Yang Chengye noticed the look on his sister’s face and cried out in alarm, "Sister, you can’t go! That Lou Shiring is nothing but a beast in fine clothes. There’s no telling how many wicked deeds he’s done. Everyone knows what filthy intentions he has. Who knows how many women he’s ruined over the years? We can lose our fields, we can lose our home, but we cannot let you suffer such a humiliation!"
From her sickbed, Madam Yang also struggled to shake her head, tears streaming down her aged face. "Shuang’Er, no. You absolutely cannot agree to his demands. I would rather die than let you go..."
Yang Qiushuang walked slowly to her mother’s bedside and took her hand.
Her own hand was ice-cold, while her mother’s was burning with an unnatural, feverish heat.
She lowered her head, her gaze falling on her mother’s haggard face, her brother’s resentful expression and the scars on his cheek, her sister-in-law’s terrified eyes, and the bleak despair that filled the room. It was as if she could see just how difficult life had been for the Yang Family.
’If they hadn’t been pushed to the absolute limit, if my mother wasn’t on the verge of death, they never would have called me back.’
For someone as outwardly cold as her, a tempest was raging in her heart. Guilt and self-recrimination spread through her like a poison.
Decades of life in the Palace had taught her forbearance. It had taught her to lick her wounds in silence and to live with her head down.
But the bonds of kinship are etched into one’s very bones; they cannot be severed. This was especially true when her parents and family had treated her so well over the years.
She could choose to wither away in solitude, but she could not stand by and watch her family be dragged into a quagmire because of her—plunged into an abyss from which there was no escape.
She lifted her head. Her face remained placid and expressionless, but deep within her icy gaze, something shattered, and something else, far harder, began to form in its place.
Her voice was soft, yet exceptionally clear, tinged with a resolute chill. "Mother, rest assured. Brother, do not worry. This matter began because of me, so it is mine to end."
"Lan Xi, send a card to the Lou Mansion. Announce that the Eastern Palace Fifth Class Attendant of the Yang Clan will pay a visit tomorrow at 7:00 AM." She turned to her Palace Maid, her expression as cool and detached as ever.
"Your Ladyship!" Lan Xi cried out in alarm. Yang Chengye’s face was also etched with anxiety.
But Yang Qiushuang offered no further explanation. She only said to her brother, "Take good care of Mother and make sure she takes her medicine on time. Don’t worry about anything else. A starving camel is still bigger than a horse. Even if the Eastern Palace is in decline, it is not for the likes of the mere Lou Family to humiliate."
She turned and walked back to her maiden chambers, the room she had lived in before entering the Palace.
The room was just as she had left it and remarkably clean, a clear sign that it was tended to regularly.
She opened the small bundle she had brought with her. Inside, aside from a few changes of clothes, was a single, small, locked brocade box.
She took out the box and unlocked it with a key she kept on her person. There were no jewels inside, only a few simple, unremarkable items.
There was an old Eastern Palace Token, long since faded; an inexpensive Jade Hairpin the Crown Prince had casually gifted her years ago; and a small packet of sun-dried gardenia petals wrapped carefully in oil paper. The petals were from the first bloom of the gardenia bush in her courtyard—the one she had planted together with Xia Wuyang.
She picked up the Jade Hairpin, caressing it for a moment before gently setting it back down.
Then, she walked to her dressing table and stared into the Copper Mirror. Her face was as pale and expressionless as ever, but it was as if a fire now burned beneath a layer of ice.
’Go to the Lou Mansion? Of course, I must.’
’But not to apologize, and certainly not to submit to that animal’s vile desires. I am going to make him pay the price.’
She, Yang Qiushuang, was like her name—an autumn frost on the verge of fading away. And though the mountain she had once relied upon had crumbled, she still possessed her own chilling dignity. She would protect it, even at the cost of her life.
Some lines cannot be crossed. Some humiliations cannot be borne.
Because she was an Eastern Palace Fifth Class Attendant, one of the Crown Prince’s concubines!
She sat in silence, memories of her time with Xia Wuyang drifting through her mind as she waited for the dawn.
Outside the window, the autumn wind began to stir. It tore the last few yellow leaves from the old courtyard tree with a rustle that sounded like the whisper of armored cavalry, a low murmur of an army about to advance and devour all in its path.
The hundreds of unworn garments in Ningshuang Pavilion, the man she loved in Wenhua Hall who was now a stranger to her—in that instant, they all seemed impossibly far away. So distant, she could no longer even make out his silhouette.
In this moment, she was only a daughter of the Yang Family, a sister who had to step forward and protect her kin. ’It’s a shame,’ she thought, ’that I will no longer be able to sew garments for the Crown Prince.’
Night fell, silently blanketing the small, troubled manor on the outskirts of the city.
Within the Yang Mansion, the lights were dim. The scents of medicine and sorrow mingled in the air. Almost no one slept.
And deep within the Eastern Palace, no one knew that a storm born of old grudges and cruel opportunism was slowly pushing Fifth Class Attendant Yang—the woman as cold as frost who had kept a silent vigil for decades—toward her final destination.
Tonight, there was no moon.
A layer of ink-black clouds pressed low over White Jade City, suffocating even the faintest glimmer of starlight.
On the western outskirts of the city, the country road that had been bustling during the day now lay submerged in a deathly silence.
The wind swept across the fields, carrying the heavy scent of ripe grain and a bone-deep chill. It rustled the withered grass and dead leaves by the roadside, a sound like the scuttling of countless tiny feet, as if something was hidden in the dark, adding to the eerie atmosphere.
Within the Yang Family Residence at Yang Family Manor, the lamplight was faint and dim.
Yang Qiushuang sat alone in her old maiden chamber. She had not lit a lamp, and had no idea how long she had been sitting there in the dark.
The faint light filtering through the window barely sketched the outline of her straight, slender back, a desolate and lonely sight.
On the old mahogany dressing table before her, a plain white handkerchief was spread out. Resting upon it was a silver hairpin, sharpened to a wicked point. It had been part of her mother’s dowry.
The tiny pearl that had once adorned its head was long gone, leaving only a sharp metal point that glinted coldly. In the gloom, it looked like a silent, frozen star, poised to plunge into an enemy’s heart.
Her long, pale fingers wiped the shaft of the hairpin again and again. The movements were extremely slow, extremely forceful, as if she was determined not to miss a single spot.
Her actions were mechanical, imbued with an almost cruel focus, as though she were polishing all of her hatred into the metal itself, preparing it for a single, fatal strike.
The cold sensation from her fingertips spread through her veins, threatening to freeze her solid.
The icy rage, the humiliation, the despair she had suppressed all day now fermented in the solitary darkness, simmering until it threatened to shatter her cold facade.
’Tomorrow. 7:00 AM!’
The words ground over and over in her mind. She knew what stepping into the Lou Mansion meant. Lou Shiring’s fat face, a mask of greed and depravity, already felt suffocatingly close, its nauseating presence threatening to swallow her whole.
She could even imagine the smug, hypocritical tone he would use, the way his filthy eyes would rake over her body, and the even more despicable acts that would follow.

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