Han Linfeng lowered his head and saw her biting her lip in silence. He knew he had misspoken — he deserved whatever rebuke was coming — and could only wrap her firmly in his arms, breathing in the fragrance that clung to her, and murmur softly: “It was all my fault. I should never have tricked you into marrying me without knowing what you were getting into. But since you have married me, I will see to it that you are kept safe. It is only that the capital has become dangerous ground — let me think on it a little more.”

The covert struggles within the palace were intensifying. And Fang Jinshu still regarded Su Luoyun as a thorn in her side. Su Luoyun had been sharp enough to escape this time — but there was no guarantee she would not be swept up in the next scheme or conspiracy.

The wisest course at present was therefore to leave the capital. He had already been in the city for nearly three years — it was time to go.

But leaving the capital required a plausible reason. He would need to write to his father, the Prince, and begin making arrangements in advance.

Still — would she be willing to go with him?

Han Linfeng felt a small knot of uncertainty in his chest. Before the wedding, this woman had been all but calculating her terms for a divorce on an abacus — that image remained vivid in his memory.

Since the marriage, he had been patient, wearing down her resistance step by step. And though she treated him well now, it was out of gratitude — because he had been good to Guiyan, and good to her. It was not because she had fallen in love with him.

That much Han Linfeng understood with perfect clarity. If they returned to Liangzhou and she found herself ill at ease there, she would most likely work out a case for divorce in no time at all.

The thought lodged like something solid in his chest. He pushed it aside — if he kept pulling at this thread, he would end up kicking the chair again.

Since he had not yet worked out what to say, he said nothing to Su Luoyun about his intention to leave the capital.

As it happened, that evening Su Luoyun’s manner had softened somewhat toward him — perhaps out of concern for the servants’ gossip — and she finally permitted Han Linfeng to return to the bedchamber to sleep.

But when a wife has lost all deference toward her husband, the master of the house finds his standing in the inner chambers diminishing by the day.

Although the Shizi was allowed back into the room, he was promptly exiled — person and bedding both — to the narrow daybed.

The great bed, which rightfully belonged to the master of the household, remained occupied by its two current lords: a pair of snow-white, cloud-soft cats.

Han Linfeng lay on his side on the daybed, hair loose, the collar of his wide robe slightly open, one hand propping up his head, and could only stare helplessly at his former sleeping territory, now claimed by the cats.

Arong stretched out with comfortable satisfaction, rolled lazily over, blinked his mismatched eyes at the solitary male figure across the room, and let out a long, drowsy meow — as if to say: Come on, then.

Han Linfeng’s expression remained perfectly blank. He reached over to the fruit dish on the side table, picked up a peanut, and flicked it directly at Arong’s backside.

Arong yelped at the sting and leapt down from the bed.

Su Luoyun, hearing Arong’s pitiful cry, reached out to investigate, and felt the peanut at once. She understood immediately. “Shizi — that is really too—”

Han Linfeng said coldly: “No males allowed in my bed.”

Arong was a tom. He had only flicked a peanut — that was already generous restraint. Su Luoyun had been about to call him childish, but hearing this particular justification, she found she lacked even the energy to roll her eyes. She simply gathered Axue, who had curled herself into a little ball, drew the bed curtains closed, and lay back down.

At some point, Su Luoyun finally drifted into sleep. She was sleeping soundly when she became dimly aware of a great warm cocoon wrapping itself around her, enveloping her in heat from all sides.

When she reached out a hand partway through the night, she discovered that the man had somehow made his way back onto the bed — and that her beloved cat Axue had also vanished, evicted to parts unknown, possibly having been deposited outside the room entirely.

The man, entirely unapologetic about his return to the bed, was perfectly at ease in his explanation: “It was so cold last night that you had curled into a tight little ball. Naturally I came over to warm you. If you are not a fool, you should know that pressing against me is considerably warmer than pressing against a cat.”

Su Luoyun had barely opened her mouth to retort when he had already pulled her into his arms: “I am still the master of this household, am I not? To be ranked below even a cat? Ah Yun, you are growing bolder and bolder — when did you stop being afraid of me?”

