In short, Ding Pei freely acknowledged that her background was disreputable and that she had brought embarrassment upon the Master of the household — but she asked the Master to endure it, and to muddle through the rest of their lives with her as they were.

If he would not — then she was prepared to disregard even her own children, bring the entire Su household down in ruin, and ensure that he did not come out of it unscathed either.

Old Master Su had always lived in comfort and enjoyed the finest things — she only wondered whether his constitution was equal to prison food.

Only then did Su Hongmeng finally realize how thoroughly he had underestimated the soft-spoken woman who shared his bed.

He looked at her now as if seeing her for the first time. Ding Pei appeared delicate as a willow bending in wind — yet her eyes flashed with the light of someone prepared to fight to the death. And the hands gripping his collar held such force — such familiar force. It was exactly as it had been that year, when she had broken free of three or four grown men in Red Cloud Lane, seized him by the arm, and clung to him desperately, begging him not to leave.

This woman was a rabid dog wrapped in the soft hide of a lamb. Drive her into a corner and she would use every last ounce of her strength to grab hold of whatever lifeline she could reach — even if it meant being dragged into the whirlpool together, she would not let go.

Once he understood this, Su Hongmeng felt as though his spine had been snapped clean through. Pinned by Ding Pei into the corner of the wall, he found he could not move.

That day, the Ding family walked away the clear victors. The brutish elder cousin carved up the horse for meat and swaggered triumphantly home with his companions.

The main course at the Su family’s dinner table that evening was a large platter of red-braised horse intestine.

Ding Pei, all smiles, served her husband’s bowl and added food to his plate with warm attentiveness as the three children sat looking at one another without daring to speak — behaving precisely as she always did, gentle and dutiful and mild.

Having thoroughly subdued Su Hongmeng through this combination of force and persuasion, Ding Pei knew she still had one more person to bring to heel — and that was her stepdaughter, Su Luoyun.

Why was it that after the Lu family had kept their silence, word of her origins had spread everywhere in an instant, even reaching the eyes of the Su family’s extended kinsmen in the form of the actual register document?

If Su Luoyun’s wretched hand was not behind all of this, she would not believe it if someone beat the claim into her.

And now Su Luoyun’s shop far outpaced the old family establishment, squeezing Shou Wei Zhai out of its own market. Ding Pei had endured the sight of Su Luoyun for long enough.

Now, having fully tightened her grip on Su Hongmeng and brought him to heel, she intended to press the advantage while it was hot and go deal with her presumptuous stepdaughter.

This time Ding Pei brought her rough-and-tumble brother along, as well as her nephews’ drinking companions, and descended upon Sweet Water Lane in a boisterous, menacing crowd, banging at Su Luoyun’s gate.

Since there was no longer any need to maintain the pretense of maternal kindness, she saw no point in putting on a pleasant face. If she did not make that wretched little creature understand who was truly in charge of the Su household, the girl would never learn her place.

Her original plan had been to give the girl a thorough beating and tongue-lashing, and then have her seized and put on a boat back to the ancestral estate in the countryside.

But Ding Pei’s elder brother had shared with his sister a different idea of his own.

The last time, he had asked his sister to help him buy land at a low price, only to be sent packing with a contemptuous dismissal from Su Luoyun. The lout had been nursing a grudge about her landholdings ever since — and her shop turned a profit as steadily as flowing water.

It would be a waste of a fine young woman to ship her off to the countryside. He did not mind that she was blind. Once things got rough today, his eldest son could find an opportune moment to drag her into an inner room. If they tore her undergarment and held up her dudou for the crowd outside to see — well, that would be getting two birds with one stone, would it not?

At that point, in order to preserve what remained of her reputation, Su Luoyun would have to marry into the Ding family. He did not care if the stubborn girl sought to take her own life — as long as her dowry, her land, and her shop passed into the Ding family’s hands, she was welcome to hang herself from a rafter if she wished.

After he had laid out this scheme, Ding Pei glanced at her brother and felt, with a start of admiration, that he was more malicious than she was — she had not thought of this approach herself.

Su Hongmeng had been thoroughly brought under her control. The Hu family’s reckless uncle was far away. The small courtyard held only a blind elder sister and a young brother — and she would like to see who could stand up for a blind girl.

