“This is the dowry list that your aunt and I have drawn up—one hundred twenty-eight carrying loads in total.”

“Besides this, there are also two estates in the capital and eighteen shops that will be part of the dowry.”

“The estates and shops are what we’re giving privately. Your three brothers don’t know about them. Don’t say anything to anyone.”

“Weixi will be marrying far away. These things are to protect her.”

“Songsheng, you absolutely must not let down your aunt’s and my intentions!”

Geng Songsheng gave an almost imperceptible sigh.

“I had no other choice. It was as if I had reached a dead end, and my only option was to take a desperate risk.”

Li Bu Yan couldn’t help but interject: “Was there really no other way?”

“You women don’t understand.”

Young Master Pei: “We men care about face. Even if we’re no good, we have to find ways to become good, especially at that critical juncture.”

Li Bu Yan: “Didn’t you think about ‘what if’?”

Geng Songsheng picked up his tea bowl and quietly took a sip.

“I didn’t think about it. Not until I walked into the examination hall and saw those patrolling Embroidered Uniform Guards did I feel afraid, and my heart began to panic.”

Sitting in the examination booth at the Tribute Court, his cold sweat dripped down. When the exam questions were distributed, he couldn’t read a single word.

His heart was panicked, his eyes were blurred, his ears were ringing, his body was trembling.

It was as if he were standing on a solitary rock—ahead was a ten-thousand-zhang abyss, behind was an abyss ten thousand zhang deep. There was no escaping death.

“When that slip of paper was discovered by the Embroidered Uniform Guard, I felt completely relaxed.”

Geng Songsheng licked his cracked lips.

“It was as if, though I had fallen into the abyss and been smashed to pieces, at least my body was lying on the ground—it was solid.”

That’s why he laughed at himself and left with his head held high.

“When I returned home, I collapsed into bed and slept for three whole days and nights before waking. Before that, I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep for three entire months. My hair was falling out in clumps, mouth sores would heal and then return, return and heal again.”

Geng Songsheng looked at Zhu Yuanzhao.

“That day you came to my residence and saw me burning books—actually, half an hour before, your father had just been there.”

Unlike Madam Mao’s furious scolding, Old Master Zhu looked at him with a gentle face, not saying a single word of reproach, only sighing repeatedly.

Geng Songsheng’s eyes suddenly turned cold and sharp.

“Zhu Yuanzhao, you should know better than Zhu Weixi what kind of person I am. I would rather he beat me half to death, or even to death, than listen to him sigh over and over.”

Zhu Yuanzhao had no response. The words stuck in his throat wouldn’t come out.

“As soon as he left, I completely lost control. What books should I read? What sage should I become? I wasn’t even fit to be human.”

A trace of tears flashed in Geng Songsheng’s eyes.

“In that instant, I not only wanted to burn all my books—I even wanted to burn myself.”

Silence descended suddenly.

Yan Sanhe’s palms slowly broke out in cold sweat.

The cruelest punishment in this world—for some it’s a beating, for some it’s verbal abuse, but for someone like Geng Songsheng, this lofty prodigy, beatings and scolding were actually a form of release and relief.

The clever Zhu Xuanjiu understood this person’s temperament deeply and employed a gentle blade.

A blade that doesn’t speak yet kills.

“Child, how could you do something so foolish?”

“Child, what can I say to you?”

“Child, what will Weixi do from now on?”

These were the subtext behind his sighs, stabbing directly into Geng Songsheng’s heart like knives.

Just like that dowry list, using a silent, soundless method to inflict death by a thousand cuts on the suffering Geng Songsheng.

What does it mean to kill without form?

This is it!

Yan Sanhe looked at Geng Songsheng. “So you chose to elope?”

“I felt that was my only remaining path.”

Geng Songsheng smiled. “Take her away, find a place with clear waters and green mountains where no one knows us, and start over. Actually, this was my private wish. I never expected…”

He only said the first half, but Yan Sanhe guessed the second half—

I never expected that foolish girl would run away with me without looking back.

In this moment, Yan Sanhe truly understood what kind of role Zhu Weijin had played in Zhu Weixi’s life.

