Gu Tingye hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Gu Tingyu struggled to his feet; Shao Furen, who stood nearby, quickly tucked away the handkerchief she had been pressing to her eyes, hurried forward to support her husband, and led the way toward the door. Gu Tingye had just lifted his foot to follow when he seemed to recall something. He turned back to Minglan and said lightly, “You come too.”

Minglan felt a great wave of relief wash through her. She rose at once, smiled, and bid farewell to the female guests with a perfectly composed expression that could only be described as a polished “pardon me,” then walked at a measured pace to follow the group.

They made their way inward, heading toward the far western end of the Marquis’s mansion. Fortunately, Xuanning Hall was already situated near the west side, so after passing through two latticed moon gates and following a narrow winding path through the garden, they arrived.

Minglan raised her head, looked, then quietly pressed her lips together in a slight pout. How unoriginal—she had already guessed it.

The Gu Ancestral Hall stood before them: a towering ridgeline, soaring upturned eaves, and black tung-oil-lacquered wrought-iron railings enclosing the entire compound. Within stood two rows of five tall main halls facing each other. The northern hall was the primary hall, with an attached antechamber and a moon terrace; the southern hall was the secondary hall, with only small side rooms on either end. In the courtyard, four massive paulownia and cypress trees reached skyward, one standing in each of the four cardinal directions. It was said they had been planted on the very day the Ningyuan Marquis title was first conferred, chosen for the symbolism of flourishing branches, deep roots, and unbroken continuation.

The moment she stepped inside, Minglan involuntarily bowed her head in solemn reverence, a sense of gravity rising within her unbidden. No one dared to speak or laugh aloud.

The Gu clan of Qingcheng had originally been an ordinary local family—fishermen, woodcutters, farmers, and petty traders who made ends meet by the day. But they happened to live through the fall of one dynasty and the rise of another; with wars breaking out everywhere, fields lying fallow, and families driven from their homes, and with Qingcheng situated at a strategic crossroads fought over by all, many local men had enlisted in the army.

When fortune’s winds shifted, the Gu clan’s ancestor, Gu Shande, died protecting the sovereign, leaving behind two young sons. The two boys were subsequently enlisted as young soldiers, and after more than twenty years of campaigns and bloody battles, the two brothers—brave and cunning both—distinguished themselves in service to the founding of the dynasty and were separately ennobled, allowing the Gu family to rise to glory.

After that, the Gu family devoted great effort to restoring their ancestral tombs and clan hall in their hometown, and sent several generations of descendants to Qingcheng to establish themselves there. The Gu clan in Qingcheng had by now become a thoroughly established great family. Later, when the Ningyang Marquis household and the Xiangyang Marquis household fell into a dispute over inheritance, the Gu family had resolved simply to keep the ancestral temple in their Qingcheng hometown, and then each of the two marquis branches established its own clan hall, both holding the authority to expel members from the clan registry or to divide into separate households.

The group walked into the courtyard. Gu Tingyu suddenly turned to his wife at his side and said, “You and my sister-in-law stay here. Second Brother and I will go in.” As he spoke, he pushed Shao Furen’s hand away. A close personal maid at his side stepped forward and offered him a walking stick. Gu Tingyu let out a faint, self-mocking laugh, took the stick, and, with trembling arms, leaned upon it and shuffled haltingly toward the northern hall.

Gu Tingye glanced back once at Minglan, then followed his brother inside.

Left in the courtyard were the two sisters-in-law and one small maidservant. Shao Furen watched with a face full of worry as Gu Tingyu walked away, then turned and managed a faint smile at Minglan. “Would my sister-in-law care to join me in the side room for a cup of tea?”

Minglan could see that she could not bear to move far from her husband, and so said with a gentle smile, “It is pleasantly cool here—the sun cannot reach at all. Perhaps we might sit in the courtyard a while and wait? I wonder what Elder Sister-in-Law thinks?”

Shao Furen kept her gaze fixed on the slowly retreating figure of her husband and could not bring herself to leave. Hearing Minglan’s words, she immediately sighed in relief. “That would be lovely. Shiwen, go and—”

The little maidservant acknowledged the order and went off. In a short while, she returned carrying two rattan stools and a small side table, which she arranged in the shade of the trees, and then went off again to fetch tea and refreshments.

