Inside the imperial palace.
Having listened to Eunuch Wang’s report, the Emperor furrowed his brows. He studied Eunuch Wang’s face intently, finally pinpointing a faint crow’s foot beneath the corner of his eye. “You aren’t young anymore,” the Emperor observed mildly. “You can hardly handle this kind of late-night exertion. How about We grant you a few days of leave?”
Eunuch Wang blinked in surprise.
They were in the middle of discussing the fourth young miss of the Marquis Household, how had the topic abruptly swerved into granting him time off?
The Emperor arched an eyebrow. “What, are you unwilling?”
Judging by the Emperor’s slightly begrudging tone, Eunuch Wang knew that if he hesitated for a second longer, the granted vacation would vanish into thin air.
He hastily bowed. “This servant thanks Your Majesty for his boundless grace!”
The Emperor hummed in satisfaction.
Eunuch Wang ventured cautiously, “Then, regarding the Fourth Young Miss.”
“We heard that the Marquis’s second daughter wed last year. To whom was it again?”
Eunuch Wang promptly supplied, “Cui Heng, the young master of the Cui clan.”
“One imagines marital harmony between them would also bring great benefit to the Marquis Household.”
In all his years serving by the sovereign’s side, this was the very first time Eunuch Wang found himself utterly incapable of deciphering what the Emperor meant.
Emerging in a total daze, Eunuch Wang bumped into his young apprentice carrying in a bowl of lily bulb and white fungus soup.
Opening the tier of the food box, Eunuch Wang saw steam swirling up. “His Majesty prefers his broth lukewarm and soothing. Let it sit a bit longer before serving.”
“Understood, Master.”
Eunuch Wang waited until his apprentice entered and watched the Emperor partake of the soup before finally taking his leave. Halfway down the marble terrace steps, he slapped his own forehead in sudden revelation.
His Majesty simply didn’t believe a single word of it!
In the blink of an eye, the fourth month arrived.
At the beginning of the fourth lunar month, Tong Anying and her siblings were always in high spirits, as it was time to harvest fresh peach blossoms to brew wine.
Su Zhouyue had just returned from an errand when she spotted Tong Anying and Tong Yi’an perched high in the peach tree, passionately directing Tong Fengye below.
“Third Brother, over here! Over here!”
“Third Brother, look that way there are bunches over there too!”
“That one’s the prettiest!”
It was fortunate that Tong Fengye possessed boundless energy. He bounded back and forth without catching his breath, only a fine layer of sweat glistening on his forehead.
A warm arm wrapped around Su Zhouyue’s waist from behind. Tong Baibo asked softly, “What are you watching so intently?”
Isn’t that a rhetorical question? Su Zhouyue jutted her chin forward. “There, take a look. It’s all your high-minded scholar’s romanticism leading the children astray.”
Brewing wine with peach blossoms had originally been Tong Baibo’s idea. Who could have foreseen that what began as a whimsical experiment would turn into an annual family tradition?
Tong Baibo chuckled softly. “And who was it that drank up all the peach blossom wine we buried under the roots last year?”
Su Zhouyue averted her eyes guiltily. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“My dear—”
Before Tong Baibo could press further, Tong Fengye came trotting over, grinning ear to ear. “Mother, there are so many peach blossoms this year! Plenty enough for you to drink your fill!”
Su Zhouyue, who had been wiping the sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief, promptly mashed the cloth right into his face. “Quit spouting nonsense.”
Tong Fengye scratched his head. Did I say something wrong?
So Mother was the one who secretly drank all that wine after all!
Su Zhouyue’s face burned even hotter. Slipping a hand behind Tong Baibo’s back, she gave him a vicious pinch.
Yet her fingers only met rock-hard muscle; she couldn’t pinch a single millimeter, and her fingers ended up aching instead.
Utterly infuriating man.
“Mother, look!”
Tong Yi’an and Tong Anying swarmed around Su Zhouyue, chirping away like little sparrows.
Seeing that there was no room left for him by his mother’s side, Tong Fengye sidled over to Tong Baibo, asking in wonder, “Father, why are you gritting your teeth like that?”
Su Zhouyue glanced back, only to see her husband standing there with the picture of refined, scholarly grace. She couldn’t help but stifle a laugh.
“We can’t possibly use all of them for wine,” Su Zhouyue noted gently. “The blooms are so tender and fresh, they’d make wonderful peach blossom pastries too.”
“Yes, please!”
