The question of whether or not to become a female official ultimately boiled down to when the money would be repaid. Shen Yuezhuang stopped worrying entirely.
Fifty thousand taels was no small sum. Knowing her grandfather, no matter whether the Huo family could produce that sum immediately, he would only hand it over on the very last day.
And Great Liang’s first prospective female official had been locked up in the palace for three days. Now that she was hiding from her own father at her grandfather’s house, she couldn’t sit still either.
After eating and drinking her fill, Shen Yuezhuang left the mansion to find some amusement.
In the old days, when Shen Yuezhuang went looking for fun, besides Chun Rui and her Eight Great Guards, Shen Qingjue often followed along. It was always a big, boisterous crowd.
Now, she found it boring to play alone and couldn’t go home for the time being. So she ordered the carriage to Yongle Lane in the East City—she remembered Sister Pei had said A Sang was living there.
Yongle Lane was neither long nor short, housing a dozen or so families, around a hundred people. Shen Yuezhuang didn’t know which house she lived in, so she told the driver to take the carriage slowly while she called out from inside, all the way from the head of the lane to the end.
This area was fairly well-to-do. Every family kept chickens, ducks, geese, and dogs.
Every time Shen Yuezhuang called out, it prompted the dogs of each household to crouch by the gate, baring their teeth and barking in response.
Shen Yuezhuang, completely oblivious to the threat, cheerfully broke off pieces of the pastries she’d brought and tossed them to the dogs.
“A Sang~ Here, here, here, here.”
.
In a courtyard at the end of the lane, a woman dressed in indigo tight-fitting clothes was wielding a long spear that towered over her, whirling it with the force of a tiger and the roar of a dragon.
After finishing a set of spear techniques, the woman panted slightly. She wiped the sweat from her brow and casually rested her arm on a wooden stump under a tree to catch her breath.
The commotion outside was loud—every dog on the lane was barking, along with chickens, ducks, and geese, all clucking, quacking, and honking. Amidst the noise was a barely perceptible human voice…
The voice was unfamiliar, but A Sang vaguely heard her own name. She went out to look and saw an extremely low-key carriage, followed, in an extremely low-key manner, by every chicken, duck, goose, and dog on the lane.
A head and half an arm protruded from the carriage. The hand held a half-eaten piece of pastry.
“A Sang! Here, here, here, here.”
The pastry was tossed into the chaos behind, triggering another round of frantic barking and squawking.
A Sang really hoped this person wasn’t looking for her. But she had already seen the Pei family marking on the carriage, so the identity of this person was obvious.
“Miss Shen?”
Shen Yuezhuang turned her head.
A Sang recognized the face and confirmed her guess.
Shen Yuezhuang’s appearance hadn’t changed much in ten years. Her eyes were always clear and bright, like a lake shimmering under sunlight.
Her eyes were large, but when she smiled, they always curved into crescent moons, with slightly uptilted corners, giving her the look of a fox—the friendly, fluffy sort with sharp claws but no real threat.
She recognized Shen Yuezhuang at once. But Shen Yuezhuang, however, hesitated as she looked at the woman before her.
Her gaze swept up and down, appraising the straight-backed person in front of her. She asked, half-convinced, “You’re A Sang?”
Shen Yuezhuang was pretty good with faces. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have recognized Pei Shangyu, whom she hadn’t seen in ten years, by just a silhouette from so far away.
But A Sang’s transformation was astonishing. When the Pei family left the capital, A Sang had been thin and small, like a little bean sprout. Now, in the blink of an eye…
She watched A Sang approach with the long spear in hand, and only then did she see traces of the little girl she used to be in A Sang’s slightly bashful expression.
A Sang clasped her fists in salute. “Miss Shen.”
Seeing that she was no longer the weak, tiny thing she used to be, Shen Yuezhuang broke into a grin. She tossed the last piece of pastry away, brushed the crumbs off her hands, and said, “Hey, no need for all that formality. I saw Sister Pei in the palace. She said you couldn’t enter the palace and were living here alone?”
Shen Yuezhuang had to shout to be heard over the barking, straining so hard the veins stood out on her neck.
A Sang also stepped forward half a step and shouted back, “Yes. The house next to the Shen mansion was sold. Besides, my mistress is in the palace now. I live alone, so I don’t need such a big house!”
“Huh? Don’t need what?”
“The house!”
“Oh, right, right!” Shen Yuezhuang still hadn’t caught a single word. She nodded along. “Enough of that. Come on up. You haven’t been to the capital in a long time. I’ll take you out for some fun!”
.
The carriage stopped at a teahouse. Shen Yuezhuang lifted the curtain and asked the waiter who came up, “Who’s the storyteller this afternoon?”
The waiter replied it was Mr. Chen. Shen Yuezhuang muttered, “That might be interesting,” then got off the carriage and took A Sang to a private room on the second floor.
A Sang had been here over a decade ago. Back then, she’d come with her mistress and that Miss Shen’s Miss Liu. The storyteller had performed a tale from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. It was terrifying!
She had been the only one of the four present who was scared—so scared, in fact, that she hadn’t dared to go to the privy alone for a long time. After that, whenever Miss Shen proposed going to listen to stories, she never went.
Now that Miss Shen was taking her to hear a story, A Sang agreed without a second thought!
Times had changed. She was determined to salvage some of her dignity in front of Shen Yuezhuang. Besides…
A Sang glanced out the window. It was now almost two in the afternoon—broad daylight. She wasn’t afraid!
The two sat in the second-floor room facing the storyteller’s stage. The waiter brought two pots of tea and several plates of pastries.
