Liu Niang lowered her eyes with a smile, then turned to fetch the pastries.
"Sit down first, Wanwan. I'll get you some freshly steamed Osmanthus Rice Cake. It was your favorite when you were little."
Su Wanwan's eyes stung, and she obediently sat down.
The rice cakes had been shaped into little rabbits, round and plump with pointed ears, charmingly innocent.
She picked one up and took a gentle bite. The familiar sweetness melted on her tongue, and the tears shimmering in her eyes nearly spilled again.
"It still tastes the same."
Liu Niang sat beside her and smiled. "You were such a tiny little thing back then, following me around every day. Whenever you smelled rice cakes, you'd stare at them so longingly. If I didn't give you any, you looked as though you'd suffered the greatest injustice in the world."
Ye Tianchen found this amusing. "Little Sister Wanwan was that adorable as a child?"
Su Wanwan's cheeks flushed faintly. She lowered her eyes, her voice softening.
"I was sold to a brothel back then. I was too young to do anything. If you hadn't protected me all along, Sister, I never would have met my master."
At those words, the smile on Ye Tianchen's face faltered for an almost imperceptible instant.
A brothel?
Previously, he had only known that Su Wanwan had suffered a difficult childhood, before a master from the Perched Cloud Immortal Sect took her away to cultivate. Later, she had stayed with the Ye family for a time, where they had met and grown close.
He had never imagined that those hardships included being sold to a brothel.
Though she had been very young then and had never truly sunk into that mire, the word "brothel" pricked him lightly like an exceedingly fine thorn. The