Fan Changyu felt it strange and was about to continue walking home when that madam said with a subtle expression, “The people from the gambling house went to your home again, your husband…”

The figure before her flickered—Fan Changyu grabbed a carrying pole from the wall and strode hastily toward the alley.

The woman hadn’t expected Fan Changyu to be so rash and shouted, “Your husband isn’t hurt—it’s the people from the gambling house who were beaten lame by him!”

But Fan Changyu had already run far away and didn’t hear clearly.

From a distance, she saw that there were again many people gathered at her doorway watching the commotion. Her heart tightened at once, and her grip on the carrying pole grew even stronger as she shouted, “Move aside!”

The onlookers saw her rushing over with the pole in hand and quickly scattered to both sides.

Just then, the small head of the gambling house, Master Jin, came limping out from the Fan family’s doorway—which had already been smashed open—supporting himself with a long staff. His face was ferocious, lips curled in a grimace. Before he could even react to the sight of Fan Changyu charging toward him, she struck him with the carrying pole, sending him flying sideways and collapsing to the ground, unable to get up.

Fan Changyu planted the carrying pole on the ground and looked toward her courtyard, ready to speak harshly—but she saw that the group of gambling house thugs all wore looks of terror as they stared at her. The ones who had been dragging their legs to crawl outward immediately changed direction and began shrinking back inside.

Yet beneath the eaves, upon a grand master’s chair, still sat a man holding a crutch—his complexion pale, his expression shadowed and cold.

The gambling house thugs, trapped between advancing or retreating, trembled and huddled together in the courtyard. One by one, those burly, broad-shouldered men looked now like pitiful little cabbages wilted in the fields.

Fan Changyu: ?

She looked at the man sitting beneath the eaves in disbelief. He was the one who beat them up?

He was injured like that—he could barely walk without a crutch—and he could still fight?

The neighbors gathered at the doorway thought Fan Changyu meant to beat the men again and hurried to persuade her: “Changyu, stop hitting! Your husband already beat them—look at them, every one of their legs is broken! Who knows how much medicine money you’ll have to pay!”

When Fan Changyu heard there was money to be paid, she quickly grabbed the “half-dead” Master Jin by the collar and hauled him up.

Master Jin turned ashen, two streaks of nosebleed hanging from his nostrils as he begged for mercy: “Miss Fan, Miss Fan, you’re magnanimous—please spare me! I won’t dare again!”

He raised both hands to shield his face. “Please, no more hitting…”

Fan Changyu scowled and pointed at her doorway, which had been torn down. “You bullying scum, you even tore down my family’s gate—how are you going to compensate for that?”

She needed to settle her family’s losses quickly—best if, with their legs broken, they wouldn’t even dream of asking her to pay their medical fees!

Her gaze swept further inside and found that aside from the few terrified thugs huddled in a circle, nothing in the courtyard seemed broken—not even a jar or bowl!

Under the eaves, the man sat on the grand master’s chair, his face pale but his presence oppressive, his aura sharp and heavy. The door behind him was perfectly intact. Clearly, the gambling house men hadn’t even managed to get inside.

Fan Changyu’s eyes roved over him several times, and when she noticed a trace of blood seeping through his robe, she finally found another pretext to flare up again, scolding fiercely: “My husband is wounded, and you lot ganged up on him—look at what state you’ve beaten him into! Never mind the external injuries, who knows how serious the internal ones are? Seeing a doctor will cost a fortune!”

Master Jin hurriedly shoved both hands into his robe and fished out a handful of broken silver pieces and copper coins, offering them all to Fan Changyu. “I’ll pay! I’ll pay! Miss Fan, just let me go!”

Fan Changyu: “…”

She had only meant to scare the gambling house people a bit, but somehow the situation seemed to have taken an unexpected turn?

As her attention wavered, she loosened her grip on Master Jin’s collar. Terrified out of his wits, he dropped the silver and copper coins on the ground, then scrambled away in a rolling crawl.

The trembling thugs in the courtyard froze for a moment, then, following his example, each pulled some copper coins from their robes, tossed them on the ground, and hobbled off on their lame legs, rolling quickly out through the Fan family gate.

