The peony garden was in full bloom with purple and yellow flowers, but Jiang Songyi had no time to appreciate them.
She watched the tussling between Jiang Shu and Chen Ruyi, her fingertips unconsciously caressing the Pisces jade pendant at her waist. Her three cousins were still commenting on the floral patterns of "Azure Dragon Lying in the Ink Pool," as if the torn pearl hairpins and ripped brocade were merely petals drifting in the garden.
"Cousin, try this honey-floating pear blossom." Lady Cui, the wife of Duke Dingguo, handed over a jade cup, her features as gentle as a finely brushed painting of a court lady. Her dark blue plain face and jacket made Chen Ruyi's crimson-purple gown woven with gold look even more striking. If it weren't for the silver hair at her temples, they would have truly resembled sisters.
As Jiang Songyi took the teacup, she saw Chen Ruyi tug the intricate golden phoenix hairpin from Jiang Shu's hair. The hairpin cut through the morning light and fell into the peony bushes, startling a few colorful butterflies. "Madam, aren't you going to stop the fight?" she finally couldn't help but ask.
Cui picked up the lotus-patterned pot and poured tea. The jade bracelet on her wrist knocked against the rim of the cup. "Last month, the old lady and the wife of the Earl of Yongchang had an argument. When I tried to mediate, I got splashed with almond tea." She traced the dark pattern on her sleeve with her fingertips. "We only got three bolts of this brocade material."
Before she finished her words, Chen Ruyi suddenly shouted, "Get away from here, you little bitch!" Jiang Songyi looked up and met her scarlet eyes. Her gaze was like a poisonous silver needle, which made her take a half step back.
"How dare you, old hag, yell at my niece!" Jiang Shu yanked Chen Ruyi's neatly coiled bun, snapping her agate necklace and sending coral beads tumbling into the cracks between the cobblestones. The two imperial ladies, their hairpins tangled and their hair messy, looked like street shrews.
Cui sighed softly as she pulled a rhino horn comb from her sleeve. Jiang Qingzhi was already waiting nearby, holding her dressing box. This process had clearly been rehearsed countless times—Jiang Qingzhi straightened Jiang Shu's crooked hair, while Cui smoothed Chen Ruyi's loose strands. The bronze mirror reflected two faces still etched with anger, even more ferocious than those portrayed by the Jing actors on stage.
"Gentle!" Chen Ruyi slapped Cui's hand away, the kingfisher armor scratching blood on her wrist. Cui silently picked up the fallen jewel-inlaid gold hairpin, as if she was already accustomed to this kind of grinding.
Jiang Songyi stared blankly at Chen Ruyi as she straightened her large sleeves with embroidered gold clouds and instantly transformed herself into the dignified old noble. If it weren't for the golden thread still dangling from the torn button on her lapel, the farce would have seemed like a dream.
"Is this the niece you treat as an eyeball?" Chen Ruyi suddenly sneered, pointing the armor directly at Jiang Songyi's eyebrows, "She looks more beautiful than those rough girls in the Jiang family, could it be..."
“Bang!”
Jiang Shu raised her hand to knock off the armor that nearly stabbed Jiang Songyi's eyes, and the jade ring made a crisp sound on the bluestone slabs. "If you dare to talk about my Jiang family bloodline again, believe it or not, I will tear down the ancestral hall of your Dingguo Mansion!"
Chen Ruyi stroked the back of her red hand and suddenly sneered: "Why are you in such a hurry? You were not so majestic when you fainted in the delivery room while holding the dead fetus." She deliberately emphasized the word "still fetus" very heavily, as if she was chewing a bloody bone.
Jiang Songyi could clearly feel Jiang Shu trembling all over. The hand wearing the gilded bracelet gripped her sleeve tightly, with such force that it threatened to tear the brocade. She remembered that when she changed her clothes this morning, her aunt insisted on tying the Five Poisons Pouch on her—it turned out that today was the anniversary of her deceased cousin's death.
"Your son lived to be six." Jiang Shu's voice was hoarse as a dull knife grinding a stone. "I heard that before he died, he grabbed his wet nurse and called her mother? How pitiful. He died without knowing that his mother deliberately delayed calling the imperial physician in order to control the family."
"Nonsense!" Chen Ruyi flipped the table, shattering the sweet white porcelain cup with a peony pattern into dust. Her carefully painted willow-shaped eyebrows twisted like earthworms, and her previous dignified appearance was gone. "My Yuan'er has a sudden emergency! It's those lowly maids' fault for not taking good care of her!"
