Chapter 59 p1
Jingyu looked up at him, blinked, not understanding what he meant.
“You dare to look at me directly.”
Jingyu quickly lowered her eyes.
Xie Yao chuckled, not a cold laugh. Jingyu’s tense mind relaxed.
“My affairs, how much have you told her?” Xie Yao asked.
“This servant has not said anything.”
“Then why does she think I have been treated unfairly?”
Jingyu was silent for a moment and said, “The Mistress is as intelligent as ice and snow. She must have remembered the content from the time she heard the storyteller in the teahouse. Later, when she guessed the master’s identity, she associated it with the master’s youth.”
Xie Yao was thinking and did not speak.
Jingyu: “The Mistress once asked this servant, and this servant replied that I did not know. After that, the Mistress asked this servant if the master’s parents were still healthy. This servant only said that the second master had passed away from illness and did not mention the legal wife, nor did I say another word.”
“Second master. Legal wife,” Xie Yao repeated these five words. “In the Duke’s Residence, you were willing to be a slave?”
The fingers in front of Jingyu clenched. She subconsciously wanted to lower her head but held it, and slowly straightened up.
“It should have been like this long ago,” Xie Yao chuckled and said slowly, “I had originally intended to keep you until Yuli was enfeoffed as the empress.”
Jingyu was greatly alarmed. Seeing his gloomy expression, her whole body lost its strength. She had had moments when she did not want to live, but at this moment, it was the time when she most wanted to live well.
Jingyu knelt on the ground and kowtowed. “I beg the master to be merciful and spare this servant’s life.”
“Tell me what you did wrong and how I should forgive you.”
“This servant should not have let the Mistress have contact with an outside man, and even less should I have allowed the Mistress to greet guests in the shop. I also should not have, relying on the Mistress’s trust, avoided the master’s summons. In the future, this servant will definitely take the master’s orders as the standard and will not disobey in the slightest.”
“Even if it means disobeying her?”
His voice was tinged with an indifferent killing intent. Jingyu felt that his killing intent was already set, and it was futile to say anything. She said in a low voice, “This servant will only protect the Mistress and will not disobey the Mistress.”
“Not bad. I can allow you to choose a way to die.”
Jingyu trembled uncontrollably and sobbed, “The fastest, will do.”
“You can also choose a time.”
Jingyu silently shed tears. “After this servant has said goodbye to the Mistress, let her think that I am just going home, or getting married.”
Xie Yao: “There’s no need to be in such a hurry. How about in fifty years?”
Jingyu thought she had misheard. She looked up and saw that his face was full of inquiry, as if he were serious.
Just now, it was as if she had really walked the road to death. After surviving, Jingyu’s tears still did not stop, but she was so excited that she could not control herself. After calming down for a moment, she kowtowed. “Thank you for sparing my life, master.”
Xie Yao looked at her for a while and told her to get up.
Jingyu wiped away her tears and thanked him again before getting up.
Xie Yao glanced at her, said nothing, and walked away.
Jingyu watched his departing figure disappear and finally let out a huge breath. She no longer had to worry about losing her life at any time, and she could also continue to follow Yuli and live a life where she could hold her head high.
Jingyu’s eyes were full of hot tears, but she smiled.
*
Xie Yao left the Xie Residence, mounted his horse, turned its head, and went to the Duke of Qing’s Residence.
Because the master of the residence had passed away from illness, the mourning clothes in the residence had not yet been removed. White banners fluttered, and the lights were dim. Besides the shadow guards, no one was walking around, making it even more eerie and grim than before.
Xie Yao went straight to Xilan Courtyard, where Xie Chunlan was.
It was already past the hour of Ren Ding. Xie Chunlan was forcibly brought out, casually wrapped in plain clothes, and thrown into an armchair.
Several lamps were lit in the room, illuminating Xie Chunlan’s face clearly. Xie Yao sat down opposite her. Song He was on the side, and a cup of tea was on the table.
Xie Chunlan’s face was slightly pale, from not having seen the light for a long time. She was wearing a simple chignon, one side smooth, the other slightly messy, with a few strands of hair hanging down by the side of her face.
She raised her left hand, slowly and deliberately straightened her hair, and tucked the strands behind her ear. From the moment she saw Xie Yao, her face had always maintained a noble smile.
She smiled and said, “Fourth Brother has come today. Do you want to chop off my hands or my feet?”
Xie Yao took a sip of tea and glanced at her. “I have come today to tell my seventh sister a story.”
Hearing him call her seventh sister, Xie Chunlan’s smile deepened. “Whatever Fourth Brother wants to say, I am willing to listen.”
Xie Yao looked at her, his face calm, showing no emotion. He began to speak, his voice having just the right narrative feel.
