Xia Qingping's face was deathly pale. He took two steps forward, then stopped, while Jiang Lan's tears streamed down her face and she rushed over with a cry of "Old man!"
Once the dead were gone, grudges vanished with them. Mother stared blankly at everything unfolding before her. The fury that had filled her eyes finally settled in that moment.
In Xia Yunxuan's dying words, he had said nothing—and yet he had said everything. He had said that Xia Qingping was more seasoned than he was at scheming, while I was even more ruthless than Xia Qingping. Perhaps he felt that some greater secret lay hidden within all this, but he had not revealed it. After all, as long as the Xia Household had not fallen, that alone counted as success to him.
I looked at Xia Qingping, my heart a tangled mess of emotions. Was anyone in the Xia Household simple? Ginger grew hotter with age, after all. Did that mean Xia Qingping was a fool? No, clearly not. As things stood, he was the only one who had ultimately benefited. No one else in the entire Xia Household had gained anything, nor had anyone lost what they should have had. They had merely changed masters.
But I had been born into the Xia Household. Was I supposed to kill everyone in it? Or sever the Xia family line? Of course I could not. Right or wrong, wherever I went afterward, whoever saw me would point at my back and call me an unfilial wretch.
Besides, not everyone in the Xia Household was bad. Jiang Lan, the steward Xia Ming, and Xia Yi, for example—they were all good people. Where would I find the heart to kill them?
"Xia Haofei, Xia Yulian, Xia Haoyu, Xia... Those whose names I