Chapter 66
As soon as Mrs. Tao left, Ye Hu and Ai Ye, who had been kneeling on the ground for half a day, collapsed to the ground. Ai Ye said to Yue Ming with tears in her eyes, "Goddess, I thought I was going to die tonight."
Ye Hu didn't cry, but his arms, which were supporting the floor, were shaking slightly.
Seeing the two maids so frightened, Yueming covered her mouth and laughed, "Look at your little achievements, what's there to be afraid of? She got her brain stuck in the door and came to me to cause trouble. Master is very clear-headed, would he let her do whatever she wants?"
Ye Hu smiled bitterly in her heart, thinking that the young lady was too naive. As slaves, their lives were worthless. If the mistress got angry and beat her and her elder sister to death in front of the young lady tonight, what could the young lady do?
Yueming stretched and complained, "Mrs. Tao didn't even pick a good time to come and make trouble. I have to wash and do my hair all over again in the middle of the night. I'm so sleepy."
Ye Hu and Ai Ye quickly got up from the ground and helped her to rest. After pulling the tent, Ye Hu asked her sister to go back to her room to sleep. She hugged the quilt and slept on the footstool in front of Yueming's bed.
Yueming told her not to do it, saying how could she sleep when it was so hard? She spread the quilt over the footstool, half as a cushion and half as a cover, and then lay down on it.
Moonlight shone in through the window sill. Yueming looked at the bulging mass under his feet in the dim light and suddenly asked softly, "Were you really afraid that I would control you just now?"
The room was silent. Just when she thought Ye Hu was asleep and hadn't heard anything, Ye Hu suddenly spoke: "We slaves have never had any control over our own lives. Even if you really return us to the mansion tonight, it is our fate."
Yueming rested his head on his palms and sighed, "You haven't been with me long, so I don't blame you for not trusting me. But you must remember, as long as you are mine, I won't let anyone else squeeze you like a rice ball. I know you're afraid of my wife, but I don't understand. Han Yunkai is clearly a difficult person to deal with. My wife is nothing to him. Why don't you fear him as much as you fear my wife?"
Ye Hu thought to himself, aren’t you here?
"The Second Young Master is reasonable, but Madam..."
Yueming understood immediately, yawned and said, "Let's go to sleep. We have to go and comfort the second young master who was molested early tomorrow morning!" After saying that, he found it funny and covered his mouth with his hands and burst out laughing.
After breakfast in the morning, Yun Kai asked Feng Xiaosai to pack his luggage. He sat in a chair in a daze, looking unhappy.
Feng Xiaosai felt uneasy being stared at by his lifeless eyes and suggested, "It's going to be a mess to clean up. Why don't you go see Miss Yueming?"
Yun Kai crossed his legs and rested his chin on his head, saying listlessly, "I'm not going. That heartless woman must have known I was scared last night. She should have come to see me. I'm not going."
As soon as he finished speaking, Yueming's voice came from the door: "I'm here, aren't I?"
Yunkai looked up and saw Yueming standing at the door with her eyes narrowed in laughter. Seeing her coming, Yunkai sat still, rolled his eyes at her, and turned his head away without looking at her.
Oh, you're still angry! Yueming raised an eyebrow and asked Feng Xiaosai to leave.
Feng Xiaosai glanced at Yunkai and seeing that the young master didn't say a word, he probably agreed. He bowed and left the room.
As soon as he left, Yueming sat on Yunkai's lap, put her arms around his neck and asked delicately, "Abby, what's wrong? Were you bewitched by that vixen from last night?"
Yunkai, unlike his usual clingy self, lightly swept her off his legs. Yueming wasn't angry either, and sat down again, raised an eyebrow, and asked, "Who are you targeting?"
Yun Kai was furious, even angrier than when the Fourth Young Lady groped him last night. He'd done everything he could to give Li Sheng a good beating after last night's incident, all for her. He wanted to be her hero, to make her proud, to have her admiring him. Instead, she acted like a spectator, grinning and playful, sending a surge of inexplicable rage through him.
He gave up chasing her because he couldn't chase her anymore. He clamped her chin fiercely and asked with gritted teeth, "Do you care about me?" His face was ferocious, but his hoarse voice revealed a hint of uncertainty.
Yueming's mouth was pinched into a little chicken by him. In the past, if he dared to do this, she would have scratched his face. But she knew that if she could appease this man now, she and her father would no longer have to worry about Yunxiang.
She buried her head in the crook of his neck and whispered shyly in his ear, "Abby, Gu Harmon (I love you)."
