Of course it was about this.

The Flower Banquet was only half over, and Dai Yuquan was going to propose to her. How could Pan Yurong sit still? She herself had climbed to her current position through marriage, so naturally she believed marriage was a woman’s only path. She couldn’t make sense of the thriving Wutong Courtyard, of Ye Lingbo’s shops spreading throughout the capital raking in money by the day, of Qinglan becoming a cherished guest at the Grand Princess’s residence — that kind of success was beyond her understanding. But Ye Lingbo receiving a marriage proposal from a rising official at court? That she understood perfectly, and she immediately couldn’t stay seated. She had come here to seize the opportunity.

“Pan Yurong,” Lingbo said with a smile, “all right, we’re both exhausted — let’s not beat around the bush. Aren’t you simply insinuating that my dealings with Master Dai are improper, and using that to goad Master Ye into coming here to discipline me? I thought there was some new rumor. If you have any evidence to back up your slander against my reputation, state it. If you cannot, I will send for Master Dai right now and see how he responds to your accusations.”

She wasn’t saying this because she couldn’t out-argue Pan Yurong — she knew perfectly well that if she let this drag on, she could force Pan Yurong to say what she’d been building toward: that the two of them were secretly entangled, that Lingbo had lured Dai Yuquan with her affections, and that’s why he had come to propose. Pan Yurong’s entire existence was consumed by the petty dramas of the inner chambers, so she naturally assumed everything worked that way. Master Ye and she had shared a bed long enough to meld into one person — no matter his origins as a palace examination laureate, a court-recognized man of letters, by now he was nothing but a puppet controlled by a gossip.

But she was too tired to keep sparring. What did it matter if she won? Pan Yurong and Master Ye were her parents in name — she couldn’t kill them, couldn’t beat them. Even if she wanted to teach them a lesson, this wasn’t the right season for it. There would be plenty of opportunity in the future. Master Ye had no male heirs, and Ye Yinzhang had been raised by Pan Yurong to be a limp, useless thing. The future these two faced was easy enough to foresee, and there would be ample time to deal with them slowly.

But Pan Yurong couldn’t see that far. Seeing Lingbo bring it up herself, she crowed in triumph: “Master, you see — Second Miss has given herself away. She’s clearly harboring a guilty conscience…”

Before she finished speaking, Luo Niangzi had already lost her patience. She lunged forward and slapped her across the face. The sudden blow shocked everyone present — even Lingbo hadn’t anticipated that.

“You vile creature! Just because we called you Madam, you actually started thinking you were Madam. Have you forgotten kneeling on the ground begging our Lady to buy you? When we were servants together, you played the part of gentle and virtuous so well — now that Lady is gone, your serpent’s nature has come out, and you’re slandering the Second Miss!” Tears streamed down Luo Niangzi’s face. She turned to implore Master Ye directly: “Master, open your eyes and see clearly! Second Miss conducts herself with integrity. It’s always been said: catch a thief with the goods, catch an adulterer in the act. Second Miss earned this marriage proposal through her talent and capabilities — Master, are you truly going to believe Pan Yurong’s lies and wreck this fine match?”

Everyone had her own way. Just as Yang Niangzi was icily composed, Luo Niangzi’s temperament was the warmest and most forthright of them all — even after seven years, she still believed that Master Ye was simply a good man deceived by an “evil schemer,” and wept hoping he would do right by them. Lingbo wasn’t irritated by it. Let her do as she pleased — if a slap was thrown, the shame was Master Ye’s to wear, not hers. She had no intention of marrying Dai Yuquan anyway. What was there to fear?

What was remarkable was that Pan Yurong, uncharacteristically, did not explode. She covered her face with one hand and let tears pour from her eyes, sobbing to Master Ye: “Master, do you see? This household has completely fallen apart. Servants are not servants, and mistresses are not mistresses. There must be something wrong with Lingbo and Master Dai — with her looks, and no virtue to speak of, why would Master Dai ever propose to her? There’s definitely something underhanded here. Master, we must act decisively, for our family’s reputation.”

The reason Pan Yurong had maintained Master Ye’s favor for so many years was partly her appearance — but truthfully, the two of them were remarkably alike in character. Master Ye, though a palace examination laureate, had come from poverty, and so he both craved wealth and feared to admit it. Like a foolish ruler in need of a villainous minister, he needed someone to say aloud what he himself dared not. It was less that he truly believed Ye Lingbo and Dai Yuquan had made a secret romantic pact, and more that regardless of how Lingbo had secured this match, he stood to gain nothing from it. Knowing Lingbo despised them both to the core, he was certain she would use Dai Yuquan’s future power to avenge her mother’s wrongs — so he needed to come now and destroy this match before it could take shape.

