Jiang Songyi suddenly clapped her hands and laughed, "Why don't you finish your story, Prince? Remember last year on Double Ninth Festival, you chased Jiang Yuyao's sedan chair across three streets, and in the end, she hit you on the forehead with her embroidered shoes?" She deliberately pointed at the shallow scar between Mei Weixing's eyebrows, "Didn't you say it was scratched by a branch?"
Mei Weixing instinctively touched his forehead. It still seemed to hold the coolness of the South China Pearl earrings on his embroidered shoes—that day, when Jiang Yuyao had lifted the curtain to angrily rebuke the "lecher," her earrings had shone brighter than the autumn sun in the Imperial Garden. Compared to this fiancée who knew only how to burn incense and arrange flowers, she was a world apart.
"Enough!" Jiang Shu hurried over, supporting her maid. The jade bracelet on her wrist clattered against the tip of her red sandalwood staff. She stared at the painting sinking to the bottom of the pond, as if she were seeing the fragments of love poems she had burned with her own hands twenty years ago when her husband betrayed her.
"Prince Mei." She protected Jiang Qinghe behind her. "In three days, I will ask the elders to open the ancestral hall and give you the twenty-eight loads of betrothal gifts."
"Mother!" Jiang Qinghe suddenly grabbed her mother's sleeve. She stared at her shattered reflection in the water and recalled the golden crown of peony branches Mei Weixing had given her on her coming-of-age day. He'd said then, "The king of flowers is worthy of Qinghe," but it turned out he had never meant for her.
Mei Weixing mistakenly took this silence as an opportunity and hurriedly took out the Hetian jade pendant from his arms: "My nephew is really sincere to Miss Qinghe! This jade pendant is..."
"Jiang Yuyao lost it at Baohua Temple last year, right?" Jiang Songyi picked up the five-colored silk ribbon adorning the jade pendant. "She said at the time that a wild cat took it away. It turns out that the 'wild cat', the prince, picked it up."
Jiang Qinghe suddenly chuckled. She took the jade pendant, weighed it, and suddenly threw it towards the rockery. The crisp sound of the jade hitting the Taihu stone startled Mei Weixing, who rushed over to catch it, but only managed to grab half of the silk ribbon.
"Prince, be careful." Jiang Qinghe took out a handkerchief to wipe her hands. "The broken jade is sharp. Don't scratch your masterful hands." The lotus embroidered on the handkerchief was stained with mud. She casually threw it into the lotus pond, and it sank into the mud along with the paintings.
Mei Weixing knelt on the gravel, his face twisted in the reflection of the broken jade in his palm. He suddenly remembered the day in the secret room, when his mother had held a torch to burn the painting, and the note Jiang Yuyao had sent him: "If love lasts forever, why should we be together day and night?" Now, those "nights and nights" hadn't even begun, and it was about to be destroyed by these fierce women in the Jiang family?
He staggered to his feet, pointed at Jiang Songyi and shouted, "I, Mei Weixing, will remember the humiliation you inflicted today! I will avenge you someday."
"What will the future hold?" Jiang Shu slammed her dragon-headed cane down on the ground. "Will you follow your grandfather's example and remarry, or will you follow your father's example and keep a mistress?" As she turned around, the hem of her crimson skirt brushed against the back of Mei Weixing's hand. The anger she felt when she caught them in bed together suddenly surged back up. "Go back and tell your mother that she was able to steal my husband back then, but her son may not be able to steal my daughter away now!"
Those words resonated like thunder. Jiang Qinghe looked up suddenly, finally understanding why her mother had so abruptly called off the engagement. She watched Mei Weixing's hastily fleeing figure, and suddenly realized that his running resembled her father's desperate escape in her memory—as expected, the inherent bad habits of blood can be hidden in a painting, but not in the mud beneath one's feet.
The copper bells in the corridor jingled in the evening breeze. Jiang Qingmo's pearl earrings swung with each step, and she kept scolding Mei Weixing: "What's this about the talented students of Bailu Academy? I think it's the Blind Academy! Jiang Yuyao's sobbing tricks just fooled them!"
Jiang Songyi's fingertips unconsciously rubbed the jade pendant at her waist. Memories of a past life suddenly flooded back—she had once imitated Jiang Yuyao in wearing a plain gauze dress, only to be told by her second brother that she looked like she was in mourning. At that time, Jiang Yuyao had stood behind the porch pillar, a smug smile hidden behind her silk handkerchief.
"Songyi, don't imitate her!" Jiang Qingmo suddenly turned around, her golden butterfly hairpin fluttering as if ready to fly. "You are the Princess Jiaqing granted by the emperor, so you should be!" She stood on tiptoe and pointed to Jiang Songyi's ear, "You should be so majestic!"
