Yunchu’s Vengeance - Chapter 100
Chapter 100 - Are the Children Alive?
Yun Chu walked out of the delivery room.
She had originally intended to find Xie Jingyu to inform him of Concubine Tao's explanations, but after taking only a few steps, she faintly caught the mention of something about four years ago.
She immediately gestured for her two accompanying maidservants to lighten their footsteps.
Moving lightly yet swiftly, she arrived right at the entrance of the side chamber.
Though the voices within were not entirely crystal clear, they connected intermittently into coherent sentences.
"...the child still drawing breath... directly discarded..."
"...those two babies carried the Xie family's bloodline..."
"...cast out into the freezing snow..."
With a deafening roar, the blood in her entire body surged straight to the crown of her head, leaving her barely able to stand upright.
Tingshuang and Tingfeng naturally heard those voices as well; their pupils contracted violently, utterly incapable of processing the horror of what they had just overheard.
Possessing a hot-headed disposition, Tingfeng reached out, instinctively wanting to shove the door wide open.
Tingshuang grabbed Tingfeng's arm in a tight grip while steadying Yun Chu, her voice trembling and dropping to a bare whisper: "Madam?"
Yun Chu's legs had grown so weak she could no longer support her own weight, and she clung desperately to Tingshuang's hand for stability.
She knew that even if they burst through that door right now, Xie Jingyu and Madam He could easily claim she had misheard.
Such an atrocious deed—how could they ever admit to it...
Making a hand gesture, Yun Chu allowed Tingshuang and Tingfeng to support her as she left the courtyard and returned to Sheng Residence.
After they helped her inside the inner chamber and laid her down upon the couch, Tingshuang and Tingfeng abruptly dropped to their knees with a heavy thud, while Tingsue, though baffled, quickly dropped to her knees beside them.
"Slap! Slap! Slap!"
Tingshuang ruthlessly rained heavy blows across her own face.
"Madam, it is all this servant's fault! Four years ago when you went into labor, this servant should never have handed the little young master and little young miss over to the people from the master's courtyard. This servant truly had no idea the little young master and little young miss were still alive! Madam, this servant was wrong—please beat this servant to death..."
Tingfeng began slapping her own face as well, weeping uncontrollably as she cried, "Madam, this servant deserves a thousand deaths, it was all my fault... This servant is going to go question the master right now to ask how he could be so cruel, how he could throw his own flesh and blood into the snow! Heavens above, such tiny infants—how could they possibly survive..."
Tingsue finally pieced the situation together, her eyes widening in absolute, disbelieving horror.
The two little masters the Madam had given birth to four years ago... were they actually alive at the time?
That very night, the Madam had been taking a stroll in the courtyard when she somehow slipped and fell. By evening, abdominal pains set in, leading to premature labor.
The Madam's lower body had bled incessantly, spilling copious amounts of blood that terrified all the maidservants. Tingshuang had held the Madam's hand while speaking to her, while Tingfeng squatted at the foot of the bed to clean up for the Madam. What was she doing at that moment? Ah, yes, she had been feeding the Madam chicken broth so she would have the strength to deliver the child...
The Madam had labored from night until dawn, and the baby was finally delivered, yet the newborn refused to cry.
She remembered the midwife wrapping up the babies and exclaiming in shock that the infants had no breath left. It was precisely those words that caused the Madam to hemorrhage endlessly, plunging her into postpartum blood collapse—a life-threatening crisis... Between two infants who had lost their breath and a Madam facing mortal danger, they hadn't needed to make a choice at all; Tingshuang had hurriedly instructed the midwife to carry the children out...
Once the babies were taken away, the Madam lost consciousness...
When the Madam finally regained consciousness three days later, the children had already been buried. Day in and day out, the Madam remained utterly silent, and they never dared to bring up the children's names again... Later on, the eldest young master, second young master, and eldest young miss entered the estate, and later still, Auntie Yu gave birth. Because the third young master was roughly the same age as the two prematurely lost young masters, he was raised by the Madam's side, which slowly allowed the Madam to heal...
The rhythmic, overlapping sound of slaps finally dragged Yun Chu's wandering consciousness back to reality.
"Stop!"
She commanded in a deep, heavy voice.
She had entertained countless possibilities, but never once had she imagined that the children had been born alive...
