In the resplendent hall, the Royal Symphony Orchestra played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Ladies and noblewomen in splendid gowns stepped down from carriages, took the arms of similarly attired gentlemen, and ascended the red carpet toward the elevated stairs to the strains of the violin.
Ye Tang wore a black backless evening gown with a serpent-shaped white gold necklace inlaid with diamonds around her neck. The tail of this unusual necklace was very long, draping from the back of Ye Tang’s neck all the way down to the middle of her spine. The serpent’s eyes were two top-grade pigeon blood gems, their deep and alluring red making the entire serpent necklace look like a living creature with a soul.
The white serpent with red eyes and white scales also held a large, brilliant ruby in its mouth. Anyone familiar with religious myths could tell that the serpent necklace around Ye Tang’s neck was modeled after the serpent of desire from the Garden of Eden that tempted Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.
Amazed that Mrs. Hedelin truly lived up to her reputation as Mrs. Hedelin, daring to wear a symbol of taboo around her neck, the surrounding noblewomen and ladies could not suppress their curiosity and voyeuristic interest. They approached Ye Tang to chat, and she responded candidly.
Like other great powers, Osnabrock’s aristocratic world had a rule: inferiors must not greet superiors first. If a superior chose to ignore an inferior, the inferior was considered unaccepted. Such an inferior could not introduce themselves or announce their house; they could only bow silently. Afterward, they would be excluded from the superior’s social circle.
Ye Tang’s status was that of a commoner. In a place like the palace, she clearly had no right to initiate conversation with the noblewomen and ladies. But as a businesswoman, she could never have too many connections.
Since the fated ball would be held whether Ye Tang wanted it or not, she figured it was better to use the ball to befriend more nobles than to attend reluctantly, trembling in fear of whether the prince would choose Cinderella.
Duke Wilson was not omnipotent. Even if he were, the duke—whom the royals distrusted—had to lurk beneath the surface. Ye Tang had only obtained Duke Wilson’s protection through Daisy; this did not mean the duke would fully support her. Nor did Ye Tang plan to pin all her hopes on Duke Wilson alone. It would do neither her nor Hedelin House any good.
‘Oh, Anna Rochel, you truly are a courageous woman to hang that “taboo” ornament on your slender neck. Are you trying to challenge divine authority?’
One noblewoman unfurled her lace fan, half-covering her smile laced with two parts disdain, three parts mockery, and four parts probing curiosity.
‘Attracted by this serpent of desire, you who come to talk to me are courageous busybodies as well.’
—Of course, Ye Tang could not respond to the noblewoman that way. Instead, she unfurled her own fan made of peacock tail feathers and crow feathers, her expression gentle as she said, “Challenge divine authority? I lack such audacity… I am merely a humble merchant.”
“The reason I wear this little one around my neck is that I believe the serpent of wisdom is no villain.”
Ye Tang, holding the fan in one hand, touched the white serpent around her neck with the other. The serpent’s deep red eyes glimmered faintly from the refraction of light, as if its gaze had shifted.
“Eating the fruit of wisdom may have been taboo, but without this little one, we would still be naked, ignorant of ourselves, each other, and the world.”
Ye Tang clutched her forehead and exaggeratedly leaned back. “…Oh dear, just imagining myself walking shamelessly naked in front of gentlemen makes me so embarrassed I’m about to faint… Thank goodness the serpent of wisdom guided us humans.”
“Hehehe, calling the serpent of desire the serpent of wisdom—you truly are an interesting person.”
The noblewoman laughed at Ye Tang’s words. The hostility in her eyes thinned considerably, while her interest grew much thicker.
By the time Claudia, Gloria, and Cinderella returned to their mother’s side, Ye Tang had already been chatting amiably with several noblewomen, including the wives of earls and marquises.
“What an unprecedented spectacle.”
Charlotte whispered to Claudia.
On the household registry, Charlotte was impeccably clean—even related to minor nobility, counting as an aristocratic descendant. Thanks to Daisy’s planning for her social debut, Charlotte had quite a few peers among the nobility.
Unlike her friends, Charlotte had entered Hedelin Medical Academy to study, so she had faced some ostracism for a time from friends whose mindsets still lingered on “nobles should not work.” But times had changed. Hedelin Medical Academy, with its outstanding achievements in epidemic prevention and control, had become Osnabrock’s foremost institution.
Daughters from minor and middling noble houses, seeing Gloria and Cinderella at the forefront of the era, were influenced and wanted to enter the medical academy to become people who contributed to society and the nation.
Minor and middling nobles did not actually expect their daughters to become great doctors, nor did they believe their daughters could achieve much in the profound field of medicine. What they envied was the vast wealth and investment acumen possessed by upstarts like Ye Tang and Daisy. With the aim of letting their daughters become classmates and study companions with the daughters of the Clement and Hedelin houses, these minor nobles sent their daughters out.
