Chapter 10

These past few days, I’ve been in an excellent mood.

Everyone in Bianjing praises the Sheng family’s young lady as virtuous. For once, they’re right.

Letting a despicable man live half-dead—that sort of great act of kindness is not something everyone can manage.

10.

It was deep in the night. The candle flame wavered.

I had Yuwen attend Wei Jing at his sickbed while he and I spoke in low voices, our gestures intimate.

Yes, in the end I hadn’t been able to bring myself to kill him.

The day he threw himself into the lake, I stood on the bank and watched coldly. Only when he was nearly dead did I order someone to pull him out.

Well, life is short. There was no hurry to give up a little entertainment.

Wei Jing glared at me, his bloodshot eyes bulging and his chest heaving as if it might burst.

Yet he couldn’t move even one finger. All he could do was watch me and Yuwen exchange tender glances right in front of him.

His throat was hoarse. A few rasping sounds escaped him, as if he wanted to curse us, but he no longer had the strength to speak.

I accepted the cup of tea Yuwen offered and took a leisurely sip. I glanced at Wei Jing with an almost-smile.

“My lord, don’t blame me. Your body isn’t what it used to be. Naturally, I have to provide heirs for the Wei family. Isn’t that only proper?”

“To restore the marquis’s glory, surely you won’t begrudge me this little thing?”

“Oh, that reminds me. I have something amusing to tell you. I’m sure you’ll be delighted.”

I looked straight into his eyes and leisurely revealed the truth about the blood test: back then, I had deliberately added alum to the bowl of water.

Alum dissolves in blood, of course.

The corners of my lips curled higher and higher.

“So Jin isn’t your flesh and blood either.”

Seeing my serpent-like cruelty so plainly, Yuwen’s cheeks flushed for some reason. The look he gave me grew even more adoring.

I slowly rose. Under his yearning gaze, I bent down and bestowed a kiss on his lips like a reward.

Wei Jing’s eyes turned scarlet with rage. His throat constricted; he spat out a mouthful of blood and collapsed unconscious.

I thought he brought bad luck. The next day, I ordered the servants to carry him to a small courtyard.

“Take good care of the marquis. Don’t let him want for anything.”

My words sounded gentle, but the servants understood what I meant.

From then on, Wei Jing was confined to the small courtyard. Officially, he was recuperating. In truth, he was under house arrest.

I assigned trusted guards to watch him day and night and gave him medicine without end. But I had prepared every dose myself, keeping him alive in misery, unable to live and unable to die.

Everyone in the household knew my methods. Who would dare rebel?

Wei Jin was exceptionally bright. I personally taught him the classics and proper conduct from childhood, and hired renowned tutors from the capital to instruct him in letters and martial arts.

A few years later, he stood out among the most talented young men, accomplished in both the literary and martial arts. Everyone praised him.

One year, during the spring hunt, Wei Jin shot a wild goose out of the sky with a single arrow, astounding everyone at the hunting grounds. Even the emperor heard of him.

The emperor was delighted. He rewarded me with a thousand taels of gold and bestowed on me the title of Lady Zhenyi, praising me for ruling my household with discipline and raising my son well.

The noblewomen of the capital all exclaimed, “Madam Sheng truly is an extraordinary woman! She not only manages the household with an iron hand, she has raised such an outstanding young master that even His Majesty praises him!”

Under my hand, the Wei household grew more prosperous by the day, eventually shining brighter than it had even when the old marquis was alive.

As for Wei Jing, he was like a dying lamp before the wind. He managed to hold on for a few days—perhaps half a month—before drawing his last breath on a bitter winter’s day.

That day, the Wei matriarch returned from the small courtyard after taking care of her son’s funeral. She looked more than ten years older.

Her steps unsteady, she pushed open the door to my room.

She looked at me with hatred and fear, her voice trembling.

“Mingzhu… I never imagined you had such methods…”

Seeing the terror on her face now that she knew the truth, I could guess most of what had happened. Before he died, Wei Jing must have used what little strength he had left to tell her everything.

I set down the account book and looked straight at her.

“Old Madam, when you wanted me to marry into this family, you deliberately hid the fact that Wei Jing kept another woman. You also let him humiliate me on my wedding day. Did you ever imagine this day would come?”

She froze. A glimmer of despair crossed her eyes.

I slowly stood and said, “Which matters more, the marquis’s glory or the Wei family’s bloodline? Old Madam, you may decide for yourself.”

She did not answer. The next day, she hanged herself in the Buddhist shrine.

When the news spread, everyone in the household fell silent in fear. Not a soul dared breathe a word.

I merely ordered that her funeral be arranged properly. In public, I put on an expression of grief and anguish. In my heart, not a ripple stirred.

She had once let Wei Jing cast me into a living hell. Now she had merely reaped what she sowed.

Wei Jin inherited the title and became the new marquis of the Wei family.

As his mother, I held the household’s power firmly in my hands.

Twenty years passed in the blink of an eye. When I finally laid down the burden of managing the marquis’s household, crabapple trees in the courtyard had grown thick enough to shade the eaves.

Yuwen had remained by my side all along. In his simple blue robes, he was still as bright and pure as when we first met.

He gathered my silvering hair and tied it up for me. In the bronze mirror, I saw that his eyes were still full of tenderness.

Only then did I realize that, in a lifetime of ruthless decisions, his gaze was the one thing that had never changed.

When I was on my deathbed, he insisted on combing my hair himself. He took the hairpin he had bought by selling his ancestral jade pendant and placed it in my hair.

He spoke softly. “The underworld is cold. Let Yuwen go ahead and prepare the way for you.”

At last, he bowed beside my bed, smiled, and drank the cup of poisoned wine.

Outside the window, fresh snow weighed down the branches. For a moment, it was just like that day years ago in the woodshed.

Then, the young man covered in whip marks had looked up at me as though I were a god who had rescued him from a sea of suffering.

(END)

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