“Twenty-three years ago, a child was born in a private house in Anren Fang. When the child was three, his mother hired a teacher to teach him to read. The child learned very quickly and had finished the Thousand Character Classic in less than half a year. The teacher praised him as a prodigy. The child’s mother did not care and only had him recite poems to his father when he came…”
“…He recited a long fu, deliberately revealing the bruises from his mother’s abuse. His father saw them, blinked, told him to stop, and then held her and went into the room. In the daytime, a strange laugh was heard. He did not understand those smiles at that time, but he learned one thing: pleasing and showing weakness could not solve any problem…
“Later, the other women either died or ran away, leaving only him and his mother, and a few children. When he was eight, a groom came to the courtyard.”
“One day, the child saw them holding each other behind the rockery, their panting as loud as the coupling of livestock. He stood there without moving, until they came out and saw him…”
Xie Chunlan had long known who he was talking about. At first, she still maintained a smile, but gradually, a look of contempt appeared. It turned out that his birth mother was even more lowly than she had imagined.
Xie Yao looked at her. She straightened her back even more, showing the pride of a noble lady from an aristocratic family.
He paused, then continued.
“After that, the groom would often beat him in private. He had resisted, but he was too young at that time and could not win.”
Beside him, Song He’s hand holding the sword suddenly tightened. His thumb pinched the scabbard, and his fingertips turned white.
Those gloomy and oppressive scenes suddenly came back one by one. Listening to the unhurried, calm as water narration of the person beside him, he felt as if he were there again.
“Once, his mother saw it and only said not to kill him, and not to hit his face, so that it would be hard to explain if that person saw it and asked. The groom became even more aggressive. On the night he tried to tell his father, the two of them ganged up to abuse him, but they were calculating his father’s money and did not kill him.”
His breathing was always steady, as if there were no fluctuations.
Song He was only one year younger than Xie Yao. He remembered everything. Those scenes, he had often watched from the side, and had occasionally been affected and beaten. Now, just a few images flashing through his mind made it difficult for him to breathe.
It was a winter day. The second master Xie had come with a money bag and some pastries. The few of them, children, were gathered together to share the pastries. Song He had often followed Xie Yao, calling him “brother,” which his late mother had taught him when she was alive.
At that time, his brother was standing at the door of the legal wife’s room. After the person inside came out, he walked to the second master Xie, wanting to say something. The legal wife came out, entangled with the second master Xie. The second master Xie was in a hurry to leave, pushed the person away, and left in a hurry.
Not long after, the groom came and held his brother by the neck. His brother’s face turned purple. He wanted to help but was kicked away and hit the wall, unable to move.
The legal wife watched from the side for a long time before coming over and saying, “That’s enough. Just scare him. Ah Yao, will you still tell your father in the future?”
His brother did not speak, but got up and looked at the two of them, his eyes as fierce as a young wolf’s.
He did not submit, did not make a sound.
The groom slapped him. The groom was as strong as a mountain, and his hand was twice the size of an eight-year-old child’s face. He was knocked to the ground and could not get up.
The legal wife asked again, but he gritted his teeth and did not say a word.
The legal wife took the fire tongs from the side of the fire basin and stabbed him in the back of the waist. “Will you still say it or not?”
The question squeezed out from between her teeth was chilling.
The smell of burning flesh spread. The groom held the legal wife’s hand and added some force. He could hear his brother’s teeth grinding, but he just wouldn’t speak.
The legal wife pushed the groom away and whipped him with the fire tongs. In a fit of anger, she poured the fire basin on him.
His clothes caught fire, and the smell of burning hair filled the room.
The children younger than him cried out, one after another, and the two of them were finally scared.
A basin of water extinguished the fire on his brother. The groom threw him outside. When he went to see him again, he was crawling towards the woodshed. He was almost frozen, his clothes were torn, and his face was also burned.
Later, he survived and no longer fought against them, but the groom and the legal wife would still warn him from time to time, repeatedly tormenting the wound on his waist to make him remember the lesson.
At that time, one was eight, the other seven. Just recalling such a scene made Song He suffocate.
“He studied hard, wanting to change his situation, but he was too young. At the age of ten, he had read all the classics, histories, poems, and songs, and only then did he understand that studying was useless. No one cared if he was full of knowledge. But what he learned from the books taught him how to erase a person without a trace.”
“He chose a rainy night. While the groom was drunk, he used a firewood knife to pierce the groom’s chest. The groom struggled. He turned the knife, pulled it out, and a lot of blood flowed. He stabbed three times in a row. In the end, the groom did not struggle much and died. He walked into the rain. The rainwater washed away the blood, leaving no trace. He also learned how to completely solve a problem.”
Xie Yao paused and took a sip of tea.