Just as Su Luoyun was gathering herself, suppressing her indignation, preparing to offer this formidable master of the house a perfunctory apology — he suddenly attacked her armpit with tickling fingers, and announced: “Look at that — eyebrows arching, about to say something cutting — let’s see whether you can manage it now!”

Su Luoyun was utterly helpless against being tickled. She could only flail her hands in defense while dissolving into helpless laughter she could not stop.

What manner of shameless tactic was this — beneath even a child’s dignity!

Tears were actually squeezed from her eyes. She laughed against her will, half in distress, while sputtering: “Han — Han Linfeng, to resort to such means — are you some kind of infant?”

Calling him an unweaned child? Han Linfeng laughed and raised an eyebrow, then lowered his head and kissed her lips — since that was how she felt about it, he would simply have to show her just how grown up he was.

In a moment of half-resistance and half-surrender, the two who had been sleeping apart for several days came together again at last.

After only a few exchanges, Su Luoyun found herself quite unable to hold her own against him. In the end, she simply bit down on his face as she always did when at a loss, wanting to use force — but finding herself a little reluctant to actually hurt him.

In the end, he had his way with her entirely. The restorative feast that had been denied him for several days arrived all at once in abundance, replenishing him from first to last.

When the storm had quieted and the clouds had stilled, Han Linfeng turned over with an air of deep contentment and settled her against his chest, letting her lie quietly and listen as his heartbeat gradually slowed and steadied. Then he said softly: “Do you remember that time I began avoiding you?”

Su Luoyun said nothing — only listened to the steady reverberation in the chest beneath her ear.

“It was because I had begun to realize, even then, that I had developed feelings for you. And yet you had no interest in me whatsoever. In your heart, I was nothing but a presence reeking of powder and rouge, without even a face. Not like that gentleman Lu — at least your mind held an image of him, a memory of a graceful young man.”

This — Su Luoyun had nothing to say to this, because he was right. She had sketched out countless imagined versions of his appearance in her mind — but none of them could possibly have matched what Han Linfeng actually looked like.

She genuinely did not know what the man she had married looked like.

Sheltered by the darkness of the night, Han Linfeng, in one of those rare moments, opened his heart and spoke of what lay inside it: “I tried, for a time, to keep my distance from you. I thought we could each go our own way, live our own lives. But you kept appearing before me again and again, no matter what. And then the moment I realized there was an opportunity to bind you to me — I felt something almost like joy. I stopped hesitating and thought only of securing you, firmly and without question. Even if you accuse me of scheming. But marrying you is the one thing in my life I have never regretted, not for a single moment.”

Much had happened during the days they had been apart, and Su Luoyun had had no time or mind to dwell on their quarrel. But now, in this moment, suddenly hearing that he had once drunk himself into a fury of jealousy over Lu Shi, and then recalling all those days when he had blown hot and cold — now she understood the state of mind behind all of it, and something in her released.

A man as calculating as Han Linfeng — his keeping his distance in those early days had surely not been only because he discovered she was indifferent to him. He must also have weighed what it meant to take a wife like her: the ridicule it would invite from others, and all the inconveniences it would bring.

And yet, in the end, he had still gone out of his way to bring this mismatched match about.

If anything, compared to her — he had needed the greater share of courage.

The thought arrived, and she reached out her hand, and slowly, by touch, found and closed her fingers over his broad palm. Her slender fingers interlaced with his long ones, and she said quietly: “Having gone to all that trouble to deceive someone into marriage — I hope, my lord, that when the day comes and you have risen to the heights of honor and rank, you will not regret it, nor look down in private on the one you took as your unworthy match.”

Han Linfeng laughed and tightened his grip around their interlaced hands. He turned and pressed the soft, sweet-smelling creature beneath him, his voice low: “Little wretch — you always know exactly how to provoke a man.”

The sounds of their laughter and play drifted through the closed door from time to time. The maidservants waiting outside exchanged glances and quietly breathed sighs of relief — the Shizi’s consort had finally chosen to show the Shizi a kind face. With the two masters reconciled like this, perhaps they too could relax a little.

But the news of the reconciliation had evidently not yet reached the Su family’s small courtyard next door.

The following day, Su Luoyun took Xiangcao to visit her younger sister Su Caijian, who was staying in the adjacent quarters.

Caijian had her maidservant Xique washing plums for her to eat. Seeing Su Luoyun arrive, she selected one and handed it to her elder sister.

