The old house was even more dilapidated than Fan Changyu’s home, and it was clear that it hadn’t been tidied up in a long time. The things inside were piled together in a chaotic mess. Because they burned fire pits during winter, the tables, chairs, and benches were covered with a layer of soot that no one had bothered to wipe away.

If one didn’t brush the seat clean before sitting, they would stand up with their clothes covered in black smudges.

The furnishings in the room were all worthless earthen jars. Both Elder Fan and his son were fond of gambling; anything of value in the house had long since been pawned away for money.

The old couple lived in the west room. Standing by the doorway, Elder Fan called, “Old woman, Changyu’s here.”

The old woman lying on the bed turned over immediately, her back facing the door—clearly unwilling to even say a single word to Fan Changyu.

Elder Fan looked a little embarrassed and explained, “Ever since Dabao was killed, she’s been like this.”

Fan Changyu didn’t take it to heart, nor did she bother to greet her. Ever since she could remember, the old woman had never once treated her family kindly.

She took the handkerchief that Elder Fan  handed her, wiped off the stool, and sat down beside the fire pit in the main room to warm herself.

While Elder Fan hung the cured meat she had brought above the fire pit to continue smoking, Fan Changyu noticed that there were still uncollected bowls and chopsticks on the table.

From the look of it, the old couple had eaten rice porridge that morning; even during the New Year, not a trace of meat could be seen on the table.

Fan Changyu frowned. After Elder Fan sat down, she asked, “After Eldest Uncle’s accident, the yamen gave twenty-five taels as compensation. You didn’t use that money?”

Twenty-five taels was no small sum. For an ordinary household, if they lived frugally and no one fell ill or needed medicine, ten taels of silver would be enough to last a whole year.

Elder Fan mumbled, “That money’s to be saved for your cousin’s marriage…”

Fan Changyu raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me he’s lost it all gambling again?”

Elder Fan replied, “The money’s being kept by your aunt. She’s afraid the mourning period will delay the boy’s marrying age, so she plans to have the wedding during the mourning period. They’re already looking at girls.”

Fan Changyu, hearing this, said nothing more.

Everyone lived their own lives. The old couple had always favored Fan Da when he was alive. Now that their son was gone, it was only natural they would favor their grandson.

As long as the old house didn’t get any crooked ideas about her home, she was willing to maintain this “well water does not intrude upon river water” relationship between the two families.

She asked, “You said earlier you had something to tell me about my father—what is it?”

The firelight flickered over Elder Fan’s deeply wrinkled face, making him look even more gaunt. He let out a long sigh. “Dabao’s death may well be retribution for my own deeds.”

Fan Changyu found this strange but remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

“Your father wasn’t my own flesh and blood, but he was my real brother’s son. That year there was famine. Your real grandfather went with the villagers to raid the government’s granary and was beaten to death by the soldiers. Your grandmother left all the remaining grain to your father and starved to death herself. Before she died, she entrusted him to me…”

As he spoke, tears welled in Elder Fan’s clouded eyes. “I wanted to raise that child as my own, but it was a famine year—people were dying by the roadside and even being cooked in pots. The Guanyin clay¹Guanyin clay (观音土) — a kind of inedible white clay that starving people during famines would eat to try to fill their stomachs. was all gone, snatched clean. Having one more mouth to feed meant everyone else had to share part of their food with your father. You had two aunts you never met—the elder one was only thirteen when she was sold to a wealthy squire as a concubine, in exchange for half a sack of white rice flour…”

Elder Fan’s voice trembled, tears streaming down his face. “Later that squire moved to another prefecture. Decades have passed, and my old woman and I never saw that child again. Don’t know if she’s alive or dead. The younger one was only eight and sold to a human trafficker for three hundred wen—also never heard from again. At that time, the only children left in the family were Dabao, Erniu, and your father, and still we couldn’t fill our bellies. Your father was the

same age as my Erniu, but Erniu was frail, fell seriously ill while we fled the famine, and to get him medicine, I had no choice but to sell your father to the traffickers…”

“Your father was an understanding child even back then. When the trafficker bought him, he kowtowed to me three times.” At this point, Elder Fan choked up completely. “That five hundred wen I got for selling him has made me feel guilty for a lifetime… Erniu was weak-fated. Even after forcing down several doses of medicine, he couldn’t be saved. I thought I’d never see your father again in this life—but sixteen years ago, he came back to this town with your mother.”

