Time flowed slowly on. In a blink, she was sixteen.

At sixteen, Tang Zhiwei had blossomed into someone bright and captivating, as if copied from a painting.

Several competitions in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting among noble ladies had earned her the title of the capital’s foremost talented woman. Those seeking her hand in marriage came in an endless stream.

She refused to see any of them, nor would she allow Master Tang to see them.

Master Tang, helpless, could only claim externally that he wanted to keep his daughter home a few more years.

He was twenty-six. In three more months, he would take the spring imperial examinations.

Among the matchmakers, many also came for him.

He was the Crown Prince’s Grand Tutor’s student. After the spring examinations, nine times out of ten he would soar to great heights. Some far-sighted noble families thus set their sights on him.

He found it unbearably tiresome and simply used the excuse that that place had been injured, refusing all at once.

No one doubted whether this excuse was true or false.

At twenty-six, normal men were long past the age for marriage and children. Who could still be like him, without even a woman by his side?

When the master learned of it, he furiously scolded him. What man in this world would joke about his manhood? He also asked what Lu Shi was actually thinking.

Lu Shi truly wanted to ask back: Do you know what your precious daughter is thinking?

“It really was injured, slashed by a tree branch. I crudely stitched it closed.”

Tang Qiling was so shocked he couldn’t speak for ages. Finally he patted Lu Shi’s shoulder and said, “After the spring examinations, I’ll find the Imperial Medical Academy’s best physician to examine you.”

When the two junior brothers learned of it, they immediately wrote home requesting their parents help find folk remedies for male root injuries.

Only that girl, upon hearing of it, looked at him with a gaze grown somewhat heavier. Occasionally when their eyes met, her lips would curve in a soundless cold smile.

That cold smile seemed to say: I’ve long seen through everything about you, but I just won’t say it. I want to see which of us can outlast the other!

Lu Shi smiled bitterly inwardly: This girl had learned to keep her composure compared to two years ago.

The calamity occurred the day before that year’s Lantern Festival. That day he was studying in his room when someone called him to the master’s study.

Upon entering the study, he discovered an unfamiliar face sitting beside the master.

That person, seeing him arrive, first sighed before speaking.

After hearing everything, Lu Shi showed no expression, his mind completely blank. When he came back to his senses, that person had already left.

The study door slammed shut with a bang. Only then did he feel a sharp, piercing pain in his chest.

That woman had been caught in adultery and drowned in a pond;

He’d been stripped by the Ministry of Rites of his qualification for the spring examinations.

The master poured him a cup of hot tea. “Child, regarding your mother and the Lu family, is there anything you want to tell me?”

“I…”

Opening his mouth, Lu Shi discovered even his breathing trembled. These days of studying day and night had caused mouth ulcers—very painful.

He numbly shook his head.

Tang Qiling didn’t press further and drew several bank notes from a drawer.

“Put other matters aside first and go back to see her. All these years you’ve never mentioned the Lu family, never returned for festivals—you don’t say, and I don’t ask. In these times, who doesn’t have some troubling matters in their heart?”

Lu Shi snatched up the bank notes, knees buckling as he dropped to the ground—three loud, forceful kowtows.

The master walked before him and pulled him up.

“People aren’t gods—they can’t be right about everything. You’ve made mistakes, I’ve made mistakes. Just because she gave you life, you must forgive her. Forgiving her isn’t out of filial duty but to release yourself. Child…”

Tang Qiling patted his shoulder, face full of regret. “One must release oneself. Do you understand?”

…

Lu Shi thought—he had released himself, but who could release him?

From the stables back to his courtyard required walking exactly nine hundred fifty-two steps. Every night of burning the midnight oil, whether windy or rainy, he would carefully walk all nine hundred fifty-two steps.

Not a single day interrupted.

He told himself—having no father was nothing, having a mother of loose morals was nothing, starting late was nothing, being slower than others was nothing. As long as you stake everything and persevere, someday you’ll carve out a bright path.

But why?

Why, when he was just about to climb up, did heaven still press him to the ground and viciously stamp on him again?

Did it want him never to rise again in this lifetime?

Was he only fit to be a bastard despised by all?

On the road from the capital rushing to Jinling Prefecture, Lu Shi rode his horse and couldn’t help crying silently.

The north wind scraped past. He tasted a pain like bones being carved and flesh gouged—if this pain had another name, it was—despair!

…

Half a month later, Lu Shi returned to Liuhe County in Jinling Prefecture.

After a ten-year absence, returning to the Lu family, the Lu family members looked at him with extremely complex gazes.

Under everyone’s scrutiny, he walked to his former courtyard. That woman’s corpse lay in the main hall.

Lu Shi lifted the cover for a glance, then turned to the man he should call father and said, “I’ll keep vigil for her for three days. Bury her after three days.”

“This…”

“Not in the Lu family cemetery.”

The man nodded, then sighed heavily. “This burial matter…”

Lu Shi coldly interrupted, “I’ll pay. You don’t need to worry.”

The man flicked his sleeve and left.

Lu Shi closed the courtyard gate, set up a stove to heat water, found a wooden basin and towels, and rummaged through the chest for a set of plain shoes and socks…

After completing all this, he went to the quarry.

Though ten years had passed, he still had a few friends there. He had to find out whether that woman deserved to die, whether anyone had harmed her.

She truly had committed adultery;

She truly had conspired with her paramour to rob the Lu family;

She truly had been discovered by the Lu family, and the two, to save their lives, fled to the magistrate’s office to beat the drum and cry injustice, even bringing up Lu Shi’s name.

But the one who truly deserved death wasn’t that woman—it was that quarry worker named A Feng.

He’d seen the woman was still attractive and had some silver in hand, so he orchestrated their “chance meeting,” then used deep affection and sweet words to deceive her.

Robbing the Lu family was also that man’s idea;

After the matter failed, running to the magistrate’s office to cry for help was also him.

Because only this way could he survive. As for whether that woman lived or died, whether the child in her belly lived or died—he didn’t care.

From his friend’s mouth, Lu Shi learned another piece of news—he was now truly the Lu residence’s Seventh Master. His name had been added to the genealogy.

After thanking his friend, Lu Shi returned to the residence and directly sought out the Lu clan elder, requesting removal from the genealogy and confessing that he could no longer take the imperial examinations and had been expelled by Tang Qiling.

Upon hearing this, the Lu clan elder didn’t even hesitate—he immediately summoned clan members to open the ancestral hall, and with a bold stroke removed Lu Shi’s name.

Three days later, the woman was buried.

Lu Shi didn’t even use a coffin—he directly shouldered the woman’s corpse and walked out of the Lu family.

No one stopped him, much less came to see him off.

That man he should call father, upon hearing he’d been expelled from his master’s tutelage, spat a thick glob of phlegm on the ground and cursed, “Bastard.”