chapter 4

chapter 4

Ning Qimei moved quickly.

Before half a day had passed, she sent the travel permit and banknotes.

Not five thousand taels.

Ten notes worth a thousand each.

Ten thousand taels to purchase a clean end to our relationship.

Shen Linzhang finally returned six days later.

His face was stormy. The moment he entered, he demanded to know who had written the annotations in the Compendium of General Medicine.

“That is not your hand.”

“Who is the man?”

I did not answer.

“Where is the book?”

“Burned.”

He said it without concern. “It could not cure Feiying. There was no reason to keep it.”

My pupils contracted as I stared at him.

Although I knew the book was beyond recovery, some foolish fragment of hope had remained.

“It was mine. What right did you have to burn it?”

“Shen Linzhang, how dare you!”

I screamed and raised a hand to strike him.

He caught my wrist as though it required no effort.

“All this over a worthless book?”

“You married me while yearning for another man. I am the one who should ask how you dared.”

He seized my jaw and crushed his mouth against mine.

His kiss was punishment and conquest, stealing every breath.

I struggled and pounded his chest with both hands, but nothing moved him. His arms closed around me as he forced me toward the bed.

I knew what he intended.

No.

I drove my knee into his abdomen.

He grunted and held me tighter. His tongue forced its way into my mouth while one hand roamed over my body.

I stopped hesitating.

With all my strength, I bit down on his tongue and lower lip.

Hard.

The taste of blood flooded my mouth.

Pain finally loosened his grip. I tore myself free, staggered upright, and hurled the teapot from the table.

It struck his temple. Blood poured down his face.

He did not seem to care. He even laughed.

“Do you think you can escape?”

“I gave you the chance to leave. You were the one who refused.”

“You married me while pining for some other man.”

“What am I to do? Your husband is very angry.”

He advanced again, menace making refusal seem impossible.

“Has he tasted you?”

“The thought of another man touching you makes me want to kill him.”

Ignoring his wound, he lunged like a rabid beast and began tearing at my clothes.

I pulled the hairpin from my hair.

“But you have already killed him once.”

The gold pin sank deep into his chest.

He groaned.

I kicked him away, seized a chair, and smashed it against his head.

Blood spilled from his mouth. His body swayed, yet his eyes remained fixed upon me.

“Cuicui, did you ever love me?”

The question was so absurd I almost laughed.

“Why would I love an animal who tried to throw me away the moment he recovered?”

His face went white, and his voice trembled. “Did you come to avenge Liang Chengbin?”

Liang Chengbin was the son of the Marquis of Valor whom he had killed in the street.

He thought that when I said he had killed the man once already, I meant Liang Chengbin.

He did not even recognize his own elder brother’s handwriting.

He mistook my silence for assent.

“He was no good man,” Shen Linzhang said with a bitter, almost pleading smile. “What does he possess that I do not?”

“Feiying is broad-minded. She is willing to share a husband with you.”

“If you agree, I will elevate you to honored concubine. I will overlook everything that came before.”

He spoke with tender generosity, as though this arrangement were a magnificent gift.

I said nothing and walked toward him.

With each step, his eyes brightened.

I stopped before him and looked straight into those eyes.

Then I pulled out the gold pin and drove it into his chest again.

“No.”

His legs gave way. Sweat rolled from his brow as he collapsed.

I twisted the pin in his wound, pouring all my hatred through it.

At last, he lost consciousness.

Sunset approached. Two hours remained before the city gates closed.

I dragged him onto the bed and covered him with the quilt to hide the blood.

He would not die. I had merely damaged the channels around his wound. His health would remain weak from that day onward.

I changed clothes and hid the permit and banknotes close to my body.

When I opened the door, Auntie Yong was waiting.

Surprise stirred in me, though my expression did not change.

Her face was calm.

“Madam, follow me.”

She led me through the rear compound, past several abandoned courtyards, until we reached an overgrown corner.

Pulling vines from the wall, she revealed a dog hole.

She gestured for me to crawl through.

I retreated two steps and regarded her warily.

She smiled without concern. “Do not be afraid, Madam. This servant takes money and completes the task.”

“A servant must know how to bend with circumstances. In this life, I trust only silver.”

“After you leave, someone will make certain no trouble follows you. You may sleep soundly.”

Confusion filled me.

Ning Qimei was the only person I knew in Chang’an.

Could she truly be this considerate?

There was no time to puzzle it out.

If I failed to leave today, I might never have another chance.

I crawled through the hole and thanked Auntie Yong.

“Do not take the main road,” she whispered. “Go west. Someone is waiting.”

I put on a veiled hat and hurried west until I reached Anding Gate.

Dusk had deepened, and the gate was about to close.

I reached for my travel permit, but a burly man stepped into my path.

“My master wishes to see you.”

A figure stood before the wind in an upper room of the gate tower, black hair and robes streaming, bearing magnificent.

When the figure turned, a trace of femininity softened those resolute features.

I had never seen her before, but I understood at once.

She was Huo Feiying.

Her peerless reputation was deserved.

I did not understand why she had saved me, but I bowed in thanks.

