Chapter 65
Although they knew that the situation had turned around when Mr. Tao said he wanted to talk to Mr. Han in private, the second young master's aggressive approach and cold and murderous gaze just now made Mrs. Tao and the others shudder when they thought about it.
Miss Tao Si was probably going to have a bad ending tonight. The eldest lady burst into tears the moment she stepped out of the guest house. "I know this little girl brought this upon herself, but she couldn't even get up after being kicked by the second young master, and they won't let her call a witch doctor. What will we do if something happens to her?"
After all, this was her granddaughter, whom she had held, kissed, and loved since she was a child. Thinking of her lying injured and bruised on the cold floor of the guest house, Mrs. Tao couldn't bear it. But since Mr. Tao had intervened, there was no room for her to intervene. No matter how heartbroken she was, she couldn't seek medical help before the matter was finally resolved.
Watching the second son and his wife bow to her and go back to sleep as if nothing had happened, Mrs. Tao suddenly thought: Yueming hadn't shown up tonight, and probably didn't know what had happened. If she also helped to intercede, wouldn't this crisis be easily resolved? Maybe a big problem could be reduced to a small one, or a small one could be eliminated.
She decided to take her eldest daughter-in-law to the guest house where Yueming lived.
The knock on the door sounded urgent in the silent night. Ai Ye woke up from her dream and put on her clothes while paying tribute to the young lady's clever calculation. Sure enough, someone came again. She stood in the yard, stretched her neck and asked loudly, "Who is it?"
Mrs. Tao's maid responded, "Ai Ye, it's me."
Although she recognized who was speaking, she still muttered to herself, "Who the hell knows who you are? Are you afraid that the ghosts will take your soul away in the middle of the night if I tell you my name?" She stood still and continued to ask, "What's going on so late at night?"
"Madam wants to see Miss Yueming. Please open the door."
Ai Ye yawned, pulled at her coat, and said, "The young lady is already asleep. Let's talk about it tomorrow. She gets angry if she doesn't get enough sleep." Then, she prepared to go back to her room to sleep. But then she heard a stern voice outside the door, commanding, "Open the door." Ai Ye was startled. She had thought the mistress had only sent one of her maids, but she hadn't expected her to come in person. She quickly turned back and asked Ye Hu to call the young lady while she went to open the door.
Ye Hu got up when he heard the noise. When he heard that the lady had arrived, he hurried into the room and called Yue Ming, whispering through the curtains, "Miss, Miss, Mrs. Tao is here."
Yueming didn't sleep well and woke up as soon as she was called. She was surprised to hear Mrs. Tao coming. After thinking for a moment, she smiled meaningfully and said, "It seems that something big is going to happen tonight!" She asked Yehu to tell Mrs. Tao to wait for her for a while.
Ye Hu came to the yard and asked Ai Ye to help the young lady dress. She knelt down and saluted Mrs. Tao and said, "Madam, Grandma, the young lady needs to dress up. Please wait a moment."
After saying that, he led them to sit at the stone table under the banana tree in the yard, and then he hurried to boil water and make tea.
Yueming took out the clothes from the suitcase one by one, put them on her shoulders and stood in front of the mirror to choose. She also took out the jewelry she brought from the box and tried them on one by one, without any hurry at all. Ai Ye grew up in the Tao Mansion. Mrs. Tao had a great influence in the mansion and she was afraid of her from the bottom of her heart. Now seeing the young lady dawdling, she couldn't help but said anxiously, "Young lady, the lady has a bad temper. If you neglect her like this, she will definitely be angry."
Yueming picked out a set of clothes and threw them on the bed. He slowly unbuttoned his pajamas and turned to ask Ai Ye, "What can she do to me if she gets angry? Will she beat me up or eat me?"
"But we're in Lishengmeng after all..." she muttered, but Yueming interrupted her before she could finish. She said disdainfully, "So what if it's Lishengmeng? I don't know any of the things Han Yunkai taught me, but I've learned bullying very well! Would they come to me if they hadn't run into a snag with Han Yunkai? Since they need my help, they have to follow my rules. My father always told me that the most important thing in life is to be tough in your methods and flexible in your stance. When your uncle mentioned this lady to you, he was like a mouse seeing a cat. Today, I want to see if this lady, who you think is so powerful, has the means to act with lightning speed and the flexibility to adapt to the situation."
Mrs. Tao and the eldest young mistress waited outside for two cups of tea, mosquitoes buzzing around them, and the maidservant kept fanning them to drive them away. Mrs. Tao remained motionless, fingering her Buddhist beads. The eldest young mistress was getting impatient, complaining, "You made us wait in the yard in the dark for so long? You're so young, but you're so arrogant."
