A Willing Mistake, My Lady – Chapter 26

Fluttering Like a Startled Swan¹

Her Peerless Hero

Who would have thought this Young Master Liu truly embodied the old saying—to die beneath the peony blossoms, a romantic even in death².

            

He had reached a point where he disregarded all propriety and decency. The youth laughed in anger, smashed the round stool beside him, bent down to pick up one of its broken legs, gripped it in his hand, and slowly approached Young Master Liu. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he brought the wood crashing down on the man’s body. Though Liu was a man in his twenties and in his prime, years of wine and debauchery had hollowed him out—he couldn’t fight back, reduced to scrambling across the floor to dodge the blows of a slender youth.

“Someone… someone help!” Young Master Liu howled like a stuck pig. The attendant³ outside the door, afraid of getting into trouble, hurried downstairs to report to Liu’s retainers⁴. Before long, six or seven burly men filed up to the second floor, trapping the youth and Jiang Chenyu in the room.

“What are you standing around for? Beat him to death! Beat him to death!” Only his mouth still intact, Young Master Liu bellowed through a bruised and swollen face.

            

The young Jiang Chenyu clutched the youth’s clothing in terror, her knuckles white, all color drained from her face. The youth looked at the incoming lackeys⁵, drew a short blade from his waist sash, and pressed it into the little girl’s hands behind him. “Don’t be afraid. If anyone comes near you, kill them outright. This is a precious blade from the Western Regions—it cuts iron like mud.”

Jiang Chenyu stared at him, transfixed. The youth’s features were bold and striking, blazing and dazzling. Just moments ago, when the lecher⁶ had slipped his hand beneath her waist sash, her mind had gone completely blank, her whole body frozen rigid. She had thought her end had come—only to see the massive weight on top of her kicked aside in a single blow. It was as though she had glimpsed heaven’s light.

He cracked his knuckles with sharp snaps, then turned to face the retainers charging at him. Surrounded by six or seven men, he looked far too slender. Jiang Chenyu gripped the dagger, palms slick with sweat, yet she somehow believed this youth could defeat those villains. His counterstrikes were blindingly fast—she couldn’t follow his movements, only watch the retainers fall one by one. But he was still too young, and the men kept climbing back up to attack again. Fighting a revolving battle against a whole group, he quickly began to lose steam.

            

Outnumbered, he had to end this fight fast. He stepped onto a chair, leapt up onto the table, and from that height raised the stick in his hand—bringing it crashing down on a retainer’s neck. The man, their strongest fighter, dropped straight to the floor without a sound. The others hesitated, daring not advance. The youth held his stick like a jade-faced Asura⁷, his gaze cold as he said, “Next.”

When the retainers still refused to advance, Young Master Liu—who had suffered the youth’s wrath—couldn’t stomach it. He shouted, “Whoever captures him, this young master will reward two hundred taels of silver!” At those words, the two retainers still in one piece began to stir.

“Dog eyes look down on people⁸—this young master is only worth two hundred taels?” His breathing was ragged now. His calf had scraped against something—he seemed injured—yet he still couldn’t resist firing back.

            

Jiang Chenyu noticed that this gege’s leg seemed to have trouble lifting. She was just thinking that if he couldn’t hold out, she would use the blade in her hand to stab the remaining two—whether she could or not, she’d only know by trying.

But before Jiang Chenyu could put the iron-cutting precious blade to use, another youth appeared at the door—thick-browed and big-eyed, roughly the same age as the red-clothed little gege but twice his build, solid and powerful, with a commanding presence. The moment he spotted the youth leaning against the wall, fury overflowed in his eyes. He drew a large blade and pressed it against Young Master Liu’s neck, hoisting the man clean off his feet.

“Move again and I’ll carve him up. Everyone get out.” The sturdy youth glared with already enormous eyes, sending a chill through everyone present.

            

“Out, out, we’re going out! Young Hero⁹, please don’t take it seriously—we were just sparring, having a bit of fun!” Young Master Liu, throat still pinned, strained his voice to beg for mercy.

“Chen Lan, I’m fine. Leave him his dog’s life¹⁰.” Seeing reinforcements arrive, he relaxed considerably. Besides, dealing with a piece of dog trash was best done in the shadows.

But then government soldiers suddenly arrived at the door, hauling everyone—them and Young Master Liu’s people alike—off to the yamen. They said the Chunfeng Inn¹¹ had reported the incident. That night, Jiang Chenyu and the red-clothed youth were locked in a cell, while the thick-browed youth escaped in the chaos. Jiang Chenyu was stunned, but the youth comforted her, saying that his companion had gone to fetch help, and they would be out by tomorrow at most—no need to face trial in the yamen’s courtroom.

            

She finally let her heart settle, but when she saw the blood soaking through the fabric of his trouser leg, tears streamed down her face. The day’s terror and grievance were more than a girl of ten could bear. She clung to his waist like a koala, weeping openly—though the tears flowed freely, she didn’t dare make a sound. Soon his clothes were soaked through. The red-clothed youth looked down at the little girl, helpless against the snot and tears she wiped all over him. He didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare ask—could only silently pat her back.

The youth hadn’t lied. The next day, they indeed walked out of the cell. But his wound hadn’t been treated in time and had worsened. He had to be carried out on the thick-browed youth’s back. Waiting outside was a magnificent carriage. From it stepped a woman in white, like a fairy sister—her every gesture radiated the bearing of a noble family’s daughter, coupled with an ethereal detachment from the mortal world.

