Guan Si’er hadn’t seen much of the world, but in his understanding up to now, women were generally delicate creatures who needed protection and care.

Tricked into this by his sworn brothers, he lay on that wretched woman’s kang still utterly confused.

These vile women chattered on and on with strange talk. What were they even saying? That the young lady had always been afraid of pain as a child, so delicate and pampered! That the young lady had been raised as the apple of her family’s eye, coddled in her mother’s arms for a whole morning over the slightest bump or scrape… They spoke of how precious she’d been to her mother, how adorable her little younger brother had been, only to die so tragically—that child was surely crying for his sister down below even now…

They spoke of her father, killed by rebel soldiers, who had cherished the third young lady most dearly while alive; they said not a single soul remained back in her hometown either, how pitiful; they spoke of her sickly elder brother, how worried he’d always been for her; and finally they said that a family ought always to be together in the end…

Guan Si’er finally understood. These women had turned their mouths into blades, methodically shredding this fragile girl’s heart into ribbons, piece by piece.

For a woman who had just lost her entire family, if you kept telling her that death meant reunion with her family, that death was liberation, she would eventually feel a great weight lifted and prepare herself to go.

How utterly vicious.

Those women tried several times to approach and provoke Guan Si’er, but Tong Jintai stopped them each time—after all, they’d already taken the money, so Tong Jintai generously allowed them a full incense stick’s worth of talk.

Throughout, he naturally played deaf and dumb.

It wasn’t until the old man doing the ventriloquism had cried his voice hoarse that Yu Qingguan’s scolding voice finally sounded from the doorway: “Old Third! That’s about enough. This is the Imperial Guard station, not some family’s mourning hall. Our superior is already angry—get moving, we don’t have all morning to listen to wailing, it’s such a bother.”

The lead woman cried her way out, pleading, “Sir, we’re only doing this because we care about the third young lady. Please, show some mercy…”

This woman, tearless, whimpered while making a gesture as if counting coins.

Yu Qingguan, irritated, cursed bluntly, “Get lost already! Do you think your family’s money is as big as a millstone? Move it, move it, our superiors are all taking on responsibility for this—we can’t have our higher-ups coming down on us over it…”

He played the villain well, even releasing a hint of menace. The women, unable to bear it, reluctantly stopped their crying… but just as they were leaving, the woman claiming to be the maternal aunt tried one last desperate lunge forward, only to be seized by Tong Jintai and flung out of the room.

“Get out!”

Tong Jintai showed no courtesy this time.

The women, guilty consciences and all, quickly pulled out their handkerchiefs to cover their faces as they left.

Tong Jintai followed them all the way to the main gate, watching until they’d boarded their carriage. Once the disgusting group was out of sight, he spat on the ground and turned back toward his elder sworn brother’s quarters.

Entering the room, he found a middle-aged man of about forty or fifty chatting cheerfully with his elder brother. Once he got a clear look, Tong Jintai recognized him—this was Shen Qin, the Shuntian Prefecture Assistant Magistrate, who was currently presiding over the Wu family poisoning case.

And that Ge Sansu had been the one he himself had begged the station chief to take in and protect.

Seeing Tong Jintai enter, Chen Dasheng asked, “They all gone?”

Hearing this, Tong Jintai nodded, his face full of disgust. “Yeah, they scrammed! Ugh, I’ve really seen something today. Tsk, I can’t even describe it, it’s too disgusting to say—truly, truly a pack of poisonous women.”

He finished speaking, placed the deed and gold packet from his sleeve in front of Magistrate Shen, and said, “You came at just the right time. I took this. Heh heh~ when you leave, just take it with you.”

Shen Qin smiled, reached out and shook the packet open, watching several gleaming small gold ingots fall out, but he said indifferently, “What do I care about this! Officer Tong, you keep it. These past few days you’ve caused trouble running back and forth for us. We won’t touch money from decent people, but skinning that Wu family’s hide, well, that we’re happy to see. These past few days they’ve been splashing silver around like water, so this little bit of yours is nothing. Haven’t you seen how even our Shuntian Prefecture office can hardly keep up?”

Among Yandu’s officials, the Shuntian Prefecture had it hardest. Besides having backbone, they were also generally quite skilled at handling people.