Seeing Shao Furen’s face etched with worry, Minglan very much wanted to offer some words of comfort but could not think of where to begin. Shao Furen’s brow furrowed tightly. “I don’t know whether there are any chairs or tea inside for them.”

Minglan went blank and could not answer. She hesitated awkwardly. “That… I don’t know either. I have only been in there once.” That was the second day after her wedding, when she had offered sacrifices to the ancestors, been entered into the clan registry, and been introduced to the extended family—only that one time.

Shao Furen looked at Minglan with the expression of a child who cannot answer a teacher’s question, her face visibly vexed; yet even with all the worry weighing on her heart, she could not help but smile. “I have only been inside twice myself.”

Among great and powerful households, the rules were strict: except for important clan affairs, because of the prescribed avoidance between brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and the separation of men and women, female members of the family could not freely enter the ancestral hall. Even during festivals and holidays, when sacrifices had to be offered to the ancestors, the men and women conducted their worship separately, in the northern and southern halls respectively.

The two sisters-in-law had barely exchanged a few words when there came a soft sound: an elderly servant guarding the hall quietly pulled shut the main doors of the northern hall.

The vast hall fell into deep shadow, with only a few thin threads of faint light filtering down from the high windows.

“Light the candles,” Gu Tingyu said. “I have no strength.”

Gu Tingye stepped forward, felt along the bottom of the first shelf of the wooden rack to the left of the incense table, and drew out a flint and tinder wrapped in layers of oiled paper. He turned with practiced ease and, without needing to look, lit the tall brass candlesticks on either side—their enormous candles—as if he knew the precise location of every object in this room by heart. Even in this dim light, his movements did not slow by half a step.

Gu Tingyu watched Gu Tingye set the flint back with fluid ease and let out a soft, scornful laugh. “Speaking of this ancestral hall, of all our brothers, none can be more familiar with it than you.”

Gu Tingye paused briefly, then said with self-deprecating humor, “Naturally. Punished lightly every three days and severely every five, I could never avoid coming here to kneel for a stretch. If they hadn’t let me out by nightfall, a child afraid of the dark had no choice but to feel his own way to the flint.”

With the candles lit, the hall grew considerably brighter. Everything was clean and polished, evidently wiped and swept at regular intervals. A tea tray sat on the side table nearby. The hall used premium incense candles; in the layered, flickering light, the faint fragrance of sandalwood drifted through the air. Looking about, one saw the spirit tablets of the Gu ancestors standing row upon row on the altar platforms—six spans wide, seven spans deep, eight tiers high. The hall itself was lofty and spacious, built to accommodate a great number of Gu clan descendants gathering here together for ancestral worship.

At this moment, in all that vast space, there were only two brothers.

Gu Tingye’s gaze rested steadily on the newest tablet on the altar: The Spirit Seat of the Late Lord Gu Yankai.

Six simple characters, and they put an end to every shred of anger, resentment, grievance, and unanswered question he had carried since childhood. From now on, he would never again be able to demand answers of his father. It was all over.

On each of the two tall pillars that soared up to the beams, a nanmu wood plaque hung vertically, each bearing four bold characters deeply carved into the wood: Ancestral virtue endures; ten thousand generations shall flourish. The script was the rounded, weighty Yan style.

The first-generation Ningyang Marquis, Gu Youshan, had loved the unconstrained wildness of cursive calligraphy all his life; drunk, he could dash off four variations of the cursive script for “Invitation to Wine” in one sitting. People asked him: why, then, had he chosen the restrained and proper Yan style here?

He answered: All my life I have been reckless with wine and unruly in my ways. Before I enter the earth, my only wish is that my descendants live in peace—free from calamity and harm.

Gu Tingye smiled faintly.

He remembered how, as a small child forced to practice his characters, his father would always invoke the example of their ancestor, Lord Youshan, who had disciplined himself to master calligraphy, using the story to spur on his unruly second son. Hearing it so many times had made him tired of it. He had once sat there chewing on his brush and muttered: practice cursive script? Wasn’t it just because no one could read the mistakes if you wrote in cursive?

