A horse carriage galloped past on the nearby official road. Nanyi wanted to chase after it for help, but in her haste, she tripped over vines buried in the snow and stumbled, falling completely to the ground.
The person inside the carriage seemed to sense something. A slender hand lifted the cloth curtain, and the man inside glanced outside, but there was only vast white snow everywhere, and he saw nothing unusual.
Cold wind rushed in, causing Xie Hengzai to cough uncontrollably several times. Qiao Yinzhi, sitting beside him, immediately reached out nervously, hurriedly helping him lower the curtain and adjusting his cloak, looking at him with heartache.
Xie Hengzai showed her a pale smile, then grasped her hand.
The carriage continued on its way.
Nanyi struggled to climb out of the snow. She caught a distant glimpse of the man in the carriage seeming to lift the curtain and look outside, but before she could even run over, the carriage had already traveled far away.
Nanyi was on the verge of tears. Behind her were pursuers, and ahead was the exposed official road with no cover. She was almost in a desperate, helpless situation with nowhere to turn. For a moment she felt panic – could she escape from his grasp?
At this moment, Nanyi didn’t know that the threads of time had begun to converge, and in the carriage she had brushed past sat someone who could significantly influence her fate.
Luoyang Town lay on the shady side of Tiger Kneel Mountain. Pass through a valley and you’d reach Li Du Mansion.
The Qin family’s ancestors included great scholars, but their descendants hadn’t produced even a single imperial examination graduate. By this generation they had gradually declined. While unremarkable in Li Du Mansion, in Luoyang Town they still counted as a wealthy household.
On this day, the Qin family’s tightly closed gates were knocked upon repeatedly.
The Qin residence sat in the center of Luoyang Town, occupying several acres of land, with the advantage of being peaceful despite the bustling location. With days of heavy snow, pedestrians on the streets were sparse, and at this hour, it didn’t seem like anyone would come visiting.
The steward came out to open the door with suspicious puffs of warm breath, only to see a small beggar knocking at the gate. The little beggar was disheveled and dirty, impossible to tell if male or female, with filthy clothes that even had bloodstains.
The steward disdainfully pulled out a few copper coins from his sleeve and threw them on the ground.
“Don’t beg at the Qin family’s gate. Go somewhere farther away.”
Nanyi, almost at death’s door, grabbed the steward’s trouser leg.
“I’m looking for Qin Yue.”
The steward was startled and looked at Nanyi more carefully: “What do you want with our master?”
“Go tell him I’m Little Oriole Fairy’s daughter.”
Hearing this was a serious matter, the steward hurriedly turned and ran into the courtyard.
Nanyi was an illegitimate daughter, the daughter of a courtesan. The courtesan had no real name, only a stage name – Little Oriole Fairy.
In her youth, she had been quite popular in the pleasure quarters, but she believed the lies of a playboy who promised to redeem her and make her his mistress, willingly bearing him a daughter.
However, the playboy had a formidable wife who absolutely refused to allow this illegitimate daughter, who couldn’t be brought into proper society, to enter their home. She even had people drive both the courtesan and her daughter out of town.
After giving birth, the courtesan had no money for proper recovery and suffered a severe beating, leaving her with a limp and suddenly aging considerably. Her beauty gone, she made a living washing clothes for others, raising her daughter with irregular meals.
But Little Oriole Fairy’s love for Nanyi was merely keeping her from starvation. She blamed all her life’s misfortunes on Nanyi.
From childhood, the words Nanyi heard most were: “If I hadn’t given birth to you, who knows how carefree and happy your mother would be now.”
Along with this, Nanyi also heard many of Little Oriole Fairy’s curses about Qin Yue. From these descriptions, Nanyi roughly understood that her father, whom she’d never met, lived a respectable life in Luoyang Town with both sons and daughters.
Even knowing who her father was, Nanyi still couldn’t claim a surname. She was used to drifting like duckweed in this world. If not for being at her wit’s end, she wouldn’t have knocked on the Qin family’s door. She didn’t dare to, nor did she hope for anything.
But she truly couldn’t walk much farther on her own two feet. She was too afraid of being caught by Xie Queshan, so she could only hold onto a thread of hope, hoping the Qin family would extend a helping hand for the sake of blood relations.
The steward left the door slightly ajar, and through this crack, Nanyi could see into the Qin family’s large courtyard.
Outside, snow blanketed everything, making every step difficult, but inside, someone had swept the courtyard’s snow clean for easy walking. The world inside looked so warm.
Nanyi waited like this. After a long time, the steward hurried back.
“Young lady, please come in.”
They’re willing to help me? Nanyi still found it hard to believe, but her numb feet stepped forward ahead of her consciousness.
Wonderful, she could live.
Nanyi immediately relaxed, then her vision went black, she fell forward, and lost consciousness.
When Xie Queshan returned to the military camp, He Ping behind him brought back a female corpse with an unrecognizable face.
“Caught up with her and killed her.”
He tersely informed Gusha.
Gusha hadn’t paid attention to what that girl looked like either. He casually glanced at the female corpse – it was indeed freshly dead – and confidently had someone throw the body into the mass grave.
Once back in the empty tent, He Ping asked Xie Queshan in confusion: “Young Master, what was worth saving about that little thief? Why go through such trouble to find a corpse from the mass grave to deceive people?”
“Games must follow rules,” Xie Queshan stood by the wash basin, meticulously washing his hands, using soap to clean all the bloodstains from under his fingernails.
He Ping handed him a towel, looking bewildered.
“It’s not over yet,” Xie Queshan said with certainty.
When Nanyi awoke, she mistakenly thought she was in a celestial paradise. The room was filled with fragrant incense, warm as spring, and the bedding beneath her was soft as clouds.
She moved her body and only then felt the aches and pains throughout her limbs surge up all at once. She tried to sit up but had no strength at all.
“Awake?”
A woman helped Nanyi sit up. Her hands were very soft. Nanyi instinctively shrank back – well-maintained hands represented years of pampered living, and she feared dirtying those hands.
Nanyi moved to the corner of the bed, nervously looking at the woman. The woman’s smile was impeccable. Though there were already some wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and a few strands of white hair at her temples, one could still see the beauty and dignity of a proper young lady from a good family.
“I am your legitimate mother. You may call me Mother. What is your name?”