Against the Current - Chapter 134

Chapter 134 - Retribution (Part 2)

Cao Lihuan stared abruptly, her eyes wide open, a rattling sound gurgling in her throat. Gathering all her strength, she swept her hand across, knocking the bowl out of Siqiao's hands and sending it crashing to the floor with a sharp crack as it shattered into countless pieces. She raged, "You, you, you... why didn't you tell me sooner!"

With the same unchanging, simpering smile on her face, Siqiao replied, "I was only afraid the mistress would get upset. But now that Sister Hui'er is carrying a child, such joyous news naturally had to be reported for the mistress to know."

Paying no mind to Siqiao's sarcastic and mocking tone, Cao Lihuan forced herself to sit up, only to be overwhelmed by a wave of dizziness and spots dancing before her eyes. After catching her breath for a long while, she finally rasped, "Go call that little bitch Hui'er here to see me!" Seeing that Siqiao stood motionless, she flew into a rage again and snapped, "Are you still not going?!"

With a cold sneer, Siqiao turned and left.

Cao Lihuan rested her head against the bedpost, panting heavily for a long time. Before long, Hui'er arrived. As soon as she stepped across the threshold, she was greeted by the heavy stench of medicinal herbs mingling with a foul, sour, and putrid odor. Hui'er hurriedly covered her nose and mouth, retching as if about to vomit. Siqiao rushed forward to support her, wearing a face full of fawning and obsequious smiles as she coaxed, "Oh dear, Sister Hui'er, you are a precious person now. Are you feeling unwell? Sit down quickly, sit down quickly. I'll go pour you a cup of hot tea to settle your stomach."

Clutching a handkerchief in her hand, Hui'er waved it back and forth in front of her nose and said, "No need, no need. Go to my room and brew a cup using that jar of this year's new tea. And bring a plate of those pepper-and-salt spiced pastry cakes with fruit filling as well."

Siqiao smiled and said, "Understood, I'll go right now." She lifted the curtain and departed.

Hui'er sat down near the door at a safe distance. Raising her eyes to look, she saw Cao Lihuan slumped against the head of the bed, glaring at her with ferocious malevolence. Her eyes were bloodshot, her complexion sallow and waxen, and her cheeks so sunken that her high collarbones stood out with stark prominence. Her hair was a tangled bird's nest, making her look precisely like an evil female ghost. Startled, Hui'er collected herself, crossed her legs, and asked with an air of arrogant detachment, "What did the mistress want with me?"

Cao Lihuan looked Hui'er up and down. She saw that her round, moon-like face had grown even fuller, and her already plump figure had become considerably fatter. Her raven-black hair was adorned with frosted gold hairpins, a silver-threaded eight-treasure bun, pearl and kingfisher-feather floral ornaments, and agate gold hairpins. From her ears hung purple-gold filigree earrings, a piece of fine jade hung against her chest, and she wore two bracelets on each wrist. She was dressed in a clove-purple multicolored woven gauze vest that revealed pale-moon cloud sleeves, over a skirt of emerald-blue scattered gold. Her face was evenly tinted with court powder and rouge, making even her slightly yellowish complexion look fresh, bright, and snow-white—she cuts the very figure of a respectable household's young mistress!

Gritting her teeth, Cao Lihuan hissed, "Hui'er, I always prided myself on treating you like my own biological sister. Whatever food, drink, or clothing I had, I invariably made sure there was a share for you. You ungrateful, faithless, and shameless wretch—to actually steal your master's man and treat me like this!"

Hui'er let out a cold snort. "Treat me like your biological sister? Don't use those high-sounding, pleasant-sounding words to gild your own face! When I was foolish before, I thought you treated me with genuine affection, but when I think back carefully, every single thing you ever handed down to me was always something you no longer wanted or cared for, tossing it to me merely to look generous. When have you ever parted with anything you truly treasured? Whenever I accidentally got my hands on a nice trinket, you would still use every possible scheme to sweet-talk it away from me, all while claiming it was for my own good!"

Furious, Cao Lihuan retorted, "Even if I fell short in some ways, you still went behind my back to seduce the master of the house, casting your mistress aside and leaving her to live or die. Have you no conscience left at all?"