Both Tong Anying and Tong Yi’an had a wicked sweet tooth, so they voted in favor with both hands and feet.
That evening, after dinner had concluded, Su Zhouyue deliberately lingered in Tong Anying and Tong Yi’an’s chambers.
The two sisters’ rooms were adjacent. Tong Yi’an had been attached to Tong Anying’s hip since toddlerhood, and even now, she still snuck in to sleep with her older sister from time to time.
At that moment, Tong Yi’an was sprawled across Tong Anying’s bed, gazing expectantly toward her.
Su Zhouyue finished combing Tong Anying’s hair and gave her back a gentle nudge. “Go on, then.”
Tong Anying padded over to the bedside, where Tong Yi’an immediately enveloped her in a bear hug. As the two girls giggled and rolled around, Su Zhouyue gently fluttered her silk fan, watching them with tender, affectionate eyes.
Propping her chin on her hand, Tong Anying asked, “Mother, why did someone from the Duke’s Manor come by today?”
“To deliver an invitation. The Duchess is hosting a Hundred Flowers Banquet.”
“Oh.”
Host, Host! There’s going to be major drama to watch!
What kind of drama?
It’s about—
Su Zhouyue perked up her ears, waiting with bated breath. Why did it cut off? What drama is there?
She turned to look at Tong Anying, only to dissolve into helpless laughter.
The transmission hadn’t broken down, Tong Anying had simply passed out cold mid-thought, with Tong Yi’an dozing peacefully right beside her.
Both girls were still propping their chins in their hands, their sleeping faces the very picture of innocence.
Su Zhouyue pulled the quilts up over their shoulders, snuffed out the two candles closest to the bed, and quietly tiptoed back to her own chambers.
The moment she stepped inside, Tong Baibo caught her in his arms. “I thought my lady wife wasn’t planning on returning tonight.”
“And leave you to hoard the giant bed all to yourself? Dream on.”
Tong Baibo paused, then gently turned her face toward his. The smoldering heat in his eyes made Su Zhouyue’s cheeks flare crimson.
A flutter of bashfulness caught her off guard. Lowering her voice, she scolded softly, “Behave yourself.”
Yet despite her mild protestations, she yielded to his embrace all the same.
On the day of the Duke’s Manor banquet, it happened to coincide with the Imperial Academy’s decennial recess, so Su Zhouyue brought Tong Anying along.
Su Zhouyue was dying to know what scandalous secrets were brewing inside the Duke’s residence.
Tong Anying, however, did nothing but graze on refreshments and take catnaps, practically resembling a pampered, lazy little piglet.
Presently seated beneath the blooming crabapple trees, Tong Anying began nodding off once more. Suddenly, a falling blossom smacked squarely onto her cheek, jolting her awake. Clutching the fallen petal with bleary eyes, she sat there looking adorably bewildered.
Su Zhouyue let out a chuckle. Tong Anying puffed her cheeks at her in protest, prompting Su Zhouyue to tease with feigned surprise, “Didn’t you sleep in this morning? How can you still be tired?”
Tong Anying: “?”
I’m still young! I’m still growing! Sleeping in is an absolute biological necessity!
Su Zhouyue’s smile widened.
Mother is actually laughing at me!
Tong Anying pouted indignantly. Su Zhouyue instantly composed her expression, looked toward the winding path, and murmured, “Anying, the Duchess is heading this way.”
Tong Anying rose alongside Su Zhouyue.
Though the Duchess was nearing forty, she remained breathtakingly graceful and devastatingly gorgeous. Time seemed not to have left a single mark on her features.
Tong Anying couldn’t help but marvel inwardly: The Duchess is such an ethereal beauty, why on earth does the Duke still keep an outside mistress tucked away?
Wei Mingning stiffened on the spot. “!”
The surrounding noble madams and young ladies froze as well. “!”
The Duke is keeping an outside mistress?
What brand of unhinged lunacy was this?
Everyone knew the Duke owed his entire current status and titled glory entirely to the Duchess and her illustrious maiden family. Where on earth did he get the sheer audacity?
Only after putting some distance between them and the crowd did Wei Mingning firmly squeeze the hand of her trusted senior maidservant. Lowering her voice to an icy whisper, she asked, “Did you hear that?”
The senior maidservant was equally shaken. Pondering for a moment, she replied, “The voice sounded remarkably like that Fourth Young Miss of the Marquis Household.”
Wei Mingning remembered the girl.
