The Trap Springs

“This was found in Fang Cheng’s room,” she said.

Inside the brocade pouch was a personal seal engraved with the character “An,” along with an unsent letter.

It was a letter Pei Cheng’an had written to Yunxu.

It said plainly:

“If the baby has already stopped breathing at birth, use the method for a stillborn child to compound the medicine. If he still has breath, take the full medicinal guide while he is newly born. Leave no future trouble.”

“Leave no future trouble.”

I silently repeated those five characters, suddenly finding them ridiculous.

Three years ago, when Pei Cheng’an came to ask for my hand, he had told my father that all he wanted in this life was to protect me.

Now he called his own baby a future trouble.

It turned out that a man’s words, written as promises in a marriage contract, became nothing but scraps of paper when faced with self-interest.

As Zi hour approached, I changed into a pale cloak.

Physician Xie wouldn’t let me walk much, so I had a soft sedan chair carried for me.

It circled past the Orchid Courtyard’s front gate and quietly entered the small Buddhist shrine through the rear corridor.

The lamps in the shrine were dim. Incense ash littered the floor.

Yunxu stood before the altar in a faded blue Daoist robe, holding a blackened dagger. Half his left little finger was missing.

Lu Wanning knelt on a prayer cushion, a white porcelain bowl in front of her.

Pei Cheng’an stood behind her, his expression taut.

At the sound of movement, they all turned around.

Pei Cheng’an’s expression changed first.

“Why are you here?”

I lifted my cloak and slowly stepped down from the sedan chair.

“Didn’t my lord invite me to pray for a blessing?”

Yunxu narrowed his eyes as he looked me over. Then he suddenly laughed.

“Madam Pei has arrived at just the right moment. Mother and child are connected by blood. With the mother’s blood as an ingredient, the medicine will be even more effective.”

I looked at Pei Cheng’an.

He did not deny it.

In that moment, the last of my reluctance disappeared.

I had once thought perhaps he was simply being deceived by Yunxu.

Perhaps he didn’t know the forbidden prescription would kill the baby.

But he stood there in silence, as if everything had already been agreed upon.

“Pei Cheng’an,” I asked, “do you know what he wants?”

He avoided my eyes.

“Wanning won’t survive the night.”

“So what?”

“Taking a little blood won’t hurt the baby.”

I laughed.

“A little blood?”

I threw the letter at his feet.

“What did you mean when you wrote ‘leave no future trouble’?”

Pei Cheng’an’s pupils suddenly contracted.

Lu Wanning lunged for the letter, but Qingque stepped on her hem.

At last, she stopped pretending to be weak and shrieked, “Cousin, you promised me!”

“What did he promise you?” I asked.

She looked up. The tears on her face were still wet, but poison had already surfaced in her eyes.

“He promised to let the baby die. Once that child was gone, you wouldn’t be able to bind him anymore. Cousin said the Pei family never needed a child—they needed me alive!”

The Buddhist shrine fell utterly silent.

Pei Cheng’an snapped, “Wanning, shut up!”

“Why should I shut up?”

Lu Wanning laughed until her shoulders shook.

“Didn’t you say she was too clever, and that once she gave birth to a son, it would be even harder to get rid of her? You said that if she lost the child and lost hope, she’d hand over the household authority and her dowry. Then we could leave—”

“Enough!”

Pei Cheng’an grabbed her and pulled her away.

Lu Wanning stumbled two steps but didn’t fall.

She looked at him as if he were a log floating downstream that had suddenly turned against her. At last, a genuine trace of panic appeared in her eyes.

I only felt disgust.

So the “medicinal guide” I’d thought was the only secret had concealed an even deeper scheme.

They didn’t just want my baby’s life.

They wanted my money, my position, and everything I had held together for the Pei family.

“My lady,” Pei Cheng’an stepped forward, his voice hoarse. “I can explain.”

“No need.”

I raised a hand to stop him.

“You’ve all explained enough.”

I clapped my hands.

The tightly shut shrine doors were pushed open from outside.

My elder brother led the way in, followed by officers from the Court of Judicial Review, Physician Xie, Steward Li, and Fang Cheng, whose hands were bound behind him.