Tong Jintai smiled, turned and sat across from Magistrate Shen, roughly reenacting what those women had said earlier. When he finished, he sneered coldly, “Back on the battlefield, I used to think that was hell on earth. Now I’ve broadened my horizons. What we went through back then is nothing—straightforward, at least it was a quick death. Heh! But this bunch of women, breaking someone’s spirit like that—every one of them is a master at it. Their hearts are truly black!”

Magistrate Shen smiled. “Black? Not black at all, Officer Tong just doesn’t know the full story. These past two days my subordinates and I have been tallying up the two families’ assets. The Ge family did tribute ink business for over a decade—just their land and property back home alone are worth two to three hundred thousand strings, not to mention their several tribute ink formulas and colored ink recipes.”

Chen Dasheng reached back to scratch his backside and sighed. “These past two days I’ve also gone through the law. This girl is an unmarried maiden still living at home, so in the end she can claim a third of the family property—that’s at least a million strings right there. This is an extinct-line fortune! Think about it, now she’s the only one left, and with this much money at stake, no matter how you look at it, it’s not a good thing!”

Shen Qin shook his head helplessly, slowly extending three fingers. “You’ve hit the nail on the head. In my office, riddled with holes as it is, even the most loyal petty clerk only earns two or three strings a year, and has to support an entire family on that.

Just from the scale of what the Wu family’s been throwing around—if ten thousand strings doesn’t buy someone off, they try a hundred thousand; if that fails, two hundred thousand? This old man doesn’t think too highly of himself either—everyone’s got a wife and children behind them. Reckon it up to five hundred thousand strings and even I would hesitate. Heh! I found myself thinking, our government offices have generations’ worth of dark tricks up their sleeves already—what’s one more small girl in the grand scheme? One job like this could set up three generations of my descendants with wealth. So why not do it?”

Magistrate Shen was quite the character, able to say such things openly in front of Chen Dasheng, which showed just how candid he was.

Chen Dasheng found him amusing and said with a smile, “If even you can’t resist five hundred thousand strings, how could the likes of us, risen up from common foot soldiers, possibly resist?”

Magistrate Shen laughed lightly. “You gentlemen have earned His Majesty’s favor, which sets you apart from ordinary people out there. You’ve all clawed your way back from the brink of death more than once—your perspective on money must have been thoroughly tempered long ago…”

Chen Dasheng laughed. “I think you’re not bad yourself, sir.”

“You flatter me. This old man’s only got that one virtue to speak of…”

Unable to bear the two of them going on like this, Tong Jintai patted the armrest and shook his head helplessly. “In broad daylight, right under the Emperor’s nose, I’ve really opened my eyes today. That Wu family, a major merchant house in Yandu no less—how could their methods be so vile?”

Chen Dasheng propped himself up and crawled forward slightly, laughing despite his injury. “Vile? An ordinary stick of ink, from gathering materials to being sold on the shelf, might only turn a profit of a few dozen coins along the whole chain. But how many scholars are there in this world who need ink? That Wu family’s eldest branch held eighty percent of the family assets. His Majesty’s intent is that since this case stems from the evil of money, they’ll confiscate the Wu family’s assets to compensate the Ge family… Heh! Now that the Ge family’s line is extinguished, with only this one just-grown unmarried girl left, by law she’s entitled to a third of both the Ge and Wu family assets combined. All told, as Magistrate Shen said, that comes to at least three hundred thousand strings… tsk, just hearing that figure is enough to frighten a person to death.”

Magistrate Shen nodded repeatedly. “Exactly so. That makes her a genuinely, solidly wealthy young lady! But if she dies, according to our laws, her blood relatives may designate someone to carry on the bloodline and continue the ancestral rites. The vile part is, Ge Sansu’s only blood relatives left are the Wu family’s second and third branches. This Miss Ge hates the Wu family down to her bones—how could she ever agree to that? I don’t believe for a second that the Wu family’s eldest branch dared poison their sister’s family on their own authority. There’s something deeper going on here… the waters run deep indeed.”

Tong Jintai looked at Chen Dasheng, and the two exchanged helpless glances. Finally Chen Dasheng asked, “What’s the Prefect’s intention on this?”

Magistrate Shen stood and bowed. “Ah, that’s exactly why this old man came today. Our chief magistrate’s wish is that, before the case goes to trial, he’d like to ask you gentlemen at the Changdao station to continue taking the trouble to shelter and protect that poor child, no matter what it takes. On the surface, the Ge-Wu case does appear clear-cut, but several of us old clerks got together and mulled it over, and we suspect it’s not so simple after all… Of course, this is also the sentiment from above, so it seems the investigation will need to be drawn out a while longer.”