Su Luoyun bit into it. The taste was sharply sour — but from the sounds Caijian was making, eating them with evident delight, they clearly suited her perfectly well.

In Caijian’s eyes, her elder sister seemed unusually gentle today, apparently willing to converse with her — she was almost pleasantly surprised. She chatted warmly and eagerly, and then, with careful tentativeness, probed at whether her sister had made up with her brother-in-law, and whether the Shizi was still sleeping in the study.

Su Luoyun did not answer. She simply smiled and turned the question back on Caijian, asking where she had been spending her time in the few months before their father had sent her here.

Caijian’s tone abruptly dropped, and she replied with a trace of reluctance: “I just stayed home. I didn’t go anywhere.”

The young maidservant Mingchan, who had just come in carrying a plate of melon seeds, heard this and, thinking the Second Young Miss had a poor memory, casually offered: “Second Young Miss has forgotten — two months ago, when your mother fell ill, you were so worried about her. Didn’t you go to visit her at the Ding family’s house?”

The words had barely left her mouth when Xique and Su Caijian reacted as though both their tails had been trodden on at the same moment: “Keep your mouth shut!”

Even Xiangcao was startled by the outburst, unable to make sense of what had come over the mistress and her maidservants. Mingchan, thoroughly scolded, quickly set the plate down, lowered her head, and retreated from the room.

Su Luoyun kept her eyes lowered, finished the sour plum one bite at a time, chatted for a little while longer, then rose and said: “I have a banquet to attend at the Princess’s residence shortly — I won’t keep you any longer.”

With that, she left the Su family’s small courtyard.

Once outside, Xiangcao said, puzzled: “Did you have a banquet today, my lady? I didn’t hear anything about it.”

Su Luoyun’s expression was grave. “Go. Through the back gate, back to the Shizi’s residence.”

They went around the long way and slipped back into the Shizi’s residence without drawing any attention.

Han Linfeng had originally been set to remain at home that day, but Minister Li had sent for him on short notice, and he had gone out early in the morning.

After he left, Su Luoyun had instructed the gatekeeper to make no mention of the Shizi’s absence to anyone who might ask.

Now that she was back, she sat inside going over the account books. Before long, the gatekeeper came to report: “The Second Young Miss of the Su family says she is bringing embroidery patterns for the young commandery princess, and has come to the Shizi’s residence. Following your earlier instructions, this servant let her in.”

Su Luoyun thought for a moment, then said quietly to Xiangcao: “Tell the others not to interfere with her. Have someone watch from a distance, and see what she gets up to.”

Before long, Xiangcao returned — this time she had not even opened her mouth before her eyes had already reddened with barely suppressed fury: “After the Second Young Miss came out of the commandery princess’s courtyard, she claimed to have a stomach ache, shook off the household servants, and slipped away with that little maidservant Xique to the Shizi’s private study. She — what on earth does she think she is doing?!”

Su Luoyun lowered her eyes.

The Shizi had left in haste today. Even the young commandery princess did not know he had gone out.

By the household’s ordinary routine, this was the hour when the Shizi would be spending time alone in his study.

Caijian had never applied her mind this carefully to anything in her life — waiting deliberately for her elder sister to be away from the residence, and then scheming with such determined effort to have a cozy private conversation with her sister’s husband.

Su Luoyun rose to her feet. “Bring several tight-lipped older maidservants with you, and come with me to the study.”

That day, when Su Luoyun walked in and threw open the study door without warning, she very nearly frightened Caijian out of her wits.

Xiangcao, at that moment, found herself quietly grateful that her mistress could not see — for the sight was hardly one fit for eyes.

There lay Caijian, draped across the daybed of the Shizi’s study in a thin robe, her posture deliberately inviting — and then startled into a shriek by her elder sister’s sudden entrance, and by the five burly older maidservants who came crowding in behind her. Caijian scrambled to pull her clothes around herself.

The grim-faced older maidservants surged forward and dragged Caijian off the daybed, binding her with no ceremony.

The maidservant Xique, who had been keeping watch outside, came rushing in in a panic. Taking in the scene, she cried frantically: “The Second Young Miss got lost in the residence and was tired from walking — she came here only to rest for a moment. How can you be so rude as to actually tie her up?”

