Chapter 3
The hall fell silent.
Mother’s face hardened first. She rebuked me.
“Shen Qingheng! How dare you behave so outrageously before Her Majesty?”
She let out a breath.
“We all know you have been grasping and quarrelsome since childhood, but within these palace walls, you cannot indulge your whims.”
“Pretending to retreat so you can advance, imitating your sister to snatch the position of principal consort—this is hardly wise.”
“With your flighty disposition, being allowed into the Eastern Palace is already an immense favor. Do not be greedy.”
So I was merely making a poor imitation of my betters.
The assembled ladies all breathed a sigh of relief.
They exchanged glances.
When they looked at me again, their contempt had deepened.
The corners of Shen Rushi’s lips lifted almost imperceptibly.
“My heart is set on the world, not fame or profit. We share a mother. Why would I compete with you?”
“Say no more. I will yield to you.”
No competing, no grasping—she would simply yield?
She had been born with a lotus-shaped mark on the sole of her foot.
A wandering diviner proclaimed her a bodhisattva reborn.
The entire household worshipped her as a deity.
From the moment she was old enough to understand, every word she spoke was Buddhist wisdom.
In the year of the heavy snows, the starving dead lay for miles.
Countless people in the capital donated silver and porridge.
I emptied my private savings too, doing what I could.
But she set her sights on my dowry.
Grandmother knew that Father and Mother placed all their hopes in her, while I was neglected and slighted at home.
So she gave me half her own dowry to provide for my future.
Shen Rushi said she did not mind, but inside she was sick with envy.
At a banquet, she deliberately declared that worldly goods weighed a person down and were worth less than boundless merit. She urged me to donate the worldly things in my storeroom to earn merit for Grandmother.
They were all I had to rely on. Naturally, I refused.
She sighed and gazed at me with lofty compassion.
“Sister, why can you not understand? What we should seek in this life is freedom within our hearts.”
“Can your conscience rest easy while you enjoy riches built upon the flesh and blood of famine victims?”
Everyone praised her righteousness.
Mother praised her kindness.
When she turned to me, only disappointment remained.
“Your sister has always been frail, yet she went to the shelters herself to distribute porridge. Can you not learn a little of her righteousness and compassion?”
“I have decided. Half the things in your storeroom will be donated to feed the refugees. Make another fuss and you can go back to your courtyard and reflect behind closed doors.”
I earned a reputation for nothing but greed and love of luxury.
And half a storeroom of my lavish dowry became relief grain—porridge Shen Rushi ladled out to the people herself, spoonful by spoonful, to win a name for herself.
Later, she claimed to have felt a spiritual calling. She needed hundreds upon hundreds of scriptures to pray for all living beings.
The Shen residence was enormous, yet the place she chose for her prayers was my courtyard.
I refused to give it up.
She said it was ugly for sisters to quarrel. However selfish I was, I could not defy heaven’s decree. Keeping me there to argue with her would only disturb her peace. Better that she retreat to Huguo Temple for spiritual cultivation.
How could Mother bear that?
So I was sent to my maternal relatives overnight and left there for three years. The courtyard that should have been mine became a storeroom for her Buddhist scriptures.
When people asked about me,
she looked regretful and hesitated meaningfully.
“Perhaps I simply do not understand the greed and anger of ordinary mortals. Let us not speak of it.”
And so every noble young woman in the capital knew that my parents had sent me away because I was greedy, grasping, and quarrelsome.
Even today, on our way into the palace,
her gaze fell on my white jade hairpin, and she remarked casually,
“How elegant. Quite free of vulgarity.”
Mother snatched away the white jade hairpin an old acquaintance had given me and placed it in my sister’s hair.
She never fought. Never grasped.
Because she only had to move her lips, and everything was hers.
I, branded grasping and quarrelsome, was left with nothing at all.