Clear, luminous eyes, a radiant and captivating smile; barely fifteen years of age, yet already poised, slender, and unmistakably blooming into a peerless beauty.
Wei Mingning glanced back over her shoulder. Tong Anying was lazily fluttering her round fan. Noticing Wei Mingning looking her way, she offered a polite, sunny smile.
What an absolute shame, the voice sighed.
Wei Mingning and her maidservant kept walking forward with measured steps. “Did you observe her closely?”
The maidservant answered, “The Fourth Young Miss didn’t move her lips at all.”
Then what did I just hear?
Tong Anying’s innermost thoughts?
If it were anyone else, jumping to conclusions and suspecting one’s spouse based purely on an ethereal inner voice would be deemed madness.
But Wei Mingning was no ordinary noblewoman, she was a fierce daughter born of a legendary martial lineage, incapable of tolerating even a single speck of sand in her eye. If Gu Zhenye hadn’t betrayed her, fine.
But if he truly dared to cross that line, she would make sure he suffered a horrific demise.
Wei Mingning said coldly, “Summon the Duke immediately. Tell him the banquet is about to begin.”
“Understood.”
The maidservant bowed and hurried away. The sky above the Duke’s Manor was about to collapse.
Su Zhouyue was equally floored.
The Duke was famous throughout the capital for doting on his wife, how could he possibly be keeping an outside mistress?
Su Zhouyue’s heart was itching with curiosity, desperate to uncover the whole truth, yet she couldn’t very well interrogate Tong Anying directly.
Sipping her tea, Su Zhouyue lamented that Siyuan hadn’t accompanied her today; otherwise, she would at least have a partner in crime to dissect the gossip with.
Only after the banquet was well underway did Gu Zhenye come hurrying in.
Wei Mingning’s expression cooled. She inquired languidly, “Why are you so late?”
Gu Zhenye wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. “I was delayed by some urgent matters.”
Wei Mingning smiled, though her gaze remained frigid. “What matters could possibly take precedence over my banquet?”
Her razor-sharp gaze bore down on him, forcing Gu Zhenye to lower his head. Resentment flared within him, he was a titled, honorable Duke, yet he still had to tread on eggshells and cater to Wei Mingning’s every whim.
Gu Zhenye smoothed things over hurriedly: “Merely a minor trifle. Madam need not fret over it.”
Oh, so secretly bringing your mistress’s bastard child into the estate counts as a ‘minor trifle’ now?
Wei Mingning nearly ground her molars to dust. There’s even a child?
Host, that’s not even the half of it! The system chimed in. The Duke plans to register the mistress’s child under the Duchess’s name as her legitimate son!
Making the Duchess raise his bastard? Where does he get the shameless nerve?
Tong Anying fumed in outrage. If the Duke dares smuggle a mistress’s bastard through the front doors today, he’ll dare poison the Duchess tomorrow!
Wei Mingning gripped her porcelain teacup so hard her fingers turned bone white. She could hardly fathom that the man sharing her bed could be this deranged and ruthless.
Seeing that the Duke had made no move to take his seat, Wei Mingning suppressed the raging inferno in her chest and asked coolly, “Why haven’t you taken your seat? Is there something else?”
Gu Zhenye put on a troubled, earnest facade. “My lady, I know that having no children all these years has been a heavy burden on your heart. Recently, I came across a boy—clever, docile, and exceptionally bright. Why don’t we adopt him as our own?”
What an utterly shameless play.
The seated noblewomen were utterly dumbfounded. Wasn’t this treating the Duchess like an absolute fool?
Wei Mingning narrowed her eyes dangerously. “What did you say?”
“My lady, this is the child. He—”
Seeing the servant lead in a young boy, all lingering doubts vanished from Wei Mingning’s mind.
Splendid. Absolutely splendid.
Before Gu Zhenye could finish his sentence, Wei Mingning launched a brutal front kick squarely into his chest.
Gu Zhenye flew backward, crashing hard onto the stone floor like an upturned beetle, completely disheveled and humiliated.
Pfft, he looks just like an overturned giant turtle!
Hearing those words, Wei Mingning’s mood brightened considerably. Looking down at the groaning Gu Zhenye struggling to roll over, she brought her heel down mercilessly, grinding it straight into his shin bone.
Arching an eyebrow, she asked softly, “What was that you were saying?”
A blood-curdling screech tore from Gu Zhenye’s throat.
Excuse me, sir! Pig slaughtering isn’t allowed here!
Wei Mingning threw her head back and let out a resounding, triumphant laugh.