Chapter 5

Between my pregnancy and my looks and manner, so like his dead wife’s,

Shen Shanliang doted on me more and more.

I went to Guangling’s largest cloth shop, Duanjinxuan, every few days. He set aside his business to accompany me.

We returned each time carrying bolts of expensive silk.

People in the streets said that he was delighted with me. Once I gave birth, he would probably make me his concubine.

Others said he had grown much stronger since leasing me. No wonder he could still get a young wife pregnant at his age.

Still others said I was born with the rare good fortune of bearing sons and bringing prosperity to men. Hadn’t Qiu Bingzhong become a licentiate only after marrying me? Now that Shen Shanliang had leased me, his health had improved and he had an heir on the way.

The rumors kept spreading.

With each retelling, they grew more absurd.

Older women even began to say that I was the Goddess of Sons reborn. Whoever obtained me would certainly have a son, and generations of flourishing descendants.

And so on.

Every one of these rumors was Qiu Bingzhong’s work.

In the letter I left at Duanjinxuan, I had instructed him to find every possible way of building my reputation throughout Guangling.

We had been communicating secretly by letter all this time.

At the very beginning, I had drawn one crucial piece of information from him.

The prefect, Li Tian, still had no son.

Under our dynasty’s regulations, a prefect was an official of the junior fourth rank and could take no more than two concubines.

Li Tian had one wife and two concubines. Between them, they had borne him eight daughters, but not a single son.

A son might move him more than silver.

I thought of the “special ability” the system had given me: Guaranteed to Bear Sons.

It repelled me. Somewhere inside, I vaguely felt that something was wrong.

But for now, it was my only way to complete the system’s mission and climb higher at the same time.

So I set out my entire plan in my letters to Qiu Bingzhong.

That included how he should promote me.

It was complicated, tiresome work, and it would cost a good deal of money.

He wouldn’t work that hard for me.

For himself, he would spare no effort.

After all, how often did a chance to attach himself to the prefect come along?

At the height of the rumors, my time drew near.

Shen Shanliang had arranged for the physician and midwife well in advance. He even invited the best Daoist priest in Guangling to perform a ritual summoning Shen Xiaoqing’s soul.

The whole household brimmed with joy, awaiting the new life that would carry Xiaoqing’s spirit.

Only I stared at my belly, swollen like a balloon about to burst, and could not stop being afraid.

Even in the modern world, with pain relief and anesthetics, fear of childbirth was etched into women’s bones.

In ancient times, with medicine so far behind, giving birth meant stepping into death’s doorway. You might never step back out.

Fear kept me awake all night and left me unable to eat.

Nanny Qi watched, puzzled.

“You’ve already given birth once. Why are you frightened like a girl who’s never had a child?”

How could she know that before I came to this hellhole, I had been a university student who had only just turned twenty?

I was a girl who had never had a child.

However frightened I was, the day came.

When labor began, pain like a collapsing mountain and a splitting earth nearly swallowed me.

Worst of all, the baby was in the wrong position. I couldn’t deliver him.

The physician put needles into my abdomen. The midwife reached in and pulled.

My shrill screams all but rang through the Shen residence.

Soon, however, the drums, gongs, and suona horns of the ritual in the courtyard drowned them out.

The competing clamor continued for a full day and night.

At daybreak, the baby came out.

My belly shrank rapidly, like a deflating balloon.

At last, the household’s endless drums and horns fell silent too.

The midwife immediately carried the baby out to give Shen Shanliang the good news.

Seeing a boy, he was overjoyed. He named him Shen Qinghui.

Soon Nanny Qi brought him back in.

She had someone pull open my clothing and pressed the child to my chest.

As she did, she said,

“The master wanted to buy you outright and keep you as a concubine. But that husband of yours, Scholar Qiu, refuses, no matter how much he’s offered.”

“We’ll have to employ you here as a wet nurse for now.”

“That may be your title, but you won’t lack food or clothing. The master knows what you’ve done in bearing his heir. He’ll certainly treat you almost as a concubine.”

“Your good days are coming, mistress!”

I had no mind to listen.

All I could feel was a lump of flesh against my chest, while Nanny Qi kept squeezing with her hand.

At last, a powerful suction pulled the milk through. Pain engulfed me again.

I could feel it clearly: I was ruined.

From top to bottom, inside and out, body and heart,

I had been hurt beyond recognition.