At the time, Gu Yankai had rounded his eyes wide, raised his large palm, and seemed on the verge of bringing it down—but his hand lingered, never quite falling, while a peculiar expression crossed his face, caught between wanting to scold and wanting to laugh. Young Tingye had shown no fear whatsoever, and had then, as if moved by some perverse impulse, thrown out one more remark: Could it be, Father, that you had the very same thought when you were young?

The consequence was twenty additional full transcriptions of the Exhortation to Learning as punishment.

Gu Tingyu leaned on his walking stick at the side of the hall, watching Gu Tingye in silence. In truth, of all the brothers, both he and Gu Tingwei most resembled the Qin family, while Gu Tingye alone was the very image of their father—in bearing, in gesture, in smile and in anger—and had grown more unmistakably like him with every passing year.

Had their father noticed it long ago? Was that why he had always paid such particular attention to Tingye?

“…Now that you have achieved so much, if Father and the ancestors could know of it from beyond, they would surely be overjoyed.” His voice was bleak, and he himself did not quite know why he had said it.

Gu Tingye curved the corner of his mouth as if in wry amusement. “If Elder Brother could recover his health, I imagine Father would be even more pleased.”

Gu Tingyu fixed his eyes on him. “From the time I could understand anything, I was told that my birth mother, the First Madam Qin, had been harmed to death by your mother. And not only that—this frail constitution of mine was also said to have been the blight she planted.”

Gu Tingye said tonelessly, “Whenever anything went wrong in the household, it was our mother who was blamed for it. I have known this for a long time. There was no need for Elder Brother to remind me.”

“Later I came to understand that when the matter of the treasury shortfall arose, I had already been born. My condition of health cannot be laid at anyone’s door.” Gu Tingyu said calmly. “My birth mother was never in good health to begin with; she should never have borne a child.”

Out of deep love for her husband, she had staked her life to give birth to a son, and in doing so had hollowed herself out entirely. The child, too, had never been very robust.

Gu Tingye raised an eyebrow in light derision. “My thanks to Elder Brother for your clear-eyed view of the matter.”

“You and your wife share a very good bond.” Gu Tingyu ignored the mockery and suddenly, without apparent connection, said this. “If today a great calamity were to befall the family and you were required to cast her aside and take another wife, what would you do?”

“Elder Brother poses an amusing question.” The idea of casting Minglan aside for these people—Gu Tingye could not help but laugh out loud.

“Cough, cough—naturally, as things stand—cough, cough—because of those people in Xuanning Hall, you would refuse.” Gu Tingyu broke into a light cough; he drew out a handkerchief to wipe his mouth, then looked up and fixed his gaze on Gu Tingye. “But what if it were for Father? If saving Father’s life required you to cast her aside and take another wife, what would you do?!” The last four words he suddenly raised to a sharp pitch, piercing and knife-like, driving straight into his opponent’s heart.

Gu Tingye’s heart lurched violently. He stumbled back a full step, then steadied himself at once. He had always known that this elder brother of his was a shrewd man—perceptive about others’ hearts, alert to weakness and opportunity, careful and thorough in his calculations. Had it not been for his failing body, a man who had once risen to official office would have been a formidable opponent indeed.

From the time Tingye was very small, a seemingly careless, offhand remark from Tingyu had been enough to make their father fly into a rage at him and redouble his punishment. He had suffered no small amount of hardship because of it, from childhood through adulthood.

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “What is it that Elder Brother actually wishes to say?”

Gu Tingyu was breathing with great difficulty. He slowly made his way to a pillar and leaned against it, feeling along the surface until he found a chair and sat down. “It is true that all of the Gu household, by and large, has wronged you and your mother. But surely not everyone behaved so. Elder Brother Tingxuan, time and again, secretly brought food into the ancestral hall to give to you; when you were barred from the mourning hall, who was it that spoke on your behalf while enduring the beatings and curses of the elders? And then there is Father—he was never unaware that the two of you had suffered injustice. It was not easy for him either…”

It would have been better not to say this at all: hearing it only made another wave of fury surge through Gu Tingye. He drew his back up straight and drove a heavy fist into the pillar beside him. Arrogant and cold, he laughed aloud. “And what of it, that Father knew? For these past twenty-odd years, did he not simply stand by and watch others grind my mother down with their words? And then use my mother to grind me down? If he had felt even the slightest pang of conscience, how could he have gone through all those years without saying a single word? Elder Brother must be mistaken if he thinks a few words like these could change my mind.”

