Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Changpu’s voice was not loud, but every word landed with weight.

Mother could not say another word.

She knew Changpu was telling the truth.

She did not love this plain-looking, slow-witted daughter of hers.

Changpu led me out of the kitchen.

I let her pull me along until she brought me back to my courtyard.

Changpu took out a handkerchief and wiped away my tears.

Her voice was gentle. “When they bully you, you can’t bully yourself too.”

I looked up at her, not quite understanding what she meant.

She smiled. “Think about it. Since they don’t love you, why should you go out of your way to please them in everything?”

I pressed my lips together. This was the first time anyone had ever said something like that to me.

I had thought that if I pleased Mother and listened to her, she would spare me a little of the care she gave Mingzhu.

But Changpu said that was bullying myself.

That even I was bullying me.

“If they don’t love you, you cannot stop loving yourself.”

Each word from Changpu struck my heart, deafening in its force.

After she finished speaking, she turned to leave. I reached out and caught her hand.

It was not a particularly pretty hand.

Her palm was covered in thin calluses, and there were scars on the back of it.

It lacked the softness and delicacy expected of a young lady’s hand, yet it was exceptionally warm.

“Sister, can you take me with you?”

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You want to come with me? Do you even know where I’m going?”

I nodded. “I know. I want to go to war with you.”

Changpu froze for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Now that is strange. I have never mentioned this to anyone. How did you know?”

I lowered my head, not daring to meet her eyes.

In a small voice, I said, “I just know.”

In my previous life, Changpu had gone to the battlefield.

She was incredible. She won many battles and became a female general.

Many men could not compare to her.

Father and Mother always said she was no good.

They said that because she had not been raised in the manor, she cared nothing for blood ties or family bonds.

All they wanted was for her to support our younger brother. Such a tiny matter, yet she refused to help.

After scolding her, they would then blame me for being useless.

For failing to win my husband’s heart.

I had always been timid in front of my parents.

Yet somehow, I found the courage to argue back. “She did nothing wrong. You are the ones at fault.”

Though I was slow-witted, even I understood that her military achievements had been carved out through mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

If our younger brother wanted to become an official, why could he not take the imperial examinations himself, or go to the battlefield like Changpu?

Father flew into a rage the moment he heard that.

He did not care that I was a daughter already married out of the family. He raised his hand and slapped me hard across the face.

Mother also cursed me as an ungrateful wretch.

They said that since I was so eager to curry favor with Changpu, I need not regard them as my parents anymore.

They truly were furious. Even after they learned I was bedridden with illness, they never came to see me again.

They simply acted as if they had no daughter like me.

Instead, it was Changpu who, after hearing that I was gravely ill, had someone send me an old ginseng root.

She also sent me a letter, saying that once she finished the war and drove away the barbarians, she would come back to see me.

But I was truly useless.

I could not hold on long enough for her to return.

At the moment I closed my eyes for the last time, another letter from Changpu arrived.

Unfortunately, I no longer had the strength to read it.

I wonder, in the end, did Changpu drive away the barbarians?