Chapter Ninety-One: Disposition

On a night like this, after Lu Ying’s warning, the guards had kept a rotating watch. If it had not been for the fact that dawn was nearly upon them and the man on duty could no longer hold out and had fallen asleep, so many things would not have happened.

Thus, the moment the alarm was raised, the guards were jolted awake at once. And not only they—the boys and girls in every tent began screaming, dressing themselves in a flurry, the whole camp thrown into chaos.

Lu Ying walked to one side, lit the candle unhurriedly, then idly shook out the fire starter and put it out. Only then did she turn her head and look toward the tents standing in rows—the one tent in the Chen family’s line that still remained dark.

Guards were running everywhere. Lu Ying stood quietly at the entrance, waiting in silence for what would happen next.

Sure enough, before long, several maidservants who had originally been attending Chen Yan but had been dismissed halfway through came rushing in panic toward her tent. Behind them was Chen Shu, tying his belt as he ran, shouting urgently, “What happened?” Then, in the next instant, he thought of his most cherished younger sister and called out again, “Why hasn’t A Yan gotten up yet?”

As he spoke, he, too, headed toward Chen Yan’s tent.

Just as Chen Shu reached the outside of the tent, the maidservants who had already rushed into Chen Yan’s tent called out twice from the doorway. One of them then turned around and lit the candle.

The moment the flame flared, before that maid had even turned back, the several maids standing at the bedside, ready to call Chen Yan, all screamed at once. The cry was sharp and sudden, piercing straight through the night sky and carrying far into the distance.

This was bad. Something terrible had happened.

Chen Shu was horrified; the guards were startled as well. The maid who had lit the candle turned back in haste.

And as she turned, she saw a scene she could not believe. Her eyes went wide, and she froze in place. By then, Chen Shu had already rushed in with several maids. “What is it? What happened?” He had waited outside for so long only because he had been afraid his sister was still asleep, afraid her clothes might be disordered. Hearing the maids scream now, Chen Shu, who had always protected Chen Yan with the utmost care, instinctively assumed that something terrible had happened to her and charged in without a second thought.

The instant he entered, Chen Shu saw the two white, naked bodies. Because he could not see the woman’s face beneath the sturdy male body that lay atop her, he instinctively thought: This cannot be A Yan. It could not possibly be A Yan.

No one knew better than he did how proud his beautiful younger sister was. She had told him more than once that in all this world, only the most outstanding man would ever be worthy of her choice.

So Chen Shu’s mind hummed with shock. He lost the ability to think and could only stride forward, only wanting to confirm that the woman was not his sister, Chen Yan. In his bewildered panic, he failed to give an order in time for the maidservants to guard the tent and keep outsiders out.

Only when Chen Shu reached the other side of the bed in long strides and saw with certainty that the woman lying naked with the man was indeed his own sister did a series of footsteps come from outside. Then the round-faced Chen family maid, along with Xiao Yan, who had slept in her clothes and woken first, lifted the tent flap and rushed in.

“Did something happen?” Xiao Yan had only just begun to speak when the words caught in her throat. Her eyes flew wide as she stared in disbelief at the two naked, white bodies. The frightened young lady suddenly let out an uncontrollable scream.

She screamed as she rushed blindly toward the exit. And that rush drew even more people into the tent...

Lu Ying yawned. Following the sound, she arrived just as matters were nearing their end. In a hush heavy with unease, the Chen family members all wore pale, ashen faces, while Xiao Yan, A Ti, and the others looked down their noses toward the Chen family’s direction, occasionally gathering together to whisper a few words.

The guards, now certain it had been a false alarm, were back at their posts. The servants of each family kept their heads lowered and carried on obediently with their work. Only the distant neighing of horses broke the quiet, dotting the gradually brightening sky.

Seeing Lu Ying approach, A Ti was afraid she might ask something she should not, and hurriedly pulled her away, going with Xiao Yan back to their own tent.

By the time they reached A Ti’s tent, several other young ladies who had come with them had also arrived. Once everyone had sat down, they looked at one another for a while. Then A Ti suddenly burst out laughing. Almost at once she realized it was improper, so she covered her mouth, stifled the laugh, and lowered her voice. “I wonder if she’s awake yet?”

Xiao Yan had been involved from beginning to end, and she replied, “She should be awake. Cold water was poured on her then.”

After another silence, one young lady said softly, “What was Chen Yan thinking, anyway? Didn’t she always pride herself on her beauty and dream of marrying into some grand household? How did she end up doing this with her own guard?”

Xiao Yan shook her head. “Who knows?”

Speaking of it, A Ti felt a little like laughing again. Her crescent-moon eyes narrowed as she said, “Well, Chen Yan always puts on that act of being mistreated by everyone. Who would have thought she was such a shameless woman? Now things have blown up. I wonder how the Chen family is going to deal with her?”

Xiao Yan lowered her voice. “How else could they deal with her? With such a huge scandal, she has shamed the entire Chen family.”

Women loved nothing more than matters of scandal and gossip. Hearing the faint murmurs all around them, and looking at the expressions before her—some sympathetic, some pitying, some gleefully malicious—Lu Ying curved the corner of her lips and lowered her head to sip the wine in her cup.

