Qing Xing, disregarding the punishment she might face later, wiped away her tears and fetched a basin of burning charcoal. The damp, freezing room was instantly filled with warmth.
Just as she had the brazier burning steadily, an older servant woman called her away.
Shen Qi rolled his blanket into a bundle, stripped off his shirt, and laid face down. His back was covered in deep, overlapping bruises—at least thirty or forty marks. The swelling was grotesquely vivid.
He retrieved a bottle of bruise-healing powder from the bedside cabinet and handed it to Shen Yan. “Rub the bruises out for me.”
“It’ll hurt,” Shen Yan said, his eyes red.
“I’m not afraid of pain,” Shen Qi replied. “I just need to heal faster.”
Shen Yan had no choice but to obey. He was young and weak, afraid to press too hard. Shen Qi, worried the light massage would hinder the medicine’s effectiveness, told him to climb onto the bed, straddle his lower back, and apply all his strength through his palms.
“Harder. Faster,” Shen Qi gritted out, biting down on the blanket, cold sweat covering his forehead. “Don’t let Mother see.”
Shen Yan clenched his teeth and pressed harder, rubbing until the swollen bruises blended into a single blotchy mess of purple and green. Only then did he stop, gasping for breath.
The air was thick with the sharp scent of medicinal wine. Shen Qi loosened his bite on the blanket and exhaled long and slow.
Shen Yan, exhausted, flopped sideways onto the wooden bed.
Shen Qi turned his head to look at his brother. Shen Yan’s cheeks were flushed, his damp bangs sticking to his pale forehead, trembling slightly with each breath.
His own heart trembled as well—like a young sprout pushing stubbornly against the heavy stone above it, raw and uncertain, yet unyielding.
“Little Nine, from now on, we—”
Before he could finish, Yao Shi entered the room in a hurry. Shen Qi quickly threw on his outer robe before she lifted the curtain to step inside.
Shen Qi stubbornly refused to let his mother see his back, insisting that Shen Yan had already applied medicine and that it wasn’t serious. Yao Shi couldn’t argue with him. She could only sit on the bed, stroking his shoulders and face, choking back tears. “I’m useless. I can’t protect you… I’ve let my son suffer again…”
Shen Qi said, “If not for you, Mother, I’d have died long ago.”
No matter how weak or submissive she seemed, in his heart, Yao Shi was a vine full of resilience. To raise her three children, she had climbed sheer cliffs and crawled across barren sand. Her only hope was to see them grow up—grow up strong enough to lead her away from the main family, out of this sea of suffering.
Shen Mingluo entered after their mother, a step behind. The pungent scent of medicine hit her nose, and she shrank back into the corner, silently weeping.
When she was younger, their sixth brother’s wolfhound had terrified her—it had once torn off a servant’s leg right in front of her. She had fallen gravely ill afterward and had been quiet ever since. She rarely spoke, rarely smiled, and trembled at the scent of blood and medicine. She feared dogs. She feared men. Even her own brothers were no exception.
Yao Shi pulled her daughter into her embrace, worried. “I heard you accidentally killed a servant. If Madam Shen pursues the matter, what will we do…”
Shen Qi said, “Don’t worry, Mother. That servant had a death contract. Hasn’t she and her son gotten rid of plenty of them already? At worst, we make a scene. Let Father and the authorities judge—see if they care about the main branch murdering concubine-born children.”
Yao Shi frowned. “If it escalates, the authorities might step in. But what about your Father? His honor will be ruined, and the Shen family’s name will be dragged through the mud. Your Father is already sick—he can’t handle the shock.”
Shen Qi curled his lips into a sneer—cold, almost cruel. He looked far more mature and ruthless than a boy his age should. “So what? The Shen family never treated us as humans. Why should we treat it as home? As for Father, watching him linger like this seems far more painful than dying.”
Yao Shi’s face filled with sorrow. She neither agreed with his harsh words nor felt she had the right to scold him. She had failed as a mother, unable to shelter him from hardship.
