Chapter 4 "Is it glorious to let others hear about it?"...
The rain stopped just as dawn was breaking.
Song Jie woke up to the sound of a dog's hiss, his mouth filled with the bitter taste of medicine, and in front of him was a large, fluffy dog's head.
The dark dog squatted by his bedside. When it saw that he was awake, it immediately wagged its tail and poked its muzzle under his hand, whimpering and wanting him to pet it.
His mind went blank for a moment, then he propped himself up and called out in his dizziness, "Jia Ning?"
But the empty house only had Panpan, the dog, and no one else, not even Jia Ning.
Was everything last night just a dream? Jia Ning... didn't come back? How could that be? He clearly felt the warmth of Jia Ning's cheek...
Song Jie's head was throbbing with pain. Panpan nudged his hand with her mouth, and something he was holding in his palm fell out.
What is it?
He looked down and saw a blood-stained sky-blue handkerchief lying beside the bed. A woman's handkerchief? Could it be Jia Ning's handkerchief? Did Jia Ning really come back last night?
Panpan picked up the handkerchief from the ground and handed it to him. He grabbed it and his heart started pounding.
"Prime Minister?" Cang Shu hurriedly lifted the curtain and came in, carrying a hot water in his hands. He walked over with surprise and joy: "You're finally awake! You were cold all over and unconscious for a long time last night..."
"Did Jia Ning come back last night?" Song Jie interrupted him, her heart pounding in her chest. Clutching the handkerchief, she asked, "Was it her who fed me the medicine? Is this handkerchief Jia Ning's? I'm not dreaming, she really came, wasn't she, Cang Shu?"
Cang Shu looked at the handkerchief and then at the Prime Minister's tense expression. He immediately knelt down and admitted his mistake, saying, "Prime Minister, please punish me. It was I who took it upon myself to ask Madam Pei to take care of you... This handkerchief belongs to Madam Pei, Xie Yushu..." He dared not look at the Prime Minister's face and lowered his head, saying, "She was the one who came last night, and she was the one who fed the Prime Minister his medicine. I deserve to die."
"Madam Pei? Xie Yushu?" Song Jie was stunned and confused. It took him a while to match Madam Pei with Xie Yushu.
Xie Yushu, the concubine's daughter who looks remarkably like Jia Ning, abandoned her dignity in order to be recognized and returned to the Marquis's mansion. She imitated Jia Ning's every word and action to please the old lady of the Marquis's mansion...
It was her.
"Last night... was it her? It was her all along?" Song Jie couldn't believe it. Those hands, as warm as a stove, were Xie Yushu's? Those soft, jade-like cheeks were Xie Yushu's?
Feeding him medicine, lying to him that it wasn't bitter, saying that she would never leave him... it was all Xie Yushu?
Cangshu dared not raise his head and said, "Yes, it has always been Xie Yushu."
He thought the Prime Minister would be furious, but the Prime Minister just said in disbelief, "Impossible. How could Xie Yushu know about my past with Jia Ning? I clearly heard Jia Ning call me Little Taoist Priest... No one but Jia Ning has ever called me that."
Cang Shu felt as if his head weighed a ton, pressing down on him so much that he almost slumped to the cold ground: "Prime Minister, it is indeed her... I don't know how she knows about your past with Miss Jia Ning. Perhaps Miss Jia Ning mentioned it to her."
"Impossible! Jia Ning hates her and her mistress the most!" Song Jie coughed violently, pressing his chest as if his heart had emptied again. It was too absurd. It wasn't Jia Ning, but Xie Yushu, the imposter Jia Ning hated the most and whom he despised the most! Last night, he had so genuinely mistaken Xie Yushu for Jia Ning...
He coughed up a mouthful of black blood into his palm, his face looking as if he had been slapped.
"Prime Minister!" Cang Shu hurriedly stood up, wiping his hands as he handed him a cup of warm medicine: "Please don't be angry, drink the medicine first. This is all my fault. If you want to punish someone, punish me."
He knelt down again, not daring to say that the idea of inviting Xie Yushu to play Miss Jia Ning was the Dowager Consort's.