Yunkai was stunned. He grasped Yueming's shoulders uncertainly, forcing her to stop hiding her face. He stared at her intently, "Say it again." Yueming couldn't pronounce words with her tongue, and her words always sounded stiff. He wasn't sure if Yueming had just been talking about Gu Harmon, or if she had seen something strange on her way here, and was talking about dogs and cats.
Yueming's face flushed, and she bit her lip and glanced at him. In his expectation, she whispered again, "Abby, Gu Harmon."
Yun Kai was ecstatic. He pressed his forehead against hers and whispered to her lips, "Say it again."
"Oh!" Yueming covered her face with her hands and said shyly, "It's so corny if I talk about this too much!"
Yun Kai pulled her masked hands away, held her in his arms, kissed her delicate cheek, and murmured, "You think it's corny! Then why did you come to tell me?"
Yueming said innocently, "I can't help it, you like to hear it!"
Yun Kai lifted her chin, looked at the red lotus-like little mouth on her snow-white face, and said dreamily, "Yes, I love to hear it. You should say it more often in the future."
Seeing that his lips were about to press against hers again, Yueming stretched out her small hand to block them, pouting and saying, "I know you were wronged last night. I came here early this morning to say nice things to comfort you, but you didn't even ask me if I was wronged last night."
Yunkai woke up from her rosy mist and looked at Yueming, who had an expression that said, "You're going to get justice for me." He released his arm from her slender waist, leaned lazily against the back of his chair, and said nonchalantly, "You've been wronged?! I'm afraid Mrs. Tao has been wronged even more. You scolded her so badly last night, and she's still kneeling in front of the shrine this morning!"
Yueming learned a crucial trick from her confrontation with the Third Wife: to keep to herself and remain constant in the face of change. If you talk to me about reason, I will talk to you about feelings; if you talk to me about feelings, I will talk to you about reason.
Yun Kai was clearly trying to reason with her, but she leaned against his chest, feeling aggrieved, and played the emotional card with him. "Last night, Madam Tao and the eldest young mistress stormed into my yard, threatening to rip you off with the fourth young lady. Of course I didn't believe it, and I had to scold her for slandering you like that!"
Yun Kai raised his eyebrows playfully: "You really don't believe it? She barged in while I was showering, and you just trust me so much, without any other thoughts?"
Of course you have, and you've come to this day! But you must never let him know this.
Yueming said in a gentle voice, trusting him wholeheartedly, "No matter what others say about you, I will only believe what you say. As long as you say it's not true, then I will only believe you. Mrs. Tao is an outsider. Even if she swears and says something to the sky, I won't believe a single word she says."
Yunkai felt that Yueming had changed after coming to Lishengmeng. She would never coax him like this before.
Although his heart was deeply moved by her words, his expression remained indifferent: "Oh!" It was no wonder that he was like this. He had suffered too many times. Her sweet words were followed by a long list of troubles.
Yueming pushed him unwillingly: "What do you mean by oh?"
Yun Kai looked at her with a half-smile: "I was wondering what Old Man Tao said to you when you went to see him this morning? Why did he tell you to act like a spoiled child with me the moment you walked in?"
Yueming's eyes widened. He had just said that Mrs. Tao had been scolded by him, and she had thought that the incident last night had spread throughout the Tao family. But he still knew that he had gone to see Grandpa in the morning.
Yueming frowned and said dissatisfiedly: "Are you monitoring me?"
Yun Kai said angrily, "Why am I monitoring you? I saw that there aren't many well-behaved people in the Tao Mansion, and I was afraid that someone would sneak into your room in the dark, so I sent someone to protect you in secret!"
Yueming asked curiously, "Standing guard at my door? I didn't see him when I left!"
Yun Kai rolled his eyes at her and said, "Why are you so stupid? I said I was protecting you in secret, so how could I possibly let you see it?"
No, if they continued talking about this topic, they would probably start fighting again. Yueming put on a delicate look and said aggrievedly, "Did they tell you how Mrs. Tao framed you, and did they tell you how I refuted her with reason and evidence?"
The question is asked as if you are taking credit for it.
Yun Kai kissed her hard on the forehead and praised her casually: "Well done, here's your reward."
Yueming touched her forehead and cried softly, "I don't want this?"
Yun Kai approached dangerously, and said in an ambiguous tone: "If you don't want this, what do you want?"
Yueming grabbed the collar of his clothes and threatened to get off, "If you keep doing this, I'm leaving!"
Yunkai sneered with a look of "whatever you want" on his face.
Why is he so difficult to coax today? Yueming decided to give up the soft approach and just act tough. She grabbed his collar with both hands and said arrogantly, "I don't care. They pissed me off last night. I was so angry that I couldn't sleep all night. You have to help me vent my anger."
