These words provoked the most extreme reaction from the least expected person — Ding Shi, who had been bound and kneeling there, raised a face that had aged visibly and sharply, and cried out in a voice scraped raw: “No. Absolutely not. What sort of man is Ding Gucai? He drinks, gambles, frequents houses of entertainment, and wastes himself in every conceivable way — not a single decent girl for miles around is willing to marry him. If my Caijian is matched to such a man, her entire life is ruined!”

At that, she scrambled desperately in Su Luoyun’s direction, weeping as she begged: “I know I treated you and your brother badly in the past. But I looked after you for years — even if there is no merit in that, there was still hardship. You know better than anyone that your younger sister has no head for scheming — every mistake that has been made is my mistake, not hers. I beg of you, Shizi’s consort, to be magnanimous and grant your sister a way forward!”

With that, she abandoned all dignity and began knocking her forehead against the floor in earnest, kowtowing to Su Luoyun again and again.

Su Luoyun said calmly: “You certainly had your hardships, and your contributions — for without your clever arrangements, a girl as simple as Caijian would never have thought up, on her own, a scheme so charming as using our father’s authority to plant herself in my household and set about seducing my husband. Fortunately, I discovered it early. Had things gone a little further, and Caijian’s belly begun to show in the Shizi’s residence, the Shizi and I could have had ten mouths apiece and still not talked our way clear of it. You would truly have latched yourself onto a great household — risen in one step to become my husband’s proper mother-in-law.”

Nanny Tian produced the chest of garments at that moment and shook them out for the room to see.

Su Hongmeng was so mortified he could barely keep his eyes open. He could restrain himself no longer, and went over and kicked Ding Shi hard: “You poisonous woman! Was it not enough to ruin the Su family — now you have ruined your own daughter as well! What a disgrace — you have dragged our shame all the way to the Shizi’s residence gates!”

Ding Shi had thrown caution to the winds. Even while being kicked, she shouted back: “The Shizi has always been a man of roving habits — who knows how many women he keeps outside. One more concubine in his household is one more mouth to feed, nothing more. She would never compete with Luoyun for his affections. And you, her father — have you not considered? Luoyun cannot see, after all. Can she truly keep a firm hold on a man as fickle as that one, without a blood relative by her side to help her watch over things?”

Su Hongmeng was so furious his very hair seemed to be suffused with rage, and he threw himself at Ding Shi and began striking her with his fists.

Madam Xie, however, was afraid her husband would lose control of himself and beat her to death, and immediately called the male servants to pull the master away.

Meanwhile, Su Luoyun had already laid out the full scheme of the Ding mother and daughter, organized the confessions and witness statements, and delivered everything into her father’s hands.

Her own view was this: Ding Gucai’s crime warranted a public court proceeding. If the case were heard quietly, with proper management, the family’s reputation need not necessarily be destroyed. As for Caijian, she would need to return to the family’s rural estate, and decide there what was to be done about the child she was carrying.

But this proposal of Su Luoyun’s was opposed even by Caijian herself, who wept her objection: “If the case goes to court, will not my reputation be utterly destroyed? I will not go to a nunnery! Sister, take me in — at least preserve my good name!”

Nanny Tian, listening from the side, was so exasperated she almost laughed. “So you and your mother have grown so accustomed to taking from our eldest young miss that you think the Shizi’s residence is a place that will receive any manner of shameless thing? The Shizi’s standards are considerably higher than that gentleman Lu’s ever were — he wanted nothing to do with even the second Fang daughter. Why would he look twice at someone like you? Even the maidservants in this household have more talent, better looks, and finer conduct than you do!”

Madam Xie had weighed the matter silently herself by this point, and she too was clearly opposed to Su Luoyun’s suggestion of reporting the matter to the authorities.

She spoke up from beside Su Hongmeng: “Luoyun, do not be angry. There is no need for you to trouble yourself further with this. These are family matters — the clan has its own rules and customs for such affairs. It must be thought through carefully.”

Su Luoyun understood what Madam Xie was saying. Whether her father chose to take the matter public or settle it privately was the decision of the Su family’s head of household. As a daughter who had married out of the family, she had no right to act in his place.

And so, even though Madam Xie urged her to stay several more times, Su Luoyun rose and left.

Madam Xie was of farming stock, with parents who were both careful and calculating people. When she had for so long resisted agreeing to the Su family’s marriage proposal, it was because she had been wary of the complications that her husband-to-be’s first wife represented.