Hui'er stood up, took a few steps forward, and pointing straight at the tip of Cao Lihuan's nose, she raised her voice and shouted, "I have no conscience? Cao Lihuan, you touch your own chest and ask yourself if you have any conscience! I served you through thick and thin, and if I didn't rack up great merits, I at least poured out bitter toil. I'm already nearly twenty years old, and my family finally managed to arrange a match for me—though it wasn't a prominent family, they were farming folk with some property. I came to beg you for this bit of grace, but you put up every obstacle and went behind our backs to reject the marriage at the groom's family home, before getting me drunk and offering me up to that old wretch Han Yaozu to be trampled upon! You did it solely to lock down that old man's affections so you could rake in profits for yourself. Cao Lihuan, I hate you down to the very marrow of my bones, and day and night I dream of chewing your flesh just to vent my hatred!"

Startled, Cao Lihuan desperately argued, "I naturally did it for your own good! Back then, Han Yaozu even told me he wanted to take you as a concubine. Han Yaozu is a dignified county magistrate; wouldn't being his concubine be a hundred times better than being a farmer's wife..."

Hui'er shrieked, "Absolute bullshit! Is that tigress of a wife in his household someone easy to get along with? If Han Yaozu is so wonderful, why didn't you go be his concubine yourself? As for that old fogey, the mere sight of him makes me sick to my stomach!" Letting out a couple of shrill screams, Hui'er stepped back a bit, her chest heaving rapidly as she and Cao Lihuan stood glaring at each other with mutual hostility.

At that moment, Siqiao carried in the tea, pastries, and fruit, then quietly withdrew with light steps.

Hui'er rubbed her chest to calm her nerves, took two steps back, and sat back down. Picking up the teacup, she took a sip, then turned her gaze back to Cao Lihuan. A smile bloomed across her face as she said, "Cao Lihuan, you truly are someone who doesn't know how to appreciate blessings. Even though Ren Yu is incompetent and utterly useless, he has one redeeming quality: he is loyal, cares deeply for his family, and holds onto old attachments. Even after you slapped a towering green hat onto his head and reduced yourself to this ghostly state, he still kept worrying about you and tried everywhere to find doctors to cure you. But now, your husband belongs to me."

Tossing her head wildly, Cao Lihuan screamed, "Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!"

As if she hadn't heard a thing, Hui'er continued talking while picking up a piece of pastry and taking a bite. Her smile was both smug and ostentatious. "He treats me with attentive warmth every single day. Whatever I want to eat, I only have to say the word and he immediately puts on his shoes and runs out to buy it for me. He even massages my shoulders and pounds my legs, and at night he's fiercely vigorous too..." With these words, she covered her mouth with a handkerchief and giggled snidely. "He's a hundred times better than that useless old geezer Han Yaozu—I truly have no idea how you ever took a fancy to that old monster." Walking right up to Cao Lihuan, she leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice with a smile, "You haven't got many days left to live anyway. Your husband has already said that once you kick the bucket and I give birth to a son or two for him, he'll raise me to be his legal wife. Cao Lihuan, I really must thank you properly. All the family property you worked yourself to the bone and schemed so hard to accumulate will now be nicely enjoyed by my future descendants." Having said her piece, she straightened up, hummed a little tune, and strolled out.

Rage overwhelmed Cao Lihuan's heart; Hui'er's words were a hundred times more vicious than carving out her heart and lungs. She spat out two mouthfuls of fresh blood, her vision darkened, and she collapsed unconscious. When she drifted back to a hazy consciousness during the night, she stretched her neck and called out for a long while, but no one came to answer. Struggling to lift herself up, she reached out toward the teacup on the bedside table, stretching her trembling hand forward for a long moment before her head lolled to one side, her eyes staring blankly as she crossed over to the netherworld.

Early the next morning, when Siqiao came in to tidy up, she realized that Cao Lihuan had passed away and hurriedly reported the news to Ren Yu. Ren Yu threw himself over the corpse and wept bitterly, wishing to give her a proper burial, but Hui'er stopped him, saying, "With all the money spent on treating her illness these past few days, the household has already been mostly drained. I'm going to give birth in a few months, and your younger sister still needs to get married—we need to save some silver! There's no need for an elaborate funeral; just pick an auspicious day, find a plot, and bury her."

Although Ren Yu agreed verbally, he still felt it didn't seem right. Secretly scraping together some silver, he purchased a decent coffin to encoffin her and, with flutes playing and drums beating, selected a burial plot to lay her to rest.

