Against the Current - Chapter 184

Chapter 184 - Talisman (Part 5)

Xiulan half-squinted her eyes.

Meimei cried, "My sister once told me that you entered the manor reluctantly because the Eldest Young Master forced you. You hold a grudge against him in your heart and dream of leaving the manor. But now that things have reached this point, and the Eldest Young Master has been treating you with boundless kindness—even though he nearly strangled you to death a few days ago—you should still cherish his affection. Why on earth would you resort to such tactics!"

Madam Qin trembled all over with rage, her face as gloomy as water.

Xiulan hurriedly knelt down alongside her and said, "May my Lady examine the facts clearly. I am not the only one who has access to this room. High-ranking maids, young ladies, and even Aunt Mei have all visited here before. How can this prove that I was the one who planted this talisman?"

Changfa’s wife stepped forward, placed her hands on her hips, and snapped, "You still dare to be obstinate! Aside from you living in this room, who else among Aunt Mei, Yingge, and the others could freely go into the bedroom and touch the pillow where the Eldest Young Master sleeps? The maids can fold quilts and make beds, but who would harbor such malicious intentions? Lianxin, Tinglan, Ruoshuang, Nuanyue, or Chunling? Pah, pah, pah! It's only you—you look improper from the start, a dainty, seductive little hussy who only knows how to go around seducing people. The Eldest Young Master has elevated you, yet you don't know how to appreciate your blessings. You are so rotten to the core that you hold a grudge against the Eldest Young Master, and thus resorted to such low, despicable tricks! My Lady, drag her down and deal with her properly, strip off her clothes and give her a sound beating with the heavy board! Just kneeling here is dirtying the floor!"

Seeing Madam Qin’s face turn a bruised, purplish red, Xiulan said with tears welling up, "I dare not claim how completely innocent I am, but my Lady has always been a magnanimous and reasonable person. Please think carefully: how do I conduct myself in the manor every day? The maids can all witness it. Even when the Daoist nun Cui came, I didn't even catch a single glimpse of her. A few days ago, when I went home for a visit, someone was watching me every single moment. Where would I even go to get such a harmful talisman? That is my first point. Secondly, although I am young and ignorant, and have indeed had verbal clashes with the Eldest Young Master, he treats me quite well. What possible benefit would it bring me to harm him like this? Thirdly, because the Eldest Young Master favors me somewhat, there are plenty of people whispering behind our backs. It is entirely possible that someone grew jealous and resentful and decided to frame me."

After she finished speaking, although Madam Qin’s expression remained gloomy, her gaze swept across the surrounding maids, clearly moved by Xiulan’s reasoning.

Realizing things were turning unfavorable, Nuanyue hurriedly dropped to her knees and pleaded, "Reporting to my Lady, I have something to say. A few days ago, I vaguely caught sight of Sister sewing something into a pillow. At the time I didn't think much of it, but I never expected... never expected that it would turn out to be this..." She wiped her face with her sleeve, secretly smearing osmanthus oil into her eyes, and instantly burst into an endless stream of tears.

Upon hearing this, Madam Qin’s complexion turned deathly pale once again. Pointing a finger, she berated, "You seductive, slanderous, base creature, still trying to fool your master with smooth words! Someone actually saw you do it, yet you still stubbornly bare your teeth—truly detestable! Why hasn't anyone dragged her out of my sight!"

The matrons on either side surged forward, grabbing Xiulan to pull her away. Xiulan stubbornly resisted and cried out, "I beg my Lady to examine the truth! If I did this, may I be struck by five heavenly lightnings and meet a wretched death! I only beg my Lady to thoroughly investigate this matter. It matters little if I am wronged, but if the real culprit is allowed to go free, leaving such a black-hearted, base seed by the Eldest Young Master's side, what will become of him if he is harmed in the future?"

Madam Qin’s heart felt as though it were being roasted over a blazing fire—a mixture of wrath and fury. Hearing Xiulan’s words, she forced down the raging flames in her throat.

Nurse Wu hurriedly stopped the matrons, stepped forward, and lowered her voice to say, "My Lady, what she says makes sense. If we wrong the wrong person and leave the real schemer behind in the manor, we won't even know how we die in the future."

