chapter 3

chapter 3

When I finished the story, Madam Zhu wiped her tears and went to find Mother.

Mother taught her everything: how to investigate a household, how to ensure the two parties never met beforehand, and how to harden her heart enough to collect the commission she had earned.

At the end, Mother told her, “Go to the beggars’ quarter and find a grateful child to raise. Families like ours would only harm a child from a respectable orphanage, but to one who cannot eat his fill, this is still a road to survival. You’re young. You need something to live for.”

Some things did not need to be said aloud. Had Madam Zhu’s husband not fallen ill, he would have been one of the rare decent men in this world. That was why she forced him to stay alive even on dirty money. She needed him to live. As long as he did, she could make herself live too.

But heaven fixed every person’s span. He had already held on for a very long time.

Madam Zhu did not answer. On the day we left, however, she stood at the very back of the crowd to see us off. Beside her were a thin little brother and sister.

The capital was livelier than we had imagined. People came to my brother’s residence every day, all hoping to share in Mother’s auspicious fortune.

It turned out that traveling scholars had been in the crowd when he knelt outside our shop. They turned his reunion with Mother into poems, ballads, and popular tales. A few days ago, the most celebrated theater troupe in the capital had even staged a new play about it.

Mother’s past, once despised as shameful, became tragic and moving beneath a scholar’s brush.

That was because Mother was no longer the true center of the story. The center was Zhao Zheng, the diligent student who had climbed all the way to the Son of Heaven’s hall, and Princess Rou’an, the imperial daughter willing to set aside her rank and devotedly serve a common mother-in-law.

The more ordinary the listener, the more often they had dreamed of bearing a fine son, gaining a fine daughter-in-law, and watching the whole family rise with them.

Mother’s disreputable past and my brother’s muddy peasant roots made the story easier for people to imagine as their own. Unlike palace gossip, it offered more than distant spectacle.

In no time, my brother and future sister-in-law became the filial son and virtuous bride known in every street and alley.

My sister-in-law was a pitiful woman. The moment we reached the capital, she returned to the palace to confess her offense.

Her mother was out of favor with the Empress Dowager and led a wretched life in the harem. Even Princess Rou’an’s marriage had been decided by a careless point of the Dowager’s finger at the imperial graduates’ banquet.

Among commoners, my brother was naturally an excellent husband. For a princess, however, he had neither wealth nor an impressive examination rank. His official post lay far away, and she feared she might never see her birth mother again.

Another woman would have wept bitterly, but my sister-in-law never complained. When she heard why Mother refused to acknowledge my brother, she traveled to our home and knelt beside him.

She had fled the palace without permission. Now she had to return and face punishment.

I prayed silently for her. Before anything could happen to her, however, I encountered a villain of my own.

I had merely gone out to buy Mother a piece of jewelry when the man marked me as his target.

He rammed into me on purpose, then laughed without restraint. “Just what I’d expect from a bastard with no father and no mother’s teaching. You even dare throw yourself against a man’s body. Planning to trap me into marriage?”

The jade earrings I had spent so long choosing shattered on the ground.

I had no attention to spare for him. I crouched to gather the pieces, sobbing. “I saved for three years to buy Mother her first jewelry. It’s broken. It’s all broken!”

The young man who had looked so arrogant a moment ago panicked when I cried. His face flushed. He pulled out a banknote. “D-don’t cry! They were only cheap earrings, five taels a pair. I’ll pay you a hundred taels, all right? Just stop wailing.”

I glanced at the note and immediately stopped my tears. “You mean it? All of this is mine? Then I won’t cry. I’m going home.”

I snatched the note and beamed. “Hehe! A profit of ninety-five taels. Mother will like this even more than the earrings.”

He gaped at me. “You wretched girl, were those tears real? Did you just swindle me?”

I ran off, calling over my shoulder, “Young master, I can tell you’ve never suffered. Who wouldn’t cry over five taels? I’m like a pixiu – once money enters my hands, it never comes back out. Nyah, nyah!”

He jumped with rage. “You there, Liu! Just wait! If I, Yang Ling, don’t make you kneel and call me Father, I’ll write the character for Yang upside down!”

So that gullible fool was named Yang Ling.

Back home, I told the story as a joke and grinned as though asking for praise. “He deserved it for spewing filth. Next time I see him, I’ll take him for another sum.”

My brother sighed helplessly. “Little Sister grew up innocent in the countryside and knows nothing of the capital’s dangers. Do you know who Yang Ling is? He is the youngest son of Grand Chancellor Yang, only recently returned to the city. You must not provoke him again.”

I stuck out my tongue. So he was that important. He truly was not someone I could afford to offend.