Now she saw it had proven precisely as she’d feared.

Fortunately, the eldest daughter of the household was a clear-headed woman. She had managed to question and examine everyone before they even returned, and now it was only a matter of seeing how the master would settle things with his daughter.

But taking the matter to court was obviously out of the question. Once something like this got out, not only would the Su family’s reputation be blackened — even her brother-in-law Su Guiyan would be implicated, and would struggle to hold his head up.

Madam Xie was not a fool. She knew which true power in this household she needed to stay on the right side of.

These two — mother and daughter — had been too clever by half, trying to scheme against a Shizi’s consort. If the Su family handled the affair too leniently, would they not be greatly offending the Shizi’s residence?

With that thought, Madam Xie drew Su Hongmeng into the inner room and laid out her thinking for him: “Caijian’s belly is already showing, and will soon be impossible to conceal. Even if Ding Gucai were sent to the magistrate and Caijian were shut away in a nunnery, the Ding family could still spread it all over the place and make it impossible for the men in this family to hold up their heads. In my view, men grow up to take wives and women grow up to marry — let Ding Gucai marry Caijian and be done with it.”

Su Hongmeng felt sick just hearing it: “Would that not make me related by marriage to the Ding family? That pack of scoundrels — I can barely stay far enough away from them. Why would I want any connection to them?”

On this point, Madam Xie had already thought matters through. She said softly: “The two of them carried on without a proper matchmaker or parental arrangements — that alone violates the Su family’s household code of conduct. My lord must harden your heart and write a formal declaration severing the father-daughter bond, cutting Caijian off from her filial relationship to you. From this point forward, she will not appear in the Su family’s genealogy and will go under her mother’s family name. When she is married out, she must not leave from the Su family’s gates — rent her a separate house somewhere in town and have her sent off from there. Give her a dowry and send her on her way.”

Hearing this, Su Hongmeng’s paternal instincts stirred slightly: “But — would Caijian not be left entirely without support, at the mercy of the Ding family’s mistreatment?”

Madam Xie had a ready answer for this too: “If you wish to show care for your daughter, simply give her a generous dowry. And from what I can see, that former wife of yours is no pushover — she will look out for her own daughter. When all is said and done, marrying into a family you already know inside and out is better than marrying into a household where you cannot see a step ahead of you.”

It is rightly said: when a stepmother arrives, a stepfather follows. If a stepmother is upright in character and treats her stepchildren with genuine fairness, the household can be a harmonious one. But if a stepmother harbors deliberate bias, she will inevitably pull her husband along with her into crooked thinking.

Once Su Hongmeng had followed Ding Pei’s lead, his heart had turned and he had treated Su Luoyun and her brother callously. Now that he had taken Madam Xie as his new wife, his heart had begun to tilt again — he was calculating his own small interests, and had entirely forgotten how he had once doted on Caijian, his second daughter.

Su Hongmeng had never liked the Ding family to begin with. But hearing Madam Xie’s words, he found them surprisingly reasonable. Caijian was already carrying a child in her belly, and it would soon be impossible to conceal. She had refused to listen to him, had secretly continued her dealings with Ding Shi, and had let Ding Shi lead her straight to the Ding household, where she had been taken advantage of. Keeping a girl this careless and foolish in the household would only invite further disasters down the road.

Ding Gucai might be worthless — but he was of a similar age to Caijian, and they were blood relations at that. Surely the Ding family would not treat her too badly.

From this point forward, he would simply act as though he had never had this daughter. He would cut ties with her once and for all.

And so Su Hongmeng followed Madam Xie’s proposal and set everything in motion accordingly. He consulted the family’s clan elders and had Caijian formally struck from the genealogy under the charge of disobedience and impiety. He then rented a separate house for her in the county town, sent her there with a modest dowry and a maidservant, and gave orders for the Ding family to set an auspicious date and collect the bride.

After all, Su Hongmeng held evidence over the Ding family’s heads — if their son wanted to stay out of court, he had better behave himself and take responsibility.

Caijian then — whether acting on Ding Shi’s instructions or entirely on her own initiative — ran out to the alley known as the Qingyu Lane to block Su Luoyun’s carriage before her wedding day arrived, throwing herself at her elder sister in tears, trying to soften her heart with her weeping.

