As evening fell, the Wei family gathered in the dining hall. Old Madam Wei was most eager to hear her granddaughter recount her day at the Sheng residence, but Wei Shuyao was nowhere to be seen.
Where is Yao'er?
Madam Meng shook her head helplessly: "Mother, there's no need to wait for Yao'er anymore. I don't know why, but after returning from the Sheng residence today, she rushed to her brother's room, took a stack of books back, and hasn't come out since. Caizhu also came to report earlier that she was going to study hard tonight and wouldn't be coming to the dining hall."
"Studying?" Old Madam Wei was stunned for a moment, then turned her gaze to Wei Shuwan with a puzzled look. "Wanwan, did Yao'er encounter something at the Sheng Mansion?"
Wei Shuwan shook her head and said she didn't know, but she had some guesses in her heart.
Wei Shuyao was never a diligent student. The reason she was so eager to study was probably because she met a charming and talented man in the Sheng family and was afraid of showing her lack of knowledge in front of others, so she quickly made up for it.
However, since Wei Shuyao was able to obediently go to read, it saved Wei Shuwan some trouble. So, at dawn the next day, Wei Shuwan boarded a carriage and headed out of the city.
She first went to the pond to look, but couldn't find her benefactor. Then she went to the farmhouse and knocked on the door, only to find that the wooden door was locked and the man was nowhere to be found.
In her moment of dejection, she saw an elderly woman carrying water passing by. The woman was thin and looked to be struggling. Wei Shuwan gave Zi Qiao a wink, and Zi Qiao quickly stepped forward and took the carrying pole from her, saying, "I'll help you carry it!"
"Oh, thank you so much, young lady!" the older woman said repeatedly, quickly leading the way. Despite her light load, she couldn't compare to the young girl carrying two buckets of water.
After delivering the water to the aunt's courtyard, Ziqiao wiped away the thin layer of sweat that had seeped out, and the aunt quickly poured hot water for her to drink.
Ziqiao took the water and asked, "Auntie, do you know where the people from that courtyard went?"
“Him,” the aunt shook her head, “he’s not from the village. He just rents a place there. He doesn’t come here often. He only comes to stay for a few days each month. The rest of the time, I don’t know where he is.”
"Oh, I see." After that, Zi Qiao asked some other questions and found that the villagers really knew very little about her daughter's benefactor, so she went back to report.
On the return journey in the carriage, Wei Shuwan rested his chin on his hand on the window frame, thinking that perhaps it was just as Zi Qiao had guessed: fishing was merely a cover for his identity, and his true identity was something that could not be exposed to the light of day.
Wei Shuwan returned home with a heavy heart. Not long after, someone from her mother's room came to deliver a message, asking her to come over to discuss something.
Normally, if Mother has something to say, she would come directly to Fuquxuan. Today, she sent someone to deliver the message, which seems overly formal. Could something serious have happened?
With a slightly uneasy heart, Wei Shuwan hurried to her mother's Fukangyuan. As soon as she entered the house, she saw her mother silently shedding tears, and her father sitting silently beside her.
"Father, Mother, are you... having a fight?"
Upon hearing this, Sun Lurong, who had been secretly wiping away tears, immediately burst into laughter: "If we were having a disagreement, what use would it be to call you here?"
"What happened? Why is Mother crying?" Wei Shuwan stepped forward and sat on the pear blossom stool next to her mother, looking at her with both worry and confusion.
Sun Lurong hesitated for a moment, then said, "Let your father speak."
Wei Shuwan then turned her gaze to her father, Wei Zheng, who sighed and then recounted the whole story.
It turns out that Wei Shuwan did have a maternal grandfather, but no one had ever mentioned it in this life or the previous life. Therefore, she only knew one maternal uncle from her mother's family.
When she was little, every time she asked about her maternal grandparents, her mother would either be sad or angry. Over time, she stopped asking and assumed in her heart that her maternal grandparents were no longer alive.
However, her father now tells her that her maternal grandfather has written to her, wanting to see her and her mother.
It turns out that my mother had her eye on my father, but my maternal grandfather disapproved of my father's merchant background and refused to agree to the marriage, instead arranging another marriage for my mother. On the eve of her wedding, my mother secretly ran away and pledged her life to my father.
When the maternal grandfather found out, he was furious and, in a fit of rage, banished the mother from the house, forbidding her from ever setting foot in the Sun family mansion again.
Now that his maternal grandfather is seriously ill and nearing the end of his life, he has begun to miss his mother and his granddaughter Wei Shuwan, whom he has never met.
The letter urged her urgently, saying that the doctor predicted her grandfather's days were numbered, and that he might pass away within the next day or two. Therefore, having made up her mind to go, Sun Lurong dared not delay and set off that very night with Wei Shuwan in a carriage.
Fortunately, Pingyang County was not far from Shengjing. They left the capital before the city gates closed and expected to arrive before noon the next day.
That night, the mother and daughter lay on opposite sides of a chair, their minds unsettled and the journey too bumpy for them to feel anything. Wei Shuwan then began to inquire about her maternal grandparents' family.
"Mother, why does the letter only mention my maternal grandfather but not my maternal grandmother? Is she no longer alive?"
"Yes, your maternal grandmother passed away a long time ago... She didn't even have a chance to step into the Sun family's house."
"Why is that?" Wei Shuwan's eyes widened.
“Your maternal grandmother was a woman with a tragic fate. She was originally a herb-gathering girl in the mountains who lived a peaceful life. But one day, she saved a young general who had fallen off a cliff when he was at his wit’s end. When the young general woke up, he had forgotten his past life. He did not know where he came from or where he was going, so he stayed in the village for three years.”
Wei Shuwan blinked her thick, long eyelashes, momentarily wondering if she was listening to a family history or a story from a folk tale. After a long while, she finally asked, "That young general, was he my maternal grandfather?"
Sun Lurong nodded. "Over the course of three years, the two developed feelings for each other, got married, and had me and your uncle."
"And then what?"
“Then one day, your maternal grandfather went hunting and didn’t return. Your maternal grandmother feared he had encountered a wild beast, so she begged the villagers to go up the mountain to search for him. However, the whole village searched for half a month but couldn’t find him alive or dead. Everyone said he must have been eaten by a wild beast, but your maternal grandmother didn’t believe it and continued to go up the mountain alone every day to search…”
"Later, your maternal grandmother fell ill and, after being bedridden for half a year, passed away in depression."
Hearing this, Wei Shuwan couldn't help but shed tears. Even though she had never met this grandmother before, listening to her grandmother's story made her heart ache.
"So how did you finally find your grandfather?" she asked, her voice choked with emotion.
"Some time after your maternal grandmother passed away, someone came to pick up your uncle and me. It was then that I learned your maternal grandfather's true identity: he was actually a founding county marquis! And he already had wives and concubines in his household!"
“After your uncle and I were taken back to the Marquis’s mansion by him, we neither got a stable life nor felt fatherly love and affection. All we got was the title of ‘born of a concubine’.”
"It's a pity that your maternal grandmother, who lived a life of seclusion and detachment from worldly affairs, inexplicably became the mistress of a high-ranking official..."
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