Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When I was eleven, my mother finally gave birth to a son.

Before that, my father had already drowned four baby girls with his own hands.

My belated little brother carried all my parents’ hopes. They even felt our shabby family was unworthy of their precious son, so they forced me to sell myself as a maid and sent me into Dingyuan Marquis Manor.

I left home with a small bundle on my back. Inside were only two flatbreads and one change of clothes.

High gates, grand halls, and courtyard after courtyard. Once I entered, I stayed for ten years.

The mistress I served was the Fourth Miss of the Marquis Manor, six years younger than me. Though the Fourth Miss was born of a concubine, her birth mother, Madam Xu, was a devastating beauty and deeply favored by the marquis. Thanks to that, the Fourth Miss benefited as well; her food, clothing, and daily necessities were all the finest.

Back then, the Fourth Miss was young, innocent, and so simple-hearted she was almost foolish. She depended on me a great deal, calling me “Sister Bao’er” every other sentence, and often ate and slept in the same room as me, making the other maids green with envy.

Bao’er was the name she gave me. My original name was Zhao Zao Yao, which sounded like “early death.” My birth parents had once believed I had taken up the “quota” meant for their son, and they had earnestly hoped I would hurry up and die young.

At the Marquis Manor, I never lacked food or clothing, and I even saved up a sum of silver.

Incidentally, in all those years, I never let my parents get a single coin from me.

My father did come to make trouble once. But I bribed a tall, burly manservant in the manor to take a club and corner my father in an alley, where he gave him a thorough warning.

My father was the sort to bully the weak and fear the strong. Scared out of his wits by that bear-like manservant, he never came to trouble me again. As far as he was concerned, I was dead.

There was a time when my days in the Marquis Manor were very happy-so happy that I once forgot the most unreliable thing inside those deep, sprawling compounds was the human heart.

When the Fourth Miss turned fifteen, the marquis arranged a marriage for her, betrothing her to the second son of Minister Liang’s family.

Curious about what this Second Young Master Liang looked like, the Fourth Miss sent me to inquire about his whereabouts for a long while. At last, we successfully arranged an “accidental encounter.”

Second Young Master Liang was handsome and dignified, gentle and refined. He and the Fourth Miss felt as if they had met too late, pouring out their hearts to one another. Afterward, he gave her a Peach Blossom Hairpin.

The hairpin was nothing rare. I had seen the same kind in a jewelry shop in the west alley.

But a young girl in love has nowhere to put her longing. The Fourth Miss treasured that Peach Blossom Hairpin more than her own life, clutching it every day as she smiled secretly at herself in the mirror.

Not long after, however, the Peach Blossom Hairpin disappeared. The Fourth Miss decided I had stolen it and rewarded me with thirty strokes of the paddle.

In front of everyone, my trousers were stripped off, and I was made to lie across a long bench. The blows landed solidly, like the back of a knife smacking minced meat on a chopping board, each one making a dull, heavy thud.

My young mistress sat inside the room, turned sideways toward me. Sunlight could not reach inside. Her hands were hidden in the shadow beneath the table, trembling violently.

There was only a threshold between us, yet it felt like an uncrossable chasm.

That day, I did not confess, nor did I beg for mercy. After enduring more than a dozen strokes, I passed out.

In the end, the Fourth Miss could not bear to have me beaten to death and had the manservants stop. But the incident still spread, and the rumors were far from pleasant.

In the end, the Eldest Young Master of the Marquis Manor made the decision to expel me. The Fourth Miss gave me one hundred taels of silver, and as if in compensation, she also erased my slave registry and returned my freedom.

You could say I profited from disaster. Carrying a body full of injuries and a pouch full of silver, I came to Ping’an Town in Suizhou and opened a tea shop.

Five years passed in the blink of an eye. Everything that had happened in the Marquis Manor had become part of the past. Those days of laughter and tears gradually faded as well, like a fleeting dream of yellow millet.

Then one night, just after I closed the shop doors, I suddenly heard someone outside calling my name.

I peered through the crack in the door. Beneath the deathly pale moonlight stood a woman clutching a bundle tightly in her arms, soaked from head to toe, looking exactly like a drowned ghost.

She was taller now, thinner too. Her hair had come loose, her clothes were spattered with mud, and none of her former splendor remained.

But I still recognized her at a glance. She was the Fourth Miss of the Marquis Manor, the girl I had watched grow up-Wei Ningyao.