But Lingbo had underestimated just how stupidly vicious Master Ye could be.

“Yurong is right. You, wretched girl — even if you marry into a high family, you’ll only bring ruin to our house. Fortunately the matter isn’t yet settled. I will speak to Master Dai myself and have Yinzhang put in your place. Yinzhang is far superior to you in both looks and conduct. Master Dai will no doubt be perfectly satisfied.” Master Ye delivered this with a profound air of authority.

Not just Lingbo — even the servants of the Wutong Courtyard stared in stunned silence.

Xiao Liu’er was especially aghast.

“Master, who do you think Master Dai is? He comes from a Jiangnan noble family. He can’t be handed off with whatever young lady you happen to have available. He took notice of Miss’s talent and character. What makes you think he would simply settle for any young lady you might substitute in?”

“Impertinence! A mere maid daring to speak to the Master this way!” Pan Yurong snapped.

Lingbo, however, had burst out laughing the moment Master Ye began speaking, and was only now finishing.

“Our household maids have no sense of propriety — and hasn’t that started with you, Pan Yurong?” she said, laughing.

“Shut your mouth, wretched girl!” Master Ye was still full of his own wishful thinking. “So what if Master Dai has taken notice of you for your talent at running shops and managing households — at most you go along as part of the dowry and become his concubine. Yinzhang will be the legal wife, you the lesser. Yinzhang has a steadier temperament and will keep you in line, so you don’t go having one of your fits in front of Master Dai one day and bringing shame on your parents.”

If the first statement had merely been shocking, what Master Ye said next left everyone — even Lingbo — genuinely cold with fury, a murderous gleam rising in her eyes.

“Ye Zhongqing, have you lost your mind?” She called him by his full name. “Isn’t taking a concubine over a principal wife bad enough — now you’re plotting to turn a legal wife into a concubine? If you have the nerve, say that again, and I will go straight to the imperial clan authorities. We’ll settle this before the ancestral tablets. Liu Ji — send someone to fetch the people from the Old Madam’s courtyard. Master Ye has lost his mind. Let the Old Madam pass judgment.”

Even knowing her father’s character, she had never imagined he could be this vicious. A noble family’s daughter forced to be a concubine — that was more good fortune than Dai Yuquan deserved.

But Ye Zhongqing was, in name, still her father — and even held authority over her marriage. If he truly went mad, the only recourse was the Ye family matriarch, or at worst the clan elders. At most she would spend money. Those elders cared for nothing but money — and Pan Yurong had drained the main courtyard bare. She doubted they could scrape together enough to match her.

Just as she had told Pei Zhao — the most reliable thing in this world was power, and if power was lacking, money was a fine substitute. Pei Zhao just refused to listen.

He didn’t listen, and she was still going to marry him — lucky man. Today’s argument over Dai Yuquan was only ever about making Master Ye and Pan Yurong suffer a defeat.

But Pan Yurong’s answer was something Lingbo never could have anticipated.

“Second Miss, no need to go stirring up your ailment. You are at fault here, and scolding your father on top of that makes your fault heavier still. I counsel you to simply comply with Master Ye’s arrangements. Otherwise, when things that shouldn’t be said start getting said…”

“Oh, I’d very much like to hear what shouldn’t be said.” Lingbo smiled coldly.

Pan Yurong looked around at the people surrounding them — all of Lingbo’s household watching hawk-eyed, on full alert — and at Master Ye, dizzied by his own rage and of no practical use. She steeled herself and played her trump card.

“Second Miss was just going to send for the Old Madam. No need for the trouble — I’ve already sent for someone from the Old Madam’s household. Nanny Wu, come in. I can see Second Miss won’t cry until she sees the coffin.”

Pan Yurong had earned the title of “Five-Step Snake” with good reason — even now she hadn’t forgotten to drive a wedge between Lingbo and the Ye family matriarch. She called Nanny Wu in as a witness and a representative of the Old Madam, to cut off Lingbo’s retreat. But her real trump card was the few people now entering: a group of elderly men and women in ragged clothes, with the look of the lowest classes about them — not the kind of honest, hardscrabbling poor one found in ordinary neighborhoods, but men who looked like gamblers and women with the shifty look of procuresses. They came in and kowtowed to Master Ye, their foreheads nearly touching the floor: “Master, long life and boundless fortune to you, may you live a hundred years.”

“Spare me the nonsense.” Pan Yurong said impatiently, pointing at Lingbo: “Tell them. Is this or is this not the infant girl you saw Lady Ye take in all those years ago?”