If not for her betrayal…

Could the man before her have avoided becoming a monk?

Might the two of them have lived a life of seclusion?

Perhaps they would have had several children.

Life might not be prosperous, but it might not be too bad either.

Just as Geng Songsheng’s decision to cheat was made in a single thought, Zhu Weixi’s entire latter half of life hung on Zhu Weijin’s single thought.

Yan Sanhe sighed inwardly. “What about that pregnant woman? What was that about?”

At these words, Zhu Weixi’s hand loosened and her handkerchief fell.

Geng Songsheng stared at her, and she stared back at him.

“This must be the biggest thorn in your heart, isn’t it?” Geng Songsheng asked.

“Yes!”

The cheating—she didn’t care.

Abandoning her status as the Zhu family’s eldest daughter to wander the world with him, enduring hardship—she cared even less about that.

For a woman, what truly mattered were only two things:

First—did you ever truly care for me?

Second—why did you deceive me?

Geng Songsheng was silent for a long while. “If I said I didn’t even know that girl, would you believe me?”

“How could you not know her?”

Zhu Weixi looked at him in confusion.

“That girl was someone you met at the Water Splashing Festival among the Baiyue tribe. Her name was A Jun. You even boasted about it at the dinner table, saying that girl was ruthless—she splashed you with more than ten basins of water, drenching you completely, and you had no way to fight back.”

“Yes, I did say that.”

“You also said her family was very enthusiastic. They invited you to their home to drink for two days and nights. On the third day, they wanted to tie you up and drag you to the bridal chamber, and you were so scared you secretly ran away.”

At this point, Geng Songsheng had finished his pipe.

He tapped the pipe against the edge of the stove and looked calmly at Zhu Weixi.

“So in your view, I had no way to defend myself, right?”

Zhu Weixi’s eyes immediately filled with tears. “You didn’t defend yourself at all.”

Geng Songsheng: “Why should I defend myself for something I didn’t do?”

Zhu Weixi’s tears finally fell as she sobbed, “If you don’t defend yourself, how am I supposed to know if it’s true or false? I kept waiting for you to come tell me yourself.”

Geng Songsheng drew in a breath, then smiled bitterly. “Could I still enter the Zhu household then?”

He couldn’t anymore.

Everyone in the Zhu household hated him to death. No one gave him a kind look. They drove him away like a dog. Even Zhu Yuanzhao, upon seeing him, showed only cold indifference and walked away with a flick of his sleeve.

The six gates of the estate all had guards, and the household guards patrolled outside the walls twelve hours a day.

People outside couldn’t get in. The person inside waited bitterly for days without any word, mistakenly believed it was true, and gradually her heart grew completely cold and died.

“So what is the truth, Geng Songsheng?” Yan Sanhe asked.

“I have a principle: what I’ve done, I acknowledge. What I haven’t done, I don’t.”

To get to the truth, he traveled all the way back to the Baiyue tribe to find A Jun.

By that time, A Jun had already married—to a young man from the neighboring village.

When he saw A Jun, she was indeed pregnant, already four months along. But the child wasn’t his—it was her husband’s.

She had never left her village.

“She said her greatest wish in this life was to see the capital.”

Yan Sanhe’s heart jumped. “So that pregnant woman was fake?”

Geng Songsheng: “Yes!”

Yan Sanhe: “But the story was true, except for the part about you and A Jun having a one-night affair.”

Geng Songsheng: “Yes!”

No wonder everyone believed it without the slightest suspicion—this was how it was.

“When you told this story, how many people were listening?”

“Me, my father, my mother, my second brother…”

Zhu Weixi’s body began to tremble again. “And two sisters.”

“I also remember very clearly: Eldest Brother had just married and was already eating separately in his own courtyard. Third Brother had miscalculated a divination and received three lashes from Father. That day he was lying in bed and couldn’t get up.”

Zhu Yuanzhao added, “After dinner, I even took Geng Songsheng to visit him.”

Yan Sanhe’s gaze sharpened as she looked directly at Geng Songsheng.

“So from that moment, you suspected Old Master Zhu?”