Shen Qi, unsettled by her gaze, turned away, lying down with his back to them. No matter what anyone said, he refused to respond.
Yao Shi had no choice. She comforted her daughter, then retrieved a jar of her carefully hoarded linden honey.
The cold had turned it into white crystals, like sorbet, like fragrant snow. The moment the lid was opened, a crisp, refreshing sweetness filled the air.
She scooped a spoonful into a bowl, hesitated, then added another. She mixed it with warm water and brought it to Shen Qi.
Shen Qi refused to drink, refused to speak.
Yao Shi still had work to do. She coaxed him for a while, but when he didn’t respond, she knew his stubbornness had taken hold. No amount of persuasion would work—he had to come around on his own.
With a sigh, she set the bowl on the bedside table, gave him a few parting words, and left with Shen Mingluo.
Shen Qi sat up abruptly as soon as the door closed, staring in the direction his mother had left.
A flicker of remorse seemed to flash in his eyes, but it was buried beneath restraint and cold hardness—like a thicket of brambles struck by frost, already sharp by nature, with no room for vibrant hues.
“Why haven’t you left?” he asked Shen Yan, who was sitting at the edge of the bed.
Shen Yan’s face was clean, his expression obedient, as he held out a bowl of linden honey water. The gesture snuffed out Shen Qi’s irritation before it could even take shape.
Shen Qi gazed at his little ninth brother, his expression gradually softening. Lowering his head, he took a sip from the bowl’s rim.
Something felt off. A vague thought flickered to life like a spark before vanishing—he couldn’t grasp it.
He took another sip. The honey water wasn’t unsweet, but it lacked the sweetness it ought to have. This faint, inexplicable disappointment was impossible to put into words.
He hesitated slightly, then abruptly said, “You drink it.”
Shen Yan shook his head. “Mother left it for you. I won’t drink it.”
Shen Qi pressed the rim of the bowl against his brother’s lips. “You have to.”
With no choice, Shen Yan took a sip. The honey water stained his pale lips with a soft luster, like petals fallen into a teacup. Shen Qi stared at that touch of moisture, his voice suddenly hoarse. “Little Nine.”
“Mm?”
“Little Nine.” He called again, his voice trembling. “Little Nine.”
“Seventh Brother?” Shen Yan looked at him, confused.
“…Call me Qilang.”
Shen Yan blinked, then laughed. “No way. You’re my Seventh Brother.”
“—I’m not your brother!” The inexplicable frustration surged in Shen Qi’s chest, escaping his lips before he could stop it.
Shen Yan frowned. On his youthful face, there was a faint trace of difficulty, rejection, and endurance. “But we are brothers.”
A wild fury overtook Shen Qi. He knocked over the bowl, lunged forward, and pinned Shen Yan beneath him, his hands tightening around his brother’s slender, pale throat. “I said we’re not! Call me Qilang—now!”
Shen Yan’s throat constricted in pain, his cheeks flushing red. His damp eyes, so close, held an echo of the brilliance they would one day show in the spring. Strangely, there was no panic in them—just a mix of innocence and indifference. He opened his mouth and obediently murmured, “Qilang.”
His tongue lightly brushed his lips and teeth as he spoke—a gesture both perfunctory and languidly teasing.
Shen Qi got his way through force, yet the result only filled him with deeper rage and helplessness, an untamed fire burning in his chest with nowhere to go.
He let go the moment Shen Yan began to cough, burying his face in the crook of his brother’s neck. A low, hoarse growl escaped his throat—like a beast caught in a snare, unable to break free even with its sharpest claws.
Shen Yan raised a hand, avoiding the wounds on Shen Qi’s back, and patted his shoulder. “Seventh Brother, you knocked over the honey water. Now there’s nothing left to drink.”
…I want to eat you.
The caged beast inside Shen Qi roared in his heart. To devour him—alive, piece by piece, until not a drop of blood remained.
