While Chen Wanqing was getting an earful from her mother, her face burning, Chen Wanyue—who had been lying low all day—finally found her chance to catch Mrs. Zhao alone.

At that moment, Zhao Jing had gone to see his uncle and aunt home, and young Xiang’er, unable to stay up late, had already gone to her room to rest. In the Zhao family courtyard, adorned with red lanterns, only Mrs. Zhao remained, looking around to check for anything that might have been missed.

Chen Wanyue seized this exact opportunity to call Mrs. Zhao out.

She didn’t dare enter the Zhao family’s home, afraid that Zhao Jing would return and corner her inside. If he got angry and decided to give her a beating, she wouldn’t be able to escape.

’It’s better to get Mrs. Zhao to come out,’ she thought. ’That way, if I see Zhao Jing returning, I can just run. He definitely won’t be able to catch me.’

Mrs. Zhao’s scalp tingled the moment she saw Chen Wanyue. She had originally planned to pretend she hadn’t seen her, but Chen Wanyue was bold enough to actually call out to her.

It wouldn’t do to wake the neighbors. If gossip spread that she wasn’t fond of Wanqing and still favored Chen Wanyue, who had originally been engaged to Jing, wouldn’t that just be stirring up trouble between her and her new daughter-in-law?

With this in mind, despite being extremely reluctant, Mrs. Zhao ultimately stepped out of her house.

"Wanyue, it’s the middle of the night. Why aren’t you asleep yet?"

Mrs. Zhao looked at Chen Wanyue, her expression filled with suspicion and confusion.

Mrs. Zhao absolutely did not believe that Chen Wanyue was too sad to sleep because Jing was marrying Wanqing, or that she was having some last-minute regrets.

The girl had been engaged to Jing for several years. Even if Mrs. Zhao didn’t know her that well, she had paid a bit more attention to her over the years and felt she had at least some understanding of her character.

Perhaps it was because she had never really matured, or maybe Jing’s looks and character just weren’t to her liking. Whatever the reason, she didn’t harbor the kind of affection a typical girl would have for her fiancé. Instead, she treated Jing as a tool for showing off, a way to highlight how special she was.

She didn’t like Jing, yet she calmly accepted the engagement because she enjoyed the additional benefits it brought her.

It was precisely because she understood this that Mrs. Zhao couldn’t comprehend why Wanyue would suddenly break off the engagement and, on top of that, immediately get engaged to someone else.

After mulling it over for a long time, she had come up with two plausible explanations. Either Wanyue had taken a liking to Li Cun and her heart had been moved by him, or she felt that Li Cun could bring her a kind of "glory" that Jing no longer could.

Whatever the reason, the engagement was off, and Mrs. Zhao had no desire to dig any deeper into it.

But while she wouldn’t hold the Chen family’s fickleness against them, she also hoped that the third branch of the Chen family and the people from the main house would not disturb their lives again in the future.

She had thought this was a tacit understanding. Who knew it was just her own assumption?

Mrs. Zhao’s voice cooled slightly. "It’s late. You should go home. It’s cold out, and you might get sick. I need to go back too. Tomorrow is the joyous day when Jing marries your cousin, and I have to be up early."

"Auntie, don’t go yet. Just listen to what I have to say."

"I’m not listening. I’ve been busy for days and I’m exhausted. I need to go back and get some rest."

"What if the thing I have to say is about my cousin? Will you still not listen, Auntie? I advise you to hear me out. Otherwise, what will you do if something important gets ruined?"

Though her words were menacing, Chen Wanyue’s eyes were fixed on Mrs. Zhao without blinking.

Chen Wanyue hadn’t seen Mrs. Zhao in years. In her memory, the last time she had seen her, she was lying on her sickbed, on the verge of death.

Soon after, she had closed her eyes for the last time and was prepared for burial.

Remembering that in her past life Mrs. Zhao had been a dead person, Chen Wanyue shuddered, a baseless fear creeping into her heart.

She lowered her head to look at Mrs. Zhao’s shadow. Thankfully, there was a moon tonight, and thankfully, Mrs. Zhao had one. ’That means she’s a living person,’ she thought. ’I shouldn’t be afraid.’

’But in my past life, wasn’t Mrs. Zhao bedridden with illness at this very time?’

Chen Wanyue also remembered what had made her sick.

Her family hadn’t been satisfied with the betrothal gifts from the Zhao family, so they had made a scene.

The betrothal gifts from the Zhao family were standard for the village; at the time, everyone who was getting married and taking a wife gave roughly the same amount. There was no issue of one family giving more or less, or trying to outdo another.

But could other families compare to the Zhao family?

The Zhao family had produced a Scholar, after all!

When Mr. Zhao the Scholar was alive, he had earned a lot of silver running a private school. The Zhao family had wealth, so being unwilling to spend it on a bride meant that, in the end, they still looked down on her family.

At that time, Mr. Qu’s young grandson, Shusheng, had just passed away, and Mrs. Qu was acting like she’d gone mad, sitting outside their homes day after day, wailing and cursing. Desperate to escape the gossip, Wanyue, despite her private dissatisfaction, hadn’t planned on doing anything about it. She only wanted to get married as soon as possible so she could leave the Chen family home.