Chapter 5

Chapter 5

At noon, the sky was gloomy.

A servant woman suddenly came with a message: the Li Family had sent someone over with holiday pastry gifts, and the Old Madam wanted me to go receive them.

Qi Rong oversaw grain supplies for the front lines, and the Li Family was a well-known grain merchant. They had long wanted to gnaw through the hard bone that was Qi Chong.

There were far too many tricks to be played, and too much profit to be skimmed, when it came to purchasing grain.

Rigging the measures, heaping the grain unfairly, passing off inferior goods as good ones, inflating losses and overcollecting.

If Qi Chong’s side was willing to loosen its grip, the entire Li Family clan would be able to eat till their mouths ran with grease.

In the past, I was always the cold, unyielding villain in this matter. Every gift they sent was turned away at the door, and Qi’s Mother had always been displeased with me for it.

Today, I used having been caught in the snow as an excuse and claimed illness, and taught Qi Song needlework.

The servant woman came back to report that the gift list included yam cakes, sorghum buns, and tapioca dumplings.

Qi’s Mother looked down on those things to begin with, and on top of that, she didn’t dare accept them. Just like I had done before, she sent everything back.

I looked at the gift list and simply sipped my tea without saying a word.

When the Li Family steward came in from outside, she smiled with eager warmth.

“I heard Madam is ill. No matter what, I had to come and pay my respects.”

I smiled back.

“It’s nothing serious. A couple days of rest and I’ll be fine.

“I heard Mother only glanced at the gift list before having you driven out.

“Then again, I was always the one handling these exchanges in the past. Mother has never dealt with this sort of thing herself.”

A trace of awkwardness flashed across the Li Family steward’s face, but she could see that I was smiling and did not seem to be mocking her.

As she lifted the curtain and went out, she was still turning over the meaning of my words. Suddenly, she urged the maid beside her,

“Give me the food box. I’ll go see the Old Madam again.”

The food box was opened.

How could there be any yam cakes, sorghum buns, or tapioca dumplings inside?

What lay there instead were silver ingots, gold sycees, and strings of pearls.

Qi’s Mother’s eyes circled over the plump white silver and the lustrous pearls with obvious reluctance.

In the end, she hardened her heart, shut her eyes, and still did not dare accept them.

That night, Qi’s Mother had no appetite. She only ate a small bowl of plain congee before going to bed early.

Qi Song played with a ball of thread and chatted idly with me.

“Back then, Sister-in-law, you turned down plenty of gifts too, but I never saw Aunt like this.”

This time was different.

Before, she had only heard that I rejected bribes. She had no way to picture what kind of bribes they were.

But this time, she had seen them with her own eyes, and personally lost them too.

It was the same as if someone had taken that money right out of her hands.

One could well imagine how much it pained Qi’s Mother.

The Li Family steward was sharp among the sharp. She would definitely notice that in the Qi household’s inner quarters, once solid as an iron plate, a tiny ant hole had appeared.

And just as I had claimed illness, Father suddenly sent someone with a letter. For some reason, he wrote that the future prestige of my husband’s family and the empty reputation of being a virtuous wife were all false, and that nothing mattered more than my child’s health and safety.

My eyes grew hot, and in the letter I told Father that I was safe.

I thought that once I obtained the divorce papers and escaped the Qi Family’s burning pit, I would be able to return to Father’s side and fulfill my filial duty again.

Meanwhile, Qi Song sat quietly by the lamp, practicing her writing, and her figure gradually overlapped with the memory of her tearfully feeding me medicine.

Thinking of her slender figure shielding me in my previous life, my heart stirred, and a plan came to mind.

I added just a few more lines to the family letter.

I asked when the Zhang Family, old family friends of Father’s, would be coming to the capital, so that the younger generation of our two families might spend more time visiting one another.

Just as I was sealing the letter with wax, a maid from below hurried in with news:

“Master is reading in the study and has summoned Miss Yan to attend him with brush and ink.”