"Oh my, Mr. Dong's second daughter! You really do grow prettier by the day."
"Mr. Dong's second daughter-I even held you when you were little."
"Miss Liangyu, you really should come out more often. Your neighbors have almost forgotten what you look like."
Throughout the streets and alleys, wrinkled old spinsters cackled, greasy men slapped their exposed bellies and chuckled, and peddlers carrying shoulder poles grinned. All manner of humans and demons kept greeting Dong Liangyu.
Even the cat arching its back on a windowsill seemed to meow at her.
A large centipede scrambling over the tiled eaves abandoned the shade, too. The bustle in the street seemed to stir it into a flustered hurry.
Dong Liangyu remained reserved and polite along the way. However much refinement she had absorbed from books, her smile grew somewhat strained when confronted with reality.
Fan Wuzhe seemed to notice her discomfort. Taking advantage of a lull in the overlapping chatter, he said quietly, "Is all this attention becoming a little overwhelming? Shall we head back to the library?"
Dong Liangyu could not have wished for anything better. She murmured her assent. "Whatever you think best, Cousin."
There was a distinctly yielding air to her words.
Before she had said those strange things to Shi Chun yesterday, her father had summoned her for a talk about her marriage to Fan Wuzhe.
Unlike their previous talks, this time she had ultimately failed to stand her ground against her father.
Having read so many books, she deeply accepted the principle that marriage was a matter of parental command and a matchmaker's arrangement.
She also knew her father would never harm her and surely meant only the best for her. As a mere mortal in the Cultivation World, if she entrusted herself to the wrong man, she