Madam Qin closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her brows and expression had settled into a calm, clear composure. After a long pause, she spoke: "You say you didn't do this, but do you have proof? If you didn't do it, then who did?"

Xiulan turned her head sharply, her gaze burning brightly as she locked eyes with Nuanyue. "You claim you saw me sewing the pillow—what was the scene like at the time? Was anyone else there to see it with you?"

Nuanyue panicked inwardly. Casting a sidelong glance at Meimei and seeing her kneeling nearby merely covering her face in mournful sobs, Nuanyue steadied her mind and recited the pre-arranged story: "It was three days ago. I remember it was morning, after the Eldest Young Master had gone out to practice martial arts. I was bringing a cake of incense into the room and left the things on the outer table. When I glanced behind the screen, I saw Xiulan sewing a pillow at the head of the bed. There was no one else in the room at the time, just the two of us."

Xiulan raised an eyebrow. She had indeed been sitting at the head of the bed doing needlework that day. Knowing that Nuanyue must have concocted a complete fabrication, she remained calm. However, Nuanyue spoke with such vivid detail that it was genuinely difficult to refute, especially since there was no one else to bear witness to her innocence...

She thought for a moment and mused silently, "Splendid—since no one else saw us, there's also no one to prove whether Nuanyue's words are true." With a cold sneer, she retorted, "Nuanyue, your lie is certainly polished. That morning, I wasn't even in the room at all. The clusters of chrysanthemums behind the house had bloomed, so I went out to admire the flowers..."

Before she could even finish her sentence, someone behind her spoke up, "Reporting to my Lady, what Xiulan says is the truth! I was the one who accompanied her to admire the flowers that day!"

Xiulan whipped her head around and saw Xiaojuan kneeling rigidly on the ground. Xiaojuan declared, "I accompanied her to view the chrysanthemums that morning. Xiulan looked at them for quite a while and didn't even say a single word." With that, she glanced at Xiulan and lowered her head.

Xiulan felt a surge of warmth welling up from the depths of her heart, her hands tightening inside her sleeves. Turning back around, she took a breath and said, "That's right, that morning I merely went to look at the chrysanthemums..." Her eye rims reddened as she choked out, "Nuanyue, the Eldest Young Master once took you, yet afterwards he never spared you even a sideways glance. You frequently tried to approach him but gained no favor. But that is hardly my fault! You originally served in the outer rooms, and out of a desire to accommodate you, I yielded my place to let you come into the inner room so you could serve the Eldest Young Master by dressing him and making his bed. How could you turn around and frame me like this, returning kindness with enmity? It must have been you who took it to swap out the pillowcase a few days ago..." Before she could finish, tears began to drip down her cheeks.

Meimei’s heart sank. Lowering her head, she muttered inwardly, "A moment ago she was aggressive and sharp-tongued, yet now she can summon tears the moment she wants to. I underestimated her in the past. These days Nuanyue made a point of watching her whenever she was alone in the room, but who would have thought she actually knows how to win people over? The little maid by her side is even willing to commit perjury for her, and in the end, she even turned it around to bite back."

Nuanyue was startled. Losing her nerve entirely, she pointed at Xiulan and shrieked, "You—you are spouting nonsense, framing an innocent person!" She slammed her forehead against the floor with loud thuds and cried, "May my Lady examine the truth! It wasn't me, it wasn't me!" Pointing back at Xiulan, she yelled, "It's her, it's her! Xiaojuan is close to her, so she lied! Everyone knows she was unwilling to enter the manor, that she weeps day in and day out, that she gets beaten and scolded because she can't serve the Eldest Young Master properly, and that he nearly choked the life out of her. Aside from someone with hatred in her heart, who else could be vicious enough to want to harm the Eldest Young Master? Only she is desperate for the Eldest Young Master to die!" Since she was someone who could never keep a cool head under pressure, her expression grew frantic and her words descended into incoherence by the end.

The corner of Madam Qin’s eye twitched.

Inwardly cursing Nuanyue for being utterly useless, Meimei pulled the sleeve away from her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her expression mournful as she said, "Sister, matters have reached this head and the stolen goods are right here in front of us. Why must you refuse to shed tears until you see the coffin?" With that, she picked up the talisman from the floor and added, "The handwriting on this talisman is identical to the characters you write every single day. If it isn't you, then who is it?"

