Events of years past

"We've been discovered!"

Mu Wanqing's cold eyes chilled further, and she reached for her saber hilt.

"Wait. Old Woman Yan is acting strangely. She doesn't look like she's here to rescue her mistress. It looks more like she wants to..."

Li Yu braced himself sideways against the doorframe and peered through the crack at the moonlight blanketing the courtyard. The view from here was excellent: the northern building and southern gate were all within sight. If discovered, he could charge out with his sword at any moment.

"Let's watch first."

"Mm..."

Mu Wanqing agreed, her body swaying slightly, her slender brows knitted beneath her black-veiled hat. When she had mustered her strength to grip her saber just now, the movement had aggravated the staff wound on her left shoulder. Her entire arm felt powerless. With formidable enemies outside, she did not want to distract Li Yu, so she endured it in silence.

"Have some plum wine. It should make you feel quite a bit better."

Hearing her breathing grow uneven, Li Yu knew her injury was acting up. He unfastened the yellow-skinned gourd and passed it behind him.

"Staff wounds are different from saber and sword wounds. What you have to watch out for is stagnant blood and Qi. Leave that too long, and it'll be trouble. Wine helps get the blood and Qi flowing, so it should keep you safe for now."

He had poured the remaining plum wine from the jar found at the Li Family Winery into the gourd and carried it with him against the unexpected. At his right hip was another large wineskin, holding ten jin of ordinary strong liquor.

"Thank you..."

"What's there to thank me for?"

"For risking your life and venturing into the dragon's pool and tiger's den to rescue me."

"Don't mention it."

Li Yu looked outside and spoke quietly.

"We've faced life and death and shared hardships. Surely that makes us friends."

"Of course it does... good friends!"

Mu Wanqing smiled sweetly, the frost melting from her eyes.

She lifted half her black veil, revealing half a snow-white face, and took two small sips with her red lips. As the mellow wine slipped down her throat, a rosy tint suffused her pale face, and her stagnant blood and Qi gradually began to stir. At first, it felt a little itchy.

As she circulated her internal strength, the swollen ache in her left shoulder gradually faded. Mu Wanqing breathed out a wine-scented breath, her spirits unexpectedly lifting considerably too. "This wine really works. I feel much better."

Li Yu turned to take the gourd and smiled. "In this life, you should drink when you're happy and drink when you're unhappy. You should drink when you're uninjured, and all the more when you're injured. Wine is the essence of grain-the more you drink, the stronger you get."

Other people harmed their bodies by drinking too much.

For him, it was precisely the opposite.

Mu Wanqing smiled. "I'll listen to you. I'll learn to drink too."

By then, the two large wooden gates outside had closed again, and the party of five had already entered the courtyard.

The four sturdy women stood behind Yan Ruhua, looking hesitant. They feared punishment for rebelling against their superiors, yet also feared Nanny Yan's methods of tormenting people. Caught between the two, they could only take one step at a time.

"Miss, you're not answering. Could the villains already have taken you hostage?"

"In that case, I'll have to search room by room. If I disturb your private chambers, I beg your forgiveness in advance!"

All around was pitch-black, as though there was not a soul in the courtyard. Yan Ruhua extended her iron staff, hooked up a pot of white camellias, spun it twice, and sent it hurtling like a stone shot toward the eastern side room.

Both wooden doors shattered on impact.

A glance revealed that the eastern side room was a weaving room. Apart from half a bolt of fresh cloth on the loom, there was nothing else inside.

"Not in the east!"

She hooked up another pot of pink camellias. Her iron staff had barely turned half a circle when several cold sparks flew from the northern building.

"Finally willing to show yourself!"

Yan Ruhua laughed and swung out her snake-headed iron staff. The camellias and their pot burst apart in midair. Soil, shards, flowers, and leaves shot outward, imbued with internal strength, like a great net that caught seven or eight hidden projectiles. Their force spent, they all fell to the ground.

