Chapter 130: Lady Li’s Secret

The Third Prince frightened Lady Li so much that her face turned pale. She turned to a young maid beside her and shouted, “Quick! Go call the master!”

The little maid immediately ran out of the shop.

Du Wanchun stepped forward and said to Lady Li, “Lady Li, you heard it yourself just now. The one Magistrate Li wants to take as a concubine isn’t Madam Zhang but the lady from the rouge shop, Liu Niangzi.”

Lady Li crouched on the ground, biting her lip. Feeling humiliated, she snapped angrily, “So what? Zhang Qiuhua must have seduced my husband too. Otherwise, why would he come here so often?”

Madam Xu, the owner of the teahouse, raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Lady Li, you’ve truly misunderstood. Magistrate Li bought all that incense for Liu Niangzi.”

Lady Li’s face turned deathly pale upon hearing this. Her pupils dilated as she exclaimed, “What?! You’re saying he bought all that incense for that woman?!”

Madam Xu leisurely cracked open a melon seed and said, “Not just incense—he’s bought quite a bit of tea from me too, all of it sent straight to Liu Niangzi.”

Lady Li braced herself against a table to stand up, but due to her sudden movement, a large incense burner sitting on the table tipped over and fell directly onto her head.

“Ow! My head!”

She clutched her head and cried out in pain.

Her maid hurried over. “Madam, are you alright?”

Lady Li looked at the broken incense burner on the ground, then glared at Du Wanchun and scolded, “Your incense burner hit my head!”

Du Wanchun bent down, picked up a broken piece, and calmly said, “Lady Li, you should get your facts straight—it wasn’t my incense burner that hit you, but you who broke my incense burner.”

She then wiped the dust off the burner’s remains and added, “This incense burner is made of white jade and is worth at least thirty taels of silver. How about this—you compensate me twenty-five taels.”

Though the burner looked like white jade, it actually wasn’t.

Du Wanchun had placed it in the shop simply because she liked how it looked and used it for burning incense. Since Lady Li had caused a commotion in her shop today and cost her a loss, she was determined to make up for it!

Lady Li frowned, her face filled with fury. “What do you mean I broke it?! I haven’t even reported you to the authorities, and now you’re trying to claim I owe you money?!”

Zhou Ruiyuan hurriedly pulled Du Wanchun behind him to protect her.

Du Wanchun turned to the onlookers and asked, “Everyone saw clearly just now, didn’t they? It was Madam Li who bumped into my table and knocked the incense burner off?”

The crowd gathered around to watch the commotion, nodding in agreement.

“That’s right! We all saw it. It was Madam Li who knocked it over!”

“Yes, we saw everything clearly.”

“Madam Li, you broke their incense burner. You have to pay for it! You can’t just bully people because you’re the magistrate’s wife!”

Madam Li was notorious for being domineering in Cheng’an County. She always acted arrogantly toward the local merchants, never treating them with respect.

These shopkeepers had long been fed up with her.

Hearing the crowd’s accusations, Madam Li hesitated and took two steps back, looking uneasy.

Her forehead was still wounded, her face pale, and she appeared disheveled.

Du Wanchun smiled and said, “Madam Li, pay up.”

The Third Prince and Madam Zhou joined in the commotion.

“Pay up!”

The Third Prince’s voice was loud and forceful. Madam Li trembled at the sound and could no longer stay. With shaking hands, she pulled out more than twenty taels of silver, placed them on the table, and strode toward the door, intending to find Liu Niangzi from the rouge shop.

Just as she was about to leave, Xu Niangzi, who had been casually eating sunflower seeds, suddenly threw away the shells and blocked her path with a smirk.

“Madam Li, there’s no need for you to go to Liu Niangzi.”

Madam Li halted in her tracks, looking up at Xu Niangzi in surprise.

Xu Niangzi clapped her hands, and seeing the crowd gather, she raised her voice.

“Madam Li, haven’t you harmed Liu Niangzi enough? She and Magistrate Li were childhood sweethearts, and their families had arranged their marriage long ago. But then you set your sights on the newly appointed magistrate and forced him to marry you!”

The crowd gasped in shock. No one had expected such a story behind the young woman at the rouge shop.

Madam Zhou whispered to Du Wanchun, “No wonder Magistrate Li keeps going to the rouge shop. So, this is the reason.”

Madam Li’s face darkened with rage, and she cursed at Xu Niangzi, “You wretched woman! What nonsense are you spouting?!”

Xu Niangzi smiled slowly and said, “Everyone in the neighboring county knows the truth. Back then, you forced Magistrate Li to marry you. You even sent people to cause trouble at Liu Niangzi’s home, which led to the death of her parents!”

As she spoke, her voice grew colder.

“And not only that—you even hired a group of men to assault Liu Niangzi before selling her into a brothel.”