Chapter 7

She had allowed the deed and the bangle to be delivered, but kept back the letter that explained everything.

Lingge had died without ever knowing Pei Huaijin had sent her away to save her.

She thought he had abandoned her.

This revelation kept me sitting in Bamboo Court for an entire day.

When Father was alive, he sometimes muttered while drunk, “Your mother cried all night before she left.”

Back then, I thought it was because of the pain of childbirth.

Now I understood—

Lingge had died carrying her resentment and the hurt of being cast aside.

She never knew the truth.

Pei Huaijin had written a letter, but his mother had intercepted it.

All her life, Lingge believed Pei Huaijin no longer wanted her.

All his life, Pei Huaijin believed Lingge had received his explanation and simply refused to forgive him.

The misunderstanding between them had been sealed in place by the Grand Preceptor’s wife with a single word: “Keep.”

Suddenly, the letter in my hand felt very heavy.

Not because of the paper.

Because it carried eighteen years.

I folded it neatly and tucked it into my robe.

Then I went to find the Grand Preceptor’s wife.

This time, I didn’t ask a maid to announce me.

I shoved open the door of the Buddhist shrine and walked straight in.

The Grand Preceptor’s wife was kneeling before the Buddha.

At the sound, she turned. When she saw me, her face went white.

“Liu Qingping, you came in without asking—”

“I’ve read the letter.”

Her mouth fell open, but no sound came out.

I walked up to her and crouched down.

I looked her straight in the eye.

“The letter Pei Huaijin wrote to my mother. He said, ‘If you don’t leave, my mother will come after you.’ There’s a ‘Keep’ written on the back. You wrote it.”

All the color drained from the Grand Preceptor’s wife’s face.

She gaped at me, a dry, rasping sound coming from her throat, like someone who hadn’t had a drink of water in a long time.

“You kept the letter and let the deed and the bangle be delivered.”

“My mother died believing Pei Huaijin had abandoned her.”

“And Pei Huaijin died believing she had received his explanation and refused to forgive him.”

“With one letter, you killed two people.”

The Grand Preceptor’s wife began to tremble.

Not with fear.

Something she had suppressed for more than a decade had just been torn open.

Suddenly, she laughed.

It was a bitter, heartrending laugh.

“Killed two people?” Her voice was sharp. “I killed two people?”

“Liu Qingping, do you know that that lowly maid was carrying my son’s child?”

“She was a registered bondservant! Her child would be one, too!”

“What sort of family is the Pei family? What kind of lineage is the Wang family?”

“How could I allow a child born to a servant to enter the Pei clan? How could I face my sisters? My family? How could I hold my head high in the capital?”

The more she spoke, the more agitated she became. The veins stood out on the hand gripping her prayer beads.

“I was not wrong! Any proper matriarch would have done the same!”

“Huaijin was the one without sense, infatuated with a servant!”

“That lowborn maid seduced my son!”

“I only… I only wanted to protect this family!”

At the end, her voice suddenly sank.

“But… Huaijin died.”

“Only after he died did I learn… he truly loved that girl.”

“He wasn’t bewitched. He really…”

She couldn’t finish.

She was crying.

The daughter of the Wang clan of Taiyuan, a noblewoman who had been the Grand Preceptor’s wife for decades, knelt before the Buddha and wept like a child.

I stood.

I looked at her.

I didn’t comfort her or ask anything more.

Her tears weren’t for my mother.

They were for herself.

She cried because she had destroyed her son’s last hope with her own hands.

But those tears could make nothing right.

When I stepped out of the shrine, it was already pitch-black.

Pei Yanchu was waiting for me beneath the corridor.

He must have guessed what I had just done.

“Qingping.”

It was the first time he’d called me by name instead of “Daoist Liu.”

“Old sir.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“What can I do?” I gave a faint, cold smile. “Take your wife to the authorities? She’s the Grand Preceptor’s wife, a daughter of the Wang clan of Taiyuan. I’m a wandering Taoist’s daughter. Who would hear my case?”

Pei Yanchu fell silent.

Because I was telling the truth.

In this dynasty, a maidservant’s life was worth nothing.

Lingge had been a maid in the Pei household. Although Pei Yanchu had given her commoner status when he brought her in, in the Grand Preceptor’s wife’s eyes, she would always be a bondservant.

Even if I dragged the matter before the authorities, the Grand Preceptor’s wife would at most be reprimanded for “failing to manage her household.”

And I—a girl with an uncertain background, the daughter of a Taoist—wasn’t even listed in the family register.

That was the rule of this world.

But even if the rules were the rules, there was still one thing I had to clarify.

“Old sir, what’s beneath that dry well?”

Pei Yanchu’s whole body shook.

“On the night Lingge left, one of Madam’s maids went to Lingge’s room with a pair of scissors. The next day, the dry well was sealed. Matron Zhou saw her.”

“Did you know?”