chapter 4

# chapter 4

And so, the noble lady came to stay at my house for a while.

Every day I cooked her pork in different ways, and her complexion gradually grew rosier.

She still often stared blankly at that peace lock, but her whole spirit was slowly improving.

She even cut jewels out of those silks and brocades and insisted on giving them to me.

When I refused, the noble lady raised an eyebrow and feigned anger: “You silly girl, how can you be so clueless.”

“I eat pork from your butcher shop every day-I should pay, shouldn’t I?”

Only when I saw she was truly about to get angry did I carefully accept.

After the noble lady’s health got even better, she even offered to lend a hand at the place where I slaughter pigs.

Of course, she couldn’t possibly hold a pig down, but she didn’t want to sit idle either.

So I had her wash knives with me.

While washing knives, she told me about her misfortunes.

It turned out that her only daughter had been forced, because of some celestial omen, to be sent away to her maiden family in the northwest to be raised.

But later, when her husband married his first love as an equal wife, she finally learned that the so-called celestial omen was nothing but a lie.

It was just a trick played by that adulterous pair.

So she hurried back to her maiden home to fetch her daughter, only to find that the girl had met with disaster years earlier.

Rage and grief overwhelmed her, and on the journey back she ran into bandits.

That was how she ended up in such straits.

This peace lock was what she had hung on her daughter with her own hands back then.

Her voice was full of sorrow and bitter anger.

In the end, she stared at me blankly and sighed.

“Come to think of it, if Ah Nian were still alive…”

“She would surely be a girl just your age, Miss Lin, well-behaved and lovely.”

Over the month, the noble lady’s body had nearly fully recovered.

By her own account, she was in even better health than before the calamity.

Since I drove my uncle’s family out, they hadn’t come back to harass me either.

But then, one day.

I was in the butcher shop, chopping fresh pork.

The noble lady was beside me, simmering mung bean congee.

Suddenly, a market clerk appeared in front of my stall.

“Miss Lin, you haven’t paid this month’s rent.”

With that, he handed me a paper with black writing on white.

After reading it, I frowned: “I paid this month’s rent long ago.”

“And why is this rent nearly five times the usual amount?”

The market clerk snorted through his nose: “Pay when you’re told to pay-why all this nonsense?”

“And that woman has a gold ingot on her, doesn’t she? She’s got money.”

I clenched my fists.

One look at my uncle and aunt’s family trailing behind the clerk, and I understood everything.

I cupped my hands in salute: “Apologies, this rent is not proper.”

“I’ll have to ask the magistrate’s office before I know.”

Hearing this, the clerk drew his blade and said viciously: “You’ve gotten bold.”

“You dare go report to the magistrate?”

The moment the noble lady saw this, she hurriedly stepped in front of me to shield me.

Seeing this, the clerk moved to grab the noble lady and search her.

“Insolence.”

At the critical moment, a roar came from behind.

A troop of blade-bearing cavalry arrived in a grand procession at the butcher shop entrance.

The leader kicked the market clerk, sending him flying.

The clerk was knocked unconscious by that single kick.

And when my uncle and aunt saw this scene, their faces went pale.

Before they could grasp what was happening, they too were seized by the Tiger Guards at the side.

The leader knelt respectfully before the noble lady at my side: “Your subordinate arrived late.”

“I respectfully request the mistress to return to the marquis’s residence!”

The mistress of a marquis’s residence?

I stared wide-eyed at the scene.

Their blades flashed white, and I couldn’t help but tremble.

The leader noticed me standing there trembling with fear: “Who are you?”

I hurriedly moved to kneel and beg for mercy, answering in a quavering voice: “A commoner, the pig butcher at the third butcher shop south of the city…”

Before I could finish, the noble lady clapped a hand over my mouth.

Then she swept a cool glance over those cavalry and, with an air of noble dignity, spoke: “This is my only daughter, the one I sent to be raised at my maiden home.”