Su Luoyun, seeing her younger sister blocking the carriage, actually smiled.

Of everyone in the Su household, her former stepmother knew her weakness best — a hard mouth over a soft heart.

Caijian came rushing forward and began her familiar refrain, begging her elder sister to find her a way out.

Su Luoyun listened. She could not even be bothered to scold her.

When she had been pushed down by Caijian all those years ago and lost her sight, Caijian had wept and sobbed in private and spoken of her carelessness and remorse until Su Luoyun, moved by it, had let the matter go and stopped pursuing accountability.

When Caijian had tried to compete with her for the Lu family’s marriage arrangement, Su Luoyun had not made much of it and simply let her younger sister have it.

Time and again, in incident after incident, Caijian had always had some accidental misstep as her excuse. Had she not?

And yet the world is not run on the principle that whoever appears weakest is most in the right.

It was certainly pitiable that Caijian had been violated by the Ding family scoundrel. Had Caijian come to her directly at the outset, seeking her eldest sister’s help in obtaining justice, Su Luoyun would certainly have softened and helped her find a proper path forward.

But Caijian had not done that. Instead, she had set her sights on her elder sister’s husband, and had prepared to force something utterly vile down her sister’s throat.

Being foolish was one thing. Being both wicked and foolish was another matter entirely.

She did not lack all feeling of sisterhood for Caijian. But Caijian had not thought that feeling worth preserving.

Besides — at the Su family estate, she had stated the case clearly and pointed out the legitimate path of taking the matter to court. Only that course of action could have spared Caijian from being forced into the Ding family’s trap. But no one had been willing to take her advice. Since that was the case, why should she continue pouring out her benevolence?

And so even as Caijian blocked the road and wept with heartbreaking desperation, Su Luoyun did not have the carriage stop.

This time, Caijian had not come on Ding Shi’s instructions. She had come out of her own despair at her father’s arrangements. Every time she thought of Ding Gucai’s repulsive face, her stomach turned. With no other recourse, she had found a way to slip past the household servants and come alone to beg her sister.

From childhood to now, the one person in this family who had been most reliable — most protective of her younger siblings — had always been this eldest sister.

Caijian had once taken all of that entirely for granted. That was simply what an elder sister was supposed to do: yield to her younger sibling.

But now, watching her elder sister refuse even to see her, Caijian’s heart went utterly cold with panic. She could only throw herself at the back of the sedan chair, weeping and calling out: “Sister, I truly was wrong. You have always looked out for me since we were small. Do you remember, when we went back to the countryside as children, and we went to play in the fields, and the tenant farmer’s children bullied me, and they threw mud onto my skirt? You picked up a great stone and chased that child for half a mile and brought him down with it — and then you were the one Father punished for it, and you were not allowed dinner that night. I crept out in the middle of the night and stole food from the kitchen to bring to you. I remember all of that. Sister, it is I who was foolish. I should never have listened to Mother’s words and hurt you again and again. Sister, please — at least acknowledge me—”

The carriage disappeared into the distance in a cloud of dust. Caijian collapsed to the ground, the dirt on her face mingling with her tears into a smeared ruin. She sat in the road, hugging her own knees, and sobbed for a long while.

Once, she had relied on her parents’ favor and had felt that taking things from her elder sister was only natural. When she had vied with her sister over the gentleman Lu, her sister had not even seemed particularly angry — she had simply yielded with the ease of someone releasing something she had never really wanted.

How was she to have known that this time, before she had even accomplished anything, her sister would catch her in the act? When she had been questioned by her sister in that study, looking up at her face — the cold that had emanated from Su Luoyun had terrified her utterly, and she had felt the full weight of her regret.

It was only now that she understood: her sister’s past indifference had been because what Caijian had taken had never truly been something her sister wanted.

But if she touched something her sister truly cared about — her sister would bare her teeth like a mother tiger, and allow no one to touch it.

Just as she was pulling herself up off the ground through her weeping, she noticed that Nanny Tian had appeared again from somewhere, at some point unknown to her.

Nanny Tian fixed her with a stern glare and said coldly: “The eldest young miss has already done everything right by you that could possibly be done. Know this — the blisters on your feet are ones you wore into yourself. What you have done against the eldest young miss was stupidity and wickedness combined!”