Nuanyue’s forehead was already bruised and swollen in a patch. Her eyes darted around frantically as she stammered, "Right, right! It's her!"

Upon hearing this, Madam Qin immediately ordered someone to retrieve the calligraphy Xiulan had written in the past for comparison, and the two matched stroke for stroke.

Madam Qin hurled that sheet of large-character calligraphy right in front of Xiulan and sneered, "What do you have to say for yourself now?"

With a clear and steady gaze, Xiulan replied, "Please allow me to write a few characters for my Lady." Without waiting for a response, she rose to her feet on her own, walked over to the desk, dipped a writing brush in ink, and dashed off a series of characters across the paper with fluid strokes. Bringing the paper before Madam Qin, she said, "Please take a look, my Lady."

When Madam Qin looked down, she saw that the characters "die a severed death" had been written in regular script (kaishu), cursive script (caoshu), clerical script (lishu), running script (xingshu), Yan script (yanshu), and seal script (zhuanshu). Furthermore, the regular script was subdivided into the Liu style, the Yan style, as well as both large and small block letters. The bone structure was delicate and refined, while the brushwork was robust and powerful.

Madam Qin was startled. It was difficult enough for ordinary young ladies of noble families to master a single style of calligraphy; even Lin Changzheng, who was a metropolitan graduate (jinshi) passing two imperial examinations, might not necessarily be able to write all of these. Yet this Chen Xiulan, a girl of humble servant origins, was able to write such elegant and unrestrained characters all in one breath. It truly forced one to look at her in a completely new light.

Xiulan dropped back to her knees and calmly stated, "Please examine this, my Lady. Untalented though I am, I am capable of writing in several different styles of calligraphy. The regular script on that talisman happens to be the style I usually write, which is why malicious people were able to frame me. If I truly harbored malicious intentions, I could easily have used a different script, or deliberately written as ugly as a dog scratching the dirt—who then could have guessed it was me?"

Madam Qin looked at Xiulan’s bright, strikingly gorgeous face, then met her clear, sparkling eyes. Those eyes seemed like cold stars in the night sky or deep, dark pools; if one weren't careful, they could draw a person's very soul right in.

Their gazes locked for a brief moment before Madam Qin lowered her gaze back to the sheet of writing in her hand.

Growing anxious, Nuanyue shrieked in a shrill voice, "This is just your scheme! You're deliberately throwing dust in our eyes!"

Xiulan glanced at Nuanyue, a trace of mockery in her gaze, before straightening her expression and turning to Madam Qin. "My Lady, I have a few more words to say."

Madam Qin was taken aback. She studied Xiulan for a few moments longer and gave a slight nod.

Xiulan turned her body around, her gaze sweeping past the pale-faced Nuanyue and the mournful-looking Meimei before resting on the other kneeling maids and matrons. Letting out a sigh, she said, "In this world, no fabricated circle remains unbreakable forever. I truly believe in the retribution of the netherworld courts and hell. There are things I have kept bottled up in my heart for a very long time, and now that things have come to this, rather than keeping silent, I might as well lay them all out in the open before my Lady." Fixing her eyes directly on Meimei, she asked, "Meimei, lift your head. I want to ask you: at this hour of the night, you should have been sound asleep long ago. How is it that you suddenly came running to the main quarters?"

Meimei felt a surge of bitter resentment. Although she knew Xiulan was articulate, she had always assumed the girl was just a punching bag who spent her entire day weeping and shedding tears. Who could have imagined that at such a critical juncture, Xiulan would remain completely unruffled, dismantling her entire plot and carving out a lifeline for herself? With pearlescent tears still clinging to her powdered cheeks, Meimei assumed a deeply aggrieved expression and sobbed, "Sister has such a sharp and formidable tongue! I heard the commotion in the room and knew something was wrong; unable to set my mind at ease, I came over to check. When I saw this talisman and the words written on it, half my soul was scared right out of me. Then, remembering how Sister always harbored resentment toward the Eldest Young Master, my concern caused me to lose my composure, and I burst into tears, feeling it was so unjust for the Eldest Young Master, while also wanting to plead for mercy on Sister's behalf..." She choked back her sobs continuously, weeping mournfully as she muttered, "Regardless of who planted this, their heart is truly blackened! My poor master..."