The whole room was in uproar.
Jiang Songyi stood on tiptoe to look. Dark water stains oozed from beneath Chen Ruyi's dark skirt, snaking like venomous snakes across the blue bricks. She suddenly remembered how, after the flower-viewing banquet in her previous life, the Duke Dingguo's mansion had summoned three imperial physicians overnight.
"Hurry and carry her to the side room!" Princess Linchuan shouted sternly, digging her fingertips deep into the maid's arm. Last year during the autumn hunt, Chen Ruyi boasted that her menstruation was still regular, but now there was blood.
Mrs. Mei suddenly grabbed Jiang Qinghe who was about to step forward and said, "Unmarried girls should be more cautious." The strength in her hands was so great that the old scar on Jiang Qinghe's wrist began to bleed again.
"Let go!" Jiang Shu slammed her palm down on Mrs. Mei's elbow, shattering the jade bracelet. Wu Zihan screamed and tried to pick up the pieces, but Jiang Songyi accidentally stepped on her skirt.
Amidst the chaos, Jiang Songyi approached the pale Chen Ruyi. The rubies in the old lady's hair reflected the blood, giving her a somewhat eerie look. She lowered her voice and asked, "Does the old lady still remember Zhang the midwife from the west city?"
Chen Ruyi's pupils suddenly constricted, and the cramps in her stomach intensified. On that rainy night twenty-five years ago, midwife Zhang held the bruised, stillborn baby and shook her head at her. This secret should have rotted in the coffin!
"Excuse me," Jiang Shu said, pushing through the crowd and protecting Jiang Qinghe behind her. She caught a glimpse of blood on her daughter's wrist and suddenly grabbed the teapot and poured it over Mrs. Mei's head. "Oops, my hand slipped."
The eyebrows of the distant mountains that Mrs. Mei had carefully drawn were blurred into two smudges of ink, and Wu Zihan's exclamation was stuck in her throat - she finally saw the scar on Jiang Qinghe's wrist, winding like a poisonous insect, exactly the look that Mei Weixing hated the most.
Inside the side room, the moment the imperial physician's golden needles touched her, Chen Ruyi felt a surge of heat beneath her. Beneath the blood-stained quilt, a blur of flesh slid down her shrunken thigh. The moment Cui lifted the quilt, she froze like a stone statue.
It was clearly a fully formed male fetus.
The stench of blood grew thicker in the corridor. Several women who had given birth were the first to change expression, covering their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs and taking two steps back. Someone muttered, "This smell of blood is like a miscarriage."
These words were like cold water dropping into boiling oil, and the ladies immediately began to whisper. The shell-inlaid armor tapped lightly against the white marble railing, making a crisp sound. "Old Duke Dingguo has been dead for twenty-three years. This can't be a dream." The unfinished words drew chuckles from those around them.
Jiang Shu stared at the bloodstains smearing across the hem of Chen Ruyi's crimson skirt, suddenly recalling the rumors of the past. Back then, Chen Ruyi had just married the sixty-year-old Duke Dingguo at the tender age of twenty, and within three months, the happy news had arrived. Coincidentally, her stepson, Deng Xu, was also just twenty years old, and rumors circulated that the posthumous child bore a striking resemblance to the Crown Prince.
"Mother!"
Deng Xu approached at a brisk pace, the hem of his dark official robe tucking up fallen leaves. Duke Dingguo, now in his forties, tried to support the shaky Chen Ruyi, but she shook him off. The golden python pattern on his dark blue cuffs brushed against the old lady's pale face, gleaming with tiny golden glints in the morning sun.
The female doctor's fingertips rested on Chen Ruyi's wrist, but she suddenly retracted her hand as if burned. The jade-encrusted armor struck the brass buckle of the medicine chest, causing Cui to stumble and fall to her knees. As her daughter-in-law, Lu, supported her, she felt the cold sweat on her mother-in-law's palm and realized that Cui was trembling all over.
"Last month. Last month, my mother said my period stopped." Cui's voice was as vague as paper money ash. "She said I've reached the age where I can no longer have sex."
Chen Ruyi's balsam-stained nails dug into the doctor's wrist: "How long are you going to take a pulse?"
Princess Linchuan's gilded armor slid across the carved corridors, and she said in a deep voice, "You can speak freely."
"It's a slippery pulse." The female doctor knelt on the ground. "The old lady has a miscarriage."
The peonies in the garden suddenly lost their color. Deng Xu's hand, supporting Chen Ruyi, froze in mid-air, his official boots crushing a fallen crabapple petal. Suddenly, Madam Lu screamed and pushed Madam Cui aside, "No wonder! No wonder my mother-in-law wakes up early to make a pregnancy-preserving medicine for the old lady!"
