I immediately gathered her into my arms.
“That’s not true, Vân Thư. You are the life your mother traded her own life to bring into the world. No one is more important than you. You did nothing wrong.”
I guessed she must have overheard some of what Madam Tưởng had said in the courtyard.
Though I regretted marrying Chiến Lăng Tiêu, I had never regretted giving birth to my daughter.
08.
The Empress Dowager was delighted to see Vân Thư and me at first. But after hearing why we had come, she was so angry she nearly fainted.
The Emperor and Empress Dowager immediately summoned Chiến Lăng Tiêu and Phương Thanh to the palace that night.
Chiến Lăng Tiêu didn’t go to see the Emperor first. Instead, he came looking for me.
He stormed in furiously. The moment Vân Thư saw him, she instinctively hid behind me.
Chiến Lăng Tiêu glared at me in anger and shouted,
“Tô Vũ Đường! If you’re upset about something, take it out on me! Why drag Thanh Thanh into this? I told you I wasn’t going to marry her. What more do you want from me?! What are you trying to do?!”
I looked at him with contempt, wondering how I’d put up with his family for so long.
My voice was cold. “Chiến Lăng Tiêu, I told you long ago to sign the divorce agreement.
You want to keep your good name and have the beauty too. You make it sound so easy!”
I caught a glimpse of a pale pink figure behind the bushes and laughed.
“Didn’t the Emperor summon you to see him? What is it? You don’t even want to hear what the Emperor has to say now?”
Chiến Lăng Tiêu followed my gaze and saw Phương Thanh standing there, her eyes red and her frail figure looking ready to collapse.
He stepped over, took her hand, then turned and shouted at me,
“We’ll go see him right now! Are you satisfied?!”
I didn’t care what happened to them, but when Chiến Lăng Tiêu said that, Vân Thư trembled. It made me furious.
“Chiến Lăng Tiêu, my patience has limits. You’d better pray the Emperor gives you a harsh enough punishment. Otherwise, I can’t promise what I might do.”
Chiến Lăng Tiêu walked away without looking back, pulling Phương Thanh along by the hand.
I took Vân Thư’s hand without saying a word, then gave Thược Dược a glance. She understood at once and left.
The Emperor came in person to the Empress Dowager’s palace to tell me the outcome.
Chiến Lăng Tiêu signed the divorce agreement before the Emperor. He was stripped of his title and given thirty strokes of the heavy board. The entire Zhan family was implicated, but Phương Thanh received no punishment at all.
That was my request. I thought the gossip would hurt her more than any physical punishment.
After that day, word spread through every street and alley that Chiến Lăng Tiêu had been demoted for abandoning his wife and child. And I was the sole descendant of the Marquis of Vĩnh Trung. News that the Zhan family had tolerated a concubine soon spread as well.
Everyone knew that Chiến Lăng Tiêu’s concubine was the self-righteous female physician, Physician Phương.
After that, I never saw Chiến Lăng Tiêu or Phương Thanh again. I took Vân Thư back to the Vĩnh Trung Marquis’s residence and didn’t bother to find out what became of them.
The next time I heard about them was when Phương Thanh came to the marquis’s residence of her own accord to see me.
She knelt outside the marquis’s residence for several hours just to see me.
I made her wait a little longer, then told the steward to let her in.
She looked as if the slightest breeze might knock her over, like a frail white flower swaying in the wind.
She said Chiến Lăng Tiêu hadn’t been doing well at all lately. He’d been dismissed from his post and spent his days in a daze, aimless and adrift. Even the Zhan family had given up on him.
She hoped I would take Vân Thư to see him. She even promised she would never again appear before Vân Thư or me.
She said she had never wanted to marry him; all she wanted was to be by his side.
It felt as if someone had stuffed a lump of trash into my mouth. Disgusting—absolutely disgusting!
I said coldly,
“Miss Phương, I don’t need to spell out what’s between you and him. I just find it disgusting! Chiến Lăng Tiêu made vows that the entire capital knows about, and yet after carrying on with him, you come here and tell me you didn’t want anything from him. Are you that desperate for a man?”
“Why do you have to be so cruel? You and Lăng Tiêu have been married for years and even have a child together. Why do you have to take things this far?”
I rolled my eyes at her. “There’s no talking to you. I only wanted to hear whether you’d come to your senses, but you’re even more disgusting than I imagined! Thược Dược, see her out.”
Phương Thanh had just risen to say something more when Thược Dược stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth. Several people dragged her outside and dumped her at the gates of the Zhan residence.
In front of Chiến Lăng Tiêu, Thược Dược said coldly, “General of the Zhan family, please keep your concubine in check. Don’t let her get so shameless as to bother our young mistress.”
With that, she turned and left.