The moment Fang Cheng saw Pei Cheng’an, his legs gave way and he fell to his knees.

The Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review opened an official document and spoke coldly.

“Pei Cheng’an is suspected of attempting to murder his own son, using forbidden medicine to harm others, seizing his wife’s dowry, and carrying on a secret relationship with another woman. By imperial order, this residence is to be searched.”

Yunxu turned to run.

The officers by the door were ready. They pinned him down in two steps.

The black dagger fell to the floor with a clear clang.

Every trace of color drained from Lu Wanning’s face.

She looked at me, then suddenly crawled toward me, reaching for the hem of my skirt.

I stepped back.

Her hand grasped at empty air.

“Sister-in-law, I was wrong.”

She cried, “I only wanted to live. I didn’t want to die.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live,” I said, looking at her. “But if you trade my baby’s life for your own, you have to pay the price.”

She opened her mouth, but couldn’t offer a single rebuttal.

Physician Xie stepped forward and said calmly, “Miss Lu’s cold ailment has lingered, but it isn’t life-threatening. With proper treatment, her health may be weakened, but her life is not in danger. She took cold-natured medicine herself over the years, worsening her condition, then used it to pressure the marquis into seeking a forbidden prescription. She never wanted only to live. She wanted him to treat everyone else as props in her story.”

Lu Wanning stiffened.

The disguise she was best at wearing had been stripped away with a single sentence.

Pei Cheng’an stood amid the incense ash scattered across the floor, his face whiter than paper.

He looked at me, then at the letter, and finally lowered his head.

“My lady,” he asked hoarsely, “where is the baby?”

I didn’t answer.

He suddenly looked up. For the first time, genuine fear showed in his eyes.

“He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

“Of course he’s alive.”

I smiled.

“He’s my son, not one of the ingredients in your calculations.”

Pei Cheng’an seemed nailed to the spot by my words.

The officers from the Court of Judicial Review gave him no more time. Fang Cheng, Yunxu, and the shopkeeper from Miaochun Pharmacy were all taken away together. The maids from the Orchid Courtyard were questioned one by one. Steward Li carried a stack of ledgers and read aloud, in front of everyone, each sum Pei Cheng’an had taken from my dowry over the years.

Three thousand taels for medicine.

Eight hundred taels for jewelry.

Twelve hundred taels to secretly buy Lu Wanning a house in the southern part of the city.

The most laughable part was that Pei Cheng’an had even used my estate as collateral to borrow five thousand taels from a money house. He planned to transfer the house to Lu Wanning after I had supposedly “fallen ill from grief.”

I sat in the soft sedan chair and listened quietly.

At last, Pei Cheng’an could no longer maintain his dignity. His usually straight back sagged, as though someone had pulled out the bone that held him up.

“That house wasn’t for Wanning,” he suddenly said.

I raised my eyes. “Then who was it for?”

His lips moved.

No answer came.

Because what the answer was no longer mattered.

Before she was taken away, Lu Wanning kept looking at him.

She stopped crying and begging me. She simply looked at him as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time.

“Cousin,” she asked softly, “didn’t you say you would protect me?”

Pei Cheng’an closed his eyes.

She gave a laugh more painful than tears.

“So your protection is something anyone can receive—as long as they’re still useful to you.”

Her words struck him like a knife twisting into his own heart.

I didn’t look back at them.

The night wind outside the shrine was cold. Qingque helped pull my cloak tighter and asked in a low voice, “My lady, shall I go bring the young master home?”

“Not yet,” I said. “The marquis’s residence hasn’t been cleaned up.”

When the Pei family’s old madam heard the news and rushed over, she was trembling all over.

All her life, she had valued the family line above everything. Hearing that her eldest grandson was suspected of plotting against his own son, her first reaction wasn’t to ask how I was. She seized Physician Xie by the sleeve instead.

“Where is the baby? Where is my great-grandson?”

Physician Xie paid her no attention.

My brother blocked her at the door, his tone polite but not yielding in the slightest.

“Old Madam, my younger sister is still in confinement and isn’t fit to receive visitors. As for the baby, whether he’ll carry the Pei name in the future depends on whether the Pei family deserves that honor.”