It had only been a joke, said and then let go, but as he turned to walk inside, Wen Guzhi still trailed after him and said, “If something happened to your wife, would you really feel it didn’t matter?”

His steps stalled. The smile on Li Jingyun’s face slowly faded, and he turned his head to look at Wen Guzhi, his eyes a little cold. “Something happened to her?”

Wen Guzhi wasn’t a man given to rambling, and seeing him look so uneasy, Li Jingyun couldn’t help but think the worst. Watching him stammer without managing to get the words out, Li Jingyun’s hand slowly closed, and his breathing grew light.

“Say it plainly.” He lowered his eyes. “All of it, at once.”

Letting out a long sigh, Wen Guzhi’s eyes brimmed with tears as he looked at him. “Yesterday your wife suddenly went into labor. You were in the palace, and the rest of us were left scrambling to look after her — it was chaos.”

His heart sank without end. Li Jingyun’s eyelids trembled. “She didn’t survive it?”

“She gave birth — a young master.” Wen Guzhi studied his expression, his tone grieving. “It’s just that Madam, she…”

His throat seized, and his vision blanked without reason. Li Jingyun swayed on his feet and was caught by Xu Changyi, who stepped forward to steady him.

“Childbirth has always been a matter of life and death — don’t take it too hard,” Xu Changyi said quietly. “Plenty of women have died along with the child. You still have a son left to you.”

Liu Chenghe stood behind them, watching Third Master’s face turn ashen, and took two steps back. He couldn’t understand why these two were so eager to court disaster — everyone knew Third Master’s temper was foul, and to speak to him of something this serious, what would they do if he flew into a rage?

And yet Wen Guzhi, far from stopping there, pressed forward again with tears in his eyes. “Won’t you go see the young master? His brows and eyes look just like yours, and his mouth is very much like Madam’s.”

Li Jingyun’s mind wandered, as though he had heard and yet had not, his brow drawn painfully tight, his lips white of all color. In his ink-black eyes a mist had settled, murky and lost, dazed.

He thought back to long ago, to the day he had pushed open the door of the Chief Steward’s Court.

Light had spilled into the room, and half her body had been soaked in filth — dust, weeds, dried pools of blood, no different from some vengeful ghost crawling up from the underworld. And yet even in a state like that, she had lifted her head and asked him with a smile, “Are the flowers outside blooming well?”

She, who had never once bowed her head to him, had softened her brow and eyes to survive, her voice full of pleading. “This servant wants to go outside and see the flowers.”

Li Jingyun had never thought a human life was anything so precious, not until he saw the longing and struggle in her eyes, and only then did he realize that in this world, there were people who had to fight with everything they had just to stay alive.

The thing Yin Huayue had valued least was her own life; the thing he had always wanted to protect was that very life.

His fingertips dug into his palm. Li Jingyun closed his eyes.

The courtyard was very quiet. Everyone stood around Li Jingyun, not daring even to breathe too loudly.

Xu Changyi had been with him for so many years, and had never once seen him like this. He couldn’t bear it, and frowned at Wen Guzhi.

Wen Guzhi ignored the hint, only staring fixedly at Li Jingyun. After a while, he said quietly, “If there were a way to save your wife’s life, would you be willing to try it?”

Amid the ringing in his ears, this single sentence cut through. Li Jingyun startled, and raised his reddened eyes to look at him.

Wen Guzhi said, “There is a famous physician in Huaibei, one who can bring the dying back to life. I knew Third Master could never bear to see Madam’s life slip away, so I had someone send her there.”

“…”

The grief in his eyes drained away bit by bit. Li Jingyun wiped a hand over his face, and when he raised his eyes again, they were full of murderous intent.

Brothers for so many years, and these people dared to deceive him! Others might not know Wen Guzhi, but how could he not? Whenever the man started nodding and swaying his head like that, he was speaking utter nonsense in dead earnest — not a single word of it true.

He shoved the man aside and strode toward the residence. The moment he entered the main courtyard, he heard a baby crying, mixed with a woman’s soft humming lullaby.

A flicker of joy rose in him. He steadied himself, finally pressing down the panic from before, and stepped forward to push open the door.

The room was lively — four or five old nursemaids gathered around the cradle. He glanced at them, walked past them into the inner chamber, and said with a frown, “How much did you pay them, to help you frighten me like this—”

He swept the curtain aside, and his voice cut off.

By the window, a vase held freshly bloomed magnolia flowers, graceful and slender, white and soft. In the inner chamber, the bed curtains were hooked up, the quilts folded neatly — and no one was there.

For a moment he couldn’t process it, and turned to ask the nursemaids, “Where is Madam?”

The nursemaids were all newly hired. They bowed to him in unison, then shook their heads. “We haven’t seen any Madam.”

His hand, still gripping the curtain, went rigid. Li Jingyun slowly turned to look at Wen Guzhi, standing in the doorway.

“She’s still alive.” Wen Guzhi looked at him from a distance and said softly, “I told you — she’s gone to find the physician.”

Aside from that, there was no better explanation to offer this man to calm him.

Wen Guzhi had never met a woman like Yin Huayue — one who, without even the strength to rise from bed after giving birth, had vanished without a trace by the next morning.