“The two daughters who were sold—he had been trying to find news of them all those years. The elder daughter he never found, but the younger one he did. I heard she married a military household, but later died amid the chaos of war. Famine and war—both make human lives as cheap as grass…”

Fan Changyu hadn’t expected there to be so many hidden circumstances behind her father’s ‘disappearance’ back then. For a while, her thoughts were tangled and heavy. After a long silence, she finally asked, “When my father came back, why did he use your second son’s name?”

Elder Fan said, “When your father returned, he told me he’d made enemies while working as an armed escort outside, and asked if he could live in the town under Erniu’s name. How could I refuse? I told everyone he was my second son Erniu who’d gone missing during the famine years. The old woman has always resented your father, thinking it was because of him that she had to sell off her two daughters. After your parents settled in town, she often went to make trouble for them, always saying she’d sacrificed her daughters for your father, and took quite a few benefits from them. Later, when your mother gave birth to your younger sister and was left with lasting illness, and seeing that your family had no male heir, she started thinking about adopting Dabao’s second son to your father—so he could inherit your father’s property in the future.”

Elder Fan sighed heavily, shame filling his face. “She’s possessed by her own demons. In that famine year, even if we hadn’t taken your father in, those two girls… they likely wouldn’t have survived either. One by one, the children were lost until only Dabao was left. She spoiled him endlessly, and that’s what ruined him. I’m to blame too—those early years, I didn’t have the means to feed a family that big. Later on, even knowing she was wrong, every time she cried over her two daughters, I couldn’t bring myself to discipline Dabao properly…”

Fan Changyu had always despised the old woman, thinking her sharp-tongued and mean-spirited toward her family. But after hearing Elder Fan recount this story, she felt that truly, the pitiful often have something detestable about them. Yet her heart still held no change in feeling toward her.

As Elder Fan said, even selling her father in the end hadn’t saved Fan Erniu’s life—so how could the old woman insist that if they hadn’t taken her father in, her two daughters and younger son wouldn’t have been lost to her?

Her father had merely become the target upon whom Elder Fan’s wife vented all her resentment.

Fan Changyu said, “The past is the past. As long as you two don’t come to my home looking for trouble again, I’ll treat you the same as before—just as my father once did.”

Elder Fan said, “I didn’t tell you this for that reason. Before your parents’ accident, your father came to see me.”

Fan Changyu’s expression changed to surprise.

Elder Fan spoke with guilt and shame: “He had already arranged how to divide your family’s house and shops. He even wrote a testament. He said the butcher shop could go to your uncle, but everything else would be left to you and your sister. I asked if his old enemies had come after him again, but he wouldn’t say. He only told me to look after you two sisters after he was gone. Who would’ve thought that old woman’s loose tongue would tell Dabao after your parents’ deaths? Dabao had fallen deep into gambling by then—he got worse and worse. He stole that testament and burned it, trying to seize your entire inheritance. These old bones of mine are useless—I couldn’t stop him at all…”

Upon hearing that her parents might have prepared everything before their deaths—as if walking knowingly toward it—Fan Changyu’s limbs went cold. Her hands, resting on her knees, clenched into fists, and her lips turned pale.

“You mean,” she said, “my father might have already known, before it happened, that he and my mother didn’t have long to live?”

Elder Fan hesitated, then nodded.

A chill spread through Fan Changyu’s whole body, her mind a muddle of confusion.

According to the yamen’s report, her father had been found by the bandits searching for a treasure map—who’d come to claim it from him.

Then why would her father have thought that by dying together with her mother, the bandits would no longer come to kill Changning?

Unless… the bandits had already obtained the treasure map.

But afterward, their family had been attacked twice more by bandits—clearly, they still hadn’t gotten what they wanted.

However, those two later groups of bandits obviously hadn’t known about her family at first; it must have been through Fan Da’s mouth that they learned something and locked onto their target.

Fan Changyu could think of only one possibility—the bandits who killed her parents and the bandits who later came to her house for the treasure map were not the same group.

