with anger that if this maid weren’t a woman, he would have long since kicked her backside to pulp!
Learning that her young mistress was angry over braised pork knuckle, Tu Nan—who had just finished punishing Xie Feng’an—hurried over.
“I want braised pork knuckle! Rich and oily with thick sauce! Stewed until falling-off-the-bone tender!”
Tu Nan quickly assented, looking up to see her red-eyed young mistress.
Still unsatisfied, Zhao Su Rui contemplated killing someone to vent his anger. His eyes shifting maliciously, he snarled:
“That scoundrel imprisoned in the cell—beat him three times daily!”
“Yes.”
Xie Feng’an was imprisoned in the donkey shed beside the mill in Zhuangzi’s side courtyard, along with several attendants he had brought.
The original detention place on the estate was the firewood shed, but Zhao Su Rui had packed it full with provisions and fuel for military training. The Xie family matrons previously held there had been driven to the livestock feed shed, where they daily ginned cotton and picked cotton seeds, with the dexterous ones assigned to weaving.
When Xie Feng’an was captured, only the donkey shed remained available.
To prevent escape or suicide, Xie Feng’an was bound hand and foot to the donkey tethering post, his mouth gagged. The estate’s donkeys, displaced by his presence, were confined to a pen three meters away.
Though the Ning’an Lord Manor had declined daily, Xie Feng’an had after all been raised in luxury. He initially thought being captured, bound, and forced to neighbor donkeys was nightmare enough, but this morning Shen Shiqing’s maid Tu Nan arrived at the mill. Without ceremony, she rolled up her sleeves, took the donkey whip, and flogged him. After finishing, she informed him he would receive three beatings daily—morning, noon, and evening.
Half-dead from the whipping, after Tu Nan left, Xie Feng’an appeared even more wretched than the mill-donkey.
Three beatings per day.
Three.
How could he endure this life?
Xie Feng’an thought of Ning’an Lord Manor, of Wan Niang with whom he had recently quarreled, of Su Yao’er who had accompanied him for years.
These thoughts gradually revived him. Life wasn’t without hope—he must survive to make that vile woman Shen Shiqing pay!
While mentally plotting how to humiliate Shen Shiqing, Xie Feng’an’s eyes widened in shock.
Not even two hours had passed! That Tu Nan—why had she returned?!
Tu Nan worked methodically, repeating the previous procedure: rolling up sleeves, taking the whip, delivering twenty lashes to Xie Feng’an’s body.
Furious and horrified, Xie Feng’an couldn’t even cry out.
“Young mistress says you’ll receive three additional beatings daily from now on.”
Xie Feng’an was unable to speak, and the man guarding them couldn’t help but say, “Sister Tu Nan, Lady Shen said to beat him three times a day. Why has it been increased to six?”
“If the lady says to add more, then we add more.” Tu Nan looked at Xie Feng’an. She knew her lady had no affection for Xie Feng’an and looked down upon this lecherous, pleasure-seeking dandy. Yet over the years, the grievances her lady had endured in the Xie Family partly stemmed from this man.
As a daughter-in-law of the Xie Family, her lady never missed morning and evening greetings, managed the inner household flawlessly—truly going above and beyond in duty and kindness. But what about this man before her? Had he ever shown her lady even a shred of kindness? In the entire Xie Family, who had truly treated her lady as a human being?
“The lady said six times daily. I’ll come to beat him once before and after each meal—morning, noon, and evening.”
After speaking, Tu Nan set down the whip, washed her hands, and put it away properly. If not for the sword hanging at her waist, her simple cross-collared jacket and deep blue trailing skirt made her look like nothing more than an ordinary maid from a secluded household.
Having finished the whipping and stated the rules, the unassuming deep-household maid Tu Nan turned and walked out. Her lady’s braised pork knuckle was still simmering in the kitchen, and she couldn’t stay away for too long.
The donkey at the mill leisurely chewed on hay, while Xie Feng’an, half-conscious from the beating, lay with his neck crooked, weeping.
