Chapter 1 Confiscation of property
"In compliance with the Emperor's decree, Yongning Marquis Chen Lingyun colluded with the Ministry of Revenue Vice Minister Zhang Yanzhi to privately mint coins, passing inferior coins off as good ones and enriching themselves..." The eunuch's shrill and harsh voice rang out in the huge marquis's mansion. With a shout of "confiscate the property and exterminate the entire family", the sounds of fire, crying and shouting rang out.
The officers and soldiers who were ordered to confiscate the family's property were like hyenas smelling fresh meat, with greed and excitement in their eyes. They burned, killed and looted in this century-old noble family. The beautiful and spacious courtyard was littered with corpses of both young and old, and the carefully tended flower beds were destroyed beyond recognition.
In the innermost Shen Family Ancestral Hall, Marquis Yongning and several servants were guarding the door with knives in hand. Under the Buddha statue, the Marquis’ wife, with red and swollen eyes and a haggard face, stuffed her two daughters into the secret passage, pushed them hard, and cried, “Go! Go out through this secret passage. There are people sent by your grandfather outside. Leave the capital and live, and never come back!”
The door of the ancestral hall was pushed open roughly. The marquis's wife pushed them to the innermost part like a madman, pulled the small door shut with force, and guarded the place in fear. Her gentle and beautiful face was full of tears of despair.
The last thing Shen Wangshu saw was the frail and trembling back of the marquis’ wife, and the scene where the Marquis of Yongning and a few servants fought stubbornly and were then pierced through the heart by a sword.
Her elder sister dragged her out desperately, and all the sounds gradually faded away. Only the severe pain in her heart made Shen Wangshu still feel a little alive.
“Nian Nian, Nian Nian?” The eldest sister turned around and saw her pale face covered with cold sweat. The tears in her beautiful eyes rolled down. She kept touching her sister’s cold face and said, “Hold on a little longer…Hold on a little longer, you’ll be able to speak out soon.”
When Madam Hou was pregnant with Shen Wangshu, she fell seriously ill, which made her weak in the womb. She almost died when she was born. She suffered from major and minor illnesses since she was a child, and she suffered from angina pectoris when she was emotionally excited. In serious cases, she would be unable to breathe and even faint and die.
Shen Wangshu bit his lips tightly without saying a word, and tried to follow his elder sister to run outside. When he finally saw the light outside and the low-key carriage, he suddenly lost his strength and fainted.
Several servants in night clothes immediately jumped out of the carriage and helped Shen Xihe carry the young lady onto the carriage. Finally, they set fire to the only exit.
When they got on the carriage, Shen Xihe realized that her sister's lips were bleeding from biting, and her face was as pale as gold paper. She had been pampered since she was a child, and her family had never let her suffer any hardship. She didn't say a word even though she was in so much pain on the way.
The tears on both of their faces dried several times. Chen Xihe hugged her sister's body weakly, feeling confused.
......
It was early summer, and the grass and trees were growing lushly. The large peach tree outside the window blocked most of the sunlight, which allowed the people in the thin tent to suffer less from the summer heat.
On the rosewood bed with carved dragon patterns by the window, a beautiful woman in only a light yellow blouse was not sleeping soundly. Her hair and temples were dripping with sweat, and her delicate arms looked even whiter against the crabapple red quilt.
Shen Wangshu suddenly opened her eyes, gasped for breath and touched her chest - it seemed to still be aching slightly. The flames in her dream rushed towards her, as if to burn everything to ashes.
When she came through that day, she happened to catch the original owner's house being confiscated. In the carriage of Xiahou Mansion, the owner of this frail body died completely, and then Shen Wangshu came.
"Coronary artery atherosclerosis..." She stroked her chest and murmured, "The important thing is not to do heavy work and not to get emotional. The original owner died of emotional excitement..."
Shen Wangshu is a newly arrived doctor of traditional Chinese medicine in the 21st century. He traveled through time by chance - he stayed up late reading novels, and when he woke up he found himself in Xiahou Mansion.
When he first arrived, he was in a daze. The soul of the original owner had not yet dissipated, and coupled with his illness, Shen Wangshu was hardly awake most of the time. It took him almost a month to absorb the original owner's memories and the surrounding environment, and finally figure out his current situation.
She was wearing exactly the same clothes as the younger sister of the heroine of the novel called "The Phoenix Girl of Destiny" that she stayed up late to read, Shen Wangshu.
When I watched the show, I didn’t pay attention to this cannon fodder character who only appeared a few times. Now that I think about it, even the names are exactly the same, so if she doesn’t wear it, who will?
In the original novel, Shen Wangshu did not die as early as she does now, but she did not live too long either. Not long after she married the older general named Chen Ting, she died of depression in the Duke's Mansion.
"Girl, are you awake?"
The maid Taohong's gentle voice came from outside, and then the curtain was lifted. A young girl with a round face leaned in. Seeing the beauty sitting on the couch, she smiled and lifted the gauze curtain while saying lightly, "My cousin specifically told me to check on you and make sure you didn't oversleep. I didn't expect you to wake up on your own."
Shen Wangshu yawned, rubbed his long eyelashes that were wet with physiological tears, and nodded listlessly.
In the first month after she came here, whether it was because her soul was unstable or for some other reason, she first fell seriously ill. The fever was so severe that Shen Wangshu almost thought he was going to ascend to heaven. After tossing and turning for more than half a month, she finally woke up, but became sleepy and dreamy again. She couldn't sleep well. As soon as she closed her eyes, she saw the scene of the Yongning Marquis's Mansion being ransacked that day.
The wife of Marquis Yongning's parents' home was in Moyun City, thousands of miles away from the capital. After the two sisters escaped overnight that day, they were not hunted down for thousands of miles, so the old man decided to keep his two granddaughters.
The two beauties from the Shen family, who were the most beautiful girls in the capital, disappeared from sight from that day on, and the Xiahou Mansion in Moyun City had two more cousin girls.
It has been nearly three months since the day when his house was searched. Because of the nightmares day after day, Shen Wangshu, who was already in poor health, lost weight rapidly. Although he was not emaciated, the baby fat on his face had disappeared, his eyes looked bigger, and his chin was pointed.
She had been well brought up in the past. Seventeen was the prime of her life. Even when she was sick, she was still a fragile and lovable sick beauty. Her pair of wet black eyes looked at me quietly, and she looked so well-behaved and cute that I wanted to give my heart to her.
Taohong was originally a maid in Xiahou Mansion. She was assigned by the mistress to serve the cousin from the capital. She had been nervous for several days and made full preparations. As a result, except for the first night when the cousin woke up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and called her in to cry with her for a while, she did not lose her temper at all. She spoke softly and gently on weekdays, without any irritability at all.
Taohong only remembered the pitiful look of the beautiful woman as she sobbed quietly in her arms that night, and she couldn't help but feel pity for her in her heart.
Tao Hong helped Shen Wangshu put on a green water and blue smoke silk dress. The hem of the skirt was embroidered with lifelike green lotus flowers, which made her look as light as mist, as if she would fly away on the wind in the next second.
"My cousin asked you to go to the west room for tea. She said the weather is hot, so she allows you to have some green bean ice cream."
Mung bean ice was Shen Wangshu's favorite summer snack in the past. Her elder sister loved her and remembered all her preferences in detail. Shen Wangshu was touched, but she also knew that in addition to afternoon tea, Shen Xihe was probably still struggling with another matter and wanted to ask her to discuss it.
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