Noon.
The Banquet Hall bustled with merriment. His father-in-law, Lin Fangzhi, sat in the main seat, drinking and chatting cheerfully with Xie Wen, who had not sobered up once these past few days. Their conversation was, naturally, about that somewhat regrettable marriage arrangement from years ago. "Back then, Lord Wang of the Imperial Medical Academy brought this up with me. He praised your son so extravagantly that flowers practically rained from the heavens. I thought he was deliberately flattering him. Looking at him now, Lord Wang was actually far too restrained-"
"Ah, you flatter him, Elder Lin. Wanyi was already a well-bred young lady renowned throughout the Inner City back then. My Little Deng came from an ordinary background and had no particular abilities. When this match was proposed, I never held out any hope. Who would have thought this really was a match decreed by heaven-"
At the round table, Xie Jinhuan sat upright, maintaining a polite, refined smile, looking every inch a new son-in-law blessed with both virtue and talent.
Bu Yuehua had been dragged along. As Wanyi's teacher, she should have counted as an elder, but she was also Xie Jinhuan's wife. Thoroughly awkward now, she merely lowered her eyes to her nose and her mind to her heart, sitting silently beside them without a trace of her former bearing as a demoness of the Gu Poison Sect.
Wanyi sat beside him, dressed like a poised, gracious new bride, but a blush still lingered on her cheeks. After all, A Piao had fooled her into using a special secret technique to wake her husband, and now this Big Pig Trotter had actually gotten hooked. On the carriage ride over, he had even asked her for another reward.
Outside the carriage was the clamorous, bustling street. How could