He made a digging gesture with his hand, then raised his eyebrows and pointed in the direction of the Great Liang Palace.

Chen Dasheng had spent two years at His Majesty’s side and had long since come to understand the old man’s temperament thoroughly. This Wu family had made such an enormous show of scattering money everywhere that His Majesty, tight with his purse strings as he was, had probably set his sights on the Wu family’s fortune.

Heh! What was there to say about that? Well, this counted as retribution too, one supposed.

After seeing Magistrate Shen off, Tong Jintai had someone call Guan Si’er over.

“What!” Guan Si’er let out a low cry. “Brother, are they trying to shake us down now? Are those people at the Shuntian Prefecture a bunch of walking corpses or something?”

Chen Dasheng, with difficulty, turned to one side and crooked a finger at him. “Come here.”

Guan Si’er went over without hesitation, and seeing that his brother couldn’t reach him, he lowered his head.

Chen Dasheng reached out and gave him a knock on the head, scolding, “You unlucky wretch, you’ve got the nerve to complain? That night you were the fastest to rush in—of all people you could have caught, you had to catch a giant headache. This whole courtyard full of officers, you think once this case is closed tomorrow, this girl’s reputation won’t be ruined too?”

Guan Si’er covered his head and said nothing for a good while, before finally saying, somewhat aggrieved, “So what do we do? Send her back to Qingfeng? Never mind, don’t waste your breath on this! That Miss Ge hasn’t eaten a thing these past two days. I think she doesn’t want to live anymore.”

Tong Jintai and Yu Qingguan lifted the door curtain and entered. Yu Qingguan tossed a packet of gold onto the kang and said, “If it were me, I wouldn’t want to live either. What’s the point of this life anyway? A family disaster wipes out every elder who could have taken charge, and just when the new dynasty finally arrives, she follows her mother to seek refuge with her grandmother’s family—and what happens? The whole line’s extinguished! A young girl like her, if it weren’t for wanting to avenge her family… holding on by sheer force of will… hmph, I think the day this case is finally settled will be this Miss Ge’s death day.”

Tong Jintai sneered coldly. “It’s hard for a person to want to live, but wanting to die is easy enough.”

Chen Dasheng sighed helplessly. “Killing by breaking someone’s spirit—how can people be this vicious?”

Tong Jintai curled his lip. “Who knows? Money’s what did it. Just watch, splashing money around the whole world like that has sent the rest of her family straight onto His Majesty’s chopping block—also a kind of retribution. It’s just a shame about that girl, so good, still in the bloom of her youth, quite the pity. If someone doesn’t want to live anymore in their heart, who could possibly save them?”

Guan Si’er, seemingly lost in thought, sat there in a daze. After a long while, he suddenly said, “Brother! I think something’s wrong with all this!”

Chen Dasheng looked at him. “What’s wrong?”

Guan Si’er took a breath, suddenly standing up and growling at Chen Dasheng, “That stuff written in books is wrong! What do they mean, ‘the poor in the busy marketplace go unasked, while the rich in the deep mountains have distant relatives visiting’? What do they mean, ‘everything is fate, not the slightest bit within one’s control’? What do they mean, ‘with wine and meat, friends abound, but in urgent crisis, not a single soul appears’? All these sayings are wrong!”

He backed toward the door, shaking his head with conviction. “Why should what’s written in books automatically be right? I have a brain of my own, and I think… what’s written in those books is wrong!”

With that, he turned and ran out.

He didn’t see his sworn brothers watching his retreating back with strangely amused smiles. After a good while, Tong Jintai mocked, “Lazy maggot, the only one who never gets up early. Waking him up each morning is like trying to kill him.”

Yu Qingguan chimed in with more mockery. “Now he can’t wait to fetch someone’s foot-washing water every day.”

Chen Dasheng started coughing, finally covering his mouth and laughing. “The way you two talk… his reputation’s completely ruined now… heh…”

The elder brothers began mocking mercilessly, and once they’d had their fill, they said with some satisfaction, “Good, good, he’s growing up. Finally realizing that sometimes those books are talking nonsense…”

Guan Si’er, not realizing he’d fallen for his sworn brothers’ trap, felt terribly upset—especially upset, though he couldn’t quite say why. He just felt a heavy, suffocating weight pressing on his whole body and soul.