The onlookers stared at Fan Changyu and her pale, sickly husband as though they were some sort of freakish pair.

The gambling house thugs were known not only for collecting gambling debts but also for roaming the streets to extort protection fees. Yet this was the very first time anyone had ever taken silver from their hands.

Fan Changyu was also a little dazed.

When the crowd of onlookers finally dispersed, she pointed at the gate—its hinge clearly kicked loose, fallen inward—and asked, “This door, they were the ones who tore it down, right?”

The man beneath the eaves nodded. Only then did Fan Changyu let out a breath of relief. At least she hadn’t wronged anyone.

Her mood was complicated as she stooped to pick up the broken silver and copper coins from the ground, then walked over and asked, “I see the bandage on you is soaked through with blood—the wound split open again, didn’t it?”

Xie Zheng made no sound.

Fan Changyu recalled how all those men from the gambling house had left limping. “You’re still injured. From now on, if something like this happens again, just bear with it for a while. Wait for me to come back and handle it…”

The other party still said nothing, and Fan Changyu felt a little awkward. After all, this whole mess had started because of her. She said softly, “If the wound keeps reopening, you’re the one who suffers.”

At last, Xie Zheng spoke. “They were too noisy.”

The slanting sunlight fell across him. With the bridge of his nose as the dividing line, the upper half of his face was veiled in the eaves’ shadow, while the lower half was lit by sunlight. Because his complexion was so pale, it looked almost crystalline, like ice and snow—cold and distant. It was truly a striking face.

But his temper—certainly not a good one.

Fan Changyu was momentarily at a loss for words at his explanation.

Xie Zheng seemed unwilling to say more. He rose and went back into the room.

Little Changning timidly poked half her head out from the kitchen and called, “A-jie (Sister).”

Fan Changyu went over, patted her younger sister’s head, and asked, “Were you frightened?”

Changning nodded, then shook her head. “Big brother… brother-in-law is amazing!”

Fan Changyu paused at the form of address—she guessed Auntie Zhao must have taught her that—and said, “Amazing for beating up bad people?”

Little Changning nodded vigorously. “Those people called brother-in-law a pretty-boy, and scolded him for being a cripple, but brother-in-law beat all their legs crippled instead!”

As she spoke, her eyes sparkled brightly. “A-jie, what does ‘pretty-boy’ mean? Does it mean brother-in-law’s face is very white?”

Fan Changyu thought of what she herself had said earlier, and her mood grew somewhat complicated. She told her sister, “That’s a curse word. Ning-niang mustn’t say it, understand?”

Little Changning obediently nodded.

Fan Changyu gave her the packet of malt candy she had bought and told her to play in the courtyard, not to run far. Then she went to fetch the household’s usual wound medicine. When she reached Xie Zheng’s door, she hesitated a moment before lifting her hand to knock.

“What is it?” came the man’s cold yet magnetic voice from within.

Fan Changyu said, “I brought you some medicine.”

For a long while, there was no movement inside.

Fan Changyu pressed her lips together, but in the end she still spoke. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of it sooner—since you married into my family, they were bound to say many unpleasant things…”

The door suddenly opened, cutting her words short.

He had clearly been tending to his wound; now his outer robe was only draped over his shoulders, the ties of his inner garment fastened only at the lower few loops—the top ones still undone—revealing a fine collarbone and a small stretch of well-toned chest. His strikingly handsome face, sharp and forbidding, was clouded with displeasure.

“You think breaking one of their legs wasn’t enough?” he said.

Fan Changyu quickly shook her head.

Xie Zheng half-lifted his eyelids. “A few worthless scoundrels’ words—I wouldn’t take them to heart. I told you, they were simply too noisy.”

He turned and went inside. Fan Changyu followed after him, blurting out instinctively, “Do you need me to help?”

The man suddenly turned his head and gave her a look of indeterminate meaning, then tied the last loop of his inner garment. “It’s already taken care of.”

Fan Changyu: “…”

Why did it sound as if she had some ulterior motive in offering to apply medicine for him!

She still held the hair ribbon she had bought earlier; giving it to him now would only make it seem as though she truly had certain improper thoughts. When she caught his glance sweeping toward her, she expressionlessly tied it around her own high ponytail instead. “This is a hair ribbon I bought for myself.”

