One look at their comrade cartwheeling through the air, and the rest of them visibly lost their nerve.
They bunched together, eying Yu An, running the arithmetic—could this many of them take one woman down? The male Alpha at their head released his pheromones and coiled to strike—and a needle of pain lanced the back of his neck. His strength poured out of him like water, his legs folded without his permission, and he went down in a heap.
The rest did worse. Some simply poured onto the ground where they stood.
Yu An, poised for battle, stared at the pile of groaning men and felt pure bafflement—until the original’s memories surfaced with the answer.
There was no rigid ladder among Alpha, no strict ranks. But a Alpha whose pheromones ran strong could crush another’s outright.
Oh. Well then. She let out her breath. If it hadn’t been pheromone suppression, she’d have been about to do this the hard way—she’d genuinely just been calculating whether she could fell the whole lot of them. They’d saved her a lot of bruises.
Certain they were done causing trouble, she lowered her hands and asked Liu Huaixu, gently: “Are you hurt?”
Liu Huaixu was visibly, badly shaken. Days ago Yu An had watched her fence rings around Butcher Li, cool as winter. Now a handful of Alpha had knocked her sideways.
Yu An marveled despite herself.
Truly, every craftsman has his own trade.
In wits she’d never out-argue Liu Huaixu. But in hands and feet—she could stand in front of her.
The question pulled Liu Huaixu back from wherever she’d gone. She stared at Yu An, fixed and unblinking, and it took her a long moment to say: “I’m fine.”
She looked, in every particular, like someone who was not fine. A hot prick of regret went through Yu An—how had I left her alone in a crowd like that? This society made Omega the weak party by design; a lone Omega surrounded by that many Alpha—of course they’d smelled opportunity.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you standing here alone.” The market was too thick with people. Short of keeping Liu Huaixu welded to her side, she would never relax. Brow furrowed, she made a private ruling: tomorrow, Liu Huaixu stayed home.
“I’m fine.” But Liu Huaixu’s voice trembled on the landing. She had been terrified, truly—if Yu An had come back a few breaths later…
The rest doesn’t bear thinking about.
Yu An shielding her like that—it would be a lie to say it hadn’t moved her. But one moment of shelter didn’t rewrite years of evidence.
“I asked while I was over there. Selling at the market takes a stall fee—ten wen a day.”
Their poor fields yielded a bit over one dan to the mu—nearly half again less than a good family’s land. But while milling, Yu An had noticed something: the quality fell short of nobody’s.
Sold in bulk to the merchants, a dan of rice fetched about three hundred wen. But she’d checked the market boards: fifty wen the dou, ten dou to a dan. Five hundred wen.
The tax ran two dou to the mu—call it three dan of grain in all—and after the two of them ate for a year, what remained to sell came to roughly ten dan. Five taels of silver.
She laid the figures out for Liu Huaixu, and even Liu Huaixu blinked. The merchants’ buying prices ran low, and their own harvest came in worse than most—after taxes and their own bowls, three taels was the historical ceiling.
And now, suddenly, there were two taels more.
Liu Huaixu looked Yu An up and down. Her expression seemed… excited? And somehow, shy?
“Heh. Could you—could you lend me ten wen first?” Yu An rubbed her hands together, a little stiff. The fields belonged to the Yu Family on paper—but wearing the original owner’s spendthrift reputation, she didn’t feel entitled to demand money with a straight face.
These years had cost Liu Huaixu enough.
“Here.”
Liu Huaixu counted out ten wen, expecting Yu An to trot straight off to pay the fee. Yu An took the money—and didn’t move.
“Is it short?” Liu Huaixu asked, puzzled.
“No, no—it’s just, the fee office is a bit of a walk, and I don’t love leaving you here alone. Come with me?”
After today’s fright, Yu An was properly spooked. New rule, effective immediately: for the rest of this day, Liu Huaixu did not leave her sight.
Fee paid, they found a clear patch and set out the rice.
Half the market had seen the earlier commotion, so no one objected to the newcomers—just a few lingering, curious looks at Yu An.
Beside a female Alpha, her build was ordinary. Beside a male Alpha, frankly slight. And this slight person had just dropped four or five male Alpha like sacks of grain. Curiosity was inevitable.
But curiosity stopped at staring. Nobody came to chat. Everyone had their own rice to move.
Markets ran about a morning. The two of them, ignorant of the hours, had come late, and those Alpha had eaten more of the clock—and barely had the rice spread before the closing call went round.
Even so, Yu An was delighted with the day.
Of her three dan, nearly half had sold—and after the stall fee and the cost of a set of scale weights, she’d cleared a full seven hundred and sixty wen.
The walk home, coins in hand, was the sweetest walk of her new life.
Home, Liu Huaixu went to the stove; Yu An sacked up tomorrow’s rice. First day’s selling had been a blur of unknowns—tomorrow she’d leave at dawn and buy herself every extra hour.
By the time she’d finished, so had dinner.
Liu Huaixu had noticed, days ago, how Yu An’s eyes went to the pickled-vegetable pork—and had set aside a portion of the meat just for tonight. As predicted, Yu An lit up like a lamp at first sight of it, and even managed an extra bowl of rice.
She ate faster than usual, too. When she was scraping the last of her bowl, Liu Huaixu still had half of hers left.
Yu An shoveled down the final mouthful and announced: “You don’t need to come tomorrow. The market’s too crowded. It’s not safe.”
She wasn’t the only one who thought so—Liu Huaixu’s own nerves hadn’t fully settled either; left to herself she’d have sooner not gone again.
She’d come today because she hadn’t trusted Yu An out there alone.
Plainly put: she hadn’t trusted her. But a full day side by side had bought back a surprising amount.
Liu Huaixu nodded, set down her bowl, and said: “When the rice is all sold, repay Second Grandmother what you owe.”
“And the rest—goes to you?”
Liu Huaixu went still. That had been her thinking—she simply hadn’t dared assume Yu An would agree, so she’d swallowed it.
Any other year, that money would have sat in her hands by right. But this year the harvest, the hauling, the milling, the selling—most of the sweat on it was Yu An’s. She had no claim to direct it. So she’d said nothing at all.
And now Yu An had said it for her.
Yu An read the hesitation at a glance—and honestly, the silver didn’t move her much either way. As long as there was food in her bowl and cloth on her back, whose hand held the purse barely mattered.
So she thought a moment, and said: “When it’s all sold, I’ll give you all of it. Every coin.”
Liu Huaixu’s fingers tightened around her bowl. She looked at Yu An for a long, unguarded moment—and found herself, absurdly, the embarrassed one. “You could… keep a little for yourself.”
Yu An’s hands flew up, waving it off. “No, no—you keep it. All of it.”
