chapter 4
Compared with Liu Ruying, I pleased my parents-in-law more with each passing day.
“You’an’s health has improved so much. It is all thanks to your devoted care.”
I smiled gently. “It is only my duty as his wife.”
Liu Ruying muttered, “What a performance.”
After being forced to accept a concubine, she hated me even more.
A few days earlier, she had suggested sending two concubines to my husband as well. My mother-in-law scolded her.
With my husband’s body, sending him concubines would be the same as sending him to his grave.
After morning greetings, I caught up with Liu Ruying and exchanged a few pleasant words. Then I remarked casually,
“Yunxiu has looked very pale lately. Could she be pregnant?”
Liu Ruying looked as if lightning had struck her.
When she burst into the study that day, Yunxiu had been fastening her sash.
Qin Zhaoyuan swore repeatedly that he had never touched her, but the scene disgusted Liu Ruying as thoroughly as swallowing a fly.
She had tormented Yunxiu without pause ever since.
Yunxiu waited outside her rooms day and night and knelt in punishment for two hours every day. Of course her face had turned pale.
Liu Ruying forgot to quarrel with me. She secretly summoned a physician.
He confirmed that Yunxiu was pregnant.
Yunxiu was horrified. “Impossible! The Second Young Master has never touched me.”
But Liu Ruying was convinced that Yunxiu meant to hide the pregnancy until she could give birth. She refused to hear any explanation.
After one bowl of medicine, blood poured between Yunxiu’s legs.
“So you still dared lie to me.”
No matter how Yunxiu begged, Liu Ruying remained unmoved. She watched until Yunxiu writhed on the floor in agony and gradually fell still.
When my mother-in-law heard, she hurried over.
She found Yunxiu lying in a pool of blood.
I crouched, checked for breath, and recoiled in shock.
“Sister-in-law, how could you treat a human life so lightly?”
Liu Ruying forced herself to remain calm. “What household allows a concubine to become pregnant before the lawful wife? I only gave her a bowl of medicine to end the pregnancy.”
The family physician examined Yunxiu and shook his head.
“This young woman was not pregnant. She ingested a deadly poison. That is why she bled and died.”
My mother-in-law could bear no more. She stepped forward and slapped Liu Ruying.
“You are the daughter of an official. How can you be so cruel?”
Qin Zhaoyuan stared at the maid who had served him since childhood, stunned and furious to see her end this way.
“I told you she would be no more than a decoration. Why could you still not tolerate her?”
Liu Ruying could not defend herself. She wanted the visiting physician to testify, only to discover that he had vanished.
Her head snapped up.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You framed me!”
She raised her hand to strike me, but Qin Zhaoyuan caught her and held her back.
“Even now, you try to drag someone else into this. How did you become so vicious?”
Utterly disappointed, Qin Zhaoyuan did nothing as my mother-in-law locked Liu Ruying in the family shrine.
After several days of drinking himself insensible, Qin Zhaoyuan staggered into my courtyard late one night.