The Marquis’s manor.

Lang Zhengping had asked the servants where to find her and strode briskly to the side room where Lang Jiuchuan had been taken. When he arrived, he found Cui Shi standing outside the door with a dark expression, not going in, and his footsteps slowed slightly.

Cui Shi heard footsteps, turned around, and gave him a curtsy. “Elder Brother.”

Looking at her, Lang Zhengping thought of his younger brother — his own flesh and blood. When the Lang Family’s fortunes had been at low ebb, it was his brother who had emerged as a general of uncommon ability and wisdom: the Anbei General, who had stabilized the nation, defended its borders, and protected its people. The pride of the entire Lang Family — and yet that pride had died young on a battlefield.

The night before his second brother’s death, Cui Shi had gone into sudden early labor. The child was over seven months along but came so difficultly that the birth had dragged on for an entire day and night. By the time the infant finally arrived, news of his second brother’s death had reached the household as well.

His second brother was gone, and Cui Shi had lost her grip on herself entirely. She had gone half-mad, insisting the child was not hers — that it was a cursed star, a bringer of catastrophe — and in her frenzy had all but ruined her own health, and had nearly dragged the infant down with her.

Because of this, Lang Jiuchuan had been taken from birth to be raised in their mother’s courtyard. They had hoped that arrangement would keep the peace — but when the child was three, at the third anniversary of his second brother’s death, Cui Shi had nearly drowned the girl in a basin of water. Those who saw her eyes at the time said she looked at the child the way you would look at a mortal enemy.

At that time, Zhenren Xuanjing from Huguo Temple had declared that if the child was to survive to adulthood, mother and daughter could not live together. Their mother had then taken the child to the estate for two years; eventually the arrangement became permanent, and Lang Jiuchuan had been raised there ever since.

Cui Shi, for her part, had never remarried. She had lived out her years in widowed seclusion — yet after all this time, she was still unable to let it go.

As the girl’s eldest uncle, and with the woman having kept his brother’s honor in widowhood for so many years, Lang Zhengping found it difficult to reproach her. After a moment’s thought he said: “Second sister-in-law, the child just came back. We can teach her slowly.”

A mother striking her daughter in front of outsiders — it was a loss of face for the girl no matter how one looked at it, and this girl was his second brother’s only child.

Cui Shi kept her eyes lowered and said nothing.

“Lord of the House, Second Madam.”

An elderly Nanny came hurrying forward and curtsied to both of them. “The Ninth Young Miss has returned,” she said. “The Old Madam heard the news and is very pleased — she wishes to see her.”

Lang Zhengping’s expression brightened. “Mother has come to herself again?”

Nanny Wang gave a rueful smile and shook her head. “You know how the Old Madam’s memory is — worse with every passing year. Even the Ninth Young Miss…” She cast a glance at Cui Shi. “…she only remembers her from time to time. Is the young miss inside? I’ll go in to pay my respects.”

Lang Jiuchuan had already heard the movement outside and was sitting deep in thought when a sharp intake of breath caught her attention. She looked over — it was the Marquis manor’s household physician, the one Wu Shi had insisted on summoning to tend to her hand. He was now staring at her in evident shock, his face drained of color.

“Dr. Chen — what is it?” Wu Shi saw the physician’s expression and her heart leaped into her throat. Don’t tell me this little sister-in-law’s hand was genuinely mangled from when her husband grabbed it.

“This pulse…”

Lang Jiuchuan followed his gaze to her own hand, and felt her heart drop.

Terrible. She had been too busy seething to remember to prop up this decrepit body. The pulse had stopped.

“I have always been frail since childhood — please look again more carefully.” As she extended her left hand, she quietly guided a thread of energy through it.

Dr. Chen steadied himself inwardly. He must simply have been worn out — what with the manor observing funeral rites and him constantly attending to household members’ pulses and prescribing medicines these past days. That was the only explanation for why he could have failed to detect a pulse. Couldn’t be anything else.

He drew a deep breath, pressed two fingers to her left wrist, and took the pulse with concentrated attention. After a long moment, he withdrew his hand with a small measure of relief. He had been mistaken after all.

But very soon, his brow was furrowed again — because this young miss’s constitution was so alarmingly weak, so thoroughly depleted and worn away, that she was plainly and simply not long for this world.

“The Ninth Young Miss’s pulse is extremely faint, sunken, and slow. The deficiency originates from the womb — congenital weakness — and is compounded by severe depletion of both qi and blood. She must receive careful and sustained treatment, otherwise…” Dr. Chen hesitated, then said: “Without diligent care, she will not only find it difficult to marry and bear children — I fear her lifespan itself may be affected.”

He held back a few things he hadn’t the heart to say: that this body was no better off than that of a withered old man at the very end of his days.

Frail of body, delicate as porcelain — and short of life.

Hearing the physician’s meaning plain enough, Wu Shi stood in dumb silence, and instinctively glanced at Cui Shi, who had just appeared in the doorway, then back at Lang Jiuchuan — sitting there composed and unhurried beneath the bright red mark of a handprint on her face — and felt something heavy and uneasy settle in her chest.