The first group had taken the treasure map, yet still killed her parents—perhaps because her parents knew some secret and had to be silenced?

Fan Changyu had once thought that after the government wiped out the bandits, her parents’ great vengeance had finally been avenged.

But now she suddenly felt that the murderers of her parents might not have met their end yet.

After all, not long ago there had been news that the treasure map had resurfaced in the hands of rebels in Chongzhou.

That rebel leader had even recruited many bandits and brigands from nearby areas. The bandits who killed her parents might very well now serve under that very rebel.

On her way home, Fan Changyu was weighed down by her thoughts.

When she entered the house, she heard Xie Zheng’s calm voice inside: “Wood, yao, wood—with a big character underneath; together they form the character Fan (樊).”

Changning said miserably, “I don’t want to learn characters anymore. I want to learn how to slaughter pigs like Elder Sister.”

“Your elder sister knows her characters too,” Xie Zheng said.

Changning sniffled, on the verge of tears.

When she heard the sound of the door opening, she immediately ran over on her short legs, spread her arms, and hugged Fan Changyu’s thigh. Tilting her head up, her little face scrunched into wrinkles, she asked, “Elder Sister, why do you have to learn characters to slaughter pigs?”

Fan Changyu’s mind was still preoccupied with her thoughts. She only reached out to pat the little bun of hair on Changning’s head and said, “Mother used to say that learning to read and write teaches one propriety and reason—so that in this lifetime, one won’t walk the wrong path when dealing with others.”

Changning blinked blankly, clearly unable to understand the meaning of those words.

Xie Zheng lifted his brows slightly and added, “Yet I haven’t seen you enjoy reading.”

There was a trace of teasing in his tone. Normally, Fan Changyu would have retorted at once, but today she only said wearily, “I’ll read more slowly later.”

Only then did Xie Zheng notice something strange in her expression. “How is it that after one trip out, you look as if you’ve been hit by frost?”

Fan Changyu sat down beside the fire pit and sighed softly. After telling him everything that Elder Fan had said, she said despondently, “If my parents were killed for more than just that treasure map, then I must find out the real cause of their deaths.”

After hearing this, Xie Zheng’s gaze darkened.

If her father had already foreseen something and even made arrangements for the aftermath, that meant whoever had taken his life might have met with him in advance.

Her suspicion was not unfounded. But what those people had sought was not a treasure map—it was a letter that Wei Yan regarded with utmost importance.

The killers of her parents had taken that letter. Since she and her sister knew nothing about their parents’ past, those people had spared them?

Xie Zheng had once wielded his blade for Wei Yan; he knew all too well that Wei Yan’s way was always to “cut grass and pull out roots.”

If those people spared the sisters, it might be because they had some personal connection with her parents. Combined with the fact that they had met her father before his death—this theory seemed all the more plausible.

Later, when Wei Manor’s death warriors came to her house to seize the object, and Governor Ji of Jizhou suddenly dispatched troops to Lin’an Town—such moves were certainly thought-provoking.

Most importantly, with his uncle Wei Yan’s iron-blooded temperament, to have lost so many death warriors in Lin’an Town and yet remain unmoved—that was truly unlike him.

If it was He Jingyuan who wanted to protect these two sisters—and now, with the northwestern battle situation as it was, Wei Yan had only He Jingyuan left whom he could truly rely on—then if the two of them had reached some sort of agreement, perhaps everything would make sense.

When Fan Changyu lifted her head, she saw Xie Zheng watching her intently, his gaze deep and unreadable.

Puzzled, she asked, “What is it?”

Instead of answering, Xie Zheng said, “Do you want to avenge your parents?”

Fan Changyu nodded. “Of course I do.”

It was only then she noticed the headband he wore—it was the one she had bought for him earlier. This seemed to be the first time he had used it.

The dark blue fabric set off the sharpness of his features, making his eyes seem colder, his whole person carrying a faint air of distance.

Xie Zheng said, “If everything the yamen said when they closed the case was a lie—what then?”

Footnotes

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  Guanyin clay (观音土) — a kind of inedible white clay that starving people during famines would eat to try to fill their stomachs.