Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Who could possibly have waited three years?
In less than half a year, I discovered that Gu Jinyan still had someone hidden in his heart: a younger cousin, now a consort deep within the palace.
She came from the same background as he did. The two had clung to each other through hardship, sharing the same suffering, and she had once kept him company in his darkest days. Unfortunately, once she entered the palace, she somehow caught the Emperor’s eye.
Lost and brokenhearted, he happened to run into me-dressed in red, riding down the long street on horseback.
He said I was a blazing sun that had fallen into his heart.
Only later did I learn the truth.
What blazing sun?
I was nothing more than a patch of ruined moonlight he had hidden away in the back courtyard.
After that, no matter how Gu Jinyan swore oaths and promised he would cut off all contact with his cousin for good, I remained hard-hearted and threw a divorce agreement in his face.
I thought my parents would support me.
Who would have thought that when I returned to my maiden home, they would be the ones to drive me out?
Perhaps it was because, by then, Gu Jinyan had already earned the Emperor’s favor and been entrusted with important duties. They would not allow me to divorce him. Instead, they demanded I remain in the rear courtyard of the Marquis’s Manor and continue being its richly dressed, honored mistress.
Only then did I finally understand: there was nowhere I could go.
After returning to the Gu residence, I never allowed Gu Jinyan near me again.
After being driven out of my room more times than I could count, Gu Jinyan finally flew into a rage. That very day, he spent a fortune to buy out the contract of the most famous courtesan on the Qinhuai River.
The scandal spread through the court and the capital alike.
And I became the greatest laughingstock in all of Jinling City.
Looking back now, I was not entirely blameless.
After all, I was young then, proud and arrogant, and I had blocked every path he might have taken to keep his promise.
At first, after buying Jiaoniang’s freedom, he had no real intention of touching her. He merely kept her by his side, watching my face at every turn, hoping I would soften first.
Who would have expected that, to avoid him, I would stubbornly move into the ancestral hall instead?
Seeing me act so heartless, Gu Jinyan got dead drunk one stormy night.
This time, when that woman with her seductive eyes and flowerlike face climbed into his bed again, he did not refuse.
The next day, he set out wine in the rear courtyard and took Jiaoniang as his concubine.
Later still, Wenniang, the female physician who treated me, came to the manor and happened to run into Gu Jinyan napping in the cool pavilion. The two of them tangled together and rolled from inside the pavilion to the outside, crushing dozens of orchid stalks I had painstakingly kept alive.
The next day, he again set out wine in the rear courtyard and took Wenniang as his concubine.
I thought that was already the limit.
Who knew that before long, he would bring back a baby girl of unknown maternity from outside the manor?
After that, my disgust for him reached its peak.