Gu Tingyu did not stir. He looked straight at his brother. “I am not a mind-reader, but I know this much. Search your own conscience: how did Father treat you all these years? Father’s military duties kept him busy from morning to night—if he could spare two full hours in a day, it was considered fortunate—yet nearly all of that time he devoted to teaching you martial arts. The effort he spent on you was more than he spent on me and our brothers combined, doubled over.”

He thought of how their old father, at the end of each long busy day, had never failed to urgently inquire “How did Tingye get on today?”—and how, the moment he received unfavorable news, he would bellow and take up the family rod and chase after Gu Tingye to administer discipline.

Gu Tingyu felt a sharp, deep ache in his chest. His father had treated him well, yet the old man had never been particularly willing to spend time with him. Sometimes, looking at his face and his weak and worthless body, their father would grow sorrowful and turn away.

“Father raised and trained you the way he did—if that was not love for you, what was it? Speak honestly: if what happened back then had fallen to you, what would you have done with no other option? Think about how you care for your wife today, and then think about Father!” Gu Tingyu raised his voice, his pale complexion flushed red, roaring with fury.

After so many years, self-restraint had become second nature; though Gu Tingye’s heart was churning fiercely within him, he was still able to answer with calm. “I never ask myself ‘what if.’ I am not Father. I have not so many entanglements. To end up at the point of ‘having no other option’ is itself a thing that should never have happened.”

As a general commanding an army, one does not wait until one is backed against a wall before wondering whether to sacrifice the vanguard in a charge or the rear guard in a retreat; one must ensure that such a situation—being forced to choose whom to sacrifice—never arises at all.

As the eldest legitimate son of the Gu family, with an aging father above and younger brothers below, Father may have been all very well absorbed in his deep devotion to a sickly woman—but he might at least have given some thought to the family’s circumstances, prepared for trouble in times of peace, taken precautions before crisis struck. Even if he could not immediately raise the silver, he could have found some excuse or pretext, weathered the immediate danger; had he stalled for a year or a year and a half, the Martial Emperor would have died and the new Emperor, being benevolent, would most likely have been open to a petition, and the matter could have been resolved gradually.

Thinking of the First Madam Qin, Gu Tingye, though he knew she had died young and pitied her for it, still could not help feeling a pang of irritation. He could understand his father’s unwavering devotion, but she had been the principal wife of a great household. Having entered the Gu family for nearly ten years, she had known nothing but flowers and moonlight, springtime melancholy and autumnal grief, utterly ignorant of the dangers threatening her husband’s family.

A woman that fragile should never have married the eldest legitimate grandson of such a house; she should never have been the bride of its principal heir. A woman of real substance and intelligence would never have been content to be nothing but a burden to her husband. Just like… Minglan.

Something within him went warm and soft. He turned his gaze to his elder brother, and a few traces of fierce coldness played at the corners of his mouth. He smiled coldly. “I understand why Elder Brother has brought me to the ancestral hall—to have me reflect before our ancestors and our father. But I will say one thing: even if I had not lifted a hand in this matter and had simply let things run their course, the Gu clan would not have fallen.”

Gu Tingyu’s eyes burned with intensity as he glared at him. Gu Tingye did not flinch. These two brothers, sharing the same blood, faced each other like two equally matched masters meeting over a board of chess, matching wits and testing resolve, each seeing who could outlast the other.

After a long while, Gu Tingyu let out a deep sigh and collapsed wearily against the back of his chair. He pointed toward the altar table. “There is a box over there. Go and have a look.”

Gu Tingye’s handsome eyes flashed a cold, sharp light. He walked toward the altar table.