Su Luoyun had come prepared — she had no intention of letting Xique talk her way out of anything.

Nanny Tian, leading another older maidservant, crossed the room in two strides, shoved the protesting Xique out of the way, pressed Caijian back down into a chair, and lowered the inner curtain, leaving only a single hand extended through a gap in the fabric.

Then a physician was ushered in. The old man had seen enough of the machinations that went on behind the walls of great households that he asked no questions, made no comments, and wore no expression.

He placed two fingers against the wrist that the older maidservant held firmly still, through the gap in the curtain, measured it for a brief moment, and then turned and bowed to the Shizi’s consort: “Your suspicion was correct, my lady. By my assessment, it appears to be a little over a month along.”

Su Luoyun, though she had already half-guessed this would be the answer, still closed her eyes and drew a sharp, silent breath.

She steadied herself, then gave her instructions to Nanny Tian: “Go. Have the male servants tie up that maidservant Mingchan from the Su family’s small courtyard as well — and gag her. Until I give the order, no one is to speak with either of them.”

Once Xique had been bound and hauled away, Su Luoyun allowed Xiangcao to take her arm and settled herself slowly into the seat facing her younger sister.

Caijian, bound and held in place by the older maidservants, could not move. Looking at the manner in which her elder sister had handled things, she was trembling so hard her lips were shaking: “Sister — what — what are you going to do?”

When the others had been cleared from the room, leaving only trusted attendants behind, Su Luoyun said in a cold, level voice: “My dear sister — that question is mine to ask of you. You concealed a pregnancy for more than a month, and then wore Father down until he sent you here to me. What exactly did you have in mind?”

Caijian still had not worked out how her elder sister had spotted her mistakes and maneuvered to apprehend her like this. Hearing Su Luoyun lay bare her pregnancy in a single breath, she burst into wailing tears: “You — you are slandering me with lies — I want to go home, I won’t stay here and be mistreated by you!”

Just at that moment, Nanny Tian returned from the Su family’s small courtyard, bringing with her Caijian’s clothing chest.

When it was opened and the contents shaken out, Nanny Tian could barely keep her eyes open for shame. Stowed at the very bottom of the chest, the undergarments were gauzy as cicada wings, in shades of peach-blossom pink and willow green — matching what Caijian was wearing now — things that might have been selected from a house of entertainment.

When Nanny Tian flung the shameless garments down in front of Caijian, what little defiance Caijian had left drained out of her completely. She wrenched herself free of the older maidservants, crawled forward on her bound hands, and collapsed at Su Luoyun’s feet, weeping without restraint: “Sister — I beg you, please help me — Mother is the one who has brought me to ruin!”

The truth was this: a month and a half ago, Ding Pei had indeed fallen ill.

Since returning to her elder brother’s household, Ding Shi had been unable to resume the life of ease she had known at the Su family estate, surrounded by servants and attended to at every turn — and she had found the adjustment deeply difficult.

Her sister-in-law, too, was a woman who knew how to grind away at a person. Seeing her husband’s younger sister fallen from her former position, and still stewing over how that last venture at the Su estate had come to nothing and gotten her own husband and son beaten with the judicial rod, her heart was full of festering resentment.

The sister-in-law had decided she would squeeze some money out of Ding Pei’s private funds. If Ding Pei refused, she would spend her days cursing obliquely at the cats and dogs in the household, railing that they ate and ate and couldn’t even be bothered to drag a mouse home.

Back and forth it went, until Ding Pei was worked into such a state of fury and distress that she fell ill.

But she was too reluctant to dip into her own savings for medicine and doctor’s fees. And so she sent word to her daughter, asking her to extract some money from the Su household funds to buy decoctions and remedies.

Had Caijian simply had someone send the money, the matter would have ended there. But she had always felt her father to be cold and unfeeling, and she had missed her mother terribly. She had secretly hired a donkey cart and, with only Xique for company, slipped away to visit her mother.

Unfortunately, she had entirely forgotten what sort of wretched men her maternal cousins were.

She had come to visit a sick relation and should have left promptly — but her eldest cousin had insisted on keeping her for the meal, then sent Xique off to brew medicine for Ding Shi. Left alone with Caijian while she was isolated, he had forced several liang of strong liquor down her throat.

