Chapter 3
When the news reached me, I read the letter and burned it to ashes.
It had come from the Liang family.
I had learned of Liang Zhiyan’s movements before they did.
I held a small gathering to drink beneath the moon, surrounded by my closest female friends.
The young lady of the Gu family indignantly took my side. “Young Master Liang turned his back on his family and gave up his position for a physician. He’ll certainly regret it one day. Heaven has done you a favor by showing you what he really is. Better to learn early that he is no good husband and let him go.”
I nodded and drank a cup with her.
In truth, after he and Zhao Lingyi eloped, the Liang family had meant to send guards to drag him home. It was my persuasion that stopped his parents from looking for him.
“The harder people try to stop him, the more he’ll want to prove that their love is unbreakable, strong enough to defy the world. Why not let him go? Affection is as insubstantial as mist. Once they tire of it, it will disperse.”
His parents took my words to heart and left him to fend for himself.
By sending me this letter, they were acknowledging that I had been right.
With no one standing in their way, the lovers had become a resentful couple.
No doubt the Liang family was already waiting for their prodigal son to return and beg forgiveness on his knees.
His mother had once come to see me herself. Holding my hand, she said, “If he realizes his mistake and comes home one day, perhaps the two of you could still be together.”
Under her earnest gaze, I only smiled.
What I wanted was to make his return impossible.
From the day he cast aside his position as a noble family’s legitimate son, I had had no intention of letting him pick it up again so easily.
I set up a porridge stall in the east of the city and distributed food every day.
The people who passed praised my kind heart. When they learned that my fiancé had abandoned me, they indignantly took my part.
The scandal of the Liang heir’s elopement spread still further.
But I had another purpose in setting up that stall.
The moment I saw the birthmark on a grubby young beggar’s arm, I knew I had found the person I was looking for.
Her name was Luo Jinyan. She crouched at my feet, clutching my clothes and begging me to save her mother.
I paid handsomely for a physician to treat her mother and bought a small courtyard house where the two of them could live.
Her mother’s illness began to improve. She could support them with embroidery and laundry instead of begging.
I also settled all the debts they had incurred seeking treatment.
She told me that good people like me were rare in this world.
She was wrong. I helped only those who had value to me.
Perhaps she did not yet know that she should never have lived such a life. The place Liang Zhiyan occupied was hers.
Years ago, the Liang patriarch’s concubines had borne him sons one after another, while his wife remained childless.
When she finally conceived, she gave birth to a daughter.
To make matters worse, the birth damaged her health. She was unlikely to conceive again.
So she staked everything on one desperate gamble.
She exchanged her daughter for the son of a common family.
All these years, Liang Zhiyan had enjoyed wealth and honor as the Liang family’s only legitimate son.
He had no idea that all of it was another person’s stolen life.
It was the daughter who had been exchanged who should have grown up cherished and pampered.
Liang Zhiyan was an impostor through and through, occupying a nest that was never his.
In my previous life, he discovered the truth while investigating a case. He chose to bury it.
The woman named Luo Jinyan died beneath the swords of assassins he sent.
When his mother learned what had happened, she helped him conceal it, showing not the slightest concern for her own daughter’s life.
This time, I would help Luo Jinyan drive Liang Zhiyan out of the Liang family for good.