Word of what had transpired at the Su household that day — the slaughtering of a horse — had reached Sweet Water Lane early in the morning, delivered by the Su family’s old steward, who had come on the pretext of bringing something over.

Su Luoyun was generous to servants. Beyond giving regular payments to the stewards of various noble households, she had also been quietly sending substantial red envelopes to the stewards of the great houses on each major festival. The steward was quite happy to curry favor on both sides, and so whenever anything significant came up, he would send word to Sweet Water Lane.

When Su Luoyun heard about the Ding family’s ruffian uncle coming to make trouble at the Su household, something turned over in her chest.

From everything she knew of Ding Pei, this woman was capable of acts no one would anticipate once she tore away all pretense.

That very day, therefore, she had Nanny Tian call upon a familiar acquaintance to hire three young, able-bodied manservants to keep watch over the courtyard.

The small yard had virtually no heavy work to speak of — but Su Luoyun was willing to spend silver for nothing if it meant peace of mind. She also had the household buy a full vat of cooking oil, which was left sitting in the courtyard. Beside it, a large wok was set up over a frame with rough firewood laid underneath.

Xiangcao had been puzzled by all of this right up until the day Ding Pei arrived with her crowd — at which point the purpose of these preparations became entirely clear.

When the visitors first began beating at the gate, Nanny Tian had already dropped the heavy door bar into place and was frantically urging the labor manservants to brace several thick lengths of firewood against the door.

But Ding Shi spared these efforts barely a glance. She did not even deign to step out of her sedan chair, sitting within it at her leisure while the two nephews and their companions hammered at the gate and hurled abuse at the top of their lungs.

The gate of Sweet Water Lane had been neglected for years and was in no condition to withstand a determined kicking. After some minutes of this treatment, the planks split with a crack and the whole thing went crashing to the ground.

But while they had been battering at the gate, Su Luoyun had already instructed Xiangcao and the others to heat a full wok of oil, ready to ladle out in great scoopfuls over anyone who came charging in.

It was a method she had learned from her uncle’s accounts of warfare in the north: given enough boiling oil, even an army of thousands could be scalded to a blistered halt.

In Su Luoyun’s own words, ruffians who break into a private residence deserve no mercy. Even if they were all scalded to death, she would be the one to answer for it.

The hooligans, flush with the silver Ding Shi had pressed into their hands and still glowing from their recent display of power at the Su household, came in with a swaggering sense of invincibility.

They were swiftly disabused of this notion by a flood of searingly hot cooking oil. One after another they shrieked and howled, each scrambling to hide behind the nearest available person, any earlier bravado entirely gone.

After all, the payment had been a tael or two of silver at most. Even the greediest man will not spend his life for that.

Since pushing their way in was no longer possible, there was nothing left to do but salvage some dignity with their mouths. The hooligans proceeded to direct the foulest and most degrading language they could muster at the young mistress of the household.

Sweet Water Lane erupted into chaos.

The ruffians were in full throat with their abuse, quite unaware of the schedule kept by the distinguished neighbor nearby.

As it happened, Han Shizi, who had returned from an evening of drinking out and was deep in a compensatory sleep, had been jolted awake by the commotion in Sweet Water Lane, which was disturbing the peace of the rear garden in Green Fish Lane next door.

Han Linfeng rose and stood atop the wall to assess the situation at his neighbor’s residence. He did not say a word — only gave Qingyang a single glance. Qingyang understood immediately.

Qingyang had already been listening for a while and was seething with indignation himself, finding it utterly unreasonable that a pack of ruffians was bullying a blind young woman.

The moment his young master gave the signal, he immediately gathered three or four guards, picked up short-handled wooden clubs, and headed straight to Sweet Water Lane. Without a word of preamble, he pinned the men down and began laying the clubs across their cheekbones.

The Ding family’s uncle, attempting to take refuge in his sister’s sedan chair, was given a sharp kick in that very direction by Ding Shi herself, who was too busy attending to her own concerns to accommodate him. He was then seized by Qingyang and beaten until his face was the color and shape of a ripe purple-blue eggplant. The other ruffians fared no better — teeth flying, blood spattering in all directions.

