“In the first year of the Yonghe era, Mother gave birth to twin children.”

Xie Zhifei: “In my memory, Mother from before was beautiful. Her whole person was like a blooming white magnolia flower, brilliantly radiant.

In this world, flowers are used to compare women—besides flowers having a thousand kinds of beauty and women having ten thousand kinds of charm, there’s another reason:

When spring fades, flowers gradually fall; when beauty ages, death approaches.

By the eighth year of Yonghe, when we were almost eight years old, many wrinkles had appeared at the corners of Mother’s eyes.

A person’s aging cannot be resisted. Mother’s flowering period had passed, and with each passing day, she was slowly growing old.

But in this world, few women can calmly accept themselves growing old. Precisely at this time, you were slowly growing up.

Your height gradually stretched upward, your face gradually matured. One day I looked at you sleeping and suddenly discovered—heavens, my Huaiyou has grown so beautiful!”

At this moment, Xie Zhifei’s downcast face showed genuine joy.

This joy fell into the eyes of Young Master Pei and the others, truly heartbreaking.

Perhaps only that person, that face, could eliminate the pain and wounds in his heart.

“That spring, the seamstress made a set of new red clothes for you and Mother. When Mother wore hers, for some reason, it made her skin look dark and sallow.

But when you wore yours, the entire main hall was illuminated.

Mother’s face sank again.

Once it sank, it stayed that way for half a month.

You weren’t her biological daughter. Mother watching you didn’t have the joy of ‘my family has a daughter who has just grown up’—only the jealousy of a slowly aging woman toward a young girl who was slowly growing up.”

Xie Zhifei reached out to rub the top of the young woman’s head, still with that same fluffy feel from when she was small.

“Besides this face, Huaiyou, the bearing you emanated was also Mother’s nightmare.

Father wasn’t wrong—dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes. Your father was the Crown Prince, refined and noble. Your mother was born of a scholarly medical family. So on your body…”

The words stopped abruptly.

Xie Zhifei fell silent for quite a while.

“Huaiyou, when our family of four ate together, Father ate steadily, Mother ate delicately, and I never knew what it meant to chew slowly and carefully.

Do you know how you ate?

You ate neither hastily nor slowly. You chewed each bite carefully. Even eating a simple vegetable, you could eat it as if it were a delicacy—both imposingly and elegantly.

This was an innate noble bearing.

I later saw this kind of noble bearing only on Huairen. No matter how Mingting and I tried to imitate it, we were forever just poor imitations.”

Xie Zhifei paused, saying softly:

“Huaiyou, you and Mother had no blood relation. As a woman, in intelligence, appearance, and bearing, she was a hundred thousand li behind you. Should she be jealous? Should she hate?”

“She shouldn’t!”

“She shouldn’t!”

Two voices suddenly burst out. This time, besides Li Buyan, there was also Young Master Pei.

Xie Zhifei still didn’t look at them.

He looked at the young woman’s face in the coffin, as if returning to many years ago when she had quietly pushed open the door and entered his room.

The night was so quiet, she was so lonely and pitiful, asking: “Brother, why doesn’t Mother like me?”

At that time, how could he have known why? He could only reply perfunctorily: Huaiyou, you’re overthinking it.

Now.

He could answer her righteously, could answer her decisively:

This wasn’t your fault, Huaiyou. This was Mother’s fault, the adults’ fault.

Xie Zhifei’s wandering gaze slowly focused, using the lightest yet most resolute tone, saying word by word to the seemingly sleeping young woman with closed eyes:

“Huaiyou, she shouldn’t!”

As tears slid down again, Xie Zhifei struggled to calm himself.

A son does not resent his mother’s ugliness—this was filial piety.

But every sentence he was about to say next was the greatest lack of filial piety, the greatest disrespect.

“Water Moon Convent has a custom—whoever opens the convent gate and sees an abandoned baby girl must take in that baby girl.

I won’t speak of Jingchen—someone like Jingchen, Zhao couldn’t even touch her hem. I’ll only speak of the abbess, Master Huiru.

Was Huiru an ordinary person or a worldly person?

She was a worldly person.

Was her fate bitter?

More bitter than coptis root.

Yet even such a bitter-fated person treated Lanchuan extremely well. Even though she couldn’t bear to part with Lanchuan, for the child’s future, she tearfully sent her to the separate residence.

Why?

Because Buddhist practitioners have compassionate hearts.

Zhao, as a mother, lacked precisely these two characters: compassion.

What is compassion?

It is loving-kindness and pity.

Bodhisattvas have compassionate hearts. Zhao wasn’t a bodhisattva—you can’t demand that of her—but you could demand she have a bit of tolerance.

Tolerance for you to grow up safely and peacefully in Haitang Courtyard. Even if she didn’t like you, at least not overtly harsh or covertly harmful.

How did she actually behave?

She used that gloomy face to push you away, used cold eyes to ignore you, used her icy words to hurt you.

Every year before your birthday, Father would ask what you most wanted. Before you could speak, you would first glance at Zhao’s expression, afraid that asking for too much would make her face sink again.

Huaiyou, although our mother Zhao had read books and could compose poems, although the Zhao family’s upbringing and family traditions were quite good, neither the books nor the family upbringing taught her to be a kind person.

What is kindness?

It’s Yan Xing seeing Xie Daozhi and his mother living destitute in a broken temple and extending a helping hand.

It’s Tang Zhiwei constantly planning a good future for Tang Mingyue.

Kindness is gentleness, is understanding, is being unable to bear seeing human suffering. It’s being trapped in the mire oneself yet still doing one’s utmost to make the human world a bit more beautiful.

Those with kind hearts cannot perceive others’ ill intentions. Those with malicious hearts see everyone as not being good people.

So Zhao never believed that her daughter in the nunnery would be treated as tenderly as a biological daughter by her master. This shows her heart was malicious.

This malice was concealed beneath her talented woman’s exterior, concealed beneath her bright and beautiful face, concealed beneath her identity as a mother.

A mother using such underhanded methods, year after year, to deal with a weak child…”

Xie Zhifei’s tears were about to surge forth again but he gritted his teeth and held them back.

“Huaiyou, I don’t know how you endured those eight years. What I saw was this much—what I didn’t see, what Father didn’t see… tell me, how did you endure it?”

“No wonder she…”

Li Buyan’s tears flowed from heartache: “She forgot all eight years in Haitang Courtyard. Forgot them well, forgot them so very well!”

Yes!

Forgot them so well indeed.

Xie Zhifei touched the young woman’s face, feeling his five organs and six bowels all aching because of a little girl named Huaiyou.

“Earlier I said that as a mother, Zhao treating you poorly was justified. But there’s actually another sentence I didn’t say:

Huaiyou, she was justified, but being justified doesn’t mean what she did was right.

Her heart was so narrow, her thoughts so dark. Therefore, she simply didn’t deserve for you to call her Mother!”

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