Caijian knelt and clutched Nanny Tian’s legs: “Has my sister agreed to help me after all? I truly cannot marry a man like Ding Gucai — I cannot!”

Nanny Tian held out a folded piece of paper and delivered the words Su Luoyun had asked her to convey: “The eldest young miss says: the most important thing in a person’s life is to save herself. She does not hold the loss of her own sight entirely against you — and so she chose to work hard at saving herself, and she has not spent her life blaming heaven and other people. You are now deep in the mud yourself — you must also learn to save yourself. The path is beneath your own feet. What lies ahead, no one can say — it depends entirely on the choices you make.”

Caijian quickly unfolded the paper. It was a formal legal petition, written out in Su Luoyun’s own hand on her behalf.

The petition set out Ding Gucai’s crimes in precise and thorough detail. It requested that the magistrate’s court uphold justice and deliver proper punishment, while also requesting a private hearing to protect her reputation, and specifying the monetary damages to be sought.

The case had witnesses. Even if the Ding family refused to admit anything, there was Xique’s testimony — and the child in her womb was irrefutable physical evidence. Combined with Ding Gucai’s well-known reputation in the area, it would be straightforward to build an airtight case.

With that verdict secured, Caijian would not need to marry such a criminal. And with the substantial damages awarded against the Ding family, even if the Su family refused to acknowledge her any longer, she could find somewhere no one knew her face, purchase a modest farmhouse and a small plot of land, and make a life for herself.

If luck was with her, she might find a decent man of modest means in the countryside — someone who would not mind her past — and bring him in as a live-in son-in-law. She could live out the rest of her life in quiet peace.

That legal petition was the last thing Su Luoyun could do, as an elder sister, for a younger sister she had grown up alongside since childhood.

Caijian stared at it, somewhat dumbstruck. This was nothing at all like the kind of help she had imagined receiving.

Why was her sister insisting she go to court? Her sister’s husband was imperial family. Could this not have been resolved quietly and privately, with far less trouble?

But Nanny Tian, hearing this, could barely muster the energy for a cold laugh. “The eldest young miss says this is the only solution she could devise. If you trust her, follow it. If you do not trust her, find your own way.”

With that, Nanny Tian shook her off firmly, turned, and walked away.

Su Luoyun sent no one to the Su household to inquire further about any of this.

The course she had recommended for Caijian was not out of any desire for revenge, nor was it the sort of ruinous scheme that would destroy her younger sister’s name entirely. Had Su Luoyun herself ever suffered something so vile, she would most likely have done exactly the same — or more: she would sooner have gone down fighting than spend her life alongside a creature like that.

Her father was always calling her cold as iron and stone. He did not know that within the Su household, she had always been the one who bore the weight of looking after everyone — thinking ahead, managing consequences, unable to put down a single responsibility.

Seeing Su Luoyun lost in melancholy, Han Linfeng came up from behind and wrapped his arms around her. He had since learned something of the farce involving that foolish would-be sister-in-law of his, and could naturally guess at the cause of Su Luoyun’s low spirits.

Su Luoyun leaned back into his chest and spoke of what lay on her heart, slowly and without hurry. At the end, she gave a rueful smile and said: “Am I too irresolute, do you think? Is my heart still not hard enough?”

Han Linfeng held her more closely and said in a low voice: “Have you not always been this way? You have a family that is terrible in almost every respect, and yet you have always been reaching back to pull them along with you. And it is precisely because of this that you moved me, and made me ache for you.”

He still remembered: the day her father’s illegal dealings with the imperial tribute goods had brought disaster down on them, this woman had been in tears one moment and wiping her eyes the next — already turning her mind to how to solve the problem.

He knew with absolute certainty that he himself could never have managed that.

Beneath his composed and mild exterior, he had a heart that was hard and cold to an extreme. But he wanted the woman beside him to be one with a heart soft enough to embrace him — as she embraced all her imperfect family — with boundless patience for everything about him that fell short of what it should be.

Everything about this woman seemed made precisely for him, and he found himself gradually, willingly, drowning in that feeling. But — when the day came for him to leave the capital, would this woman regard him as family she could not bear to part with, and stay steadfastly by his side?

Su Luoyun never heard the magistrate’s drum sound for Caijian’s grievance petition. Instead, the Su household quietly began making preparations for Su Caijian’s wedding, arranging to send her forth from the rented house to be married.