Meanwhile, in the inner courtyard of the Han residence, Lady Jiang was sitting upright in a grand master's chair. Kneeling before her was a thin, frail-looking woman of mediocre appearance who kept her head respectfully lowered. Flipping through the tea leaves with a porcelain lid, Lady Jiang smiled with the corners of her mouth turned up. "Siqiao, you did a good job. This business has finally relieved the hatred in my heart, and I will naturally reward you handsomely."

Kowtowing, Siqiao replied, "This humble servant asks for no reward; I only beg that the mistress redeem me from the Ren family so I can live safely as an ordinary commoner in the future."

Lady Jiang signaled the maid standing beside her with a glance. The maid fished out a slip of paper and handed it to Siqiao, saying, "The mistress already spoke with the Ren family yesterday. This is your official document of release from household status; keep it safe."

Overjoyed, Siqiao kowtowed repeatedly to express her boundless gratitude, saying, "This humble servant will set off for Yangzhou right away and never return again."

Delighted, Lady Jiang rewarded Siqiao with an additional ten taels of silver and a pair of silver bracelets.

Hastily accepting them, Siqiao offered a thousand thanks and left.

As she stepped out of the back gate of the Han residence, she let out a long, heavy sigh of relief. She harbored a deep, burning hatred for Cao Lihuan. Back then, when Sishun, the personal pageboy of Cao Lihuan's family, lost his wife, Cao Lihuan had forcefully married her off to him. Sishun ate, drank, whored, and beat his wife, torturing her into utter misery. Moreover, he suffered from an insatiable womanizing illness; because Siqiao was plain-looking, he treated her like dirt. With a tyrannical and harsh mistress on one end and a violent, abusive husband on the other, Siqiao had attempted to take her own life several times, only to grit her teeth and endure it all.

When Lady Jiang beat Cao Lihuan until she suffered a miscarriage, the trusted maid at Lady Jiang's side had quietly approached to bribe her, instructing her to secretly add a few ingredients into Cao Lihuan's medicine to turn the miscarriage into a fatal, lingering illness, while also probing into how much wealth Cao Lihuan possessed. Naturally, Siqiao held nothing back. The two of them worked in concert from the inside and out, scheming away all of Cao Lihuan's jewelry and clothing.

Now that Cao Lihuan was dead, Siqiao begged Lady Jiang to fulfill her promise: to redeem her from the Ren family and release her status to that of a commoner. Walking briskly out of the alley, she spotted a dark-skinned, stocky, and short-statured man standing anxiously at the corner, craning his neck to look around. Seeing her emerge, he hurried over and asked, "Is it done?"

Siqiao nodded. The man broke into a smile, took Siqiao's hand, and said, "Then let's quickly catch a boat to Yangzhou."

Looking at the man, Siqiao's face bloomed with a smile as she nodded and went with him. This man was a sugar-painting craftsman who could also sculpt dough figurines. He used to roam the streets around the neighborhood where the Ren family lived, and seeing Siqiao frequently beaten and scolded, he had often offered kind words of comfort, leading the two of them to gradually fall in love. Now that Siqiao had secured her release papers, the two of them immediately packed up and eloped together. They would settle down in Yangzhou, making a modest living through small business—suffice it to say, their days would pass peacefully enough.

As for Hui'er, she carried a pregnancy to full term and gave birth to a daughter. Ren Yu promoted her to legal wife, and their life together remained peaceful enough. However, Hui'er possessed an endlessly extravagant disposition; knowing only how to eat, drink, and dress up, she had not the slightest notion of how to manage a household. Now that she had become the mistress of the house, she grew even more arrogant and unbridled, indulging in rare delicacies and wearing silks and satins without any restraint. Ren Yu, on his part, was a spineless simpleton, timid and submissive. Neither of them possessed any business acumen. Not only did they burn through the majority of the fortune Cao Lihuan had painstakingly accumulated, but they eventually had to sell off the estate as well. Fortunately, they still had the rental properties providing some income. The couple simply felt they had something to lean on and grew increasingly idle, refusing to engage in any productive labor, until they dragged a once-prosperous and well-to-do household down into ordinary, mediocre poverty. In his middle years, Ren Yu fell ill and died prematurely, while Hui'er remarried twice with children in tow, eventually drifting away to an unknown destination.