Even though Lingbo knew there wasn’t a word of truth in anything Pan Yurong said, she still felt a sudden jolt in her chest.

“In reply to Madam,” the lead woman said with a fawning smile, “it was so long ago, we truly can’t be certain. Coming all this way has been very tiring for us, so if Madam might see fit to offer a little something…”

“Enough nonsense — tell them what they want to hear and the reward will follow,” Ying’er, the maid behind Pan Yurong, scolded.

The woman immediately studied Lingbo, then smiled: “The look of her, she does bear some resemblance to a Sun-woman who used to live next door to us. Especially around the eyes. Oh, and I recall that when the infant was born, there was a birthmark on her leg — shaped like a little fish. If the Miss has such a birthmark on her leg, it would all line up.”

A chill shot through Lingbo. She sensed Xiao Liu’er beside her sway slightly. She did have a birthmark on her body — and besides her mother, only Xiao Liu’er knew of it, and the wet nurse Li Mama who had tended to her from infancy…

But Lingbo was still Lingbo. She shot a glance at Luo Niangzi; Luo Niangzi understood at once and rebuked: “What kind of vagrants are these, daring to defame our Miss? Throw them out!”

But Pan Yurong had no intention of letting it go.

“Second Miss herself said it — you need witnesses and evidence, catch the thief with the goods. Ye Lingbo is not the Master’s own flesh and blood at all. Lady Ye’s own child died, and she found an infant to take in to ease the grief of losing a daughter. Every older serving woman in the Wutong Courtyard knows this! Do you think you can still deny it?” Pan Yurong immediately erupted: “This is a matter of corrupting the bloodline of our household — a serious matter! Nanny Wu, you must stand in for the Old Madam and see justice done here! Even if we take this to the ancestral hall, we are not afraid — let the clan elders all come and judge!”

Lingbo stood in the middle of the hall and felt wave after wave of cold seeping through her. Even with all the capable people of the Wutong Courtyard around her, none of them had ever handled anything like this before. They all looked at each other, waiting for her command.

“Liar!” Xiao Liu’er rushed to argue with Pan Yurong at once. “Miss was born in the seventeenth year of the Renzhao reign — and you weren’t bought into this household until the nineteenth year of Renzhao. How could you possibly know anything about Miss’s birth? You’re fabricating this entirely!”

Pan Yurong smiled at that.

Lingbo was someone who managed shops and estates, overseeing hundreds of people — of course she could read whether a person had real confidence behind them or not. This smile of Pan Yurong’s was different from her usual reliance on Master Ye as backing. This was the smile of someone who truly had nothing left to fear.

“Stop struggling uselessly. Truth cannot be made false. Ye Lingbo is adopted by Lady Ye — and there is one witness, among all the witnesses you might try to counter, that you cannot refute…”

“Who is it!” “Have the nerve to bring them out in the open — stop hiding in the shadows like a coward!” “Utter nonsense — Miss is Lady’s own daughter, I’ve been in this courtyard for fifteen years and never heard a single whisper of any such thing…”

The servants of the Wutong Courtyard argued furiously — but Lingbo stood very still.

Why had she always looked down on the inner-chamber scheming? Because truth could not be made false, and falsehood could not be made true. Lu Wenyin had plotted and maneuvered for four years, and was undone in an instant by a single decisive move from Han Yueqi. There was nothing to fight over. All this back-and-forth, as Shen Biwei had once said, was squabbling over scraps from a carcass. What was the point?

She simply stood quietly and looked past the crowd, her gaze settling on Master Ye.

And Master Ye did not dare meet her eyes.

Lingbo was born in the first month of the seventeenth year of the Renzhao reign. Lady Ye had passed away in the tenth year of Yongxi. He had been, for twelve years, a passably adequate father to her. In her early childhood, he had even shown her affection. She had memories of the whole family celebrating the new year together, joyful and at peace — and as chance would have it, her birthday fell in the first month, so to this day she still, shamefully, loved the new year…

But he was the witness.

Master Ye was vile and stupid — but in matters of real consequence, he had never told a direct lie. He genuinely intended to have Lingbo added to Ye Yinzhang’s dowry and sent to Dai Yuquan as a concubine. And he had genuinely, deliberately told Pan Yurong — who despised Lingbo with every fiber of her being — the secret he believed he could use to control Lingbo, to make her submit and agree to be a concubine: Lingbo’s greatest vulnerability.

He was the witness.

The sharper among the Wutong Courtyard’s servants had also begun to sense it. Liu Ji was the first to understand, then Luo Niangzi, and then the others, one by one, turned to look at Master Ye — their expressions complex, holding contempt, disbelief, hatred…

“Miss.” Xiao Liu’er called out with an uneasy urgency and reached for Lingbo’s hand — less a grasp and more a brace, as if she feared she might collapse under the weight of this blow.