Ye Hu stepped forward to refill the tea and apologized, "Miss, this is also to avoid being rude in front of Madam and Grandmother. Please wait a moment."
After waiting for a while, Ai Ye came out and said that the young lady wanted to see them. The eldest grandmother helped Mrs. Tao into the house. The room was brightly lit. Yue Ming was sitting on the Luohan couch in her gorgeous dress, smiling as she watched them come in.
As soon as she entered the room, Mrs. Tao shouted at the eldest young lady, "Kneel down quickly."
The eldest grandmother was in a state of confusion, suspecting that her mother-in-law was possessed by a ghost, and asked her to kneel before a younger generation. Seeing that the eldest grandmother was stunned and motionless, Mrs. Tao said sternly, "Didn't you hear what I said?"
Grandma didn't know what her mother-in-law was up to, but she still slowly knelt in front of Yueming under her stern gaze.
Yueming raised his eyebrows and said in surprise: "What happened? Yehu, help the grandmother up quickly. It's really tiring for me to have such a thing happen in the middle of the night." Although he spoke politely, he was as still as a mountain and only let a maid to support him.
Mrs. Tao waved away Ye Hu, who was about to help the grandmother, and said with a sad face, "My dear, your sister did something wrong. It was your aunt, as a mother, who didn't teach her well. I asked her to come and apologize to you."
Yueming had only one eyebrow raised, but when she heard Mrs. Tao change her address, she raised the other eyebrow as well, pretending to be surprised and saying, "I had a good time with the young lady in the mansion today, and there was no quarrel. What crime did the eldest lady apologize to me for?"
Hearing that she hadn't changed her address for Grandma, Mrs. Tao's eyes darkened. She sighed and said, "Your fourth sister went to bring sobering soup to Second Young Master Han tonight and ran into him bathing, so the two of them..." She hesitated, "Now that Second Young Master has come to his senses, we're afraid you'll be angry and furious, so we wanted to ask you to go over and try to persuade him. He's willing to listen to you."
Yueming felt that Madam Tao was far superior to the Third Madam. If the Third Madam had been a concubine in the Tao family, she wouldn't have survived more than three days. Seeing her serious expression, if the Second Madam hadn't tipped her off in advance and he trusted Han Yunkai's taste, he really feared she would have fooled him.
"Oh!" Yueming let out a long, drawn-out "Oh!" and glanced at the grandmother kneeling before her, a half-smile on her face: "This fourth young lady has climbed up to such a high position in the Tusi Mansion. It's truly a cause for celebration!"
The grandmother was horrified when she heard this. The mother-in-law deliberately spoke ambiguously. Yueming looked like she had nothing to do with her. She knelt there in a daze, not knowing how to respond.
Mrs. Tao's intentional ambiguity was to lead Yueming into the misconception that the Fourth Young Master and Yunkai were in a relationship. She then brought up her grandmother's and her mother's names in the family tree. She'd used this tactic to threaten the Second Young Master repeatedly, and it always worked. Yueming was Han Chinese, and Han Chinese people are very particular about these things. She was also young and easily fooled. If she approached the Second Young Master, not only would the Fourth Young Master's situation be averted, but she might even have the good fortune to enter the Tusi Mansion.
She coaxed him gently, "I know your fourth sister is being unfair to you by doing this, but you're still young and don't know the struggles between wives and concubines in wealthy families. Although your fourth sister did something wrong, it has its reasons. It's a good thing for you two sisters to enter the Tusi Mansion together so you can look after each other."
Yueming, with a look of "you're crazy, what nonsense are you talking about," interrupted Mrs. Tao: "What are you talking about, Madam? What do you mean by entering the Tusi Mansion together? It's your family's business if you want to let the fourth young lady enter the Tusi Mansion. Why do you have to involve me?"
Mrs. Tao was startled, thinking she had overheard the Fourth Young Lady's angry words about Yun Kai. She smiled and said, "It's all over the mansion. You and the Second Young Master are getting married soon. A girl should get married when she's old enough. What's there to be ashamed of? It's just that your status makes it difficult for you to be the legal wife. But if your Fourth Young Lady were to come into the mansion, what wouldn't be clear between you sisters?"