—
After regaining her breath, Zheng Shi flew into a rage, demanding that family law be upheld in the ancestral hall to punish the unfilial son on behalf of Master Shen.
If a parent beat their defiant child to death in the ancestral hall, it wasn’t considered unlawful—it was a matter of upholding family honor.
Shen Qi refused to surrender. He ordered Shen Yan to slip out the back door and report to the authorities, then hid his mother and sister in the wine cellar. Left alone, he was chased through the estate by a mob of house servants until he barged into Master Shen’s bedroom.
He and Zheng Shi traded vicious insults. Then he grabbed the bed curtains and threatened to set the room on fire. The already frail Master Shen, overwhelmed by the scene, choked on his own phlegm, his eyes rolling back as his body convulsed. He nearly perished on the spot.
If Master Shen died, his children could demand a division of the family estate, stripping Zheng Shi of her control. With no choice, she ordered his immediate resuscitation and summoned a doctor to keep him alive.
The manor was thrown into chaos, and Shen Qi used the opportunity to escape.
Master Shen ultimately survived but suffered a more severe stroke. His partial paralysis worsened into complete immobility. Unable to speak a single word, he became a living corpse for Zheng Shi to manipulate as she pleased.
The authorities came and left a single warning before dismissing the case with, “Even the fairest judge cannot rule on family matters.”
Shen Qi knew the situation had worsened. Zheng Shi was bound to become more desperate, so he conspired with his mother to flee the Shen household under the cover of night before she could take further action.
But Yao Shi’s ransom papers were still in Master Shen’s possession. If they fled, it would be considered desertion, giving Zheng Shi legal grounds to report them and request a manhunt.
Shen Qi suspected that Zheng Shi was holding onto the papers as leverage, so he began searching for a way to steal them.
Before he could act, disaster struck his eighth sister.
Zheng Shi had arranged for her to be married off to a wealthy rice merchant named Chen—a man in his fifties. The betrothal gifts arrived that very day, and by the next, without her knowledge, Shen Minglu was taken from the washing well, drugged, dressed, and carried off in a bridal sedan, accompanied by celebratory music.
When Yao Shi overheard the servants gossiping about it, she was struck by lightning. For the first time, she broke down completely, grabbing at Zheng Shi and screaming, “Minglu is only eleven! You’re selling her to an old man—throwing her into a pit of fire! You’re a mother too! How can you be so cruel? Don’t you fear retribution?”
The maids dragged her away, while Zheng Shi sneered. “You’re just a concubine—I am her mother. I would never mistreat my own daughter. The Chen family is wealthy, and Master Chen has lost his wife. Minglu will be well cared for. She’ll have a high status in their home—what’s wrong with that?”
Yao Shi tried to run out and save her daughter but was forcibly restrained and locked in the woodshed.
That evening, Shen Qi returned. When he heard the news, he smashed the door open, carried the exhausted Yao Shi back to the west wing, then grabbed a hatchet and climbed over the wall to retrieve his sister.
That night, he turned the Chen estate upside down.
But in the end, he brought back nothing but his eighth sister’s cold, lifeless body.
—
Shen Minglu feared men. If one came too close, she would shrink back and cry—or, in more extreme cases, scream and struggle.
When the sedative wore off and she awoke in the unfamiliar Chen household, terror gripped her. Then, when a white-haired old man tried to touch her, she sobbed and resisted. She was beaten for it. In despair and fear, she took a heavy iron candlestick and stabbed herself through the throat.
A concubine who killed herself on her wedding night was an ill omen. The Chen family found the situation distasteful enough as it was—then the Shen family’s b*stard son arrived, making a scene. Chen Yuanwai, unwilling to be further troubled, simply handed over the corpse and planned to demand compensation from the Shen family later.
Shen Qi’s eyes were bloodshot, his face as cold and pale as forged iron. A rusted machete, its blade stained with dried blood, was tucked behind his waist as he carried his sister’s body home.