He ran back to his own courtyard and rummaged through his belongings until he found a set of clothes and a headwrap he’d never worn. Bundling these up, he trotted off to the back courtyard.

These past two days, Ge Sansu had been utterly despondent, moving through life like a walking corpse.

No one needed to force her—she truly intended to die. She’d already made her plans: once her family’s case was closed and her mother’s, brother’s, and sister’s grievances were redressed, she would buy a burial plot to lay her family to rest, then prepare a coffin for herself, lie down in it, and take poison. Then the family would finally be reunited, and this human world would no longer feel so cold.

She knew she should eat something, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to.

Today was strange too—two old women had carried her out to the back courtyard without any coercion, even serving her tofu pudding to eat, saying the front area was being cleaned today.

Hmph! Just another lie to fool a ghost with. There was probably something else going on again.

Ge Sansu’s mind was quite clear at this point. She reasoned to herself—thinking of how the Wu family had been rooted in Yandu for generations, while she was but a lone orphan… What if, in the end, no one stood up for her, and her family would have died for nothing?

Thinking this, Ge Sansu, her expression calm, raised her arm and pulled a silver hairpin from behind her head, gripping it in her hand and slowly beginning to sharpen it against the blue brick wall behind her.

She’d made up her mind—she’d wait for the outcome, good or bad, either way she had no plans to keep living. If the outcome was bad, she would go find the Wu family and finish off the entire Old Wu family with this very hairpin…

This girl’s mind was running wild with fantasies, as if the Wu family were simply standing there waiting for her to strike them down.

Of course, for an ordinary young girl who had gone through something like this to gradually toughen up, not shedding a single tear in two whole days, was already quite something.

A flurry of hurried footsteps sounded in the courtyard. Ge Sansu, unhurried, slid the hairpin back into her hair.

Guan Si’er burst into the room. These past two days he hadn’t been able to bear looking at Ge Sansu’s face. But after being provoked by that group of women this morning, he found he no longer cared.

Seeing her, his heart clenched.

In just two or three days, a perfectly healthy young girl had wasted away to skin and bones. Ge Sansu, her expression calm, lifted her face, her large, clear black-and-white eyes fixed on Guan Si’er.

Guan Si’er pressed his lips together, set the clothes in his arms on the table, and pointed at the tofu pudding on the table. “You’ll eat at least one bowl. If you don’t, I’ll pry your mouth open and pour it down myself in a bit! You choose—eat it yourself, or let me force it down you?”

Ge Sansu blinked, picked up the spoon, and quietly began eating the tofu pudding, spoonful by spoonful.

Guan Si’er took a deep breath, looking at this wretched—well, never mind, quite pitiful, really—girl, and thought, as long as she ate, that was good.

Once the bowl of tofu pudding was finished, Ge Sansu quietly set down her spoon and looked at Guan Si’er.

Guan Si’er pointed at the clothes and headwrap. “Put these on!”

With that, he left the room, standing quietly outside to wait.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there before he finally heard that wretched—well, never mind—that Miss Ge’s voice from inside say, “Sir, please, would you come in for a moment?”

Her voice was weak too. Well, of course, not eating properly would do that.

Guan Si’er entered. Ge Sansu, now dressed in the new clothes, said to him helplessly, “I’m troubling you, sir. Could you call that old woman in? I, I can’t stand up on my own.”

Guan Si’er nodded and left, and before long he’d brought a carriage into the back courtyard.

Guan Si’er really had no idea where to take Ge Sansu, but thinking of what those women had said, he felt an unshakeable knot of injustice in his chest—it shouldn’t be this way, the world shouldn’t be this vicious, this dark.

He drove the carriage out of the station, gave the horse’s rear a kick, and let it find its own way. But as it turned out, the old horse knew the road—one kick, and it headed straight for Yandu’s East Gate.

It was just past noon on a scorching summer day, quite hot. Once the carriage passed through Yandu’s East Gate, Guan Si’er lifted the carriage curtain.

He glanced at Ge Sansu inside, wrapped in a blanket, and asked, “You, uh, aren’t you hot?”

Ge Sansu shook her head numbly.

Guan Si’er nodded, then reached out and took hold of the reins, guiding the horse toward the edge of the moat. He wasn’t sure how far they’d gone, but he kept going until there was no more road—a river lay ahead. He got down from the carriage and said to Ge Sansu inside, “Uh, you, come down. I’ve got something to say to you.”

