In recent days, the Yi Courtyard had seen a flurry of activity. First, four attendants came to pack up and remove Chen Fu’s usual clothing, amusements, and decorations. Then, two maids dressed in red and green spent half a day behind closed doors cleaning out Madam He’s room. After hauling out five large camphorwood trunks, they sealed the doors and windows tightly, even pasting paper seals over them.

Such blatant precautions, not even trying to hide it.

He Xianjin was speechless.

With the fall of the fierce concubine He Ai, the Yi Courtyard finally began to quiet down.

Nanny Zhang, who had been thoroughly impressed by Xianjin’s martial prowess, secretly told her that the four maids originally assigned to the courtyard had unusually sharp professional instincts. Just before He Ai’s death, they each came up with bizarre excuses to leave—”My aunt passed away, I need to go home,” “My brother broke his leg, no one’s there to care for him,” “Our sow gave birth, I need to help her through postpartum recovery”—packed their things, and left, hoping to meet their next master under better circumstances.

Most of those excuses were understandable. But the sow giving birth? That one was truly unforgivable. Couldn’t they at least put some effort into their lies? Couldn’t they show a shred of perfunctory respect?

In any case, over the past few days, He Xianjin’s back pain had eased after two days of rest. With no one left to care for her, she had to fetch water, stoke the stove, wash clothes, and clean the courtyard herself. No one paid attention to the vast Yi Courtyard, but she found a kind of peace in the solitude.

Fortunately, Chen Fu wasn’t much of a reader. He took the half-month’s worth of walnuts he’d been fiddling with, but left behind thirty or so books. All of them now belonged to He Xianjin.

The original owner of her body had been literate. She used to embroider sentimental verses on her handkerchiefs—mostly self-pitying and melancholic.

The poetry wasn’t exactly refined. Based on lines like “I pity myself like a speck of dust, brushed aside like a willow, hated by all,” He Xianjin judged that the original owner had basic literacy and writing skills. She had a small dream of being artistic—but not much. She had a rather large tendency toward melodrama.

Living a life of luxury, yet claiming to be as worthless as grass—what would the woman tending to a postpartum pig think of that?

Since the original owner could read, He Xianjin had no qualms about flipping through the books. She began to form a picture of this strange Great Wei dynasty that seemed to have sprung from a crack in a stone.

It was a fascinating era—blending features of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties. Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism hadn’t yet become dominant; Confucianism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, and Mind Studies were all vying for influence. Civil and military development were balanced, and agriculture and commerce were thriving. To the north were the Tatars, to the west the Red Sand Wadi, and to the south the Wonu. Women’s status wasn’t high, but it wasn’t so low that they were expected to mutilate their faces for chastity or bind their feet into three-inch golden lotuses—a grotesque form of psychological control through physical suffering.

All in all, He Xianjin considered this era to be another version of the Song dynasty. Whether in terms of historical and cultural development or the daily lives of ordinary people—their food, clothing, and travel—it leaned more toward the peaceful Northern Song period, untouched by war.

That was a good thing. Peaceful times were always better than the devastation of war. At least it gave her a chance to try living like a real person.

The quieter He Xianjin became, the more invisible her days in the Yi Courtyard became. And the more invisible her days, the harder they became. The first sign was in the food—

Her three daily meals grew increasingly meager. Originally, breakfast included one egg, a bowl of plain congee, a few side dishes, and two vegetable buns—roughly the standard fare of a train station breakfast stall. But in recent days, breakfast had dwindled to half a steamed bun and a bowl of rice water, occasionally garnished with a few green peas. It had dropped to the level of prison rations. Eventually, it got worse: one meal consisted of just a plate of boiled greens and a small bowl of unhulled grain.

He Xianjin lifted the lid in the steam-filled kitchen and stared at the food. She looked at the dish, then at the cook, then back at the dish.

The cook chuckled, “Miss Jin, you’re in mourning! How can you eat well and drink well while mourning?” He pointed to the ground. “Your mother’s watching!”

