When Song Chuyi returned to her room, the sun was already high in the sky. Nanny Xu had long been waiting anxiously at the door. Seeing her arrive, she hurried forward, her voice trembling uncontrollably. “It’s her, it’s Lianyi, it’s Lianyi!”

Nanny Xu had grown up with Lianyi since childhood and naturally wouldn’t mistake her. With just one glance, she recognized that the disheveled woman with hair roughly pinned behind her head was the once delicate Vice-Miss Lianyi whose ten fingers had never touched spring water.

“I had someone take her to wash up, afraid she’d frighten you, Miss.” Nanny Xu lowered her voice and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “Heaven damn the Li family for abusing people like this! I heard Lianyi gave birth to three daughters in succession, and they were all drowned!”

Song Chuyi stopped in her tracks and looked at Nanny Xu in shock.

She had grown up in a wealthy family of bells and cauldrons. Though she knew that most people in this world valued sons more, she had never heard of newborn daughters being drowned or given away.

Nanny Xu couldn’t suppress the fury in her heart. “A perfectly good person, now reduced to neither human nor ghost! The Li family people have simply gone mad. They heard that if you drown female babies, the next child won’t be a girl reincarnating again. They insisted on drowning them despite Lianyi’s tearful pleas. Not one or two, but three! How could they bear to do it! Now Lianyi is pregnant again, but she’s already thirty-two years old…”

Perhaps because of reuniting with an old friend, or perhaps because the contrast was too cruel, Nanny Xu was so agitated she was at a loss, and her words came out incoherently.

Song Chuyi steadied herself and reached out to grasp Nanny Xu’s hand. “Nanny, please calm down first. No matter what, let me see her first.”

Nanny Xu wiped her tears and nodded chokingly. “Yes, I’ll arrange it right away.”

Though she thought she had mentally prepared herself, the moment Song Chuyi saw Lianyi, she still couldn’t help but stand up in shock.

Lianyi was truly too aged. That face, which still vaguely showed the clear and delicate features of her youth, was now covered in wrinkles. Her chin was densely covered with spots, and her eyes were full of the vicissitudes of having experienced the world.

According to Nanny Xu, these senior maids were a few years younger than Nanny Xu herself, but looking at her now, Lianyi appeared more than ten years older than Nanny Xu.

“Lianyi, this is our young miss.” Nanny Xu cried as she supported Lianyi’s hand, pointing to Song Chuyi to show her. “Look, she’s eight years old now. Doesn’t she look so much like our miss?”

Lianyi hurried several steps to Song Chuyi’s side and reached out as if wanting to touch her, but stopped her hand just before touching her face.

Unable to speak, she cried while continuously opening her mouth to make monotonous and sharp “ah ah ah” sounds. Her hands kept rubbing against her clothes again and again, but she ultimately didn’t touch Song Chuyi’s face. Her body trembling slightly, she fell to her knees with a thud.

Song Chuyi was so startled by her action that she instinctively stepped back, but immediately realized what was happening. Both heartbroken and furious, she crouched down to pull Lianyi up.

This was her mother’s head maid, who should have married with a decent dowry to become either a steward’s wife in the manor or an ordinary family’s matron. But now everything had been destroyed.

She didn’t even feel qualified to reach out and touch the mistress’s orphaned child.

But what had she done wrong? Song Chuyi sadly helped her up, tears falling onto Lianyi’s hand with a patter.

“I’m sorry.” Song Chuyi suddenly felt language was pale and powerless, unable to describe even one ten-thousandth of her heartache and unbearable sorrow. “Lianyi… I’m sorry.”

Lianyi made two “ah ah” sounds and frantically tried to hand her a handkerchief to wipe her tears, but halfway through extending her hand, seeing her own hands covered with spots and veins, full of calluses, she ultimately couldn’t extend them.

Nanny Xu pulled them both up with tear-blurred eyes and asked Lianyi in a trembling voice, “Your voice…”

Lianyi wiped her tears and gestured with her hands, wanting something.

Qing Tao was the first to react and quickly said, “Do you want paper and brush?”

Lianyi made an “ah” sound and kept nodding.

Nanny Xu also smiled with pleasant surprise and looked at Song Chuyi. “Yes, yes, yes. Lianyi and the others all know how to read and write.”

Qing Tao and Hong Yu had already found paper and brush and handed them over. Lianyi grabbed them in her hands and, trembling, wrote several crooked characters, then held them up for Song Chuyi to see.

Madam was killed by Li Jingshu.

Song Chuyi clenched her fist and stared fixedly at those ten characters, slowly nodding.

Lianyi’s tears came again. She buried her head writing for a while, then held up the paper for Song Chuyi to see again.

The midwife has problems. The midwife from the Zheng family in the eastern city.

Nanny Xu had already cried out in shock. “Wasn’t Madam’s death due to difficult childbirth?! Someone tampered with it?!”

From the fragments of information from Qing Tao’s parents and the news Nanny Xu had gathered, they only knew that Lady Cui had very likely been lured by Lady Li to Qingliang Temple where she saw something unbearable, which triggered the difficult birth.

But it turned out there was more than that? Or rather, it wasn’t limited to just that?

Lady Cui’s death had actually been extremely thoroughly planned and plotted. Someone had deliberately and methodically wanted her dead.

Lianyi opened her mouth making sharp cries, continuously nodding.

Eastern city, the Zheng family.

Song Chuyi’s lips curled in a bitter smile. What a coincidence.

The Li family mother and daughter both liked to use the same people. Looking at it now, they were truly loyal to old connections, continuously patronizing this Granny Zheng’s business. In her previous life when she had given birth with difficulty, it was also this Granny Zheng who had delivered the baby.

Then she had been declared unable to have any more children.

Whether all these were coincidences or deliberate—looking at it now, it was already quite obvious.

Hating to the extreme, Song Chuyi instead could no longer produce any other excess emotions. She tightly gripped the paper Lianyi handed her, as if wanting to stare a hole through that sheet.

“Lianyi, do Grandmother and Father know about these things?” Song Chuyi looked at her with a hoarse voice, her eyes devoid of any emotion, like a clay Buddha statue in a temple.

Lianyi thought carefully, lowered her head to continue writing a few characters on the paper, and handed it to her.

Don’t know. Old Madam Li orchestrated it.

The corner of Song Chuyi’s lips held a cold smile, the hatred in her eyes becoming even more obvious.

“Then why did Grandmother sell you all off?” Song Chuyi asked the question that had always stuck in her heart, unable to let go. “She valued propriety so much—why did she suddenly not follow the rules? She even let Lady Li enter the door and become my stepmother!”

Lianyi finally reached out to grasp Song Chuyi’s hand, shaking it forcefully several times, meaning for her to calm down. Only then did she slowly write another full page and hand it over.

Nanny Xu spat several times forcefully on the ground before stopping, having already cursed Lady Li a thousand and ten thousand times in her heart. Qing Tao’s eyelids jumped watching this, and she immediately turned to look at Song Chuyi’s reaction.