Jiang Songyi smiled and ruffled her hair. Jiang Qingmo stamped her feet in anger: "I told you I'm the older sister!" Her jade-embroidered shoes crushed the locust flowers on the ground, causing Jiang Qingmo to cover her lips with her handkerchief: "The most powerful person in our family is undoubtedly the third sister who dared to pull the eldest princess's hair flower."
"Big sister!" Jiang Qingmo rushed over to cover her mouth, the golden hairpin in her hair entwined with Jiang Qinghe's necklace. Jiang Qinghe smiled as she untied the beads, and suddenly heard Jiang Songyi ask, "Second cousin, don't you blame me for ruining your marriage?"
Dusk drifted over the jade bracelet on Jiang Qinghe's fingertips. "Who do you think someone with the surname Mei is?" She pinched Jiang Songyi's cheek, the touch like a freshly peeled lychee. "But you, you're as fierce as a little leopard outside, but when you get home, you let people rub you."
Jiang Shu had pinched the moss behind the rockery, leaving crescent-shaped marks. When she heard her daughter say, "Only when you're buried will you be content," she nearly broke the jade bracelet on her wrist—that vicious woman, Chen Ruyi, had truly corrupted her daughter! She should have thought of this when the Duke of Huguo died suddenly!
"My second sister is really going to marry into the Mei family?" Jiang Qingzhi was worried. "That prince doesn't look like someone who would settle down."
Jiang Qinghe smoothed the wrinkles on her sleeve, revealing the plum blossom scar on her wrist. It was the scar she had received when she was eight years old, when her father beat her mother for having an affair. "The Lady of Marquis Jingkang has allowed me to manage the household. Mei Weixing can favor whomever he pleases." She removed the red jewel hairpin from her hair. "As long as the Marquis' Mansion survives, I will be the most distinguished member of the Mei family."
Jiang Songyi looked at the cold light on the tip of the hairpin and suddenly recalled the scene in her past life when Jiang Qinghe's blood splattered all over the bridal chamber. At that time, Mei Weixing hugged Jiang Yuyao and sneered: "Do you really think you are the daughter of a marquis? You are just a!"
"Cousin, you want to kill Mei Weixing?" she asked suddenly.
Jiang Qinghe paused with her hairpin, and a golden peony blossomed in the twilight. "I want him to live a hundred years." She gently wiped the fallen petals from Jiang Qingmo's hair. "Watch him take in eight or ten beautiful concubines, watch his illegitimate sons fight each other until they are bloodied. Watch him!"
"Watching him linger on his sickbed, begging me for ginseng soup," Jiang Qingzhi replied, her handkerchief weaving plum branches into a pattern. She remembered the day Zhang Dingqian broke off the engagement, and her mother hugged her and said, "I'll definitely find you someone who understands your feelings."
Jiang Songyi felt a chill run down his spine. In his previous life, Jiang Qinghe had indeed done just that—Mei Weixing had been paralyzed in bed for three years, relying on ginseng soup to stay alive, while he watched helplessly as Jiang Qinghe pocketed all of the Mei family's assets.
Suddenly, there was the sound of shattering porcelain from behind the rockery. Jiang Shu kicked over a flowerpot and hurried out, her pomegranate skirt sweeping across the floor. "That bastard Hao Ren!" She paused, and before her daughters' astonished gazes, she changed her words, "There are plenty of good families out there. Tomorrow, I'll invite the official matchmaker!"
Jiang Qingmo's eyes lit up: "I want to marry a son-in-law! Like Princess Linchuan, she has a concubine!"
"Nonsense!" Jiang Shu poked her forehead, "Do you think I'm picking radishes in the vegetable market?" Turning around, she saw Jiang Qinghe putting the ruby hairpin back into her hair. The posture was exactly the same as Chen Ruyi's when she was in charge of the household.
As the evening drums sounded, Jiang Songyi fell to the last. She looked at Jiang Qinghe's shadow, stretched by the setting sun, and suddenly remembered the white banners at the funeral hall in her previous life. Back then, Jiang Qinghe had held Mei Weixing's suicide note and sneered, "Still scheming until death!"
"Please wait, my lady." Mei Weixing's servant approached stealthily, "Our prince said!" Before he could finish his words, he was kicked to the ground by Xiang Zhu. Jiang Songyi stepped on the back of his hand and said, "Tell your prince, if you dare to covet a girl from the Jiang family again!"
There was a crisp sound of "crack" mixed with screams. When Jiang Qinghe looked back, she saw Jiang Songyi crushing the servant's finger bones: "My cousin wants to be a good wife and mother. I never said I wanted to be a living Buddha."
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