Han Linfeng’s guards had all come with him from Liangzhou. They had followed their young master through the northern territories since their own youth, and every one of them was formidably capable. Dealing with a pack of common street thugs was well within their abilities.

The Ding family uncle’s face was rendered unrecognizable, and both his legs were broken. His screams and those of his two sons were like the sound of pigs being slaughtered. Ding Pei’s sedan chair was kicked over by two of the guards, and she tumbled out of it in an undignified heap.

The guards moved like butchers accustomed to killing. Ding Pei was terrified. Supported by her serving women, she scrambled in a blind panic through the nearest available opening — which happened to be the entrance to the Su family’s small courtyard.

Nanny Tian, who had just scooped out another ladleful of hot oil, had somewhat blurred vision — whether she failed to see clearly who was there, or whether she saw perfectly well and directed it deliberately, she poured the entire ladleful straight over Ding Pei and Granny Zhao.

The scalding oil extracted another round of pig-slaughter screams from both Ding Pei and Granny Zhao.

After Qingyang had finished dispensing justice, he looked around at the neighbors peeking and peering from their doorways along the lane, and made a point of announcing in a deliberately carrying voice: “Where do these ruffians think they are — do they not know that the residence of Prince Beizhen’s Shizi is right next door? Our Shizi had only just gone to sleep, and was woken by this ruckus. If anyone dares come making trouble again, I will pull your tongues out with fire tongs.”

He had come to help the young mistress, but it would not do to say so directly. He instead used the pretext of disturbing the Shizi’s rest to justify giving them a beating — a perfectly legitimate basis from which no one could object.

After the ruffians had been taken into custody by officers who arrived on the scene, Su Luoyun finally heard from Xiangcao that after being drenched with the hot oil, Ding Shi had been hauled away by her maidservants and sedan chair bearers without a moment’s thought for her brother or nephews, and had vanished in a great hurry.

By the look of things, with half her face scalded, she had rushed off to seek medical attention.

Su Luoyun wrapped up some silver and went out in person to thank the brave men who had helped them.

But Qingyang kicked aside a few of the teeth scattered across the ground and waved off the silver packet Luoyun offered, explaining: “Those people genuinely did disturb the Shizi’s rest — it was not a matter of coming specifically to help you, young miss. The silver really is not necessary.”

Qingyang did not want Miss Su to misunderstand that the Shizi had come charging in to play the hero and rescue a damsel in distress. The last thing his young master needed was a new admirer developing feelings of tender gratitude.

His young master’s unwanted admirers had been rather plentiful of late. The Second Miss Fang, after a period of dejection, had come creeping back again with renewed persistence, blocking his young master’s path on several occasions and reducing his young master’s female companions to tears.

If Miss Su now misread the situation and fell into the same trap, it would be a disaster of his own making.

Having heard Qingyang’s explanation, Su Luoyun could not very well press the silver upon him further. But there happened to be a pot of snow fungus and pear soup simmering on the stove, which she had prepared for her brother, and so she had Xiangcao bring out several bowls for Qingyang and the others to drink. After all, beating people was tiring work, and their throats could do with some refreshment.

This time Qingyang did not stand on ceremony. He thanked the young miss and drank three large bowlfuls without stopping, while Luoyun, sweet-tongued as ever, complimented Qingyang liberally on his manly prowess, causing him to grin in abashed delight.

After chatting with Miss Su for a while, he returned to the residence — and found the Shizi still standing at the edge of the high courtyard wall.

He promptly gave his young master a full report of what had taken place, and made a point of informing him that he had been careful to deflect any impression of the Shizi’s involvement with their neighbor, so that Miss Su would certainly not form any mistaken impressions.

“Was it good?” After Qingyang finished his report, the Shizi suddenly asked, in a slow, unhurried way.

Qingyang did not follow immediately and gave a blank, bewildered sound of acknowledgment.

By the time he had worked out that the Shizi was asking whether the pear soup from the Su household had been good, the Shizi had already turned away — without waiting for an answer — his brow slightly cold, his long sleeves sweeping behind him as he strode off.