The Prime Minister was in a coma for three whole days after the poisoning. He had not eaten or drunk a drop of water, nor could he swallow any medicine. Several times he was on the verge of dying. He was so desperate that he went to Huguo Temple to ask the Dowager Consort for help.
After the Dowager Consort arrived, the Prime Minister kept calling "Jia Ning" while he was unconscious. The Dowager Consort, having no other choice, came up with the idea of asking Xie Yushu to impersonate Miss Jia Ning and coax him into drinking the medicine.
Unexpectedly, the Prime Minister actually drank it.
"Was it your idea to have Xie Yushu impersonate Jia Ning?" Song Jie asked him coldly after taking a while to recover from the medicine.
"Yes." Cangshu replied with his head down, "When the Prime Minister was unconscious, he kept calling Miss Jianing's name. I thought... I thought that if Miss Jianing had fed you the medicine, you might have drunk it. So I came up with this drastic measure. Please punish me, Prime Minister."
"Look up." Song Jie's tone was extremely cold.
Cang Shu raised his head, and Song Jie slapped him hard across the face, almost knocking him over.
The taste of blood filled his mouth. Cang Shu knelt down again and begged for punishment once more: "Please punish me, Your Excellency."
Song Jie's face was cold. He raised his hand to slap Cang Shu again, but seeing blood seeping from the corner of Cang Shu's lips, he didn't slap him in the end. "Go kneel outside yourself."
Cang Shu should know that this was the Prime Minister showing mercy, and shouldn't say anything more, but...
"Prime Minister, may I wait a while before accepting the punishment?" Cang Shu said in a weak voice, "I need to go to the Pei residence to return the money first."
"What?" Song Jie frowned at him.
Cangshu dared not hide anything and took out an IOU to present to Song Jie: "Madam Pei... Miss Xie Yushu came to take care of you last night, and she needs to be paid, two thousand taels of silver each time."
Song Jie took the IOU and saw two bright red handprints on it, one from Cang Shu and the other from Xie Yushu.
It was so absurd that he laughed in anger. What a greedy Xie Yushu, who actually coveted him! "Two thousand taels of silver a time, just for feeding medicine, she might as well just rob him."
Cangshu said even more quietly, "Miss Xie said this is called: performance fee."
"What kind of pay do you get for acting?" Song Jie didn't hear him clearly and looked at him.
Cangshu said, "Miss Xie said it was payment for playing Miss Jia Ning..."
He heard Song Jie's cold laugh and dared not say anything more.
"Shameless! Doesn't she have any backbone at all?" Song Jie felt even more disgusted with her: "So poor that she has to pretend to be someone else to make a living."
Cang Shu didn't speak. He didn't know why he couldn't bring himself to dislike Miss Xie. Her appearance was innate, not something she imagined herself to resemble. She just looked like that. If she and Miss Jianing were born of the same mother, probably no one would say that she was deliberately imitating Miss Jianing. Ultimately, it was just because her mother was a concubine...
"Did she look that much like her last night?" Song Jie searched through his chaotic mind for a glimpse of last night's events. In the blur, it was as if he really saw Jia Ning. Was he delirious from illness? Or did she really look that much like her?
He remembered that he admitted his mistake on the day of the outing because he was far away and couldn't see her clearly. But when he got close and grabbed her, he immediately realized that she was not Jia Ning. Jia Ning had bright eyes and would never show such a humble and subservient expression.
Cangshu replied earnestly, "When she played Miss Jia Ning, I also vaguely thought she was Miss Jia Ning."
So similar?
Song Jie stared blankly at the IOU.
Cangshu glanced at the handkerchief beside the Prime Minister, hesitated for a moment, and asked, "Should we throw that handkerchief away for the Prime Minister?"
Song Jie brushed it to the ground in disgust: "Take it out and burn it."
Cangshu picked it up, and unusually, he didn't reply. He intended to wash the handkerchief and return it to Miss Xie.
※
The rain stopped for a while.
Why hasn't Xie Yushu come out yet?
