Chapter 3
The door opened again.
Lu Zhang stood outside, utterly confident.
He looked at me like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.
Malicious and smug.
My sister spoke.
“This ends here. You never touched her anyway, and I can’t persuade her.
“If you keep pushing and she stakes her life on an accusation, losing your title will be the least of it. You could face a lawsuit.”
“What? How can we just let this go?”
I walked up to Lu Zhang and swung my hand, slapping him hard across the face several times.
It still wasn’t enough.
I pulled out my hairpin and drove it through his palm.
“You filthy little man. May you die horribly.”
He howled, shouting for the servants to seize me and beat me to death.
My sister snapped at him.
“Enough! Do you want everyone coming here to laugh at us?”
I walked straight out of the estate and climbed into the carriage home.
After Father’s wife joined me, she looked at me.
“You haven’t actually lost anything, and you’ve had your revenge. Surely you won’t hold a grudge?”
I smiled and shook my head to reassure her.
“Of course not. If this got out, I’d be the one who suffered in the end.
“I’m going to marry Song Huai and be the examination champion’s wife. Why would I ruin my own future?”
She thought it over, found that reasonable, and relaxed.
But of course I would hold a grudge.
None of them were getting out alive.
Back home, Father’s wife tossed and turned, still unable to stop worrying about my sister.
She told Father she would stay at the Dingyuan estate to care for her.
After she left, I gave Father the medicine that would make him sterile.
Having no son had always been his sorest point.
He had recently taken another concubine, a woman physician.
I passed her courtyard.
A young maid was inside, brewing medicine to help her conceive.
For half a month, while his wife was away, Father spent every night in the concubine’s courtyard.
There was still no sign of a pregnancy.
Father wasn’t anxious. He was used to this.
But the concubine was.
She knew there was nothing wrong with her own body.
Which left Father.
His wife still hadn’t returned.
My sister’s condition worsened.
She didn’t even last until the end of the month.
She died of her illness.
At the funeral, I put a drug in Lu Zhang’s wine.
After he fainted, his household called a physician, who discovered that he had been given sterilizing medicine.
The entire estate erupted into chaos.
In the end, their investigation found that my sister had done it.
But she was already dead.
Lu Zhang had to accept it whether he wanted to or not.
For the sake of his son and daughter’s reputations,
he could only swallow the grievance in silence.
He pointed at Father’s wife, demanding an answer.
“You’ve been staying in my house all this time. Did you put her up to it?”
Father’s eyelid twitched.
His wife argued herself hoarse. Since Father was deliberately protecting her, Lu Zhang had to let it go.
But the people who needed to hear about it still heard.
Father’s concubine, for instance.
Afraid her own medical knowledge was inadequate, she quietly summoned the best physician in the capital to examine him.
Father, too, was found to have been given sterilizing medicine.
He flew into a fury so violent that he spat blood.
He didn’t even investigate. With my sister’s dosing of Lu Zhang fresh in his mind, he decided at once that his wife must be responsible.
Servants dragged her from her sleep and pinned her to the ground.
Father emerged, his face dark. She was bewildered.
“My lord, what are you doing?”
He slapped her several times, cursing her.
I stepped out from behind him.
“Madam, how could you give Father medicine to make him sterile? How could you be so cruel?”
She denied it vehemently, screaming that she was innocent.
Disgusted, Father ordered them to throw her into the courtyard well and make it look as though she had drowned.
Right up until her death, she kept repeating, “No,” “It wasn’t me,” “I didn’t!”
She wanted to tell him I had done it.
But Father had already left.
He couldn’t hear her.
She soon stopped breathing.
At last, I felt a little better.