"Plum-blossom darts, heh heh. Sister Chen, your old eyes must be failing. Why are you attacking one of your own?"

Before she finished speaking, a figure rushed out of the building, thrusting a steel spade at her face. Yan Ruhua met the attack calmly, lifting her snake-headed iron staff horizontally to block it. With a bang, fierce gusts scattered in every direction, and the figure who had launched the surprise attack from the building retreated two steps.

Her martial arts have already surpassed mine...

The middle-aged woman standing in the courtyard wore a blue, front-opening jacket and was forty-five or forty-six. Though her youthful bloom was gone, her features were composed and her appearance regular. As she looked at the short, fat figure opposite her, shock filled her heart.

Yan Ruhua planted her iron staff upright and laughed in a low voice. "I recognized your back at a glance, Sister Chen. I hurried as fast as I could, and luckily I wasn't too late."

Chen Ping said coldly, "Yan Ruhua, I caught you leading people around setting fires, and now you've pursued me to the young lady's private chambers. Just what are you trying to do?"

Yan Ruhua did not answer. Her eyes narrowed in a smile, and she spoke as though to herself.

"Back then, the two of us were the closest. It was thanks to your guidance, Sister Chen, that I mastered the Twenty-Eight-Move River-Intercepting Staff Technique. Later... I became like this. Not just my appearance-my temperament changed too. I went to do hard labor in the flower fertilizer room, while you became the young lady's guard. We lived in the same manor, yet we stopped seeing each other..."

Inside the western side room.

Mu Wanqing asked in puzzlement, "Judging by their faces, that Yan woman is more than ten years older than the Chen woman. Why does she call her elder sister?"

"Perhaps..."

Looking at Nanny Yan's short, fat, ugly figure, Li Yu recalled the portrait of a lady he had seen aboard the boat that day.

His intuition told him there had to be some melodramatic tale buried beneath years of dust behind this!

Seeing him fall silent, Mu Wanqing asked curiously, "Perhaps what?"

"Perhaps this isn't what she originally looked like."

Mu Wanqing nodded. "That's possible! The jianghu is vast, and no marvel is too strange. I've heard there's a drug in the Miao villages of Yunnan that can make tall people short, short people tall, fat people thin, and thin people fat..."

After rattling off such a long string of words like a rhyme, she laughed herself.

Li Yu remarked casually, "That drug has no use except harming people."

"Who says it's useless? The girls in the Miao villages use that drug specifically to deal with handsome, faithless men."

As Mu Wanqing spoke, a trace of coldness unconsciously entered her voice. She immediately realized it, glanced at him, and felt a little embarrassed. She asked softly, "Could the person who drugged her have been a man she'd hurt?"

Li Yu paused briefly, then chuckled. "I think that's quite possible."

In the courtyard, the moonlight shone softly, piercing more than a decade of years with an inexplicable melancholy.

"Back then..."

Chen Ping's expression shifted slightly. Remembering their sisterly affection of those days, she sighed with emotion, and nearly half the hostility in her heart involuntarily ebbed away. The sharp edge of the steel spade in her hand lowered. "Have you resented Madam all this time?"

"Resented her?"

Yan Ruhua shook her head gently and slowly approached.

"If I resented Madam, I wouldn't have stayed at Mantuo Manor all these years, doing every filthy, exhausting job. Whose orders do you think put those bones beneath the flower fertilizer room?"

For over a decade, Nanny Yan had been Mantuo Manor's fiercest and most loyal dog, so much so that many people had forgotten what happened back then. The old hands said nothing, and the little maids newly arrived at the manor all assumed Nanny Yan had been born an ugly woman.

Chen Ping frowned. "Then why are you causing trouble today?"

Yan Ruhua advanced slowly, an ugly smile on her face, but her voice was unspeakably bitter.

"I've waited so many years, exhausted every scheme, and endured every hardship. It wasn't to resent anyone. I only wanted to take back what I once lost..."