“What!” At the thought of Wan Qili and her husband’s ruthless methods, Qi Fang’s heart clenched instinctively for Di Yun’s sake. She cried out in alarm.

“A few months back, that fool came knocking, saying he wanted to see you. The Young Master naturally refused, and ordered the Minister’s household guards to seize him — only to find that his martial arts had advanced by leaps and bounds. Not even the Minister’s personal guards could match him.” Taohong gave a cold laugh, her voice laced with contempt. “But what use is brute strength alone? The Young Master had me disguise myself as you with hardly any effort at all — that was enough to fool him. Once he’d been poisoned by the Heavenly Devil Flower, it didn’t matter how skilled he was. He could only lie there and wait for death like a good boy.”

“Senior Brother — he’s dead?” Qi Fang let out a sharp cry, her eyes wide with disbelief.

“The Heavenly Devil Flower claimed even the invincible Golden Serpent King Song Qingshu. A nobody like Di Yun never stood a chance.” Taohong smiled her cold smile, plainly contemptuous of Di Yun as a fellow child of the countryside.

At the mention of Song Qingshu, Qi Fang found her thoughts drifting unwillingly to the man hiding beneath her bed — the one who had robbed her of her virtue. He had indeed suffered terribly from that same poison…

But she forced herself back to what mattered. “Senior Brother was the most guileless person alive. How could you bring yourselves to do this to him!”

Under the bed, Song Qingshu was burning with rage. Di Yun had been one of his most dependable men in recent years — he had done much for him, and was one of the very few he could truly call a friend.

Song Qingshu had always admired Di Yun’s pure and honest heart, and felt deep sympathy for everything the man had suffered. He had looked after him, cultivated him as a trusted subordinate. To think he had died at the hands of such petty villains — how could he not be furious?

His instinct was to leap out and cut this venomous woman down on the spot. But reason prevailed over impulse. She could be killed at any time. Understanding the full picture, however — that would not be so easy to come by. Since she was in the mood to talk, better to let her finish.

“Pfft. A fool like that deserved what he got,” Taohong said with an indifferent shrug. “Actually, the matter of finding the Young Master a new wife had been left undecided for a long time — the Minister and the Master kept going back and forth. But that whole incident made up their minds at last. Because sooner or later you would have found out about Di Yun, and a secret like that sitting inside the household is no different from a primed explosive. Keeping you around was simply too dangerous.”

“Is that… is that what Third Brother thought as well?” Qi Fang’s beautiful eyes seemed to lose all their light at once. She spoke as though in a daze.

“What do you think?” Taohong regarded her with that half-smile.

“No.” Qi Fang shook her head suddenly. “He is not my Third Brother.” The realisation hit her all at once — her marriage, from beginning to end, had been a scheme. Her gentle, loving senior brother had been falsely imprisoned because of her, and had now lost his life because of her. She felt like a blind fool for ever calling that man her husband.

At that moment, the door creaked open and Wang Er — one of the two servants who had accompanied them on the journey — walked in with a fawning smirk on his face.

Taohong frowned. “Weren’t you told to watch the staircase and keep the others from coming up?”

“Don’t worry, Sister Taohong, I’ve already sent that innkeeper Du’s lot packing. No one will come up.” As he spoke, Wang Er’s eyes slid shamelessly over Qi Fang.

In the chaos following her encounter with Song Qingshu, Qi Fang had not had a moment to dress. Then Taohong’s revelations had struck her so hard that the quilt she’d wrapped around herself had slipped without her noticing — one pale, smooth shoulder and the elegant curve of her collarbone were exposed to the open air. Wang Er stared, his gaze fixed and glassy.

Feeling his eyes on her, Qi Fang’s skin crawled. She snatched the quilt back up and covered herself quickly. In that moment, she found herself thinking, almost against her will, that being seen by Song Qingshu earlier had been somehow easier to bear than this.

“Then what did you come in here for?” Taohong looked at Wang Er with clear disapproval.

Wang Er rubbed his hands together, his expression utterly vile. “Well, I got to thinking — the young mistress is going to die no matter what. Seems a waste to just let her go like that. Figured I might as well have a little fun before the end. Just thinking about getting a taste of the young mistress, I can barely keep myself together.”

Taohong glanced at the telltale bulge in his trousers and broke into a snickering laugh. “You’ve got nerve, you little wretch. A toad dreaming of swan flesh.”

Wang Er leered. “A toad that doesn’t dream of swan flesh isn’t worth calling a toad.”

Hearing the two of them discuss her as though she were an object, Qi Fang nearly fainted with rage. Wang Er had always been quiet and deferential — she had never imagined he harboured thoughts this filthy. “Wang Er! How dare you set your eyes on me!”

Wang Er gave a sly chuckle. “Ordinarily I’d never have the gall, my lady. But now that the Minister and the Young Master have thrown you away — well, my gall’s grown somewhat. Don’t be frightened, my lady. You should be thanking me, really. I’m giving you a taste of life’s greatest pleasure before you go. Ha ha ha!”

“You —!” Qi Fang shook with fury. She had never imagined he could be so utterly shameless.

Taohong laughed her honeyed laugh. “Wang Er’s not wrong, you know. He’s far better at it than the Young Master ever was. I guarantee he’ll show you pleasures you’ve never known before.”

For reasons she couldn’t explain, Taohong’s words made an image flash unbidden through Qi Fang’s mind — Song Qingshu moving over her earlier, lost to abandon. Her face flushed hot. ‘That sort of pleasure I’ve already had a taste of, not long ago…’

Then something else struck her. She looked sharply at Taohong. “You and Third Brother — the two of you…”

Taohong gave a disdainful toss of her head. “Wan Gui may have a pretty face, but he’s all show and no substance — a silver-plated wax spear tip, good to look at and useless in practice. Not even as good as his father, let alone worth comparing to Wang Er.” [G: 银样蜡枪头 — lit. “a silver-plated wax spear tip”: an idiom for something that looks impressive but is completely ineffective; used here as a vulgar double entendre.]

Under the bed, Song Qingshu quietly clicked his tongue. ‘This woman is something else. She’s Wan Zhenshan’s concubine, sleeping with Wan Gui on the side, and tangled up with the household servants on top of that. Is there a single man left in the Wan household she hasn’t been to bed with? One wonders whether Wan Qili is on the list — at this rate, Taohong might complete the remarkable achievement of working her way through three generations of the same family.’

“Shameless. Disgusting. And Wan Gui is even more shameless, even more disgusting!” With that, every last illusion Qi Fang had harboured about her husband shattered completely. She cast him from her heart as a stranger.

Taohong’s face twitched. “What gives a little country girl the right to snap at me?” she spat. “Do you think you’re still the Minister’s young mistress? Fine — you’ve always thought yourself so pure and high-minded, haven’t you, fancied yourself a paragon of virtue? Wang Er — have your fun with her. Properly. When you’re done, sell her to the cheapest br0thel you can find. Let’s see what she has to be proud of then!”

“At your command!” Wang Er had been straining at the leash. He stripped off his clothes in three swift movements and closed in on Qi Fang where she lay on the bed. “Let this servant serve you properly, my lady,” he gloated.

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