Even though the babies were premature, even though they hadn't cried upon birth, and even though their breathing was faint, they were at least alive. As long as she carefully nurtured and raised them, she refused to believe they wouldn't have survived... Yet Xie Jingyu had gone ahead and thrown the infants away!
If they had been abandoned outside during the scorching heat of summer, there might still have been a sliver of a chance of survival.
Yet when she gave birth, a heavy snow was falling. It was freezing cold—how could two newborn infants possibly survive?
So the children hadn't died at birth after all; they had been abandoned by their own biological father, tossed out into the elements to freeze or starve to death.
Solely so she would wholeheartedly accept and embrace his and Madam He's children, he had brutally murdered her pair of infants!
He was nothing more than a beast!
No, calling him a beast was an insult to beasts!
Yun Chu closed her eyes, forcing her tears back down.
Right now, her sole desire was to find out where the children had been discarded. No matter what, she had to track them down, whether they were dead or alive...
Xie Jingyu was hypocritical to the extreme; any words passing his lips would be nothing but layer upon layer of lies, just like those excavated skeletal remains whose true identity remained a mystery.
"Tingfeng, make a trip outside the city right now," Yun Chu articulated every word with chilling precision. "Personally source some thunder god vine."
Tingshuang was struck dumb with shock. Even though she had never studied pharmacology, she knew precisely what thunder god vine was—when decocted with certain supplementary medicinal herbs, it could dispel wind-dampness, but if ingested improperly, it induced severe illness. In short, thunder god vine was a potent poison.
"Understood, Madam!" Tingfeng scrambled up from the floor, wiped away her tears, and strode straight out the door.
Why should the Madam's biological children be dead while the master continued to live at ease? Why should the Madam suffer such torment while the Xie family flourished with luxuriant descendants?
The master deserved to have poison enter his belly and his entrails rot away until he died!
Yun Chu spent the entire night in a hazy, waking nightmare, unsure whether she had slept or not as various scenes flashed before her mind's eye like a revolving lantern, until the crowing of roosters finally broke the silence.
She rose early as usual to practice her martial arts.
Though Qiutong remained unaware of the specifics, she sensed that Yun Chu's emotional state was deeply abnormal and gently suggested taking a day off to rest.
Yun Chu shook her head.
If one fished for two days and sun-dried the nets for three, what could one ever hope to learn?
After practicing for over half an hour as the sky gradually brightened, she returned to her room to wash up and change into fresh clothes. By the time she emerged, all those who had come to pay their morning respects had already arrived.
Concubine Tao had just given birth and was absent; Tingyu had dark bruises under her eyes; Madam He held a listless Xie Shiyun by the hand; and Concubine Jiang kept her head bowed as she held the hand of the perpetually quiet Xie Xian.
Regarding the incident where Concubine Tao had been pushed and caused to fall the previous day, Xie Jingyu had personally investigated the matter, declared it an accidental mishap, and swept it under the rug.
Yun Chu sneered internally. Madam He wielded a secret so monumental it held Xie Jingyu by the throat, and that spineless man naturally lacked the courage to punish Madam He, leaving him no choice but to muddle through the situation with vague pretexts.
"If there are nothing further to discuss, all of you may withdraw," she lifted her gaze. "Auntie Yu, stay behind for a moment."
Madam He blocked Tingyu's line of sight toward Xie Shiyun, pulled the child along, and swept out of the hall.
She was consumed by profound regret. She had exhausted all her efforts orchestrating yesterday's performance, yet not only had she failed to eliminate the child in Concubine Tao's womb, nor had she succeeded in bringing punishment upon Xie Shiyun, but she had instead utterly severed whatever lingering affection the master still held for her.
Left alone in the hall, Tingyu kept her head lowered with jittery unease, not daring to utter a single sound.
Yun Chu finally spoke, "Last night, I had someone investigate the matter of Concubine Tao's premature labor."
Tingyu hurriedly blurted out, "Madam, the master already stated that the incident was purely an accident and had nothing to do with Yu Ge'er."
"It indeed had nothing to do with Yu Ge'er," Yun Chu set down her teacup. "According to what my people gathered, it was Madam He who deliberately told Yu Ge'er that Concubine Tao's unborn child would be raised by my side, which was what provoked Yu Ge'er into rushing over to Concubine Tao's courtyard early in the morning and committing such an act..."
Tingyu snapped her head upward in shock.