Cui bumped into a red lacquer pillar, and her jade-inlaid hairpin broke in two. She looked at the jade fragments scattered on the ground and suddenly burst into a chuckle. "Twenty years. I kept it a secret for you for twenty years."
"What nonsense!" Chen Ruyi grabbed the medicine pillow and threw it at him, her silk nightgown slipping off, revealing her forearm. A few cinnabar moles pierced Jiang Songyi's eyes—they were clearly the location of a girl's uterine bleeding.
Jiang Shu suddenly grabbed her niece's wrist and tapped her fingertips on the same spot. Jiang Songyi exclaimed, "Shou Gong Sha! Why is there this on the old lady's arm?"
Amidst the uproar in the garden, the eldest princess quickly stepped forward and ripped open Chen Ruyi's sleeve. The scarlet scorching in the morning sun made the old lady's pale face look even more eerie.
"Ridiculous!" Deng Xu suddenly shouted, the jade pendant tassel on his waist trembling. "My mother is over fifty years old, how could she do that?"
"Fifty?" Cui laughed while leaning against the pillar, her golden peony skirt covered with dust. "When the old Duke died suddenly, she said she had just turned twenty to protect the fetus in her belly, but in fact..." Before she could finish her words, Chen Ruyi grabbed her throat.
Deng Xu was about to intervene when he heard the sound of hurried horse hooves from outside the garden. A Dali Temple official rushed in, holding a token high in his hand. "Imperial decree! After investigating the case of Duke Ding's sudden death twenty years ago, there is a hidden story. Pei Ji, Junior Secretary of the Dali Temple, is ordered to escort Chen to court immediately!"
Pei Jiya's blue official robe was chilled by the morning dew. His eyes swept across the cinnabar mole on Chen Ruyi's forearm. "Daughter of the Chen family, you have been pretending to be the stepmother of Duke Dingguo for twenty years. You used a fake pregnancy to poison the old Duke, and now you are going to use a real pregnancy to frame your stepson?"
…
The bloody odor in the corridor grew stronger, and Jiang Shu caught a whiff of a strange fragrance. She stared at the golden hairpin dangling precariously in Chen Ruyi's hair, and suddenly remembered that the day before, when she passed by Duke Dingguo's mansion, she had seen Chen Ruyi's personal maid picking up medicine at the pharmacy.
"The old lady's face looks like this." Jiang Songyi leaned against the vermilion lacquer column and ate melon seeds. "The Palace of Children is dim and dull, which clearly shows that she has no chance of having children." Her voice was not loud, but Jiang Shu heard it clearly.
Chen Ruyi was grabbing Cui's wrist and asking, "Tell me! What did the doctor in the Li Mansion say when you took her pulse last month?" The jeweled armor left a bloody mark on Cui's wrist, and the female doctor was so frightened that she took three steps back.
Cui burst into tears: "Don't worry, mother. Doctor Li said that this is a symptom of menopause." Before she finished speaking, Chen Ruyi suddenly curled up on the ground, holding her stomach, and her crimson skirt was soaked with dark red.
"Quickly, call the imperial physician!" Princess Linchuan's gilded armor buckled into the cracks of the blue bricks. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Jiang Songyi calculating with her fingers, her hands trembling slightly beneath her peony-patterned cuffs—the same night Chen Ruyi gave birth, the ground was covered in blood.
When Old Lady Cui rushed into the garden with her eight servants, they saw her son-in-law Deng Xu holding Chen Ruyi's shoulders. Her jade-inlaid cane clanged against Deng Xu's official boots: "What a filial son and grandson! The late Duke's body is still warm, and you are here!"
"Mother!" Cui rushed over and grabbed the old lady's sleeve, "It's not what you think."
“Bang!”
A slap startled the birds under the eaves. Mrs. Cui pointed at her daughter's swollen face and said, "Fool! They even got pregnant with a bastard, and you're still covering it up!" She turned and bowed to the women watching. "Excuse me for making you laugh, but we, the Cui family, are going to seek justice today!"
Jiang Songyi spat out the melon seed shells and wrote on Jiang Shu's palm: Chen's palace blood has not faded. Jiang Shu suddenly remembered the red spot on the inside of Chen Ruyi's forearm when she raised her hand just now - how could the old lady of the Duke's Mansion, who had been there for twenty years, have proof of virginity?
"Shut up!" Princess Linchuan suddenly dropped her teacup. Broken porcelain splattered onto Chen Ruyi's skirt, mixing with blood and turning it a strange purple. She stared at the doctor's trembling needle. "One more time. If you dare to speak nonsense again, I will not let you off lightly."
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