Watching you grow ulcers on your feet and pus on your scalp, maybe.

He Xianjin said nothing, picked up the food box, and walked out. One or two meals like that were tolerable. But five days in a row, with no change even in the type of vegetables? It was unbearable.

Late at night, starving, He Xianjin sat up and reached under the bedboard, pulling out a narrow wooden box. Inside were three banknotes worth a hundred taels each, two heavy gold hairpins, and three thick gold rings. These were He Ain’s parting gift to help Xianjin survive.

Clearly, He Ai hadn’t considered how impractical large-denomination notes and gold jewelry were in the secluded inner courtyard.

At the very least, He Xianjin didn’t dare use a hundred-tael note to buy three vegetable buns. If she tried, Third Madam would raid her quarters the very next second.

He Xianjin closed the box, sighed, and hid it back under the bedboard. She’d wait a little longer. Endure a bit more.

Knock knock knock—Soft footsteps outside the window lattice.

He Xianjin knelt on the bed and pushed open the wooden window.

A food box was gently passed in.

“Quick, eat!” Nanny Zhang’s face appeared in the moonlight. Seeing He Xianjin’s dazed expression, she urged again, “Hurry! Third Master told me to bring this to you!”

He Xianjin opened the box. Inside were a bowl of steamed egg custard, a dish of soy-scallion tofu, and a bowl of white rice—all still steaming hot.

“Third Master was tied up in the stables by the Old Madam and beaten fifty times with a board. He ran a high fever for three days—his skin split open, it was terrifying!”

Nanny Zhang glanced around, then pulled a small pouch from her sleeve and placed it on the windowsill. “He sent you some silver. All his money is now under the Old Madam’s control—he scraped together what he could, and this is all that’s left.”

“Tomorrow, Third Master will be sent to Jing County. No one knows what things will be like here after that. He told you not to clash with Third Madam—bear with it. When he succeeds and returns, he’ll find you a good match.”

Nanny Zhang wasn’t well-educated—it had taken all her effort to memorize those flowery words.

He Xianjin was still stunned. She’d always thought that Chen Fu was just an unreliable rebel with a childish romantic streak, the kind of brainless second-generation rich kid whose only skill was “how to quickly and absurdly anger his own mother to death.”

He Xianjin clutched the pouch tightly, then slowly loosened her grip.

Nanny Zhang hesitated for a long moment, then finally blurted out the rumor she’d heard earlier that day. “Third Madam is treating you this way just to make you suffer through mourning. She’s arranged a marriage for you—with the bookkeeper of the mulberry bark workshop in the east of the city. His wife died last month. He holds the workshop’s accounts, and Third Madam has always wanted that workshop. She’s using you to win him over…”

And probably to crush Chen Fu’s hopes once and for all.

“I’m still in mourning…” He Xianjin said hesitantly. “Isn’t marriage forbidden for three years?”

Nanny Zhang sighed. “Oh, you silly girl! That three-year rule is for officials and scholars. Go ask around in the countryside—who actually mourns for three years?! No marriage, no children for three years? Who’s going to work the fields or run the household?”

Right—rural families equated population with productivity. No marriage for three years could mean no new children for four or five. That was a big deal. The Chen family was merchants anyway—not exactly sticklers for tradition.

He Xianjin narrowed her eyes. “Did the Old Madam say when Third Master might be called back from Jing County?”

Nanny Zhang slapped her thigh. “She said if the Jing County workshop’s profits surpass those of the mulberry bark workshop, then he can come back!”

Ah, so it’s a KPI competition now.

“What are the profits like at the mulberry bark workshop?”

“That…” That was confidential. Nanny Zhang didn’t know. But women always had their own metrics. “Must be good! The wife of Manager Jiang from that workshop shops without blinking an eye!”

“And the Jing County workshop?”

“Manager Zhao’s wife is still wearing patched clothes from three years ago!”

He Xianjin: … It’s over. This lovestruck fool might never make it back.