But she was Ye Lingbo. She could bear anything. Whether it was being forced into a concubinage arrangement, having her marriage switched, or being expected to submit because of her origins — all of that was nothing more than Pan Yurong and Master Ye’s wishful thinking. None of it could defeat her. She still had her shops, her family, her friends, and this courtyard full of loyal servants…

But he was the witness.

It must have been to ease the grief of losing a child that he had taken her in all those years ago — and so he had known. Perhaps he had been the one to arrange it. So he had been able to gather witnesses from that time. So he could serve as that witness.

How laughable.

Lingbo wanted to laugh, but tears came instead — and quickly. He was her father. She felt as though she were only now remembering this fact. She hated him profoundly — for her mother’s sake, for the way he had stood by and watched Pan Yurong slowly close every door on her and her sisters, for his favoritism, for his coldness, for his cruelty…

But she had, at least, thought of him as a father.

And he thought of her as nothing more than an addition to Ye Yinzhang’s dowry — purely because Dai Yuquan was the rising figure he wanted to attach himself to and could not afford to lose.

How cruel.

“What does it matter who bears witness?” Lingbo heard her own voice — steady and calm. “Witness and evidence alike are meant to be presented in court. If Master Ye is not afraid of the shame, we’ll meet at the county magistrate’s office. Let the magistrate decide whether your witnesses stand. Otherwise, if you want to challenge my identity, there is no other way.”

She had money enough that the clan would not intervene over this — the matter of bloodline would never fly as a pretext for a daughter, not when she was female and not in line to inherit. The Old Madam had long since grown estranged from Pan Yurong and might not step in at all — one look at Nanny Wu’s silence was enough to confirm that…

“Ridiculous! This is a family matter, and the Master is the head of this family. Lady Ye took you in, but Lady Ye is no longer here. The Master now wants to throw you out — by what right do you cling to this household? You are not a member of our Ye family — get out!” Pan Yurong, seeing that she was turning from attack to defense, pressed the advantage with full force.

But Lingbo cut her off.

“It’s Lu Wenyin, isn’t it.” She asked calmly.

“What?” Pan Yurong startled, then quickly tried to cover: “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

“Chen Yaoqing is dead. Lu Wenyin faces widowhood. She wants to drag all of her enemies down with her. Today she released a swarm of hornets at the Han family’s peach blossom grove, trying to harm Han Yueqi and the rest of us — and ended up implicating the Rui Prince. The palace has already dispatched people to investigate.” Lingbo calmly laid out Lu Wenyin’s strategy. “So she was working two angles at once — going through your household to strike at us from within as well. The news of Dai Yuquan’s proposal came from her, didn’t it? You thought you could snatch Dai Yuquan for Ye Yinzhang — but you’ve only ever been a weapon for Lu Wenyin to wield. Master Ye has taken a concubine over his principal wife for over seven years now. The noble ladies won’t receive you — a maid who betrayed her mistress. The Ye family has long since been shut out of the capital’s prominent social circle. Whatever information you receive is secondhand at best, which is why you can be used as others’ blade. Wake up now, while there’s still time — otherwise the end you come to will be a ghastly one…”

But Pan Yurong was in no state to hear any of it.

“Master, do you hear her? She’s cursing us!” she immediately cried. “She truly is a low-born wretch from the gutter — how dare she be called our Ye family’s young lady. She already despises us to the bone — throw her out quickly! We’ll inform the Old Madam and the clan elders and have her struck from the family register. See then if Master Dai will still want her!”

And Master Ye still did not dare meet Lingbo’s eyes.

He only blustered with hollow fury: “I see from your behavior that you are beyond reforming. It’s clear a person’s nature is set at birth and cannot be changed through nurture. Nobility and baseness are different by nature. Our father-daughter bond is now severed. From this day forward, you are no longer a member of our Ye family, and no longer my daughter. Get out of the Ye household! Leave behind whatever portion of the property was allotted to you, take only your personal clothes, and do not return!”

Lingbo was not afraid — only exhausted. She knew a hard battle lay ahead, and that the law might even stand against her.

But she was Ye Lingbo. She would win.

And then Qinglan’s voice came.

“Whether Lingbo is a daughter of our family is not for Master Ye to decide.” Whatever the moment, her voice was always like that — warm as jade, and carrying jade’s hardness and its chill. She appeared in the doorway with Chun Ming beside her, surveying the scene in the hall with an unhurried, natural authority:

“I haven’t spoken yet. Who dares drive my younger sister from this house?”