Qingyang shook his head with helpless bemusement. The Shizi’s reaction just now had been truly peculiar — exactly like a child who had been denied a sweet he felt should rightfully have been given to him.

Meanwhile, on Luoyun’s side of the wall, once Qingyang and his men had departed, she instructed the manservants to fetch water and scrub the oil stains and bloodstains from the ground in front of the gate, then pulled the doors shut.

That Ding Shi would come to her door to cause trouble had been within Luoyun’s expectations all along.

But there was one thing she could not understand: given how visibly her father’s affection for Ding Shi had waned — to the point that he was striking her without any consideration for old sentiment — she had deliberately allowed Ding Pei’s secret to seep out, little by little. Once public opinion had been stirred, she had passed the register document on to the Su family’s extended kinsmen.

With Jin Guan and Jin Cheng’s autumn examinations imminent, and Caijian’s betrothal having fallen apart again, her father, if he wished to protect the Su family’s prospects, had no choice but to deal with Ding Pei.

Even if he could not formally demote her from wife to concubine outright, at the very least he ought to send her to the ancestral estate in the countryside.

Yet Ding Pei had escalated rather than retreated, throwing the Su household into tumult inside and out — very much as though she were laying down the law for Su Hongmeng.

This left Su Luoyun thoroughly baffled, and she found herself wondering whether Ding Shi had somehow gotten a hold of a damaging secret that gave her leverage over her father.

As for Ding Shi, who had retreated in humiliating disarray — she had come to Sweet Water Lane intending to hold her stepdaughter down and teach her not to be so brazen.

Instead, some inopportune neighbor who had not gotten enough sleep had emerged from nowhere and beaten her brother and nephews until they were crawling across the ground spitting out teeth. And that wretched Nanny Tian had doused her with boiling oil into the bargain.

Though she had managed to partially block it with her sleeve, half her face had nonetheless erupted in a string of large blisters.

And this was not something she could report to the authorities — doing so would drag Prince Beizhen’s Shizi into a lawsuit about assault.

That man had only to sit himself down in the prefect’s courtroom and open his mouth, and people were having planks applied to them.

In short, Ding Pei had not recovered a shred of dignity — she had lost what little remained — and had no choice but to slink away in defeat.

When Su Hongmeng learned from the maidservants about his eldest daughter’s fierce and spirited defense, he felt, to his own surprise, a measure of pride.

The Su family had fallen into misfortune, with a woman from a pleasure house tightening her grip around them — at least he still had a capable, unintimidated daughter.

Looking at Ding Pei’s blazing red half-face, Su Hongmeng felt his resentment eased considerably.

But Ding Pei was not about to let the matter rest. She launched into a fresh round of demands with Su Hongmeng, insisting he go and discipline his daughter, telling her to watch her conduct and stay well clear of any entanglement with Prince Beizhen’s Shizi.

Han Shizi had come out to shield the girl again today — it was beginning to look as though there might truly be something between them.

Han Shizi was the man the Duke of Lu’s daughter had her eye on. If the Su family’s daughter was reckless enough to get in the way of that, he — a mere vault keeper at the Bureau of Trade — would not be able to keep his position in peace.

And he needed to be clear with his daughter: she had better treat Ding Pei with proper deference, or he would make life difficult for all of them.

Ever since the horse had been slaughtered at the Su household, Su Hongmeng had been thoroughly under Ding Shi’s thumb. There were nights now when he lay awake and found himself imagining strangling the woman beside him in her sleep to free himself from his shackles entirely.

But he lacked the nerve for murder, and all he truly wanted was a quiet household. If what Ding Shi claimed was true — that the base-register document was in Su Luoyun’s possession — then the path forward was simple enough. He would explain the stakes to Luoyun and ask her to behave herself and leave Ding Shi alone.

And so Su Hongmeng appeared again at the small courtyard in Sweet Water Lane, took Luoyun directly into the study for a private talk, and came straight to the point, asking her to hand over the page from Ding Pei’s base register.

How could Su Luoyun hand it over? The documents she had distributed had all been copies. She simply denied having it, and turned the question back on her father: had her mother not been driven to her death by his secret keeping of Ding Shi all those years?