There sat a heavy, dark wooden chest, a little over a foot wide and two feet long, with gold corners and jade inlays. But that was the lesser wonder: the moment Gu Tingye touched it, he was startled to discover that the chest was made of precious agarwood and golden-thread nanmu. A chest this size would be worth a fortune beyond reckoning.

The lock had already been unfastened. He flipped open the lid to look inside. The lining was imperial yellow. On it lay a double-handled scroll case with colorful silk embroidery of dragon and phoenix patterns, along with auspicious clouds, cranes, and lions—it was an imperial edict. Beside it rested a dense, dark, arched piece of iron, thick and solid, inscribed with vertical columns of characters filled in with cinnabar and mounted at the head with a gold inlay.

Gu Tingye paused for a brief moment. It was an iron-vouched immunity tablet.

In ordinary times, these objects were brought out only during festivals and holidays to be placed on the altar table for veneration; the descendants kneeling in the back rows could not actually see them. This was, in fact, the first time he had ever laid eyes upon this most precious treasure of the Gu family.

“Take out the iron tablet,” Gu Tingyu said with effort, “and look at the first four characters at the very beginning.”

The iron immunity tablet was originally a hollow cylindrical form; on the day the imperial edict was proclaimed and the title conferred, it was split in half down the middle, with the court retaining one half and the ennobled family the other. And so the heavy iron piece that now rested in Gu Tingye’s hands was curved, shaped like a roof tile.

Gu Tingye slowly turned the iron piece. His gaze moved to the head of the inscription, where four weighty characters had been wrought in gold: Founding Merit of the Realm.

Gu Tingyu raised his eyes to the forest of spirit tablets standing in dense rows upon the altar table. In the candlelight, shadow piled upon shadow like a thorny thicket, falling across the two brothers in a way that made even their faces difficult to discern.

“Our ancestor, Lord Shande, rose from the humblest origins—common folk and laboring men—yet was recognized by the dynasty’s founder. He died leaving a widowed wife and young children. Lord Youshan then went on to achieve glorious military deeds. After that, our clan’s sons marched east with the founding Emperor, fought west against the Nuer’gan, pacified the southern Miao territories in the south, and guarded the northern border—all told, the Gu family’s sons left eleven lives on the battlefield. None of this needs to be said by me, I’m sure.”

“I know what you intend.” Gu Tingyu spoke with some breathlessness, pressing a hand to his chest, and continued. “Father took your birth mother as his wife for the sake of the Marquis household, and you were born of that union. You resent it, you hold a grudge—and so you want to stand by and watch the Ningyang Marquis household fall: let the title be stripped, let the tablet be destroyed, let those who should be imprisoned be imprisoned, and those who should be exiled be exiled. A thorough venting of all the grievances of years. Then, after ten years or eight, while you slowly accumulate military merit, the Emperor grants you a title of your own. At that point, you would have brought glory to the Gu clan. Those who wronged you will either have died off entirely or sunk into poverty and ruin. Every last score settled.”

Gu Tingyu spoke and laughed at the same time, laughing so hard he gasped for breath. “But His Majesty cannot simply strip my title and hand it to you directly. Even with charges already hanging there, it would still easily be construed as bullying a frail elder brother and a widowed sister-in-law. The Emperor prizes his reputation above all things—he would not do it. Not even for your sake. But you cannot swallow this grievance, and so you have decided simply to pull out the foundation from beneath the whole Ningyang Marquis household and be done with it. Is that it?”

Gu Tingye looked at his elder brother, who was laughing on and on without stopping. He himself remained cold, not saying a word.

“But—have you considered—” Gu Tingyu finally brought his laughter to a halt. His expression became one of desolate grief. “Many years from now, when you have obtained your own iron immunity tablet, will it carry these four words?”

“All these years, how many founding meritorious families have had their noble titles stripped away—through the purge of loyal subjects at the founding, through the Nine Princes Rebellion at the succession, through the later treasons, through the great use of dungeons, and even down to now? Do you know how many ennobled families still possess such an iron immunity tablet today, counting across the whole realm?”