Xique had sensed that something was wrong, lit a fire to raise the alarm, and hurried back into the room — only to see the Ding family’s great brute, Ding Gucai, emerge from the room with a look of satisfaction on his face, adjusting his trousers as he walked.

Xique was so terrified she nearly lost her soul. She rushed into the room, pulled aside the curtain, and seeing the state Caijian was in, cried out in fury.

Ding Shi, groggy and ill, came running when she heard the commotion from the west room — but she was already too late.

Seeing what had been done to her daughter, Ding Shi flew into a rage and launched herself at Ding Gucai, determined to fight him to the death. But the brute was stronger than she was, and in his shame and fury, he turned and beat Ding Shi bloody — bruising her nose and swelling her face.

When Caijian had sobered from the liquor and felt the wrongness in her body, and then heard Xique’s sobbing account of what had happened, her mind went dark. She stumbled upright and made for the courtyard well.

It was Ding Shi who caught her hands and held on with everything she had, refusing to let her daughter do something irreversible.

When Ding Pei’s elder brother and sister-in-law returned from town and learned what had happened within the household, that shameless pair privately congratulated themselves — thinking that now, surely, Su Hongmeng would have no choice but to give his daughter to the Ding family in marriage.

The Ding family had spoken vaguely of joining the two families again by marriage before, though back then they had had their sights on Su Luoyun — the wealthier daughter. Well, marrying Su Caijian would do well enough for their purposes now.

And if that happened, the Su and Ding families would be linked once again as relatives by marriage.

But Ding Pei spat at that husband and wife with contempt: “You flatter yourselves. Have you not learned what Su Hongmeng is like the moment he turns his face? If he finds out, he is just as likely to shave Caijian’s head and shut her away in a nunnery — and that won’t do you any good at all. My hopes rest entirely on my children making something of themselves. I will not have her paired off with your worthless son. If you push me too far, I will go straight to the authorities and have you all tried for the violation of an unmarried woman — then you can look forward to being transported to the frontier for hard labor.”

It was Ding Shi’s particular brand of viciousness that finally cowed the grasping Ding family into silence.

And then it was a long, exhausting stretch of coaxing and persuading — she convinced Caijian to behave as though nothing had happened, to go home, and they would sort out the rest from there.

But who could have predicted that from that single misfortune, Caijian would find herself with child — from something so wretched?

What followed, Caijian found too shameful to say aloud — but Su Luoyun had already worked it out.

“Your mother was counting on you to attach yourself to a wealthy household. So she fixed her eyes on the Shizi. She had you wear Father down until he sent you here. And then you were to find an opportunity to seduce the Shizi — and pin the child in your belly on him?”

Su Luoyun recalled what Han Yao had reported: Caijian had deviously extracted details of the Shizi’s daily habits from the young commandery princess — she had been planning to slip into the garden at the right moment for a chance encounter, and then find some way to use her wiles to entrap him.

After all, Han Linfeng had a well-established reputation as a notoriously dissolute young man. If he had been unable to restrain himself and had been intimate with Caijian, Caijian would have had every justification to declare it — and enter the household as a concubine.

This sort of scheme could only have been conceived by Ding Shi. After all, it was precisely how she herself had clawed her way up from desperate straits, step by step.

What Ding Shi had failed to account for was one thing: Su Luoyun was not her own mother, Hu Shi. If Caijian and her mother had simply left Su Luoyun alone, she would have done her best to maintain a surface-level civility between sisters.

But now that this foul water had been thrown into her own courtyard, she had absolutely no reason to stand by and do nothing.

Su Luoyun immediately ordered a carriage prepared and had the entire group — mistress and maidservants alike — driven back to the Su family’s main estate.

An affair this sordid was better settled under the Su family’s own roof. And Su Hongmeng, who had been away, was summoned back by Su Luoyun two days later.

When he returned, he found that it was not only Caijian and her maidservants kneeling in the main hall of the Su estate — Ding Shi was there, and the Ding couple, and their eldest son, all of them trussed up and brought in by Su Luoyun’s people.

Su Hongmeng had known nothing of any of this. He stood in bewilderment, listening to his eldest daughter’s account from beginning to end — and then his rage came up like a tide flooding his lungs. His eyes rolled back, and he pitched straight backward in a dead faint.