On the carriage at the alley entrance, Pei Shilin lifted the curtain and glanced again at the heavily guarded back gate of the Prime Minister's residence. The door was tightly closed, and there was no sign of letting anyone out.
The sky was tinged with a pale blue-white, and vendors from the morning market were starting to hawk their wares on another street not far away, but Xie Yushu had not yet come out.
Does it take all night to administer the medicine? Song Jie's attendant, Cang Shu, repeatedly assured him that Xie Yushu would only need to administer the medicine, and it would take at most an hour.
But it's bright today!
Pei Shilin's anger burned brighter and brighter. No matter how much he disliked Xie Yushu, she was still his wife. No man could tolerate his wife staying overnight in another man's room!
"Return to the manor!" Pei Shilin lowered the carriage curtain and ordered the driver through gritted teeth. She had better never set foot in the Pei manor again in her life!
The driver didn't dare ask any more questions, turned the horse around, and drove back home.
To everyone's surprise, as soon as Pei Shilin stepped into the mansion, the gatekeeper announced, "Madam returned two hours ago."
Two hours ago? But no one came out of the back gate of the Prime Minister's residence at all.
Pei Shilin pushed the servant aside and strode towards the inner courtyard. As soon as he entered, he heard Granny Xizhi whispering to the cleaning maid, "Be quiet and don't wake the madam."
They really came back!
Pei Shilin stormed to the bedroom door, only to be stopped by two young maids. Weren't they just two young girls Xie Yushu had brought? How dare they stop him!
They bowed and said, "Young master, the madam has instructed that no one is to be disturbed."
Pei Shilin, as if listening to a joke, said: "This is the Pei residence, not your Yong'an Marquis's residence. Get out of here!"
The two maids were trembling with fear, but they refused to move aside. The one named Jinye blocked his way and said in a trembling voice, "I am the mistress's maid. I will do whatever the mistress says. Young master, you cannot come in."
What audacity! Even Xie Yushu's maid dares to speak to him like that now!
Pei Shilin's face darkened, and he was about to order his men to tie up the two ignorant maids and take them away when Granny Xizhi scolded, "Who gave you the audacity to speak to the young master like that? Although the madam has instructed that no one is allowed to disturb him, the young master must have important business to bother the madam. Now get out of here."
Granny Xizhi limped over and bowed respectfully to him, saying, "These two servants are ignorant of the rules, please forgive us, young master. If you have any urgent business, we will go in and report to the madam."
That's a clever combination of soft and hard tactics.
Pei Shilin was genuinely amused and exasperated. "I never knew that I needed a servant to announce my arrival to see my newlywed wife. Xie Yushu, this illegitimate daughter of the Marquis's household, has certainly adopted the manners of a princess!"
He brushed aside the old nanny, ignored her attempts to stop him, and pushed the door open. The first thing he heard was a disgruntled "tsk."
Then, inside the bed curtains, Xie Yushu slowly sat up and said, "It's so noisy! You don't sleep, and you don't let anyone else sleep either?"
Her words made Pei Shilin even angrier, and he rushed over and lifted the bed curtains.
Xie Yushu, dressed in a blue undergarment and with her hair loose, sat on the couch, raising her face, devoid of makeup, to look at him, feigning ignorance: "What?"
Strangely enough, this was the first time Pei Shilin had seen this face clearly. It wasn't wearing makeup similar to Xie Jianing's, and it wasn't hiding half its face with its head down, afraid to meet his gaze.
It was a face that belonged entirely to Xie Yushu. She looked at him with a righteous air, even with a hint of anger.
Xie Yushu originally had a small mole on the tip of her nose, and upon closer inspection, her eyes didn't resemble Xie Jianing's. Only her face shape, nose, and overall profile were similar. She had a pair of more elongated eyes.
“I waited for you all night at the back gate of the Prime Minister’s residence,” Pei Shilin said to her, suppressing his anger.
She said nonchalantly, "I came out through the front door, who knew you were waiting at the back door."
