“No…no! Wei’er! It’s too risky! The journey is long, and your health…what if something happens to you on the way…what if someone finds out…” Madam Shen shook her head desperately, tears streaming down her face. Overwhelmed with fear, she only wanted to keep her daughter tightly by her side.

"Mother!" Shen Yuewei suddenly raised her voice, with an undeniable determination. She gripped her mother's cold, trembling hand tightly with astonishing force. "Staying here is the only way to certain death! You saw the Crown Prince's eyes today! You saw Second Brother's reaction too! The truth will out! Once discovered, the entire Shen family will be wiped out in an instant! This child... will have no chance of survival either!" Her words struck like a cold hammer against Madam Shen's most fearful nerves.

"The only way is to leave! Go far away! Go into hiding! Wait until the child is safely born, until everything settles down... Maybe... maybe there's still a chance to turn things around! Mother! Please help me! Only you can help me!" Shen Yuewei's voice was choked with sobs, and her desperate plea was like a dull knife, repeatedly cutting into Madam Shen's heart.

“But…but your father…your eldest brother and second brother…” Madam Shen was in a state of turmoil. Reason told her that her daughter was right, that staying would lead to certain death, but emotionally, she could not imagine the miserable state of her daughter, all alone and pregnant, stranded in a foreign land.

"Keep it from them!" Shen Yuewei said resolutely, her eyes flashing with the ruthlessness of a lone wolf. "We must keep it from them! Especially Father! He's upright and intolerant of injustice. If he finds out the truth... I don't even want to think what he might do! And my eldest and second brothers... they absolutely cannot know! The less they know, the better for them! The safer they are!"

She breathed heavily, her eyes fixed on her mother's shaken and pained face, and made her final, and most crucial, move: "To the outside world... just say... just say I'm sick! Seriously sick! I need to go to Jiangnan to find a famous doctor to recuperate! And you... to put my mind at ease and to silence the gossip, you've already... already arranged a marriage for me!"

"A marriage?!" Madam Shen was completely stunned.

“Yes! The marriage!” Shen Yuewei spoke rapidly, each word seemingly squeezed out from between her teeth. “Let’s say… he’s the son of a wealthy tea merchant in Jiangnan! He received favors from the Shen family in his early years, his family background is impeccable, and his character is reliable! Because the groom’s elder is seriously ill and needs to be married off to bring good luck, the marriage is being arranged hastily and discreetly. We’ll be engaged first, and then choose an auspicious day to get married after I ‘recover’! This way… I’ll have the most reasonable reason to go to Jiangnan! And it will also… completely extinguish the hopes of certain people!” The “certain people” she was referring to were self-evident.

Madam Shen felt a sudden dizziness. Her daughter's meticulously planned and suspenseful scheme was chillingly precise and ruthless. How could this be the brainchild of a fifteen-year-old girl raised in seclusion? It was clearly the work of a cornered beast, fighting for its life!

“Mother…” Shen Yuewei’s heart shattered at the sight of the intense struggle and pain in her mother’s eyes. She suddenly knelt down, her knees slamming heavily onto the cold, hard gold brick floor with a dull thud. She looked up, tears finally streaming down her face, a mixture of endless despair and pleading: “I beg you! Mother! For the Shen family! For… for your unborn grandson! Help me this once! Just this once! Once the child is safely born… once everything settles down… your daughter… your daughter will definitely come back! Come back to apologize to you! Apologize to Father! Apologize to my brothers!”

She bent down, her forehead slamming heavily against the cold ground with a dull thud. One thud after another. The heavy, relentless pounding, like the drumbeats of despair, pounded on the already unbearable strings of Madam Shen's heart.

The warm pavilion was deathly silent. Only Shen Yuewei's suppressed sobs and the dull thud of her forehead hitting the ground could be heard. Outside the window, the last rays of the setting sun had completely sunk below the horizon, and the heavy twilight, like a huge, invisible beast, silently devoured the entire Shuyu Pavilion, swallowing up the last vestiges of hope and hesitation in Madam Shen's heart.

Madam Shen stared blankly at her daughter, who was kneeling on the ground, as if offering herself in a sacrifice, her thin, trembling back, and her black hair scattered on the floor tiles... Her daughter's repeated calls of "grandson" were like the sharpest needles, piercing through all the barriers of her maternal instincts.

For a long, long time. So long that Shen Yuewei almost thought her blood was freezing in this cold despair.

A cold, trembling hand gently landed on the top of her head. The owner of that hand seemed to have used all her strength to keep herself from collapsing.

Shen Yuewei's body stiffened abruptly, and she stopped kowtowing. She raised her head in disbelief and with extreme slowness.

In the dim candlelight, Madam Shen's face was already streaked with tears, her eyes vacant as if her soul had been ripped from her body. Her lips trembled violently, opening and closing several times before finally uttering a faint, hoarse sound, as if ground by sand:

"Okay... Mother... will help you..." These three short words exhausted all her strength, making her seem to age ten years in an instant. She bent down, stretched out her trembling arms, and hugged her cold, stiff daughter on the ground as if she were holding a fragile piece of ice, tightly and desperately embracing her equally cold body.

"Mother... help my Wei'er..." she repeated, her voice broken, large tears falling onto Shen Yuewei's hair and neck, hot and cold.

Shen Yuewei's nerves, stretched to their limit, snapped at that moment. A wave of immense pain and the exhaustion of surviving a near-death experience overwhelmed her. She clung tightly to her mother, like a drowning person grasping at a last piece of driftwood, burying her face in her mother's familiar, fragrant embrace. The fear, grievances, and despair she had suppressed for so long finally erupted into a torrent of tears, silently flowing and soaking her mother's clothes. Her body convulsed violently, and a wounded whimper escaped her throat.

The mother and daughter clung tightly to each other in the warm room, shrouded in twilight and despair, like two fallen leaves clinging to each other in a storm, shivering in fear. A heavy sadness, fear, and a tragic, desperate resolve filled the air.

Madam Shen's withered fingers unconsciously and repeatedly combed through her daughter's sweat-dampened, cold hair. Her gaze passed over her daughter's head, blankly casting a shadow over the all-consuming darkness outside the window. She knew that from this moment on, both she and her daughter had embarked on a path of no return. The fate of the Shen family, like a candle flickering in the wind, had been cast into this bottomless vortex.