Ink-blue was hardly a color suited for women, yet when she tied it on, it somehow gave her an unexpectedly valiant air.

Xie Zheng’s expression grew faintly complicated.

Fan Changyu felt that she had regained her composure. She was not one to hold a grudge for long. After setting the bottle of medicine on the table, she began to speak of what had happened at the yamen that day. “Uncle Wang told me that Fan Da has already submitted a petition to the county office. Before the case is settled, I can’t transfer the property in my name. I suppose the gambling house still bears a grudge for the humiliation last time. After colluding with Fan Da, they must have thought to use this method to force you away.”

In the eyes of those gambling-house thugs, he was an outsider—unfamiliar with Lin’an Town, injured, and thus an easy target.

After all, an ordinary person, faced with such intimidation at their doorstep, would long have been frightened out of their wits.

If her live-in husband ran off, then all her effort in taking him in would have been in vain, and the property would eventually revert to Fan Da.

Yet the man who seemed not to care about anything she said suddenly spoke: “In the Great Yin Code, under the section of Establishing Female Households, there ought to be an added clause—‘Orphaned girls may likewise establish a household.’”

Fan Changyu knew that widows could head a household on their own, but an orphan girl establishing her own household—she had never heard of such a thing.

Girls like her—those whose parents had both passed—usually had their property taken by clan relatives. Those same relatives would then “raise” them until they could be married off.

As for how they were raised—that depended on whether those relatives had any conscience at all. Some, with hearts eaten by dogs, would sell the girls directly into brothels; others would use them as servants, ordering them about. When the girls reached marriageable age, they would be sold off like livestock—whoever could pay the price could take them.

When her parents had just passed away, the Fan couple had come, saying they would take her and Changning home and raise them as their own daughters. Fan Changyu had known perfectly well what kind of people they were, and refused no matter what, which was why Fan Da had repeatedly come afterward to seize the property deed.

She clearly did not take Xie Zheng’s words seriously. “The laws are all made by those high officials in the capital. Which of them doesn’t have three wives and four concubines, sons and daughters by the dozen? It’s never their bloodline that gets cut off. Even if misfortune struck and only a girl was left, she’d be living with some reputable relatives, never short on food or clothing. Those officials have no idea how orphaned girls live among the common folk—why would they make laws for us?”

Xie Zheng remained silent. Before his fall from grace, he truly had never even heard of the plight of orphaned girls among the commoners.

Seeing him silent, Fan Changyu thought she might have rebuffed him too harshly. She scratched her head, awkwardly trying to soften her tone: “Still, if some official did understand the situation of orphan girls and wanted to make a law for them, that would indeed be a good thing.”

But Xie Zheng seemed to be pondering the feasibility of it. “For female householders, the court already reduces labor and tax obligations. If orphan girls could head households on their own, it should be treated the same. But if the orphan later marries or takes in a husband, and a man is added to the household, then the exemption would cease. The documentation process would be quite complicated.”

Fan Changyu listened in a fog. “You seem to know a lot about the Great Yin Code?”

Xie Zheng realized he had said too much, and lowered his eyes. “I’ve traveled widely and heard many things, that’s all.”

Fan Changyu did not suspect anything. She took a folded document from her inner pocket. “Right, your household registration paper has been issued. The county officers are arresting vagrants and beggars now. Outsiders entering the city without proper registration or travel permits are being thrown into prison. It wasn’t easy to get this done—Uncle Wang had to call in quite a few favors.”

At her words, Xie Zheng’s gaze darkened slightly. “The officers are arresting vagrants?”

Fan Changyu nodded. “I saw it myself on the way back. They say the Northwest has a new regional commander, and he’s afraid that during the festival season bandits might come raiding, so he issued the order.”

As she spoke, she suddenly lifted her head to look at Xie Zheng. “I also heard that the Marquis of Wu’an died on the battlefield in Chongzhou. You fled here from Chongzhou—do you know if that’s true?”

“I don’t.”

Fan Changyu sighed. “If the Marquis of Wu’an truly died, that’s quite a pity.”

A trace of a smile—half mocking, half cold—appeared on his pale face. “What’s there to pity?”