Her mother had been married for many years without bearing children, and had often been separated from her husband for long stretches. It was only after many years of marriage that she had at last given birth to a son and daughter to keep her company. Taking her inspiration from a line of verse — From amid the clouds, who sends the brocade letter? When the wild geese return, the moon fills the western tower — she had named her children “Luoyun” and “Guiyan,” clouds and returning geese, hoping each day to receive her husband’s letter falling from the clouds, and praying that he, like the returning geese, would come home soon.

Little did she know that the husband she longed for day and night had kept a mistress in the brocade city of Chengdu in Sichuan.

And Ding Pei had the audacity to name her own daughter “Caijian” — a name meaning a vivid, ornate letter. It was a brazen, deliberate provocation. Even if Hu Shi received a letter tied to her husband’s goose-foot, it was no more than a piece of paper for appearances’ sake. The letters that carried true tenderness and ardor — those were all penned in Ding Pei’s rooms in her lover’s house.

Her mother had known at the time that her husband had a daughter born outside of marriage. If she had learned that this illegitimate daughter had been given the name “Caijian,” how much grief would a woman of such sensitivity have felt?

Knowing Ding Pei’s machinations, who could say what methods she had used to torment her mother in those years? Her poor mother had been frail after childbirth, and when she died she was wasted to nothing.

She had been too young at the time to understand the depths of her mother’s suffering. Now that she did understand, she found her loathing for her father’s spinelessness and irresponsibility only growing.

Su Hongmeng knew he had no standing to project authority before his eldest daughter at this point. Steeling himself, he took the plunge and told her the full truth of the private dealings in which he had been caught.

Luoyun had already suspected that her father was being held over a barrel by Ding Shi on something — but she had never imagined the secret would be this grave.

In that moment, it was as though five thunderbolts had struck her at once.

Her hands clenched into fists without her realizing it, her fury rising: her father’s nerve was staggering. He had actually dared to divert and sell off stockpiled imperial tribute goods from the Bureau of Trade?

Did he not know that the punishment for this crime was not just his own execution, but the destruction of everyone in his family?

Had the gold and silver her mother had earned for him not been enough?

Having said his piece, Su Hongmeng saw the blank, stunned look in Luoyun’s eyes and knew she had been frightened, and could not help sighing. “I know you are hard-hearted and do not wish to concern yourself with family affairs. But if I truly fall to punishment, you and Guiyan will not be able to protect yourselves either. So for the sake of the whole family’s peace, I am asking you to give way a little — stop fighting with her, and do not drag me into a legal disaster along with yourself…”

Before he had finished speaking, Su Luoyun had already picked up the scalding hot tea bowl and hurled it with full force in the direction of her father’s voice.

Su Hongmeng had not braced himself, and it struck him squarely. Scalded and yelping, he leapt to his feet, wiping tea dregs from his face as he shouted furiously: “Have you lost your mind?”

Su Luoyun wished she had another pot of boiling oil to pour directly over her father’s head: “What sort of rotten creature would be worthy of being called my mother? And you have the gall to say I am dragging you into disaster! You have already laid half your neck under the blade yourself! My mother was blind to have married a man like you — no backbone, insatiably greedy. You buried your first wife and took a woman from a house of pleasure into the household before she was cold in the ground, and now your own greed and shortsightedness have brought you to this — and to top it all off you have been taken hostage by your own wife! Life is hard enough as it is — why must I have a father such as you!”

As she cried out these words, the tears she could no longer hold back streamed freely down her face. In that moment, she almost wished she could be reborn on the spot and leave this wretched mess of a world behind.

Under ordinary circumstances, Su Hongmeng would have delivered a sharp slap long ago and put a stop to a daughter speaking to him with such flagrant disrespect.

But at this moment, he was the one at fault, and he still needed her to let the matter rest — so even as her words set his insides on fire, all he could do was let his face flush dark as a pig’s liver and glare at her: “Keep your voice down! I am still your father. Who gave you permission to run wild and speak to me like this? Whatever has happened, none of us will come out of this well. Push Ding Pei to the limit and she will, in a fury, be willing to sink the whole boat with everyone on it.”

After he said this, Luoyun made no response. Her sightless eyes did not blink, her expression was entirely without feeling, and yet the tears continued to fall — large, heavy drops, one after another, in perfect silence.