Mingshu had known she meant to leave Third Master, but who could have guessed it would happen at a time like this — who would think to guard against a woman who had just given birth? He didn’t dare imagine what method she’d used to leave, nor dare ask what exactly had happened. She would rather drag herself away in that condition than stay, and so leaving with the child — even the one that was left behind. But it was lucky the twins had been born, so Third Master still had one son.

The people in the room stood in silence, not looking at the child in the cradle, and asking no more questions.

The morning sun through the window cast his shadow long across the floor — as long as it had been the day Madam Zhuang died.

Wen Guzhi stood there a while, his eyes red, and wiped a hand across his face.

Huayue often thought back on these two years of her life. She had accomplished a great deal — become the household steward who single-handedly ran the general’s residence, cared well for Madam Zhuang, found Shuang Jiang the chance to avenge herself, secured justice for Madam Zhuang, avenged Yin Ninghuai and her father and mother the late Emperor and Empress — and given birth to two children of her own.

Life had turned out far more eventful than she’d imagined, and far more difficult.

In the days after leaving the capital, her health had been poor; she’d nearly died on the road from the exhaustion of it. Once she recovered, she named her son Yin Shiwang, and together with Shuang Jiang, ran the shops while raising him.

Shuang Jiang often asked her, “Just leaving like that — you really don’t miss him?”

Huayue would smile and shake her head. “What are you talking about — who wouldn’t miss someone they once loved? It’s only that living together wasn’t good for either of us, and I wasn’t happy. Better to give him what he wanted — a son in return, and the two of us even.”

In Shuang Jiang’s eyes, Yin Huayue was a soft-hearted person, but she also understood that when this mistress of hers hardened her heart, she was more decisive than anyone. In the end, the blood of the Yin ancestors ran in her, and she wasn’t one to bend and compromise easily.

Rather than force herself through a lifetime with a man who didn’t love her enough, she’d rather roam free — she had no father or mother to speak of, and once she left the capital, no one there knew her at all.

After worrying for a while, Shuang Jiang let it go too. By day she helped run the shops; by night she came home to look after the young master.

The small town in Huaibei couldn’t compare to the bustle of the capital, but the days were peaceful and pleasant, and the townsfolk were simple and kind. Seeing no man at Huayue’s side, they would ask kindly, “Where’s the man of the house?”

Holding her child, Huayue would answer with a sigh, “The grass on his grave is already taller than Shiwang.”

To be widowed so young — the townsfolk pitied her greatly, and were happy to give extra business to her cloth shop.

There were, of course, a few men with wandering eyes who thought to take advantage of two young women raising a child alone, climbing over the courtyard wall in the dead of night hoping to get something for nothing. But somehow, the pitiful little widow who looked so delicate by day turned fierce once startled awake at night, beating the men black and blue and bundling them up to be tossed back out.

For the sake of face, none of these men dared accuse a widow of beating them — they could only swallow it and slink away.

Huayue had a talent for business. Hers was the only cloth shop in town, and she treated people kindly and priced fairly, so anyone in town who needed clothes made went to her. For regular customers who bought a lot at once, she’d throw in a pair of embroidered shoes.

Later on, people in town noticed that the widow Yin especially loved giving out embroidered shoes — men, women, old, young, she embroidered for all of them, sending pair after pair out the door, until within a couple of years nearly the whole town owned a pair of shoes from the Yin cloth shop.

Shuang Jiang complained, “Mistress, giving them out like this, they’ll stop being special at all.”

Without looking up from sewing Shiwang’s little clothes, Huayue said, “That’s the whole point — not being special.”

Shuang Jiang fell silent, thought about it for a while, and let it go.

By two years old, Shiwang was already remarkably well-behaved. Where other children were mischievous and troublesome, he was born knowing how to care for people. While Huayue sewed, he would drag over his little stool and watch beside her, and if she pricked her finger, he’d rush over to blow on it, saying in his babyish voice, “Doesn’t hurt, doesn’t hurt, I’ll blow on it and it won’t hurt anymore.”

Huayue would laugh despite herself. “It really doesn’t hurt that much — so why are you the one about to cry?”

Shiwang would look up, eyes brimming with tears, wiping at his eyes while saying, “Not crying.”

Shuang Jiang doted on him the most, and would scoop him up at once to pat his back, glaring at Huayue. “He feels for you the most — he’s crying on your behalf. You, as his mother, are always so careless, making the child worry so much.”

Huayue laughed, and before she could retort, Shiwang tugged at Shuang Jiang’s clothes and said with a frown, “Don’t be fierce with Mama.”

Her heart melting completely, Shuang Jiang scooped him up to kiss him, sighing happily, “Truly, heaven has opened its eyes — his father never knew how to care for people, but he does.”

The smile on Huayue’s face faded slightly. She lowered her head and went back to her embroidery.

“It’s been so long — you still think of him?” Shuang Jiang glanced at her sideways, brows raised.

“No,” Huayue said calmly. “I just don’t like hearing about it.”

“If you’d really let go, you wouldn’t be bothered at all,” Shuang Jiang said with a laugh. “A letter just came from the capital — Xiaocai sent it. If you’re really bothered, just throw it away.”

With that, she scooped Shiwang up and swayed her way out the door.