The social world thus underwent a massive transformation.
Young ladies no longer idolized some princess or queen. Their daily talk shifted from jewels, gowns, eligible bachelors from various houses, and their own marriage prospects with relatives and sisters.
Many ladies treated medical texts as their bibles and revered great physicians as new gods. Even daughters of great noble houses began to aspire to the medical academy and medical knowledge.
Not all great nobles were unconcerned about the changes in their daughters and the social world. But ever since a baron’s daughter performed emergency treatment on an injured duke during a hunt, saving the duke’s life, the great nobles softened their stance on their daughters’ interest in medicine—people cherished their lives, and the more power and status one had, the more they feared losing it all. Though inferiors could perform emergency treatment, who could guarantee an inferior would exert themselves as devotedly as family?
Osnabrock had contained the spread of the Spanish Flu and was reviving at a speed many times faster than other nations. Seeing the gap between their own countries and Osnabrock, and noticing how Osnabrock’s ladies emphasized medical studies, nobles from other lands successively believed they had uncovered the secret to Osnabrock’s fearlessness against plagues.
Foreign nobles continuously proposed to ladies studying at Hedelin Medical Academy, leading to a surge in ladies coming to the academy with impure motives.
Fate always had its inscrutable designs. The foreign nobles who married Osnabrock ladies for advanced medicine and healthcare ended up with those merely idling away at the academy. Ladies who saw it only as a place to gild themselves, aiming to swiftly marry prominent nobles, discovered their new husbands had not chosen them for who they were.
The studious ladies who rejected proposals and stayed at Hedelin Medical Academy found a spiritual world far broader than marriage. There, they were not “noble ladies” or “women.” They were simply “people,” no different from other medical scholars.
No woman, once treated as an equal to men, would willingly return to a life of being manipulated. Yet Hedelin Medical Academy had been founded only two years prior, and its shortest course was four years. Thus, no Osnabrock nobles had yet noticed the true changes in the ladies.
Busy fending off the noblewomen, Ye Tang could not tend to her daughters. Daisy, known as the “Morning Star,” was at that moment gracefully dancing with an earl in the ballroom.
Having greeted her noble friends with Claudia, Gloria, and Cinderella, Charlotte saw the situation and waited with them in a spot not too far from Ye Tang and Daisy.
“Oh dear, beautiful young ladies, no one has invited you to dance?”
“At such a grand ball, it is such a waste for beauties like you to stand aside as wallflowers.”
Several nobles closed in on Claudia and the others. Charlotte stepped forward in a flash, blocking the path before Claudia, who was poor at handling noblemen and thus trembled inwardly.
“I am very sorry, we are all rather tired.”
Charlotte’s brows and eyes curved in a gentle, compliant smile. Yet Claudia, protected behind her slender back, felt a sense of reliability and safety.
“Do not say that. I know you—you are Mrs. Clement’s niece, right? I have always been very interested in you—”
One noble seized Charlotte’s arm and dragged her toward the dance floor. Charlotte had a minor noble background, after all. Even considering her mother, she could not shake off his hand to embarrass him, but he would not dare do anything too outrageous to her under everyone’s gaze.
Charlotte was not worried for herself; she worried what would happen to Claudia and the others once she was taken away.
“Then, you two, shall we?”
The speaking noble extended his arm to Claudia with a smug expression, while another blocked Gloria, who tried to seek help from Ye Tang.
“Gentlemen, my sisters are all exhausted. Please—”
Before Cinderella could finish, one noble blocked her.
The noble leaned down and said harshly in a voice only Cinderella could hear, “What? A mere illegitimate child thinks she has a chance to hook up with us nobles? Let me tell you, even your sisters are only fit to be our mistresses. An illegitimate like you does not even qualify as a mistress!”
Cinderella’s pupils contracted, her face instantly paling.
“P-Please let me go…!”
On the other side, Claudia, who had been pulled apart, was on the verge of slapping the man before her. She held back only because she knew that one slap would mean a commoner insulting a noble in front of the king and prince.
In the light case, her whole family would lose all property; in the severe case, not only would property be confiscated, but they would be exiled abroad.
That said, these nobles hardly acted like proper people. They dragged their targets to sparsely populated corners.
Gloria, pulled away from her sisters, was ashen-faced. “I warn you, if you do not let me go—”
But the noble dragging Gloria just grinned roguishly. “Or what?”
Gloria could do nothing.
The status gap between commoners and nobles was as vast as heaven and earth. Even if the nobles were rude first, as long as the resistors were commoners, the fault always lay with the commoners.