The moment Yao Shi saw her daughter, she fainted on the spot.
She held her daughter’s corpse and wept for an entire day, refusing food and water. Her two sons stayed by her side, offering no words of comfort. Deep grief takes its toll on the body, but suppressing sorrow without release wounds the soul even more.
That night, Yao Shi wiped her tears and stopped crying. She took out her meager savings and told Shen Qi to buy a coffin. They dressed Shen Minglu in mourning clothes and hired men to carry her to the cemetery at Xiangji Temple in the west of the city, where she was laid to rest.
She was not buried in the Shen family’s ancestral tomb. And the Shen household, now missing an illegitimate daughter, remained unchanged—its masters continued feasting and drinking, its servants continued their duties as if nothing had happened.
After a simple funeral, life seemed to return to normal.
Zheng Shi compensated Master Chen with two young, beautiful servant girls as concubines, and with that, the matter was settled.
As for Master Shen—perhaps he knew of his daughter’s death, perhaps he didn’t. Yao Shi no longer cared. She heard that he had developed bedsores, and the doctor had ordered that he be moved outside to bask in the sun the next day.
That night, she prepared two bowls of egg and shredded meat noodles, dressed her two sons in new clothes, and watched them finish their meal.
“Qi Ger, Little Nine is still young. From now on, he will rely on you for guidance and support,” Yao Shi said gently. “From today onward, you two are true brothers, born of the same mother.”
Shen Qi nearly blurted out, “We are not brothers,” but he clenched his teeth and swallowed the words in front of his mother, nodding instead.
Yao Shi stroked their heads and said, “Eat your fill and rest early. There’s much to do tomorrow.”
Shen Qi thought she was referring to their usual work, but he soon realized he had misunderstood.
At dawn, she donned a crimson dress and hung herself from the doorway of the main hall using a white silk rope. The morning sunlight illuminated her suspended red embroidered shoes, utterly still.
When Zheng Shi opened the door, those frostbitten, cracked, and ghostly pale hands were right in front of her face. She slowly looked up—meeting Yao Shi’s wide, unblinking eyes. A bloodcurdling scream tore from her throat.
At that moment, the servants were carrying Master Shen out of the house, laying him on a luohan couch.
The elongated shadow of the doorway stretched over his face. He stared in horror, his cloudy old eyes widening, a wheezing gasp rattling from his throat.
Wearing red in death was a sign of deep resentment—a vow to return as a vengeful ghost.
Master Shen’s frail body and fragile mind could not withstand such a shock. He died that very day. Zheng Shi, too, fell gravely ill from fright.
From a concubine’s daughter to a concubine, the Shen household saw death after death. And now, with Master Shen’s passing and the household’s matron bedridden, the family collapsed overnight.
With the tree fallen, the monkeys scattered. Many servants and maids stole valuables and their indenture contracts before fleeing the city. Zheng Shi, tormented by nightmares of a ghost seeking vengeance each night, could not concern herself with them—nor with the illegitimate sons of the household.
Shen Qi was free. No one beat him or humiliated him anymore.
But he had lost more than he had gained—his mother and sister were gone, leaving him with only his young brother.
He didn’t want to see Shen Yan as his brother, but his mother’s dying words bound him, gripping his bones and blood like an iron vice, reminding him—You are brothers.
He clutched the half jar of linden honey his mother had left behind, wanting to scream, to kill. But in the end, he only took Shen Yan’s hand and walked out of the Shen residence without looking back.
Shen Qi raised his brother alone.
At fifteen, he enlisted in the Embroidered Uniform Guards. Within two years, he used his position in interrogating corrupt officials to implicate the wealthy Zheng and Chen families in a major case of corruption and collusion. The families were sentenced to death. Zheng Shi, who had remarried after Master Shen’s passing, thought she had escaped, only to be turned in by her own kin as an accomplice. She was imprisoned and never made it to the execution ground—she died mysteriously in her cell, her body covered in whip marks and punctured wounds, her neck strangled with hemp rope, her spine crushed inch by inch.