The new wife, Madam Xie, who had accompanied him, panicked and had people fetch the master’s heart medicine and pour tea down his throat to revive him.

When Su Hongmeng came partway back to his senses, his hand was shaking as he pointed at Ding Gucai, the Ding family’s eldest son: “A beast — nothing but a beast! Someone drag him to the magistrate’s office at once!”

Madam Xie, hearing this, immediately caught his arm and held him back. She had only just married into the Su household, and was barely with child herself — and now she had walked into this nightmare.

Keeping family scandals within the family was a principle for a reason. She had no desire for her future children to grow up hanging their heads because of a second elder sister who had brought shame to the household.

After listening to Madam Xie’s quiet counsel, Su Hongmeng wrestled his fury down with great effort and turned to ask Su Luoyun: how did she propose to handle this?

Su Luoyun said, cold and precise: “Ding Gucai took advantage of Caijian while she was intoxicated and committed an act of violence against her. Under the laws of Great Wei, for the violation of an unmarried woman, to preserve the daughter’s reputation, the case should be heard in a closed proceeding. The perpetrator is to receive fifty strokes of the rod and twenty years of hard labor at the frontier. This crime must be reported to the authorities.”

The Ding sister-in-law, hearing this, immediately rounded on Ding Shi with a shriek: “We are all family here. Gucai and Caijian grew up as childhood sweethearts — cousins playing together since they were small. Haven’t our two families discussed a match between them before? This was just a foolish mistake made by young people who drank too much. Why drag the authorities into it? If anything happens to my son, the Ding family will not let you off, you discarded wife!”

The Ding elder brother also plastered on a grin: “Boys grow up and take wives, girls grow up and marry — isn’t this a good thing all around? My son has never found himself a decent wife, so congratulations, Brother Su, on becoming a grandfather.”

Translator’s Notes — Yun Bin Tian Shang – Chapter 63

This is among the most structurally ambitious chapters of the novel so far, moving through three distinct tonal registers — domestic comedy, intimate emotional revelation, and then a sudden plunge into violence and social crisis — with considerable control.

The opening scenes complete the reconciliation begun at the end of Yun Bin Tian Shang – Chapter 62. Han Linfeng’s internal monologue about leaving the capital and his uncertainty about whether Su Luoyun would follow him is among the few moments in the novel where his anxiety about her feelings is rendered without any protective irony. The bedroom comedy sequence — Arong the cat versus Han Linfeng, the peanut, the tickling — provides deliberate comic relief before the chapter’s final third. Su Luoyun’s quiet spoken offering at the end of their intimate scene (“I hope you will not regret it, nor look down on the one you took as your unworthy match”) is one of the most emotionally precise lines the novel has produced; she does not say she loves him, but she acknowledges his courage in having chosen her.

The transition to the Caijian investigation is a masterclass in information economy. Su Luoyun’s apparently casual visit, the sour plums Caijian eats with obvious relish, the maidservant Mingchan’s unguarded comment — all of these are deployed with the precision of a detective novel. Su Luoyun has already made the inference about pregnancy before she confronts anyone.

The backstory involving the Ding household is brutal and deliberately unglamorous. The assault on Caijian, Ding Shi’s fierce intervention, and her calculated decision to use the threat of legal action to shut down the Ding family’s opportunism all establish Ding Shi as a figure of considerable complexity — someone who has spent her entire life surviving in circumstances that punish weakness, and has emerged from it fierce and ruthless, though capable of genuine maternal ferocity. The closing exchange in the Su family hall, with the Ding brother-in-law smiling and calling it a happy occasion, is calibrated to produce maximum revulsion — which is its narrative purpose.

Key translation decisions: 孽种 (a child conceived in sin / a shameful child) rendered as “conceived from something so wretched” to preserve the register without the anachronistic bluntness of a direct translation; 勾栏院 (a house of entertainment / brothel) rendered as “house of entertainment” per period convention; 鸳鸯眼 (literally “mandarin duck eyes,” referring to Arong’s mismatched eyes — one of each color) rendered as “mismatched eyes” for readability; 风歇云住 (a classical idiom for the settling of passion) rendered as “when the storm had quieted and the clouds had stilled.”