Su Hongmeng was full of his own regret: “I lost my head for a moment, and that is how the diversion of those stockpiled goods from the Bureau came about. In truth it is not such a remarkable thing — it is a secret that the officials involved all understand among themselves, without anyone speaking of it aloud.”

Every year, the tribute goods sent from the various regions exceeded the required quota. Apart from items like frankincense pearls and golden silkworm silk — rare enough to be in genuine demand and insufficient to be distributed broadly — most of the better goods were left over in surplus.

But tribute goods belonging to the Son of Heaven could not be disposed of privately without the Emperor’s express order to gift them to someone. They could sit and rot and still not be touched.

The veterans of the Bureau of Trade all knew how these matters worked. At the start of each spring, when the new tribute arrived, they would take advantage of the routine clearing of the storerooms, colluding with the officials of the Inner Attendants’ Office to under-report and misrecord, and then quietly sell off items of secondary consequence — bolts of cloth, lengths of brocade, medicinal supplies. A small quantity unaccounted for could always be explained away as losses to vermin and mildew, and written off accordingly. The proceeds were then divided up according to each person’s rank and station, everyone quietly enriching themselves, and the world none the wiser.

After Su Hongmeng had taken up his post, he had proved himself skilled in the art of cultivating relationships and had quickly become well-regarded among the senior officials of the Bureau. To demonstrate his loyalty to his superiors, he had even volunteered to take charge of this particular operation. And since his connections were rather extensive, the volume of goods privately sold that year had been considerable, and the silver received was substantial.

Had his domestic affairs not descended into chaos, with Ding Pei deliberately collecting evidence against him, the whole matter would have continued undisturbed, with no ripples.

As it stood, he was concealing the situation from both superiors and subordinates, not daring to let his supervisors know that his household had erupted into crisis. All he wanted was to hold Ding Pei down and keep her from causing further trouble.

Thinking it over, Su Hongmeng concluded that he had perhaps overstated the severity of the consequences and frightened his daughter unnecessarily.

She was a young girl with no experience of the world — naturally she would imagine the worst.

And so Su Hongmeng softened his voice once more: “The senior officials at the Bureau won’t publicize this, of course. But if word leaks at this critical moment, it might be seized upon by those with ulterior motives who will make the most of it. If my superiors learn that my household has been leaking information, I fear they will deal with me harshly first. Stop provoking Ding Pei. Can we not all simply get on with living our lives properly?”

Luoyun had not imagined that her father, even at this juncture, still wanted to smooth everything over with a coat of paste.

She wiped the tears from her face and replied with a cold, quiet laugh: “The Su family’s good days are most likely over. There is no wall in the world through which nothing passes. Even if Ding Pei says nothing, there is no such thing as permanent silence. The stockpile of tribute goods you diverted could not have been small — once an investigation begins, every member of the Su family will be exiled alongside you.”

Su Hongmeng was sick with dread himself by now. But the wrong had been done, and there was no elixir in the world that could undo it. And to sit there being manipulated by his own wife, being pelted with a tea bowl and berated by his daughter without daring to retaliate — his sense of humiliation was profound.

In the end, Old Master Su let out a broken sound in his throat and sat there weeping before his daughter, old tears rolling down his face.

At the sight of him, Su Luoyun found she could no longer cry herself.

She tossed him her handkerchief, drew a slow breath, and asked: “Who is currently responsible for the accounts at the Bureau of Trade — is it you alone?”

Su Hongmeng had entirely lost his authority before his daughter by this point and could only answer honestly, nodding and then shaking his head: “I know what you are thinking — you are wondering whether I could falsify the accounts. But though I handle the ledgers, there is another vault keeper who cross-checks the accounts against mine. I cannot act unilaterally.”

Su Luoyun replied coldly: “Falsify the accounts? Are you determined to collect even more handles for people to hold over you? Tell me the procedures in full, and I will think about whether there is anything that can still be salvaged.”

Su Hongmeng wiped the tea leaves from his face. He thought to himself that this daughter of his had no idea how high the sky was or how deep the earth ran. These were matters of official accounts and records — what could a young girl possibly understand about any of it?