Shen Qi had avenged himself, his mother, and his eighth sister.
Later, he rose to the rank of a Qianhu in the Embroidered Uniform Guards but never took a wife or built a family of his own.
He watched Shen Yan achieve top marks in the imperial exams. He watched him rise to officialdom. And on the day Shen Yan married the granddaughter of the Grand Chancellor, Shen Qi drank himself into a stupor.
That night, while carrying out orders to pursue the assassin who had attempted to kill Marquis Fengan, Shen Qi was still not fully sober. He took a sword to the chest from the enemy and was gravely wounded.
At death’s door, unwilling to let Shen Yan find out, he hid beneath the arch of Chengqing Bridge, using a torn strip of his garment to hastily staunch the bleeding.
The blood dyed a wide swath of the river red—like the red dress his mother had worn the day she died.
From the surface of the river emerged the figure of Yao Shi. Her long hair hung loose, her face pale and lips bloodless, a deep purple bruise circling her neck where she had been strangled. Shen Minglu peeked out from behind her, clutching the hem of her red dress. She still looked like the timid little girl she had once been, but there was a deep hole in her throat, still oozing blood.
Shen Qi’s eyes instantly grew wet. In a low voice, he called out, “Mother.”
Yao Shi stepped forward and lovingly touched his cheek and shoulder, just as she had when he was a child. “Come with me,” she said. “Our family can finally be reunited.”
“You always said that all the suffering in life would eventually be repaid if I endured long enough. But where is my reward?” Shen Qi looked at her, trying to rise, but was held down by the intense unwillingness and attachment in his heart. He felt like he’d forgotten something—something more important than life itself.
Yao Shi sighed gently. “Life is just layers upon layers of hardship. When you’ve endured it all, what remains is release. As for reward… it’s just a mirage to ease thirst, a lie we tell ourselves. Come now, child. Come with me.”
She softly took his hand and began walking toward the pitch-black river.
Shen Qi followed numbly for a few steps. The icy water reached his chest, and suddenly, a sharp pain burst from deep within his chest—
“Qilang.”
Who was calling him?
“I’m just repaying you—repaying you for saving me from the flogging.”
Whom had he saved? And who had saved him?
“I know you’re not a good person…”
His hands were stained with blood, his path paved with corpses. He had never dared hope that, after death, there could be anywhere for him other than h*ll.
“From now on, you and I are brothers bound by life and death. As long as you do not commit acts of utter cruelty and evil, I am willing to risk my life for you, Qilang. From this day forth, we shall share hardships and prosperity alike, remain loyal for life, and never betray one another.”
He had no brothers, nor did he want any. He had only his mother and a younger sister. His sister died at eleven; a few days later, his mother died too.
He had someone he loved deeply—his greatest calamity in this life, but also his only salvation. That person was… who?
“My life, in exchange for you calling me ‘husband.'”
“You already belong to me. There’s no escaping it in this lifetime. Accept your fate.”
“It’s been days since we last met. Do you miss your husband?”
“Husband misses you too. A day or two together isn’t enough—we must spend a lifetime.”
“Don’t keep that cold face, full of murderous intent—it’s terrifying. How about I write to you when I travel for work?”
“Qilang, don’t be difficult.”
Black ink on white paper, every word carved deep into fate itself:
“The world is vast, filled with the warmth of human existence. None of it is you, yet all of it is you. Qilang, I miss you.”
—Su Yan. His name was Su Yan, Su Qinghe.
He was my wife.
All the suffering of his youth, the unquenchable fury, the unbearable desolation—the countless grievances and unfulfilled desires—everything he loved and lost, every hatred he endured, every longing that remained unmet… Like shattered fragments of time, like a haze of bloodstained memories, they scattered and faded. Shen Qi awoke as if from a long dream, returning to the world of the living.
