Chapter 9

The earl’s household had become an empty shell, so naturally money was tight.

My mother-in-law no longer had fine clothes, bird’s-nest soup, or shark fin. Even her jewelry had to be pawned.

Sometimes she called me a curse, someone who could squander such a vast fortune.

I was deeply hurt and lived year-round on a small estate, seldom returning.

So she didn’t know that I was actually living there in luxury, eating and dressing splendidly.

I even carried a child for ten months and gave birth to a boy.

My female cousins secretly came to celebrate his first month and asked how I would have him acknowledged by the family.

I said there were plenty of ways.

As long as my mother-in-law was there, it could all be perfectly proper.

After resting for almost six months, I returned home. She joyfully brought a baby to me.

“This boy comes from a collateral branch of the Wei family. He’s lively, clever, and utterly adorable.”

“I’ve discussed it with the clan elders. We’ll adopt him under your name and Zhao’s.”

“When he’s a little older, I’ll petition the palace to recognize him as heir. Then he can inherit the title in due course.”

I feigned reluctance. “But this child isn’t related to me by blood…”

She glared.

“As long as he has Wei blood, that’s enough!”

I meekly agreed, not daring to argue.

That evening, alone in my room, I opened my clothes and nursed him.

He was my own flesh and blood. Who his father was didn’t matter.

What mattered was that, in name, he was the adopted son of my late husband and me.

He would inherit the marquessate and, raised by me, become an upright and honorable gentleman.

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was laughing with her old serving woman at how stupid I was.

“That wretch actually believed it.”

“She has no idea this is her husband’s child by the sister she loathes most.”

“I can hardly wait. When she learns the truth in twenty years, will she spit blood in fury and drop dead? Ha!”

She didn’t know that the family letter she’d received was one I’d written myself, imitating Wei Zhao’s handwriting.

In his voice, it said he and Wen Lihua had had a son.

But they were traveling through mountains and rivers. Raising a child on the road was inconvenient, so they’d sent him back for me to care for.

Once older, he’d be recognized as heir and inherit the title after coming of age at twenty.

A few years later, I repeated the method and gave birth to a bright, lively daughter.

I taught her arithmetic and household management, just as my mother had taught me. I would also tell her not to lose herself in love.

Twenty years passed in a blink. Both children grew to adulthood.

My son inherited the title without trouble and earned an examination degree, becoming a pillar of the state.

My daughter became a renowned merchant, far cleverer and more accomplished than me, the richest in her region.

My mother-in-law reached old age too, paralyzed and bedridden.

Believing everything was under her control, she finally told me the truth.

Smug and beaming, she waited for me to turn hysterical, smash the medicine bowl, and demand why she’d treated me this way.

But I was impossibly calm.

Thinking I didn’t believe her, she summoned my children.

“Your real father is still alive. And your mother isn’t this ignorant woman standing before you.”

“Listen to your grandmother. Throw her out and bring your real parents home!”

My son said coldly, “Grandmother, you’re talking nonsense again.”

My daughter sneered. “You don’t mean that adulterous pair in the Qingzhou mine are our parents? Grandmother, you really have grown senile.”

My mother-in-law’s expression slowly changed.

“Qingzhou? A mine? What are you talking about?”

Kindly, I said, “Twenty years ago, my husband and Lihua didn’t get to travel the world with his burial goods.”

“In fact, as soon as they reached Qingzhou, Yan Changxi’s men intercepted them and sent them to the mines.”

“Of course, I recovered every one of those lavish burial goods.”

“And I never went bankrupt or severed ties with my mother’s family.”

“For these twenty years, the only one who has toiled and struggled without enough to live on is you.”

“As for me, I haven’t suffered a single day.”

My mother-in-law rolled out of bed, pointing at me, her eyes nearly bursting with rage.

I continued, “And the boy and girl you brought home are actually my own children. Who I had them with doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that your household’s title belongs to my own son.”

She had a stroke. Her eyes and mouth drooped, and her words became slurred.

I kept her alive with medicine, unable either to live as she wished or to die.

“Do you know? Your son died two years ago.”

“Wen Lihua killed him.”

I’d had news of my present circumstances sent to Lihua.

When she learned I had both a son and a daughter and a life of wealth and ease, she ground her teeth with hatred.

Wei Zhao, meanwhile, still dreamed of returning to be an earl. Now and then he remembered my kindness, and hated Lihua for ruining his life.

“If you hadn’t urged me to fake my death and leave the capital, I’d still be a high and mighty earl. How would I have ended up a prisoner?”

“Wen Lihua, you’re a beautiful curse. You ruined Yan Changxi, and you ruined me.”

She hated him even more.

“If it weren’t for you, I’d still be living comfortably as a nobleman’s wife.”

“Wei Zhao, you’re the heartless beast who never amounted to anything.”

They grappled with each other, each wanting to strangle the other.

More than a decade of tormenting each other had already unhinged them. Their love had long since vanished.

Only endless regret and hatred spread through their hearts.

When Wei Zhao seized Lihua by the throat, she found a stone and struck his head.

Blood poured from his broken head. He died on the spot.

Lihua was stunned with fright too.

She scrambled to a water jar to wash the blood from her hands.

But there she saw what she had become.

Old and withered, her face covered in yellow-brown spots and wrinkles.

At last, she too went mad.

When the news reached me, I felt nothing.

Those two fiends who’d once planned to drug me and make me bleed to death had finally turned on each other like dogs and tormented each other to death.

Before long, my mother-in-law would fail too.

I’d gained everything I wanted and seen off the people who’d plotted against me. I could hardly call this life anything but fortunate.

At dusk, my children came home to dine with me.

Brother and sister laughed and talked, sharing what they’d seen and heard that day.

I gazed at the setting sun and thought that days like these were truly wonderful.