Yun Kai said slowly: "I know that your tenderness and kindness are not in vain. If you don't tell me what Old Man Tao and I are plotting, then I won't agree to anything you say."
Yueming looked aggrieved. "I just gave him some American ginseng, red ginseng, and other tonics this morning, and he didn't even pay any attention to me. What could he be plotting?"
Yun Kai raised his eyebrows in suspicion: "Really?"
Yueming raised three fingers and swore, "Really."
Yueming had originally wanted to find Yunkai as soon as she woke up this morning, intending to take advantage of Yunkai's anger to complain about Mrs. Tao, and she was sure that she would succeed.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he pondered his words, figuring out when to act coquettishly and when to shed tears. Suddenly, a question occurred to him: what would the effect of complaining? Would he just let Han Yunkai scold Mrs. Tao again? Would that be as satisfying as scolding her himself?
Since Mrs. Tao had put the evidence right under her nose, wouldn't it be stupid for her not to make good use of it?
He immediately changed his clothes and took out the herbs from the box, and asked Ye Hu and Ai Ye to lead him to find Tao Tou Ren. He went to the main courtyard but found nothing there. After paying the gatekeeper some money, he learned that Tao Tou Ren went to the lotus pond to feed the fish every morning.
Fortunately, Ye Hu and Ai Ye remembered the terrain of the mansion and walked around to the lotus pond in the back garden. From a distance, they saw Tao Tou Ren holding a small white porcelain bowl, pinching fish food from the bowl and throwing it into the pond, with the housekeeper serving on the side.
Yueming asked Yehu and Ai Ye to wait at the intersection. She carried the cloth bag containing the medicinal herbs and walked along the cobblestone path to the lotus pond.
When she was about ten feet away from the pottery headman, she stopped and called out, "Grandpa."
Taotouren turned around as if he was not surprised to see her. He did not respond to Yueming's greeting, but simply told the butler, "Wait outside."
The housekeeper replied with a "yes," bowed to Yueming, and left. He ran into Ye Hu and Ai Ye at the intersection and said with a smile, "You two are so lucky! I heard you're doing so well in the Tusi Mansion!"
Ye Hu and Ai Ye quickly bowed to him and said in gratitude, "This is all thanks to you. It's all thanks to you that you chose us sisters to serve the young lady. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to live the life we have today."
The three of them exchanged pleasantries for a while. The housekeeper noticed that the two of them were absent-mindedly glancing at the grandfather and grandson by the lotus pond, and said with a smile, "Just rest assured, nothing will happen."
Yueming saw that Taotouren had dismissed the housekeeper and was now feeding the fish without paying any attention to her. She stepped forward, raised the cloth bag with both hands and presented it to Taotouren, saying in a crisp voice, "Grandpa, this is something I prepared especially for you."
Taotou stopped feeding her and turned to face her. He looked at the girl in front of him with complicated eyes. This child looked exactly like his Mannu. The moment she got off the carriage, he also felt vaguely that it was Mannu who had returned.
Yueming handed the cloth bag forward again. "Grandpa, these contain sliced American ginseng and red ginseng. American ginseng replenishes Qi without causing excessive heat. You can take one slice every day. Red ginseng calms the mind and nourishes the brain. If you have trouble sleeping at night, ask the servants to bring you a few slices to make chicken soup. Don't worry, I have plenty of these at home. I'll bring more to you when you're done."
This childish display of wealth amused Taotouren. He took the cloth bag, glanced at it, and said calmly, "You're so thoughtful."
This was her mother's father, her grandfather, and as much a relative as her uncle. Yueming felt like crying for some reason. He appeared cold to her, but in reality, he cared deeply for her. He scolded her father harshly, but when he knew she had been wronged by Yunxiang, he immediately sent someone to take care of her and even gave the Third Wife's family a good beating. Thinking of this, her earlier sinister thoughts vanished without a trace.
With red eyes and a choked voice, she said to Taotouren, "Grandpa, you must take good care of yourself. I will come to see you when I am free. If you go to Yunxiang, can you also come to see me?"
Looking at her expectant eyes, Tao Tou Ren nodded involuntarily.
Yueming wiped his eyes with his sleeve, sniffed, and said, "Then Grandpa, I'm leaving!"
The Taotou man held the fish food and the cloth bag and nodded at her: "Go!"
Yueming turned around and walked a few steps, then turned back and said to him, "Grandpa, don't worry about the fourth young lady. I will plead with the eldest young master and Han Yunkai. I promise that she will be fine." After that, she trotted away.
Looking at the girl's hurried back, Taotouren couldn't help but laugh: "It's true that Lan Yingde is cunning and his daughter is no less cunning!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