Evidently, Caijian had in the end not found the courage to take that step. She had listened to her father and was preparing to marry her eldest cousin.

Two days before the wedding, Madam Xie made a special trip to the Shizi’s residence to inform Su Luoyun of the matter.

Su Luoyun merely said, with a trace of detachment: “Father has not changed. He has always put his own reputation and interests before his children. If Father and Madam Xie believe that marrying Caijian into the Ding family is the right course, then I, as a daughter who has married out of the family, naturally have nothing to say on the matter. However — there is one thing I need to make clear to you beforehand, Madam Xie. My younger brother Guiyan’s marriage is not something Father needs to concern himself with going forward. He has spent most of his time in commerce, after all, and his circle of acquaintance is naturally limited. The Shizi has recently identified a few prospective families for Guiyan and is in the process of carefully reviewing the astrological compatibility. My father has always had a tendency to be easily swayed by what others say to him. If he listened to someone’s persuasion and arranged an unsuitable match for Guiyan, I, as his elder sister, could not allow that to stand. Isn’t that a reasonable position, Madam?”

She meant every word of it. Su Caijian’s situation had been a timely reminder — she needed to secure a marriage arrangement for her brother as soon as possible, before their father had a chance to cause mischief.

The Shizi had told her that the court was about to send a new wave of officials out to provincial posts, and if Minister Li put forward a recommendation, her brother would be among them. Once he was betrothed, posted to a provincial position, and established in his own household, he could live a quiet and independent life. Their father’s reach, however long, would not be able to extend into her brother’s own home.

These words made Madam Xie’s expression tighten slightly. She had in fact been mulling over, these past few days, the possibility of proposing a match between her own niece and Su Guiyan.

After all, a young Hanlin Academy compiler with a career ahead of him like that — every family would be scrambling to secure the arrangement first.

But Su Luoyun had just made it plain: there would be no parental decree here, and the elder sister was declaring herself the one who would determine her brother’s marriage.

In earlier days, Madam Xie might have laughed outright at this and taken the opportunity to lecture Su Luoyun on improper conduct and overstepping her bounds.

But Madam Xie had been married into the household long enough to have a fair understanding of who the real authority in this family was. The incident in which the eldest young miss had had Caijian, her mother, and the entire Ding family trussed up and delivered — that had been the act of a woman who wielded power with a firm hand.

And “I could not allow that to stand” was not an empty phrase from this particular person. So Madam Xie decided she had no further desire to involve herself in her stepson’s marriage, and smiled and agreed to everything.

After Madam Xie had smilingly agreed and found a pretext to leave, Su Luoyun immediately ordered that every cup and bowl Madam Xie had used be thrown out.

She knew all too well what it felt like to be cast aside by a father and a stepmother.

Because she and her brother had once been mired in that same hopeless place themselves.

Fortunately, in the pitch dark, she had fought her way upward — dragging her brother along with her.

Caijian had refused to struggle even a little, and simply let herself be arranged and managed by others. The mud was barely at her neck now. The more wretched days were still ahead.

Yet on the morning of Caijian’s wedding, the unexpected did occur.

When the wedding matron arrived to escort the bride, she found Caijian had vanished.

As the Ding family searched the house from room to room without finding the bride, the magistrate’s runners arrived instead. Caijian, it turned out, had put on her red bridal clothes and, with the help of her two maidservants, run all the way to the magistrate’s court. There she had struck the grievance drum and submitted the petition her elder sister had written for her.

The petition was earnest and precise in its presentation, the relevant legal statutes annotated in thorough detail. The presiding magistrate found his work largely done for him — he had only to verify that the facts as stated were true, and he could deliver judgment from the bench.

Su Hongmeng, on the pretext that Su Caijian had already been struck from the genealogy and was no longer his clan’s concern, initially had no intention of appearing — but the magistrate’s summons was not optional, and he was compelled to attend.

Once all parties had assembled, the predictable back-and-forth of denial and contradiction ensued.

Most infuriating of all was Ding Shi, who — in order to make her life in the Ding household bearable going forward — turned coat on the spot and gave false testimony in defense of Ding Gucai, insisting outright that her daughter and her cousin had been engaged in a willing liaison and brought this scandal upon themselves.

Caijian, who had still harbored a shred of hope in her mother, was devastated beyond measure. She suddenly rose from her seat and hurled herself straight at one of the courtroom pillars.