At that moment, A Ti looked at Lu Ying and said with a giggle, “Ah Ying, why did you get up so late today? Oh, you missed such a good show. What a pity.”

Hearing her tone, so eager to stir up trouble, Lu Ying merely tugged at the corner of her mouth in what counted as a smile.

It was not until the sun rose in the east that the camp was still in complete disarray.

After such a huge incident, no one was in the mood to sleep, and no one said a word about rushing on with the journey.

Compared with the buzzing chaos on this side, the Chen family’s tents were astonishingly quiet.

In one tent, Chen Yan sat collapsed on the ground, her clothes wrapped around her in disarray, tears streaming down without end.

Her long fingernails were dug tightly into the tiger skin on the couch beside her, leaving streak after streak of pale lines across it.

Tears still falling, Chen Yan no longer looked pitiably fragile as she usually did. Instead, her cheek muscles twitched constantly, and her lovely features had become ferocious and hideous.

Before long, footsteps sounded.

At the sound, Chen Yan lifted her head abruptly. She quickly composed her expression, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes.

The person who entered was indeed Chen Shu.

Seeing the brother who had always loved her most, Chen Yan burst into tears all the harder. She threw herself at him, clinging to Chen Shu’s legs, and cried with her face raised, “Fourth Brother, Fourth Brother, you must believe me. It wasn’t me. I was framed...”

What Chen Yan had not expected was that Chen Shu, staring at her, actually nodded and said in a low voice, “I know.”

“You—you what? You say you know?” Chen Yan looked at him in astonishment.

Chen Shu gazed at his disheveled, fragile sister with aching distress and said hoarsely, “Yes. I know. Hua Chang’s chest was covered in bruises, clearly struck by a whip, bamboo rod, or some other heavy bar-like object. And the two of you—you looked exactly like people who had been drugged with sleeping incense. There was also an empty bamboo tube in one corner of your tent, one that had been used to hold the sleeping incense.”

At this, Chen Yan was overjoyed. Trembling, she said, “Fourth Brother, so you’ve already found everything out. Fourth Brother, have you told Father? Does Father believe it?” She hurried on in one breath, then cried out again, “Fourth Brother, hurry and explain to everyone. Tell them quickly.”

“Explain what?” This time Chen Shu’s voice was somewhat drained.

He looked at his sister and said in a hoarse, exhausted voice, “At this point, what use would anything I say be? A Yan, tell me, what use would it be?”

Bitterly, he looked at the sister he had always spoiled, watched her retreat step by step, saw her soften and sink to the ground, and after closing his eyes for a moment, Chen Shu said, “A Yan, so many people saw you sleeping with Hua Chang...”

Before he could finish, Chen Yan lifted her head and screamed, “Then kill them all!”

Her face twisted viciously. Clenching her fists, Chen Yan shrieked, “Fourth Brother, you must help me this time. Help me kill them all, kill every last one of them!” After a pause, she seemed to remember something and immediately cried out, “I know who tried to harm me—it must be that ruined Lu family girl, Lu Ying. Fourth Brother, send people at once and kill her too. Fourth Brother, you have to help me this time. Help me kill everyone who saw it!”

By now, Chen Yan was clearly close to hysteria. She stared at Chen Shu with astonishingly bright eyes, and in the distortion of her face there was a kind of reckless, venomous hatred.

In truth, if she had said in a calm moment that Lu Ying was suspicious, Chen Shu might have listened to some of it. But now she was obviously talking nonsense.

The moment she opened her mouth, she was already demanding that all those people be killed. His sister had been blinded by rage and hatred. Did she think this was Jiyang? Did she think the boys and girls over there were all their own servants? Did she think these hundreds of lives were hers to command?

Though he understood that she was too angry to make sense and that her words could not be taken seriously, Chen Shu still closed his eyes. Suddenly, he felt weary.

Stepping back a pace to put some distance between himself and his sister, Chen Shu said softly, “A Yan, I’ve been begging Father all this time. He has agreed to send you and Hua Mao to our family’s country estate in Jingyang...”

He had barely gotten that far when Chen Yan covered her ears and screamed.

She screamed and screamed without stopping. It was her habit: whenever she did not wish to hear something, whenever she did not wish to do something, she would scream in protest like this. And every time she screamed, many people would give way to her. Chen Shu had always been among them.

But this time, Chen Shu did not persuade her, did not comfort her. He only looked weariedly at his sister, who was covering her ears and screaming in protest while waiting for him to give in and retreat, and thought with reluctant understanding: A Yan has always been proud; it is only natural that she cannot accept this for the moment.

Even so, he still felt deeply exhausted. A Yan was no longer young. She ought to know just how large a scandal this was; one could say the Chen family’s reputation had been nearly destroyed by her.

By Father’s meaning, he would have preferred to have her beaten to death and be done with it. It was only because Chen Shu had pleaded so hard, and because Father had loved his daughter for so many years and still felt some reluctance, that he relented. More importantly, the head of the Chen family was Father, not someone else, and so the decision was made merely to send her away, not execute her.

In Chen Shu’s eyes, preserving his sister’s life had already taken every effort he had. More than that, in order to avoid giving the other clan members grounds to make trouble, she would have to leave in secret.

And now, seeing Chen Yan covering her ears and screaming at him in protest, Chen Shu felt unbearably distressed.