Of course she knew that in the original drama, Pei Shilin was waiting at the back gate. Xie Yushu left the Prime Minister's residence in a sorry state and was humiliated by him in the carriage. He interrogated her about what she had done, why her skirt was torn, and whether Song Jie had agreed to save his brother. She was so annoyed that she didn't want to waste her breath on him. She simply went out through the front gate to go back to the residence to sleep, leaving him to wait at the back gate.
"The main gate? Song Jie allowed you to leave through the main gate? Isn't he afraid of being seen?" Pei Shilin was both angry and surprised. Song Jie clearly disliked Xie Yushu.
After mistaking someone for someone else during that spring outing, Song Jie looked as if he had swallowed a fly, and said, "If you still have any sense of shame and backbone, then stop imitating Jia Ning."
Therefore, he knew very well that Song Jie was only using this fake product because he missed Xie Jianing so much that his old illness relapsed.
Just like how he looked down on Xie Yushu, he would occasionally stare blankly at her face because she looked so much like Xie Jianing. In the past few years, she had imitated Xie Jianing's mannerisms and tone of voice so well that it was almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
He didn't believe Song Jie would allow her to enter through the main gate; Song Jie probably didn't want people to see him having any dealings with Xie Yushu, who was already married.
"I don't know if he's afraid of being seen, but you're probably even more afraid," Xie Yushu sneered. "The eldest grandson of the Earl of Yongyi's mansion, the newly appointed third-ranked scholar Pei Shilin, sold his wife for personal gain, sending her to the Prime Minister's mansion on a rainy night. If word gets out, how will your Pei family survive in Bianjing?"
Pei Shilin's face flushed red with anger, and he roared, "Xie Yushu, you..."
"Keep your voice down," Xie Yushu interrupted him, standing up and saying, "Is it honorable for others to hear?"
Pei Shilin's face turned a deep shade of liver with anger.
Xie Yushu, satisfied, bypassed him to comb her hair, intending to first humiliate Pei Shilin's entire family and see who would die first.
"I really underestimated you." Pei Shilin's chest heaved with anger. Not wanting to waste any more words on her, he turned around and asked, "When will Song Jie release my brother?"
"How would I know?" Xie Yushu said directly, "He wasn't awake when I left. You can ask him yourself when he wakes up."
Pei Shilin grew anxious, snatched the comb from her hand, and angrily demanded, "You were gone all night! Feeding another man his medicine and bringing him water, but you didn't even mention my brother? What were you doing there!"
He snorted like a pig in anger, but Xie Yushu wasn't angry at all. She looked up innocently and asked him, "Then how about I go to the Prime Minister's residence again tonight?"
"Xie Yushu!" Pei Shilin roared in fury, snapping the comb in two.
"Congratulations, host, you have gained 1 point of cuckold value."
Before she could even feel happy, a servant came to report, "Young master, someone from Prime Minister Song's residence has arrived."
Pei Shilin frowned and looked over, thinking that Song Jie had come to fulfill his promise to save his brother. He dropped the broken comb, ignored Xie Yushu, and walked to the door to ask, "Who is it?"
“It was a servant named Cangshu.” The servant stammered, “He was waiting at the back door, saying, saying… that he only saw the madam.”
Pei Shilin's eyebrows furrowed into a deep frown as he heard Xie Yushu chuckle softly from inside the room.
He turned around and saw Xie Yushu resting his chin on his hand, raising an eyebrow at him smugly, and complaining in a pretentious manner, "Really, you're here so early."
What does she mean? Does she know that the servant is coming? What is that servant coming for?
"Golden Leaf, Silver Sprout, come and help me comb my hair." She opened her dressing case and began to draw her eyebrows and eyes.
Pei Shilin was furious: "You actually dressed up for a mere servant!"
Xie Yushu didn't even look at him and said, "How do you know it's just a servant?"
Pei Shilin was taken aback. What did she mean? Did she think Song Jie would come to see her too? How presumptuous! Song Jie was just using her as a substitute for Xie Jianing.
A note from the author:
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Xie Yushu: When faced with a problem, condemn others first, never shame yourself. [doge emoji]
The top 100 today will also receive red envelopes!
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