Su Hongmeng, watching in horror, was shaken — this was his daughter, after all. If she died right before his eyes, how could his conscience ever be clear?

He was also deeply superstitious about fate and luck — a girl in bridal red, dying by her own hand in a courtroom. Would she not become a vengeful spirit? She would haunt both families to their graves.

Just as he was wavering and beginning to consider whether he ought to change his account, the Shizi’s consort sent a signed and handprinted confession into the court.

This was the statement she had obtained when she had originally had the Ding couple and Ding Gucai brought in and bound — she had questioned Ding Gucai separately and had him press his handprint to a signed confession.

Originally she had prepared it for her father to use — she had not expected her father to be content with muddying everything over. But the moment to use it had arrived after all.

Ding Gucai attempted to retract, claiming the Shizi’s consort had extracted the confession through coercion. But the presiding magistrate was no fool, and could read this scene perfectly well.

If this had been a willing union between relatives who wished to formalize it in marriage, why would the Su family have stricken the girl from their genealogy? If this were two people who had sought each other out voluntarily, why had Caijian put on her wedding clothes and come running to file charges even at the cost of her life?

The magistrate had seen enough men like Ding Gucai — cunning and slippery. He simply ordered the rod, and had Ding Gucai pressed down and beaten. It did not take many strokes before Ding Gucai confessed in full, and then had the audacity to say that he already knew he had done wrong, and was he not willing to marry Su Caijian and make it right?

But Su Caijian was not willing to marry him.

Su Hongmeng had wanted to settle this privately — but he had already stricken Su Caijian from the genealogy, which meant he no longer had the authority to speak on her behalf.

As for Ding Shi, she was a blood relation of the accused, and so her testimony was not accepted by the court.

In the end, the outcome of this case rested entirely on Caijian’s own wishes.

Caijian might have been foolish — but her two maidservants, Xique and Mingchan, had long since made up their minds for her.

Those two girls were no fools. They found the way Ding Gucai looked at them revolting even in ordinary circumstances. They were not about to let their young mistress actually marry such a man. And so when they saw their young mistress slip away on her own to beg the eldest young miss for help, they had urged her to listen to what her sister said.

When all was said and done, the one person in the entire Su household who was truly good at heart was the eldest young miss — the one who looked, on the outside, as hard as stone.

Translator’s Notes — Yun Bin Tian Shang – Chapter 64

This Yun Bin Tian Shang – Chapter resolves the Caijian subplot with unusual structural honesty. Su Luoyun’s handling of the affair is neither purely merciful nor coldly punitive — it is systematic, realistic, and calibrated to give Caijian actual agency while withholding the easy rescue Caijian hoped for. The legal petition Su Luoyun prepared in advance (including the handprinted confession extracted from Ding Gucai) reveals the full extent of her forethought: she had prepared an exit for Caijian even while publicly walking away. That Caijian eventually finds the courage to use it is the chapter’s quietly satisfying resolution.

Ding Shi’s courtroom betrayal of her own daughter is among the novel’s most unsparing moments — rendered without melodrama, and therefore more chilling for it. The brief editorial observation that she did it simply to make her own future life in the Ding household easier is enough.

Su Hongmeng’s characterization deepens through Madam Xie’s manipulation — the novel draws an explicit parallel between how Ding Pei once tilted him against Su Luoyun, and how Madam Xie is now tilting him against Caijian. He is not a villain, but a man of weak and shifting loyalties who has never once managed to be the parent his daughters needed. Su Luoyun’s quiet, precise maneuvering to secure her brother Guiyan’s future before her father can intervene is her real long-term victory in this chapter.

Han Linfeng’s interior reflection near the chapter’s close — his observation that he himself could not have managed Su Luoyun’s combination of softness and resilience, and his quiet anxiety about whether she will follow him when he leaves the capital — establishes the emotional thread that will carry forward into the next arc.

Key translation decisions: 义绝书 (formal declaration of severed familial bond) rendered as “formal declaration severing the father-daughter bond”; 招赘 (to bring a husband into the wife’s household, the reverse of the conventional arrangement) rendered as “bring him in as a live-in son-in-law” for readability; 恻隐之心 (the classical Mencian concept of compassionate instinct) rendered as “paternal instincts” in context; 冤魂厉鬼 (a vengeful and fearsome ghost) rendered as “vengeful spirit” to preserve the superstitious register.