Gu Tingyu suddenly grew agitated. “I will tell you: only eight! Eight! All the others—the ministers of rectitude, the men of proclaimed service—they do not count when placed before our family. We are the true and unbroken lineage, uninterrupted from the beginning! Even the Xiangyang Marquis household no longer possesses one. And the Shen family, fashionable as they are now—what are they, next to this?”

He summoned his strength, lurched forward, and grabbed Gu Tingye by the front of his robe with one emaciated hand, shouting aloud: “Do you think you know why you have been entrusted with such heavy responsibilities? When the new Emperor had just ascended the throne, you went with only a single unit of troops to take over the garrison, and the forces at the Jiangdu camp obeyed your command without question. Of all the trusted men from his days as a prince who were also sent out with imperial tallies and edicts to assume military command, apart from the Emperor’s own younger maternal uncle, who received so smooth a reception as you? You moved your troops faster than the rest, you won over your subordinates sooner than the rest—and so you were able to achieve great merit. I will tell you why: because your surname is Gu! The Gu family has buried generations of its sons in the army! Because your surname is Gu! You—”

Gu Tingyu ran out of breath in a fit of violent coughing, shaking so hard he nearly toppled from his seat. Gu Tingye’s expression remained blank—it was impossible to know what he was thinking. He reached out, steadied his elder brother, helped him back to his seat, and poured a cup of water from the tea tray to pass to him.

Gu Tingyu coughed until it seemed he might bring up blood, forcing the coughing down with the tea water, gasping heavily until he gradually calmed. He stared at the iron immunity tablet resting on the altar, its surface tinged with iron-blue, and his eyes slowly grew wet. In a low voice he said:

“When that affair broke out all those years ago, Father had already risen to the post of Left Army Commander; whether under the Martial Emperor or under the late Emperor of that time, he was held in considerable esteem. Even without the title, his career would always have remained intact. In the end, he cast aside my mother—and he did it for these four characters.”

Gu Tingye said nothing.

When he was small, he had more than once seen his father hide in the study, weeping before a portrait of the First Madam Qin.

The candlelight drew the two brothers’ shadows out long across the floor—one tall and powerfully built, the other stooped and curled in on himself. Gu Tingyu stared with distaste at his own shadow on the ground, then suddenly felt a release, a letting go. After all this time, had he been hating the things of the past, or envying what existed now? But when it had come to this, what was there still worth contending over?

“I know you feel wronged on behalf of your birth mother—as her son, that is beyond reproach.” When Gu Tingyu spoke again, a great calm had settled over his heart. “But you are not only your mother’s son—you are also your father’s. Half the blood and flesh in your body bears the Gu name, belongs to the Ningyang Marquis household.”

“I will not designate an heir. As for how long I have left, you may ask Doctor Zhang. I expect it is not many days now.” Gu Tingyu’s face, gaunt and desolate as standing water, was yet somehow as clean and stark as a lone pine growing from a sheer cliff face. “You can inherit the title in the most natural course of events. How you choose to deal with those people outside is entirely up to you. They spent years sheltering under Father’s protection, and are saturated through and through with the spoiled arrogance that comes from such ease. Given what you are capable of today, finding their handles and keeping them in check is no difficult thing.”

Hearing this, Gu Tingye smiled—a derisive twist of his lips. “I had not realized Elder Brother had come to understand things so clearly. Once upon a time, Elder Brother was as close to Fourth Uncle and Fifth Uncle as to a father.”

Especially when it came to dealing with him: the instigation, the fanning of flames, the seamless cooperation between them.

Gu Tingyu was not deaf to what these words implied. He merely said with composure, “When a man is close to death, he tends to see things more clearly. Besides, I had long understood what manner of people they were.”

“You care nothing for your wife and daughter? Your only concern is to preserve the Gu title.” Gu Tingye’s voice was mocking. “A true descendant of the Gu house, right enough.”

“Your sister-in-law has always treated you fairly. You will not give her trouble. You are not that kind of man.” Gu Tingyu answered without hesitation. “Your wife, in the days since she came into this family—I have observed she is broad-minded and generous.”

Gu Tingye gave an inward, dry laugh. Even now, this man was playing his games.

