Lan Jin watched him calmly accept the bows from the assembled nobles before striding away. Though she had long known of his immense power, witnessing it firsthand gave her a true sense of its weight.
Yet, observing his actions today, he didn’t seem as domineering and tyrannical as the rumors suggested?
Suppressing this thought, Lan Jin focused on the matter at hand.
“The second matter is settled. Next comes the third.” Lan Jin turned to Marquis Chengen. “I suppose the Marquis wishes to see the guests out first.”
With Lin Xihe’s unexpected interference, Yu Qing feared Lan Jin might go back on her word. Relieved to see her keeping her promise, he clasped his hands in a sweeping bow and said, “I’ve made a spectacle of myself before you all today. I shall make amends on another occasion.”
Having enjoyed this grand spectacle, the guests departed contentedly. Though curious about the next matter, they knew the outcome was inevitable—since the other party had brought a coffin, it was clear that Madam Qi, supposedly sent back to her ancestral home for burial, must still have her remains within the Marquis Mansion.
Tsk, tsk. How heartless Marquis Chengen was toward his lawful wife!
Once the guests left, the noisy courtyard fell silent.
The Old Madam quietly counted the number of guards and felt reassured. She snorted coldly, “You only caught us off guard earlier. Now, my Marquis Mansion has nothing to fear from you.”
“How could a prestigious Marquis Mansion fear me? It is I, a commoner, who should fear the Marquis Mansion.” Though her words said so, Lan Jin’s tone and demeanor were relaxed and at ease. She turned and instructed, “Send someone to invite the monks in.”
The person at the far end acknowledged and hurried off.
“Monks?” Marquis Chengen, having just returned from escorting the guests to the front courtyard, heard this and grew furious, though he hesitated. “If you invite monks, won’t all of the capital know Madam Qi is still in my Marquis Mansion?”
“So, it’s this easy to make the Marquis admit it.” Lan Jin smiled, her eyes filled with mockery. “If I intended to make a scene, I wouldn’t just invite two monks. I’d hire a full band of musicians, especially three or five suona players, to let the entire city hear. Surely the Marquis doesn’t think I couldn’t afford to hire them?”
“You…” Marquis Chengen was left speechless by her retort and could only threaten, “I advise you to leave some room for decency.”
“Thank you for the advice, but I’ve never been fond of lectures.” Lan Jin had no patience for his empty words. She motioned for Zhao Tang to move aside the chair she had been sitting on, then knelt and gently patted the ground, whispering soothingly, “Rest easy. I’ll take you away from this filthy place soon.”
She truly knew where Madam Qi was!
Marquis Chengen stared at her actions, his heart gripped by an invisible hand, his breath short and rapid.
Though he had suspected it from the moment she sat in that spot, only now did he feel the sword hanging over his head finally fall.
He couldn’t understand—how was it possible? How could this woman know? He was certain only Madam Qi had been present at the time. Afterward, he had immediately found an excuse to send their daughter away and transferred most of Madam Qi’s attendants under the pretext of caring for her. How could anyone else know the truth?!
“The Marquis seems rather surprised?” Lan Jin glanced at Zhi Yue. “Tell him. Let him understand what it means when justice prevails and no wrongdoing goes unpunished.”
Yu Zhiyue complied, meeting her father's gaze as she spoke each word with deliberate force: "Because that day, I was playing hide-and-seek with the maids and hid in the wardrobe in Mother's room. She watched me hide inside. When you were strangling her, I wanted to rush out, but Mother looked at me and pointed her finger, forbidding me to move."
No matter how much time had passed, recalling that scene always brought tears streaming down Yu Zhiyue's face: "Mother wanted me to live, so I must live well. But I needed to know where you would hide Mother's body, so I feigned illness for a few days. Sure enough, I saw you burying her under this tree in the middle of the night. Later, you used such a clumsy excuse to send me back to my maternal grandfather's hometown. I pretended to refuse, crying to see Mother. You claimed I was still unwell and had someone wearing a veil impersonate Mother to coax me into leaving, and I pretended to be fooled. After that, you timed it so Mother would die in childbirth, then used mourning for her as a reason to bring me to the Yu family's ancestral home. I didn't resist. I knew that only by staying under your control without raising suspicion could I survive."
Yu Zhiyue pointed at her father, her voice trembling with sorrow: "Yu Qing, you killed your wife and the child in her womb with your own hands. When you wake from nightmares in the dead of night, do you not have bad dreams?"
Yu Qing retreated two steps but immediately stood his ground again, stepping back to his original position, his voice rising sharply: "What does a little girl like you know! The Qi family offended the Fourth Prince. Who is the Fourth Prince? He is the prince most likely to become the Crown Prince. The Qi family cannot recover! But your mother wanted me to exhaust the remaining influence of the Chengenhou Manor to rescue the Qi family. I helped, I tried my best, yet she still resented me for not doing enough and even threatened me with the unborn child. How could I let a woman like her ruin the future of the Marquis Mansion? She said that without her family, she no longer wanted to live. I granted her wish. What did I do wrong?"
Yu Zhiyue retorted with an even louder voice: "And what did she do wrong? She only wanted to save her own family!"
"Zhiyue, calm down. Don't fall into his trap." Lan Jin interrupted the young girl, who was overwhelmed by emotion. "He wanted to kill your mother because she was no longer useful to him. The Qi family was his offering to pledge allegiance to the Fourth Prince."
Yu Zhiyue, still young, paused for a moment before understanding the meaning behind these words. She asked the person she trusted most in disbelief: "Was my maternal grandfather's downfall caused by him?"
"Exactly." Lan Jin stood up, looking at the panicked Marquis Chengen. "You are still young. Carrying the truth of your mother's death is already a heavy burden. These grievances need not fall on you. Others will remember them."
Yu Zhiyue's gaze toward her father no longer held hatred, only confusion. She could not understand how a person could be so heartless.
The Marquis Chengen lineage had dwindled to an empty shell by this generation. It was her mother who fell in love with her father at a flower-viewing banquet and married into the Marquis Mansion with a lavish dowry. Her maternal grandfather doted on his daughter, and her uncle protected his sister, generously supporting her father and helping him secure a foothold in the Imperial Guard. This was what later brought glory to Marquis Chengen.
Yet her father, in turn, betrayed the family that had helped him so much for the sake of his own future.
"If Mother knew in the afterlife that her family's suffering was brought about by her, how much would she regret marrying you! Father, how cruel you are!"
Yu Qing sneered: "I never begged her to marry me. It was her own choice."
"Yes, that was her choice." Yu Zhi Yue took a deep breath and suddenly smiled brightly. "And today is also your choice—the retribution for betraying my mother."
Yu Qing looked with a darkened face at this unfilial daughter guilty of insubordination. "Don’t forget, you also bear the surname Yu. You are the daughter of me, Marquis Chengen. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you are."
"Have you forgotten? We severed ties. From now on, we have no relationship whatsoever."
Yu Zhi Yue spoke these words with malice and satisfaction. Her heart ached for her mother, wishing there were no gods, ghosts, or spirits in this world—that her mother, in death and soul’s dissipation, would never have the chance to learn the truth. Only then could her mother suffer less.