Later, he had her sent back to the Jiang family, while her youthful hero was carried into the carriage. She still remembered his face when he lifted the carriage curtain to bid her farewell—that smile, bold and radiant as wildflowers carpeting an entire spring, brimming with irrepressible vitality, seizing every corner of her awareness.

            

As for this youth—after she married Shen Hetang, she rarely thought of him anymore. Because that day, standing on the second floor, the moment she first saw him, her fingers gripping the embroidered ball¹² had trembled. He had grown taller. His features were almost unchanged, but where his younger self had been striking, now there was an added edge of coldness and allure. His manner was distant, yet here he was, eyes crinkled in a smile, lips curved upward, popping pastries into his mouth one after another.

She steadied herself quickly, signaled Chuntao with a glance, and had the man hauled back to Jiang Manor.

In truth, that embroidered ball selection had been nothing more than a pretext to split from Wu Daoyuan. If she hadn’t encountered him, she would never have agreed to live with anyone else—let alone the fact that she had already arranged a chosen candidate. At the time, she was thoroughly sickened by Wu Daoyuan, but she wasn’t entirely without options for self-preservation. It was simply that her most capable subordinate was far away in the South Seas¹³, and she lacked usable hands for the moment. That was why she devised this cumbersome plan that killed two birds with one stone.

            

She took after her father in her precocity. When she saw that luxurious carriage and the guards in official uniforms, she understood that she and this flower-like youth might not be from the same world. So when Jiang Fu arrived at her door with his three children, she secretly arranged for the four of them to stay elsewhere, even using her own private savings to buy them a small house. She told no one about this.

When Jiang Fu learned that his delay had nearly caused a catastrophe for his Little Mistress¹⁴, he immediately ordered his three children to kneel and pledge their loyalty. But Jiang Chenyu ultimately kept only Jiang Fu’s servitude contract¹⁵; she did not take the children’s. She had grown up at her maternal grandfather’s side, learning by observation exactly how to win people’s hearts.

This Jiang Fu had indeed been a bandit in his younger days, but after having children and a family, he had gone straight. Yet fortune is as unpredictable as the weather, and calamity strikes without warning. The silver that had once been enough to live on went to buying medicine for his gravely ill wife. Gradually the money ran out, and his wife passed away. Not long after, his old father died too—the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Watching his children go hungry, he sold himself into servitude.

            

And the most useful person Jiang Fu brought was his eldest daughter, Jiang Ning—a tomboy so fierce that even the stray dogs at the alley entrance would give her a wide berth. She took her father’s bandit spirit and magnified it, becoming the king of the alleyway kids early on, a remarkable woman who schemed every possible way to make life better for her family. Old Jiang got a headache just looking at her.

At eighteen, she still hadn’t found a husband—though she had plenty of little brothers. Sharp-witted and bold, she and Jiang Chenyu had secretly run quite a few businesses together starting from when Jiang Chenyu was ten. From small-time peddling of needles and thread to later running trade routes and managing cargo, in five years they had earned no less than Old Master Jiang’s fortune.

Last year, when the imperial court opened maritime trade, many people merely watched and waited, afraid to take the lead. Jiang Chenyu staked her entire fortune and asked Jiang Ning whether she dared pull off something big—come back and rise straight to the top? Jiang Ning agreed without a second thought, assuming it would be just like always; she’d made plenty of money following Jiang Chenyu. But Jiang Chenyu told her to think it over before giving her answer.

            

In the end, she still wanted to try. Their silver was nothing compared to truly wealthy families, but this time everyone else was holding back, afraid to be the first to try¹⁶—and that was precisely what gave them their opening. The two of them split the investment—Jiang Chenyu taking six parts, Jiang Ning four—and scraped together 200,000 taels in silver notes. A hundred thousand taels of silver bought a large ship, and another hundred thousand went toward cargo, to buy and sell across the South Seas.

Jiang Ning set off on the voyage to the South Seas, taking one younger brother and sixteen underlings with her—like bandits descending from the mountains—joining a fleet of over sixty large ships. But it had been nearly a year since any news came from her, and even Jiang Chenyu’s steady heart had begun to falter.

She told herself that if Jiang Ning failed, she wouldn’t blame her. As long as she came back alive, they could always rise again. So she had turned her sights to Wu Daoyuan’s household assets—but then she happened to marry Shen Hetang, and after the wedding she grew lazy and indolent, spending her days circling around her husband, forgetting all about fighting Wu Daoyuan for the family estate.

            

She wasn’t particularly worried about Jiang Ning, either. This time the imperial court was leading the fleet—whatever happened, she believed Jiang Ning could at least keep herself alive. It was just that Chuntao, who served as the liaison between her and Jiang Ning—despite her silly, smiling exterior—went to the temple every seven days to burn incense and pray to Buddha for Jiang Ning’s safe return, intact and whole.

In those idle days, she had treated Wu Daoyuan as a way to pass the time. Later, without her even having to seek him out, the man had fallen into her bowl of his own accord—and she never again treated him as a mouse for her amusement!

But this man really did have a knack for getting her into trouble—wasn’t that exactly what was happening right now!

            

Jiang Chenyu had been concentrating intently on the accounts in her study when this girl—however she had found the room—threw the door open and barged right in.

“Jiejie, please, you have to save me!” The young girl fell to her knees before Jiang Chenyu’s desk and knocked her head against the floor three times.

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