When A Sang mentioned she hadn’t eaten, Shen Yuezhuang also ordered a bowl of braised noodles from the shop next door.
“The noodles will take a while. Have some pastries to tide you over.”
The storyteller hadn’t come on yet. The hall below was noisy and bustling. Waiters wove through the customers refilling tea. Shen Yuezhuang slumped bonelessly in her chair, watching A Sang look around. Something occurred to her. “By the way, what are teahouses like in Yongzhou? I heard you all don’t often listen to storytelling there, but mostly sing little ditties and tunes?”
A Sang had just taken a bite of pastry. At the question, she swallowed hastily and answered obediently, “I wouldn’t know. My mistress never goes to places like that.”
Shen Yuezhuang sighed. “That’s a shame. I always hear that the ditties of Yongzhou are soft and winding. It’s understandable for me, stuck in the capital. But I didn’t think Sister Pei would miss out on such pleasure even in Yongzhou.”
A Sang took another bite of her pastry and didn’t respond.
She wasn’t the outgoing, familiar type like Shen Yuezhuang. Besides, she had been too young when she left the capital. Her memory of Shen Yuezhuang was only of her smiling brightly and uninhibitedly amidst the crowds at the teahouse.
She knew that her mistress and Shen Yuezhuang had exchanged letters regularly over the years. But that was their friendship. Between her and Shen Yuezhuang, they were at best strangers who knew each other’s names and existence.
And now, she was listening to stories in the teahouse while Shen Yuezhuang sat aloft on the second floor—not that being on the second floor made her unapproachable, but A Sang was stubbornly, almost obsessively aware of the gap. Everything about the present scene didn’t match her memories, making it hard for her to feel any familiarity with Shen Yuezhuang.
A Sang had come out with this unfamiliar Shen Yuezhuang mainly to find out how her mistress was doing in the palace.
But she couldn’t bring herself to ask directly.
Miss Shen had only been in the palace a few days before being kicked out. It was obvious she had no hope of being chosen as a consort. If she asked about her mistress now, wouldn’t that be rubbing salt in the wound?
Besides, Miss Shen lived in the capital, yet she had called on her, a virtual stranger, to come along. That must mean she was in a bad mood and didn’t want to be seen by people she knew. A Sang only hoped to keep her company until she felt better, and then—then—she could ask about her mistress.
A Sang projected her mistress’s behavior onto Shen Yuezhuang. The more she watched, the more she felt Shen Yuezhuang was in low spirits. Then, an elderly man with graying temples sat down at the stage.
A single slap of the gavel, and silence fell. Shen Yuezhuang immediately sat up straight and leaned toward the edge of the balcony, a handful of melon seeds in her hand, looking thrilled.
“Last time, we spoke of how that Young Master Jiang, to break off his engagement with Miss Sheng, jumped into the moat in the dead of winter. But the river was frozen, and the young master didn’t drown—he nearly cracked his head open instead.”
“Seeing that the marriage had turned into a disaster, both families had to call it off. And that brings us to the hero of today’s story: this Second Young Master Zhao!”
“This Second Young Master Zhao’s ancestors were once illustrious. He and Miss Sheng were considered…”
A Sang had initially thought this was going to be some story about the walking dead, lonely ghosts, wild foxes, or immortals. But after listening for a while, she began to sense something was off.
This Miss Sheng in the story—her behavior, her life experiences… why did she seem so much like Miss Shen?
Her mistress had told her that Miss Shen’s marriage prospects were unlucky. Every young master she had been matched with had ended up trying to kill himself. That was why she had remained unmarried. But her mistress hadn’t gone into details about exactly how they tried to kill themselves, and A Sang didn’t know.
But honestly… would anyone listen to their own gossip with such enthusiasm?
The storyteller was skilled. He made the tale gripping, and soon it reached the climax—Miss Sheng confronting that Second Young Master Zhao at a brothel.
A Sang couldn’t hide her thoughts. “Miss Shen… could this be about…”
“Me!” Shen Yuezhuang’s attention was entirely on the storyteller. She was practically leaning halfway out of her seat.
“Mr. Chen tells it well. But the first three or four times, he just repeats himself. If you want to know what happens next…” She leaned closer to A Sang. “I have the script at home. I’ll lend it to you later!”
A Sang: “……”
Not that—why did she need to hear other people tell her story? And especially stuff about calling off engagements!
A Sang couldn’t understand. “Aren’t you angry that they’re talking about you like this, Miss Shen?”
“Why would I be angry about that?”
“This is ruining your reputation!”
A woman’s reputation was of utmost importance!
A Sang was furious. With a bang, she kicked over the stool behind her, grabbed a pair of chopsticks from the table, and started to leave. “I’ll take care of these loose-tongued people for you, Miss Shen!”
“Don’t! Calm down!” Shen Yuezhuang didn’t even have time to hold her melon seeds. She hurriedly grabbed A Sang. “My reputation has been ruined for ages. I don’t need one more story script to make a difference!”
A flash of thought crossed A Sang’s face. She paused, then seemed to come to a decision. “Miss Shen and my mistress are like sisters. I, A Sang, am willing to repay this debt with my life!”
She clasped her fists, a fierce murderous intent flashing in her eyes. “From now on, while I’m in the capital, if anyone dares to speak ill of my mistress, I will teach them a proper lesson! And today, we’ll start with this old man here!”
Shen Yuezhuang gasped, her pupils contracting to pinpricks.
“So… you’re going to commit mass slaughter?”