Ge Sansu was startled for a moment, but eventually steadied herself against the carriage frame and slowly climbed down. Perhaps thinking she was moving too slowly, Guan Si’er reached out and hauled her down bodily.

Remember this hauling motion—one should never provoke a woman, for they never forget a grudge.

Decades later, whenever this couple quarreled, Ge Sansu would invariably say, indignant, you old beast, is this how you treated me back then? Couldn’t even take proper care of someone, hauling me off the carriage like a chicken by the neck, then hauling me all the way to the riverbank, and that riverbank was so damp, and I hadn’t eaten in days, weak as porridge, and I just plopped down right there, both layers of my clothes soaked through…

“Sit!”

Guan Si’er spotted a patch thick with wild grass that looked soft, and pointed at it for Ge Sansu to sit.

Ge Sansu sat down quite calmly, not looking at him, just gazing at the river.

Having brought her all this way, Guan Si’er still hadn’t figured out how to convince this girl to keep living.

He put his hands on his hips, mouth open, pacing back and forth by the riverbank for a good while with no idea what to say, utterly at a loss. Finally, he spoke.

He didn’t dare look at the young lady’s face, so he stared at the river water instead. “Uh, in the past I always talked nonsense, and my sworn brothers and I aren’t exactly proper either, but today, today I want to say something real. Really, I’m going to tell you something, uh, something I’ve never told anyone before!”

Ge Sansu thought this fellow was really strange—every day cursing and complaining, never showing her a kind face, and now he’d brought her to the riverbank to say such odd things.

She didn’t respond, just hugged her knees and slowly lowered her head.

Guan Si’er didn’t expect her to say anything either, and just kept looking at the river. “I used to have a name—they called me Little Beast!”

Ge Sansu jumped in shock, raising her face to look at that back.

“Ah, that’s really what they called me—Little Beast! Actually I had a father and mother, brothers and sisters, grandparents. I’m not stupid, I knew where my home was too…”

Guan Si’er, having said this much, turned to look at Ge Sansu.

Seeing her staring at him unblinking with those large eyes, he said, quite earnestly, “Just listen, you, you don’t have to respond to me. Um… where was I?”

He turned back to face the river and continued. “I know where home is… my home is in Chongling, Mishan County. My father’s surname is Zhao. If they hadn’t called me Little Beast, I suppose I’d be surnamed Zhao too, tsk, not even sure why I’m telling you all this…”

Ge Sansu felt a wave of confusion, thinking this young officer’s mind must be addled somehow.

“Let me put it this way—I’m different from my sworn brothers. Before I turned seven, I actually thought my given name really was Little Beast. That’s what they always called me, so I thought that was my name. But then one time I got beaten badly by the steward, and I overheard an old woman say, well, he’s still the Fifth Master’s child after all—beating him to death would be nothing, but if word got out that someone had this kind of leverage, you’d lose your position over it… The steward let me off after that.

After that I started paying attention, got a bit sharper too, and I secretly asked around. I found out the tallest mountain in our Mishan County belonged to the Zhao family, the broadest fields belonged to the Zhao family, the best academy belonged to the Zhao family, even the most famous, most talented figures were all from the Zhao family. I’m the Fifth Master of the Zhao family’s own son—except I was born out of wedlock, which is why they called me Little Beast…”

Getting things off his chest felt quite freeing, but Ge Sansu no longer wanted to hear it, finally stammering, “You, why are you telling me all this?”

Guan Si’er laughed, still without turning around. “No reason, just wanted to tell you, that’s all… Listen if you want, and if you don’t, just cover your ears and pretend I’m passing wind!” Hearing no response behind him, he continued, “My birth mother was the widow of Fifth Master Zhao’s sworn elder brother. My birth father went to visit her, stayed one night, and, well, that’s how I came to be… You don’t know this, but going back generations, the Zhao family produced many highly esteemed great scholars, with students spread across the realm… um, why am I even telling you this?”

Ge Sansu’s startled voice came from behind him. “The Zhao family of Mishan?”