Cui suddenly broke out in a violent cough, staining her handkerchief with scarlet. Last year, when the young master had a persistent fever, Chen Ruyi was busy investigating the village head's account books for embezzlement. She hadn't dared to speak this, but now, like a fishbone, it pierced her false calm with her coughing fits.
Jiang Songyi looked at the porcelain shards scattered across the floor, finally understanding why her cousins were so unwilling to intervene. This wasn't just a common argument; it was two walking corpses exposing each other's bloody wounds. They had transformed their dead children into poisoned daggers, stabbing each other in the heart every time they met.
The wind blew through the peony bushes, and purple petals fell on Chen Ruyi's trembling shoulders. She suddenly became quiet, picked up a piece of broken porcelain and pressed it against her throat: "Jiang Shu, if you dare mention Yuan'er again..."
"Mother!" Cui knelt down and banged her forehead heavily on the bluestone slab. "If anything happens to you, how can I explain to our ancestors?" Blood flowed down her smooth forehead and formed a cinnabar-like red mole between her eyebrows.
Jiang Shu suddenly burst into laughter, and as she laughed she coughed up tears. She pulled Jiang Songyi's hand and pressed it against her lower abdomen, where there was a centipede-like scar. "If he were alive back then, he would have reached adulthood." The hot tears fell on the back of Jiang Songyi's hand, burning her heart and making her tremble.
The broken porcelain in Chen Ruyi's hands clanked to the ground. She stared at the blood on Cui's forehead, and vaguely saw Yuan'er in his fever. The child had finally convulsed in her arms, his tiny hands clutching at her clothes and crying out in pain, but the imperial physician she had summoned was still checking accounts at the other hospital ten miles away.
The peony fragrance suddenly became nauseatingly strong. Jiang Songyi supported the shaky Jiang Shu and heard Cui's gentle instructions to the maid, "Go get the old lady's favorite calming incense." Her tone was so calm that it seemed as if the events that had just occurred were just the most ordinary excerpt on the stage.
Peony petals fell onto the bluestone slabs, and Jiang Songyi stared at Jiang Shu's trembling fingertips. Chen Ruyi's words just now, "You've given birth to a stillbirth," were like a poisonous sting, pricking the ladies in the garden and causing them to whisper among themselves.
[Stillbirth? Jiang Shu has given birth to a stillbirth before?]
[Including the previously aborted fetus, this is her fourth. Is that bastard Hao Ren using her as a breeding sow?]
Jiang Songyi bit her tongue to stifle a sneer, then suddenly caught sight of the Pisces jade pendant dangling from Jiang Shu's waist—a token of the Hao family, passed down only to daughters-in-law. For some unknown reason, she counted on her fingers, her nails digging into her palm.
[No! That child is not stillborn!]
Jiang Shu, clutching a handkerchief, was about to rip Chen Ruyi's mouth when she stumbled and knocked over her teacup. The scalding tea spilled down her skirt, but she seemed oblivious. The bloody stench of the delivery room seventeen years ago suddenly surged up her throat, and the midwife's terrified screams seemed to still ring in her ears.
Hao Ren gave his own son a sex-changing drug, twisting the male fetus into a monster that was neither male nor female. The child was still crying when he was born, but was suffocated to death by Old Xia with a pillow!
The silver bracelet on Jiang Songyi's wrist jingled. She saw, in the backyard of the Hao Mansion, late in the winter night, wild dogs with green eyes tearing at swaddling clothes. Hao Ren, holding a torch, sneered, "A monster like this deserves to be fed to animals."
"Song Yi!" Jiang Shu suddenly rushed over and grabbed her wrist, and the red nails dug into her flesh. "You just said..."
"Auntie, it hurts!" Jiang Songyi flinched, backing away, bumping into the peony bush behind her. As the thorns dug into her lower back, she heard her own trembling voice: "That child is still alive? Was he picked up by a scavenger the night he was thrown into the mass grave?"
Jiang Shu's jade earrings cast a shadow in the sunlight. She recalled going to Daxiangguo Temple to burn incense last month, and a little beggar tugged at her skirt, calling her "mother." She'd thrown a silver ingot at him out of disrespect, but now she wanted to rip the boy's collar off—was there a butterfly-shaped birthmark on the back of his neck?
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