Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Yun Family held reputation above all else.

No matter the reason.

Getting tangled up with an unrelated man and appearing in public drenched to the skin was my fault.

And I had no say in my own marriage.

If I refused, there was always a length of white silk waiting for me.

What could I do?

While I was punished to kneel in the ancestral hall,

the rumors only grew louder.

The people of the Commandery Prince’s Manor cursed me for clinging to power.

The Yun Family cursed me for being shameless.

Even my mother slapped me across the face.

“This is what you get for insisting on saving that little slut. Now look at the filth you’ve dragged back on yourself.”

“Your elder brother has just returned to the capital from his post. If he is criticized because of you, I will never forgive you!”

I knelt in the ancestral hall, hard blue bricks beneath my knees.

Yun’e passed by the doorway.

Her eyes burned with blazing fury.

“A short while on your knees, and you trade it for the chance to marry into the Commandery Prince’s Manor.”

“Sister, what a brilliant little scheme you’ve calculated!”

I felt as though I had not saved a life.

I had killed someone instead.

And this was my retribution.

On the day Murong Ling married me, there was no wedding ceremony.

Sitting high on his horse, he looked down at the bridal sedan.

“What I am marrying today is not a wife, but a shameless schemer.”

On our wedding night, he kicked open the door and splashed the nuptial wine across my face.

“Since you were so desperate to enter this door, I’ll teach you what it means to live a life worse than death.”

I suffered every torment the Commandery Prince’s Manor had to offer.

Washing dishes, chopping firewood, cooking, kneeling in the snow, carrying foot-washing water.

The cruelest time, he pinned me down on the ice and said,

“Aren’t you good at swimming? Swim.”

I was so cold my lips turned purple and my whole body shook, while he stood on the bank and laughed.

Every servant in the manor laughed with him.

A dignified Commandery Princess, living worse than the lowest scullery maid.

But who told me to have “schemed” my way into this marriage?

However miserably I lived, in everyone else’s eyes, I had brought it on myself.

I tried everything I could think of to escape.

But there were eyes everywhere.

I could not take even half a step out of the manor.

Clinging to my last shred of hope,

I exhausted myself to send out a letter.

But my parents would not allow me to divorce.

They said,

“The Yun Family has no daughter like you.”

“If you want to die, then die far away from us!”

The day Yun’e came to visit,

I was dressed in thin clothes, washing laundry in the bitter wind.

She gathered her fox-fur cloak around herself, looking unbearably pleased.

“Sister, seeing you live so badly makes me truly happy.”

She leaned close, her voice extremely soft.

“Well, who told you to get in my way and keep me from entering the Commandery Prince’s Manor? I had everything planned that day. I was the one who should have married in, but you just had to barge in and ruin it.”

At this point, her face twisted.

“But it doesn’t matter. I am carrying the Commandery Prince’s child. This position of Commandery Princess will come back around to me in the end.”

As she said it, the way she stroked her belly was so gentle.

Twisting black into white. Confusing right and wrong!

I looked at her face, fair and tender as jade.

Then I lowered my head and looked at my own swollen, cracked hands.

My reflection in the water showed a sallow, withered face.

There was no trace left of the bright, radiant girl I had once been.

And the one who had caused it all was standing right before me.

Hatred flooded my mind.

I grabbed Yun’e by the hair and shoved her head into the laundry basin.

Thanks to all the hard labor at the Commandery Prince’s Manor,

she had no strength to resist me at all.

Bubbles gurgled up from the surface of the water.

Until there was no movement left.

After throwing her corpse aside,

I looked at my faintly trembling hands.

And thought,

Killing one person meant death.

Killing a dozen people meant death too.

So I would not spare a single person who had once humiliated me.

A large packet of rat poison

brought down the entire manor.

I heard that this poison acted quickly, but killed slowly.

The courtyard was a scene of horror, wails rising one after another.

I sat in the main hall, looking down on it all.

Yet the hatred in my heart did not ease by even a fraction.

They were still dying too easily.

So I dragged Murong Ling, who was foaming at the mouth, into the pond.

I watched him struggle in the water.

Until he finally drowned.

I said,

“Murong Ling, this is the ending you deserved.”

I was the one who interfered with their karma.