09.
Vân Thư and I gradually settled back into a peaceful life.
I didn’t stop Chiến Lăng Tiêu from seeing Vân Thư. He was her father, after all, and I didn’t want to interfere in their relationship.
As time passed, Chiến Lăng Tiêu gradually recovered, but he still didn’t marry Phương Thanh.
With her reputation in tatters, Phương Thanh was scorned wherever she went, even when she opened a medical clinic. In the end, she had no choice but to close it and move in with Chiến Lăng Tiêu, officially becoming his nameless concubine.
Time also healed Chiến Lăng Tiêu’s wounds. He prepared to return to the army, hoping to regain his standing.
Before setting out, he used saying goodbye to Vân Thư as an excuse to see me once more.
He looked at me for a long time, then said,
“Vũ Đường, if only back then I hadn’t…”
I didn’t want to hear the rest, so I cut him off at once.
“Chiến Lăng Tiêu, I don’t want to say this again. Remember this: from now on, you are nothing to me but Vân Thư’s father. What happened back then was your choice. Now that everything has been settled, I don’t want to bring it up again. Whether you regret it or not has nothing to do with me.”
Chiến Lăng Tiêu’s face went deathly pale.
He hadn’t expected Tô Vũ Đường to remain so cold. He thought that after all this time, she would still miss him, just as he missed her.
That was why he had never married Phương Thanh. He’d kept a glimmer of hope in his heart, thinking that if he asked, Tô Vũ Đường would return to him and the three of them would be a family again.
But hearing the ice in Tô Vũ Đường’s voice made him realize at last how terribly and irreparably he had been wrong.
Tô Vũ Đường had left so decisively back then. How could she have left him even the slightest hope?
He wanted to return to the battlefield, at least to earn back his military honors, and then beg Tô Vũ Đường to marry him again.
But when an enemy arrow pierced his body, he wondered:
“If Tô Vũ Đường finds out I’m dead, will she regret it? Will she regret turning me down before I left?”
Phương Thanh’s face appeared in his mind again. Her eyes had been full of admiration. She’d once told him he was the bravest man she’d ever met, and that she was willing to remain his nameless concubine forever, as long as she could be by his side.
If only—if only he had pushed her away back then. Would things have turned out better?
But it was too late. It had all happened. His vision gradually blurred, and his body grew colder and colder.
Chiến Lăng Tiêu died on the battlefield.
He wanted to know whether Tô Vũ Đường would grieve, whether she would cry and regret it.
His soul drifted to Tô Vũ Đường’s side. She was reclining on a chaise longue, eyes closed in peaceful rest. Their daughter, Vân Thư, was beside her, intently practicing her writing.
Tô Vũ Đường looked just as she had before—or perhaps a little younger. Vân Thư had grown up. She was graceful and poised, with refined features.
He thought they must be heartbroken, didn’t they?
But no. When they received the news, they simply carried on with what they were doing. Nothing changed.
Whether he lived or died made no difference at all to their lives.
He couldn’t bear to leave, still believing that Tô Vũ Đường would surely think of him on quiet nights, and that Vân Thư would surely miss her father.
But no.
Tô Vũ Đường remarried. Her new husband was the newly appointed top graduate of the imperial examinations. He agreed to marry into her family, treated her with boundless tenderness and care, and looked after Vân Thư, too.
Chiến Lăng Tiêu tried to find fault with the man, to prove that no one could become the person Tô Vũ Đường wanted. But the man had done it. Tô Vũ Đường was the only one in his life.
As soon as he left court, he hurried home just to be with Tô Vũ Đường, eat with her, and take walks together. All he wanted was to spend time by her side.
The second year after their remarriage, Tô Vũ Đường gave birth to a child.
He was nothing like Chiến Lăng Tiêu. He stayed by Tô Vũ Đường’s side the whole time; when she gave birth, he cried even harder than she did.
He held her hand and promised they wouldn’t have any more children.
They became a happy family of four, admired by everyone.
All of this should have belonged to him.
He began to resent Phương Thanh, blaming her for ruining his life.
But he could no longer find her.
It turned out that on the day he rejoined the army, the Zhan family had beaten her to death and thrown away her body. Even now, he still couldn’t find her remains.
Three years passed. As he wandered by Tô Vũ Đường’s side, Ox-Head and Horse-Face arrived, shackled him, and dragged him away.
He still couldn’t accept it. Tô Vũ Đường had left him, yet she could live so well.
Ox-Head and Horse-Face dragged him away by force, shouting a warning:
“If you’d known this would happen, why did you do it in the first place?”
He turned around and looked at Tô Vũ Đường one last time.
Her family of four was filled with happiness, their laughter ringing out, bright as sunshine.
—THE END—