Yueming resolutely denied it and said sternly, "Madam, you must have misunderstood something. Although I attended a modern school, my family was very strict from a young age, and naturally, my father had to make the final decision on matters of marriage. Seeing a man with clean hair and a neat face, and then offering himself to him without even a thought of modesty, would be punishable by being thrown into a pig cage in our Han area. Do you know what being thrown into a pig cage is? It's when they put a person in a pig cage, press a stone on them, and sink them in a pond. And then they have to have the whole village come to see what happens to those who are unfaithful to their wives and have no sense of shame? And then the parents who didn't raise their daughters well would be whipped in the ancestral hall. It's utterly humiliating."
Mrs. Tao was so angry that her face turned pale. This sharp-tongued little bastard, when she was spoken to nicely, she actually blatantly ridiculed the daughter of the Tao family for having no manners and doing such immoral things.
The two protagonists of this incident, one is related to her by blood, and the other has feelings for her, but she doesn't buy into either of them and forcibly makes herself an outsider.
Mrs. Tao's face darkened. "So what do you want? Do you want your fourth sister to die?"
Yueming scoffed lightly, looking at Mrs. Tao with a puzzled expression. "Madam, why are you asking me this? This matter has nothing to do with me anyway. You should go and ask the Second Young Master for help! But I think that since the Fourth Young Lady has done such a thing, she might as well forget about it and go around making a fuss about it. I know a thing or two about the temper of Mrs. Yin of the Tusi Mansion. She is a very kind and fair person. If she hears about the absurd thing the Second Young Master did in Lishengmeng, whether she marries her or not, she will have to give the Fourth Young Lady an explanation."
If Lady Yin really knew about this, no one in the mansion would be alive.
Mrs. Tao couldn't stand it any longer. She sneered and used her trump card: "You keep talking about distancing yourself from the mansion. Since you don't care about blood ties at all, then your grandmother and your mother should be wiped out from the family tree."
Yueming shook her head in her heart, she couldn't hold on so soon, she thought she could hold on a little longer, it seems that the fighting ability of this famous Mrs. Tao is also average!
She looked surprised and said, "Marry the chicken and follow the chicken. Isn't my mother's name written in the Lan family's genealogy?"
"You..." Mrs. Tao gritted her teeth and sneered, "Since you are determined to clean up your relationship with the mansion, it seems that Ye Hu and Ai Ye don't need to follow you back to Yun Xiang."
Yueming almost wanted to sigh. Wanting to take back something she'd given away when she couldn't win an argument was something only a child would do. Besides, when it came to manipulating people, didn't she have the upper hand?
Ye Hu and Ai Ye fell to their knees after hearing what Mrs. Tao said. They were sweating profusely, thinking that their lives were over tonight. If Mrs. Tao couldn't control the young lady, wouldn't she use them as a raft?
Yueming turned her head away from the two maids' terrified expressions and muttered to herself, "So our caravan is so mean. We've been working for Lishengmeng for so long and can't even buy two maids. Forget it, let's not let them eat for free in Lishengmeng. When I leave, just come with me back to Yunxiang."
Mrs. Tao had not expected that the disturbance tonight would cause the family to lose the largest source of income. She was filled with rage, but dared not say anything.
Seeing that she was subdued like this, Yueming said with a smile: "Madam, I'm afraid you haven't figured out the current situation yet, but you are trying to force me. Your threats are useless, I never fall for them. After all, I'm just a guest at the chieftain's house, I can't be the master of the house. You guys take care of yourselves! But..." She changed the subject, the contempt in her eyes was undisguised: "I would rather suffer a loss than be offended. If I am offended, I will find someone to vent it on. Whether it's my father or the second young master, there are people who can help me vent my anger. I just don't know if the fourth young lady will be so lucky."
Whether these words were a warning or a threat, they hit Mrs. Tao right in the nick of time. She felt increasingly angry, but she refused to be controlled by a young girl.
Just as the two sides were locked in a stalemate, the Tao family's housekeeper arrived. He clasped his hands together, bowed respectfully to Mrs. Tao, and said, "Madam, I have a message for the master. He says you and the eldest grandmother should both return home. If you cause trouble again, I'll have a carriage sent to send the eldest grandmother back to her parents' home tomorrow. You should also pack up and go to the monastery to chant some sutras for the whole family to dispel the bad luck."
The grandmother really felt wronged. As soon as she came in, she was forced by her mother-in-law to kneel down in front of the little girl Yueming. She was busy watching her mother-in-law and Yueming arguing with each other and couldn't even get a word in. She had no time to cause trouble.
Mrs. Tao's face was gloomy. It seemed that Master Tao and Second Young Master Han had already made a decision about the Fourth Young Lady's matter.
It was all in vain tonight!
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