“Elder Brother’s eloquence has grown—this younger brother can barely get a word in edgewise.” Gu Tingye smiled coldly and without warmth. “However, I was born the unworthy son of the Gu family, and for the sake of those four characters alone I am to swallow all these years of grievance—Elder Brother makes it sound very easy. Understandable, too. After all, you were not the one who suffered.”

“It was I who was bound by Father and very nearly sent to the Imperial Clan Court. It was I who was blamed when Gu Tingyang defiled a maidservant in Father’s quarters and drove the girl to her death. It was I whose name Gu Tingbing put on the debt slips he owed to brothels and gambling houses after he ran up debts—Father very nearly beat my bones to pieces. I, unable to swallow it, went to confront the brothels and gambling houses directly, only to entangle myself in endless trouble and acquire a full reputation for debauchery, which so enraged Father that he spat blood. I, in my anger, escalated things further and further… In the end, Father was heartbroken and despairing; it was still I who was driven from the household.”

Gu Tingye spoke very quietly, almost murmuring to himself. “…At that time, of everyone in the Gu household—how many said a single word on my behalf? Elder Brother Tingxuan did, a few times, but later he no longer dared, especially when it concerned his own full brothers. As for the others… hm…”

The vast, dim ancestral hall sank into a deep hush. The two brothers were silent for a long time.

At length, Gu Tingyu sighed. “I am a man close to death. I am doing no more than honoring our father’s charge: doing my best to uphold the Gu family’s dignity. Whether you want to vent your grievances or exact your revenge, there are always other ways. Just—please—do not destroy this foundation of many centuries. Do not.” Toward the last, his voice grew fainter and fainter, close to entreaty; his strength was all but spent, unable to bear the weight any further. “I have said all that needed saying. What remains—decide for yourself…”

Gu Tingye raised his head and looked directly at the two large portraits at the top of the altar table: the first-generation Ningyang Marquis, Gu Youshan, and his wife.

The young men of the Gu family, upon reaching adulthood, mostly shared a pair of deeply drawn brows—heavy eyebrows pressing down beneath them in proud, upright lines, as if all the turbulence within had been locked away beneath that thick, ink-dark restraint.

He suddenly recalled that day of humiliation—how he had finally managed to gain entry to the mourning hall and, across the coffin, taken a last look at his old father. The man who had seemed as tall and mighty as a mountain range to his young eyes had shrunk to something so dry and thin.

Before the age of fifteen, he had lived in inferiority and stubbornness, feeling that his very birth made him lesser in station. After he came to know Nanny Chang, he learned the truth of his birth mother’s entry into the Gu household, and his chest filled with a fury so hot it could have been lava, yet he had no one to speak it to. From that point on, he had harbored secret resentment even toward his father, and every word that passed between them had been defiant and sharp, making the distance between father and son even more rigid.

He knew he could not trust what Gu Tingyu had said. He had known from childhood to adulthood exactly what manner of man his elder brother was.

And yet—if he were truly to inherit his elder brother’s title, could he in good conscience neglect a widowed sister-in-law?

If the title were truly stripped, the other branches might manage—at least they had men to hold the household together. But Shao Furen and her daughter were a widow and a fatherless child; they could only survive by attaching themselves to the charity of other relatives. What good fate could that possibly bring? Only so long as the Ningyang Marquis household stood firm, bearing the name of the late Marquis’s widow and weak daughter, would they be able to live the comfortable, respected lives of honored women.

To say nothing of Xian Jie’er’s marriage prospects—the difference that would make was as great as heaven from earth.

He was no longer, as of today, the second son of the Gu family whom anyone could bully or deceive at will. He could see right through everything in their hearts; he understood it all with absolute clarity.

Gu Tingyu wanted to arrange his affairs and provide for his wife and daughter’s future—was that reason enough for Tingye to obediently comply?

Without his even noticing, a patch of bright light appeared above his head. He had walked out of the ancestral hall. Coming to meet him was a familiar, bright face—full of urgent worry and care. He loved her eyes most of all: so clear and candid, untouched by the dust of the world.

Behind him lay a stretch of dark and shadowed past. Before him, a clear and brilliant future.