She opened her eyes in astonishment, but the world immediately began to spin, and a wave of dizziness made her feel sick.
“Careful.” Someone reached out to steady her arm.
The voice was low and deep — she felt she had heard it somewhere before, though it sounded somewhat different.
She paused to steady herself, then looked up with effort.
A beautiful jade-carved Bodhisattva had opened its eyes and was sitting at her bedside, with an elmwood box placed across its lap — exactly like the one she had seen in her dream.
She stared at that box for quite a long while, before finally managing to turn her eyes toward the person beside her.
“You……?”
The anxiety in Zhang Zhixu’s heart finally dropped back into place with a thud.
She could wake. She would not become senseless. She would not die.
But then he felt a flash of irritation: “I knew it — not ten jin of vitality-restoring herb could do what one jin of gold could!”
Then he looked down and saw his own inner robe, soaked with blood and caked in filth, and the colour rose swiftly up his neck. He got to his feet at once, picked up the box, and walked away.
“Hey——” Chen Baoxiang feebly raised her hand, but couldn’t catch hold of the box.
“Miss, please don’t worry.” Jiuquan quickly tucked the quilt around her. “The master has something to attend to — he’ll be right back.”
His master?
Chen Baoxiang should have known who his master was. But she had lost a great deal of blood and the wound had begun to inflame slightly — her mind was completely unable to turn the pieces over — and she could only press her fingers against the edge of the bed frame.
A maidservant helped her settle back against the soft pillows, and dabbed at her lips with a cloth moistened with tea.
In a daze, she drifted back to sleep.
This time, the dream was not peaceful.
She dreamt that the second young master of the Zhang family had woken, and was glaring at her, holding the promissory note that the Great Immortal had forged: “You bold and shameless commoner — you deceived me out of my money, squatted in my home, and even had the audacity to pass yourself off as my woman.”
“Someone — come! Take her away and give her eighty strikes of the board. Then hang her at the city gate for three days, so that every person of rank in Shangjing can know exactly what she is!”
No.
Chen Baoxiang struggled with all her might: “The board is going to hurt so much — can we do fewer strikes?”
“Hanging at the city gate is too humiliating — if it absolutely must be done, could you at least put a black cloth over my head?”
The high-and-mighty Zhang family’s young master gave a cold laugh: “Do you think I am someone easy to reason with?”
“Jiuquan — carry it out.”
Pain crashed over her in overwhelming waves. Chen Baoxiang wept until tears streamed down her face, sobbing and wailing.
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