She smiled, her voice crisp and open.

“There is no need. You were a dear friend of someone I once knew. I merely acted for his sake.”

“Who?”

She studied me for a moment but did not answer.

“Go. I command this gate, and I will see you through.”

“Once you leave, do not look back.”

She turned away. Her voice drifted into the wind, carrying an inexplicable loneliness.

I was full of questions, but this was not the moment to ask them. If she did not wish to speak, I would not pry.

The gate groaned open into the night.

The wind cut like a blade and flung dust through the air.

For one fleeting moment, a trapped beast tasted freedom.

At the riverbank, a single lantern glowed upon a narrow boat, one small firefly in the darkness.

I boarded. Moonlight spilled across the rippling water.

Far away, on the gate tower, Huo Feiying remained still for a long time.

“Is it done?” she asked.

The swordsman behind her answered, “The woman’s corpse has been taken into the Shen residence. The fire should have started by now.”

Flames rose in the distance, scorching the darkness gold.

Huo Feiying watched the river until that solitary light disappeared.

Then she drew a damaged book from inside her robe.

The Compendium of General Medicine—the book supposedly burned.

She opened it and ran her fingers over the bold annotations.

“Let the long wind bear Linzhao’s soaring will; let his horse roam free wherever the rivers and mountains lead.”

The verse should have sounded carefree and heroic.

In her voice, it became desolate.

“You promised you would wait for me, liar.”

Now life and death divided them.

Across the breadth of heaven and earth, only the wind remained.

Shen Linzhang

Shen Linzhang knew better than anyone how Li Cuicui had treated him during those three years.

The physicians said he could never have recovered without her brewing medicine for him day after day.

Huo Feiying had merely appeared at the precise moment that stirred the damaged pathways in his mind.

Li Cuicui, however, was a Ning adopted daughter in name and nothing more than a village girl in truth.

If the family had not needed a bride to dispel misfortune, a woman of her station would never have crossed the Shen threshold.

He did not believe he owed her anything.

For three years, she had enjoyed every resource the Shen household offered.

That was compensation enough.

The moment his horse raced after Huo Feiying, he had already decided upon divorce.

What he had not expected was Li Cuicui’s calm agreement.

Her eyes held no longing for him.

Only indifference.

Even he did not understand why that indifference filled him with rage.

It was almost as though he was furious because she did not love him.

When he learned that his mother had withheld her travel permit, relief had crept through him. He used the opportunity to tear up the letter.

Huo Feiying carried a parasitic poison that made every bone in her body ache when it flared. She had returned to the capital to seek a cure; without one, she might die.

Then guilt toward Feiying overcame him.

She was the only woman he had loved in his youth.

Not some delicate woman raised behind courtyard walls. Certainly not an illiterate village girl.

Yet while tending Feiying, his mind returned again and again to Li Cuicui.

He knew the medical books were useless. He ordered the steward to take them because a woman accustomed to wealth would never willingly return to poverty.

He wanted Li Cuicui to understand who she depended upon.

Then he saw the forceful handwriting inside the Compendium of General Medicine and finally understood why she held it every day as though it were her life.

Her heart had belonged to another man all along.

Jealousy and resentment drove him to throw the book into the brazier.

Feiying urged patience and hinted that she was willing to call Li Cuicui her sister.

He was overjoyed.

Feiying had once sworn she would never share a husband. Now she was willing to humble herself for his sake.

He assured her that Li Cuicui was obedient.

“If the two of you live in harmony, I will consider myself a fortunate man.”

He imagined fighting beside Feiying and returning in triumph to find Li Cuicui waiting with a bowl of hot soup.

Every respectable household had three wives and four concubines. He wanted only two women. If anything, that proved his devotion.

Once Feiying’s poison had been brought under temporary control, he hurried home.

He found that heartless woman had spent the day browsing the Butterfly Pavilion.

Reason left him, and he demanded answers about the book.

When she learned it had been destroyed, she screamed at him like a madwoman.

He had never seen such emotion from her.

Who could matter so much that even her husband came second?

Jealousy swept away his reason. The fire within insisted that once he possessed her body, her heart could hold no one else.

As she struggled beneath him, he thought only that she meant to preserve herself for that man.

That was unacceptable.

He had not expected her to be so fierce—willing to wound him rather than submit.

With his martial skill, he could have caught the hairpin.

He chose not to.

If she vented her anger, perhaps she would forgive him.

Once.

Twice.

She stabbed him three times with all her strength.

He finally collapsed.

The last thing he saw was hatred in her eyes.

When he awoke, the northern courtyard had burned to the ground. Only a charred woman’s corpse remained.

He refused to believe it.

But every identifying mark named by the coroner matched Li Cuicui.

Feiying came and told him to grieve.

How was he supposed to grieve?

This was the wife who had cared for him for three years.

The woman he had harmed and would never have the chance to repay.

He watched the corpse carried away.

Blood surged from his mouth.

Once, lost memory had cost him Huo Feiying.

Now, his own obsession had cost him Li Cuicui.

In the end, he had nothing.