Volume One, Chapter Nine: Liberation, for She Was Already Illusory

In the ancestral hall.

Nanny Li held a cushion in her hands, half-kneeling beside Xie Jiaoyue.

“Miss, please use this. A young lady’s knees are delicate; how can they endure kneeling on this bare floor?”

Xie Jiaoyue glanced at her from the corner of her eye.

“Why did you take Ruyue’s ginseng? Didn’t I tell you not to touch her things?”

Her voice was so soft it seemed on the verge of breaking.

Yet her throat trembled unmistakably with anger, though she was too weak to truly vent it.

She could only look at Nanny Li, her eyes filled with disappointment.

“I clearly told you…”

She had tried to avoid this, but these people had only brought disaster upon her.

Nanny Li’s face was full of guilt as she knelt, bowing her head to Xie Jiaoyue.

“It was my fault, Miss. You suffered three years in the nunnery, and seeing your frail body, I thought the ginseng could help restore your health. I never expected it would leave you bedridden, almost to the point of…”

“If anything were to happen to you, Miss, I would accept death as my atonement. Thankfully, Heaven has preserved you, and now that you have awakened, if you wish to punish me, I will bear it without complaint.”

Xie Jiaoyue looked down at the old woman prostrating before her.

How could she not see through this servant’s thoughts?

Relying on having raised her since childhood, and knowing she was now powerless, the woman assumed she dared not move against her, so she spoke these grand, hypocritical words.

Xie Jiaoyue closed her eyes for a moment. These servants were only so brazen because they acted under Madam Xie’s orders.

She had hoped to ignore it and avoid trouble, but the reality was otherwise.

People like this remaining by her side would only breed endless strife in her courtyard, never granting her peace.

She had only half a year left to live.

But in these six months, she could neither live in peace, nor atone for her sins, nor win her family’s forgiveness.

Living or dying seemed no different.

She slowly closed her eyes again, the chaotic, absurd world before her fading from blurry to pitch black.

“Nanny Li, go tell Madam I am willing to marry.”

The ancestral hall was too cold and desolate; she no longer wished to kneel.

...

Half an hour later.

“Miss, Madam says defiance is a grave sin. You may rise only after two hours.”

Nanny Li returned and said so.

---

Xie Jiaoyue opened her eyes. After such a long darkness, she struggled to adjust to the light, but she did not blink, stubbornly and painfully staring at the blurred ancestral tablets on the altar.

Only the pain in her body clearly reminded her—she was still alive.

If her body didn’t still ache, she might have believed herself dead.

Two hours was nothing; she could wait.

She had endured three years before; she was not afraid of these two hours dragging on.

Yet in truth, these two hours felt longer than three years.

So long that Xie Jiaoyue thought her knees would freeze solid on the cold floor.

The chill in her knees seeped into every bone, making her shiver uncontrollably.

Beside her, Zhiqiu, seeing her like this, quickly took off her outer garment and covered Xie Jiaoyue’s frail shoulders.

“Miss, please use the cushion. If you keep this up, you won’t be able to endure.”

Xie Jiaoyue staggered, almost falling to the ground.

Zhiqiu hurried to support her. “Miss!”

Xie Jiaoyue held onto her hand and forced her emaciated back upright.

“I’m fine. How much longer until the two hours are up?”

“One more hour.”

One whole hour remained.

She thought the time had already come.

Xie Jiaoyue looked at the cushion beside her. Seeing this, Nanny Li hastily pushed it in front of her.

“Miss, please use it. No matter how upset you are, you must not harm your body.”

“I’m not upset.”

Her lips were pale, drained of color, and her face was so pale it resembled frost gathering on leaves.

She only felt that the cushion was soaked in the coldness of this ancestral hall, as chill as the floor itself.

“Miss, why must you be like this?”

Nanny Li looked at her. “Though Madam has punished you by making you kneel here, she still loves you deep down. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have personally brought you back from the Quiet Nunnery. Why use your body to hold a grudge against her?”

Love her?

Xie Jiaoyue once believed that too, but now, whenever she heard the word “love,” it sounded to her like the biggest, most ridiculous lie in the world.

She once thought her mother loved her.

So when her mother first brought the abortifacient, despite the pain of losing the innocent life inside her, Xie Jiaoyue resolutely chose to trust the mother who claimed to love her.

That first bowl of medicine was hers alone to drink.

But after she finished it, her mother coldly brought a second.

---

Her mother said, “One bowl isn’t enough.”

She remembered the helpless look she cast at her mother, and the agonizing cramps tearing through her abdomen.

She wanted to say, “Mother, I don’t want to drink this,” but the person who once loved her most had no patience to hear her refusal, grabbing the hair at the nape of her neck and forcing the second dose down her throat.

More painful than the physical agony was the pain in her heart.

That humiliation—being held by the hair, forced to swallow abortifacients—felt like having her clothes torn off and being thrown naked into the freezing snow.

The shame crushed her heart, tore it apart, ripped it open and sewn back repeatedly until it was a bloody pulp.

She had believed her mother truly cared for her. Only now did she realize her mother did not love her; she loved only the once-celebrated Xie family heiress of the capital.

Her mother loved a perfect, pristine daughter—not her.

Long after, neither Nanny Li nor Zhiqiu knew how to comfort her and could only stand silently behind her.

Outside, white snow fell softly, its dazzling cold light filtering into the room and flickering across Xie Jiaoyue’s face.

Her excessively thin frame was supported only by a straightened spine. Standing behind the door, Zhiqiu gazed at her as if seeing the shadow of the talented young lady Xie Jiaoyue had been three years ago.

Like bamboo unbent by wind and snow, like a crane descending gracefully on snowy ground.

“Miss, the time has come.”

Zhiqiu said softly.

The woman kneeling on the floor’s lashes trembled as she slowly stood. In the next moment, her knees, cold as stone, betrayed her balance, and Xie Jiaoyue fell once.

This time, she was caught.

Zhiqiu steadied her. “Miss, I’m holding you.”

Xie Jiaoyue did not refuse.

She said, “Nanny Li, go tell Madam that I have returned to the residence for several days but have not yet paid respects to my grandmother. Ask for permission to leave the house. I will return after the visitation.”

Nanny Li looked at her. “Miss, you just regained consciousness today, and you have knelt here for so long. Would leaving the house now not be too tiring? Perhaps another day would be better.”

“Today,” Xie Jiaoyue said calmly.

Though her voice was faint, it carried an unmistakable tone of command.

Nanny Li could only reply, “Yes.”

After Nanny Li left, Xie Jiaoyue removed Zhiqiu’s hand from her arm and took slow steps toward the courtyard.

“You may go back. I want to visit my grandmother alone.”

“Miss.”

Zhiqiu knelt, head bowed low. “Madam says I must stay by your side at all times and never leave you. If you abandon me, Madam will not forgive your servant.”

Xie Jiaoyue paused, then said slowly, “As you wish.”

Since moving into this small courtyard, all peace and freedom had been nothing but illusions.