The burly man guarding him felt somewhat sympathetic. As a tenant farmer from Zhuangzi who had never met the Xie Family’s second young master before, he truly believed the man before him was a thief. Clicking his tongue, he said:
“Why did you, this thief, have to impersonate Lady Shen’s husband? Lady Shen is so capable and shrewd—her husband must be a top-tier hero in the world. How could a thief like you pretend to be him?”
Xie Feng’an had nearly cried himself dry of tears.
If he had known Shen Shiqing was this vicious, he… he… why hadn’t his mother and grandmother sent anyone to look for him yet?
Little did Xie Feng’an know that after he left the city, Wan Niang packed her belongings and quietly left the estate with her maids and valuables, returning to Jinyang.
By the time Lady Sun Shi, the wife of the Earl of Anning, learned of this, the Feng family’s carriage had already left Yanjing City and was on the main road—impossible to catch up with. Unable to find her son, she assumed Xie Feng’an had gone to Jinyang with them.
The servants and attendants he had brought were all captured by Pei Feng, leaving no one to send word into Yanjing City. Thus, in the vast Earl of Anning’s estate, no one knew he was trapped here.
The well-fed donkey brayed a few times, and Xie Feng’an looked at it with a hint of envy.
This donkey didn’t get beaten as much as he did in a day.
Returning to the kitchen, Tu Nan ran into Xia He, who was fetching food for Qing Ying. When their eyes met, Tu Nan nodded.
Xia He, however, felt somewhat embarrassed. She intended to step aside, but Tu Nan bypassed her and walked to the large stove.
“I was truly blind before, failing to see that Sister Tu Nan was a sword-bearing heroine.”
As soon as she said this, Xia He wished she could slap herself.
In the past, she had been ambitious and aggressive, acting arrogantly when favored. As the young mistress’s maid, Tu Nan had naturally suffered her share of mistreatment from Xia He.
Now, with her own status lowered and Qing Ying’s life saved thanks to Tu Nan, Xia He wanted to say something pleasant. But the words came out sounding sarcastic even to her own ears.
Tu Nan paid no attention to her tone and simply asked the little maid tending the stove if anyone had touched the lady’s pork knuckle.
Xia He opened her mouth behind her, then closed it dejectedly.
Seeing Xia He leave, the young maid whispered, “Aunt Xia is trying to curry favor now, but wasn’t she quite imposing before? If she had known it would come to this, why didn’t she accumulate some virtue back then? I heard from others that Qing Ying ended up in such a state because of Aunt Xia.”
Tu Nan poked the pork knuckle with her chopsticks and said softly:
“The young lady once said that Ning’an Lord Manor is merely an illusion—power is false, affection is false, wealth and glory are false, and even the scheming is false. Now that Aunt Xia has seen through the illusion, why should you keep remembering her past foolishness? Once the illusion shatters, no one feels the pain more keenly than she does.”
The young maid pouted and said no more.
Outside the kitchen, Xia He had not gone far. Hearing Tu Nan’s words, her hands trembled as she held the meal, nearly dropping it.
Qing Ying had woken up that morning. After recognizing Xia He, she remained silent but spat in her face—the saliva mixed with blood.
Returning to the side courtyard, Xia He had just entered the room when she saw Qing Ying shudder violently on the bed, her eyes snapping open in panic.
Xia He forced a smile and said gently, “I’ve brought you some food…”
Qing Ying’s eyes first glanced at the food, then fixed intently on Xia He’s face. Finally, she spoke her first words since waking up that morning.
“In this state, the Second Young Master would certainly not want me.”
You need not scheme so meticulously to harm me again.
Xia He understood Qing Ying’s meaning. Her lips quivered as she picked up the bowl of minced meat porridge and took a large gulp.
Setting the bowl down, she stared back just as intently at Qing Ying:
“I know you can no longer trust me, so hate me instead! Survive, and hate me!”