Guan Si’er let out a snort of laughter, quite at ease as he addressed the river. “That’s right! That very family. Such a noble, virtuous family, and in several hundred years the only illegitimate child they ever produced was me. My mother hanged herself right after giving birth to me. Her husband’s family obviously couldn’t keep me, so they sent me back to the Zhao family and squeezed a fair amount of money out of them in the process…

I only pieced this together later, from the steward’s drunken, rambling account—that’s roughly how it went, best I can figure. You see, I have a father, a mother, a whole clan—my family’s produced great scholars for generations—and yet I was the little beast, couldn’t even read, and before I turned eight I never once slept in a bed. In summer I’d just find some straw pile or even a sheep pen to make do, and in winter I’d sleep in the stove pit.”

Ge Sansu murmured, “What did an innocent child do to deserve that?”

Guan Si’er just laughed, quite at peace with it. “Nothing to deserve—just bad luck, and you have to accept it!” He turned to look at her seriously. “You have to accept it too. Your luck’s just bad.”

Ge Sansu didn’t want to speak anymore, just continued hugging her knees.

Guan Si’er took a breath. “Back when I was Little Beast, I was actually pretty happy, really! I didn’t understand anything, just felt like I was born to suffer, born to be beaten, born to live like an animal. I didn’t know what a good life even looked like, didn’t know who I was. But when did I start feeling unwilling to accept it? Right, it was that beating, when the old woman said I was Fifth Master’s son…

Fifth Master had several other sons too, and I knew how they lived—grown to their teens and couldn’t even pick apart a chicken bone properly, while I, starving half to death, had to fight the family’s guard dog for scraps… I really wanted to ask Fifth Master back then, why, if we were both his sons, did I have to be the little beast?”

Ge Sansu murmured, “Did you ask him?”

Guan Si’er picked up a flat stone and skipped it across the water.

“No. Fifth Master Zhao was serving as headmaster at some river-jujube academy or other…”

“He He Zhao Academy, the ‘he’ of crane, the ‘zhao’ of imperial edict.”

“You know this place?”

“Yes, the students there use tung oil pine soot ink, my family’s supplied it for a long time.”

“Um… is it expensive?”

“Expensive? What?”

“Oh, I mean your family’s ink.”

“Some’s expensive, some’s cheap.”

“Oh… so you know everything after all, while I knew nothing, grew up to eight not understanding a thing at all, until the steward who managed the livestock pens in the back lost at gambling and sold me off far away… heh…”

Guan Si’er suddenly laughed, turning to grin at Ge Sansu with white teeth. “Miss Ge, do you know why I’m called Guan Si’er?”

Ge Sansu shook her head.

Guan Si’er, unable to hold back his laughter, said, “The steward abandoned me there, and mealtimes at the back courtyard had a fixed schedule—who was going to bother with me? Afraid of missing the meal, I clung to the slave trader’s cart shouting ‘Steward! Steward!’ As it happened, that trader was in the middle of forging contract papers, and just wrote me down offhand as Guan Si’er—’Fourth Steward’—and from then on I was Guan Si’er…”

Having finished, Guan Si’er turned back to face the river and said with great conviction, “After that, there was only myself left in this world. I opened my own eyes to see my own sky, to see my own world of people. I had nothing at all! But I still wanted to live. Others saw me as a little beast, but I saw myself as a person—I am a person!

Beasts walk on four legs, but I walk on two feet, so I’m a person! I was sold from place to place, walked very far, went without shoes until I was twelve, never tasted meat…”

Hearing rustling sounds behind him, Guan Si’er turned and smiled at Ge Sansu. “Miss Ge, I hope you can keep living. You have to live well! Otherwise you’ll have come into this world for nothing! I’m not good with words, but anyway… ah, that’s roughly what I mean. You see, even Heaven itself won’t let you die, so you ought to live as well as I have.

You see, I’ve become an officer now, learned to read too. I’ve got a proper two-courtyard house over in Qingfeng, and a couple of manors besides… There are too many unfortunate people in this world. My grandmother, my sisters-in-law, my family’s teacher—none of them should compare their misfortune to anyone else’s, you can’t compare misfortune, really! If you try, you’re bound to lose. Isn’t that really what living comes down to? Why should it be that bad people eat well and live in comfort, while we good people have to suffer, don’t you think…”

Guan Si’er hadn’t even finished rambling when he saw Ge Sansu suddenly break into loud, wailing sobs. She cried so hard it left him at a complete loss, standing there dumbfounded, and then he saw Miss Ge collapse into his arms, continuing to weep…

He thought to himself, damn it, there goes his reputation again.