What Was Witnessed
Nanny Zhang, fearing that Madam Yu might blurt out something reckless and land herself in trouble, hurried forward to pay her respects and opened her mouth to answer. But at that very moment, Bai Jingyan's icy voice cut through the air.
"Madam Hu has quite the silver tongue. Calling black white, dismissing an attempt on a person's life as mere play. All I wish to do is take my second sister home, since I've found no other way to protect her — and in the time it took Madam Hu to flap her lips a few times, somehow we have become the violent ones."
Seeing Chun Tao help Bai Jingyan down from the carriage, Bai Jindong stood beside it and watched in silence.
Behind his back, Zhongyong Marquis Jin Dexiao clenched his fist tight. His deep eyes fixed on Bai Jingyan as she strode forward, unyielding.
"Eldest Bai Miss, watch your tongue."
Nanny Zhang rushed ahead to support Bai Jingyan, standing faithfully at her side.
Madam Yu, her eyes rimmed red, could not master her feelings and spoke through her fury.
"Marquis Zhongyong, your two daughters are truly remarkable! They split open my daughter's head, and then threw her into the water in the dead of winter! Just what grudge do they hold against her, that they would treat her like some beast?"
When Jin Dexiao turned to look at Lady Zhang, she went white-faced and shook her head frantically. He turned back to Madam Yu.
"Second Madam, surely this is all a misunderstanding?"
"A misunderstanding? There is no misunderstanding!"
Madam Yu jabbed a finger at Madam Hu — Lady Zhang — and let loose a torrent of abuse. Tears streamed down her face, and in her eyes burned a longing to tear Lady Zhang apart with her bare hands.
"Ask your precious wife! That fool of a nurse beside her has already confessed everything. Your two daughters harmed my daughter, and you call it an accident from playing with her sisters-in-law! And what did your wife do? While my daughter lay unconscious, she ransacked her dowry and sold off every last one of her maids! When she was in the most desperate need of care, leaving not a single servant at her side — that was clearly an attempt to take her life!"
Unable to contain herself any longer, Madam Yu broke into open sobs mid-sentence. Clutching and tearing at her collar, her grief rose like it would pierce the heavens.
"Is this the Marquis Zhongyong estate? This is clearly a demon's den that devours human lives! I was the blind one — I was the one who pushed my daughter into this fire pit they call the Zhongyong household! Are you even human? Your whole family is nothing but savage beasts!"
"Second Madam! Bai Second Miss slipped and fell into the water! No one wished for any of this!"
Jin Dexiao's temper flared as well.
"I have treated you with respect as my in-law. Keep spewing such slander, and I will not stand by idly!"
"Indeed, Marquis."
Bai Jingyan spoke, cold and composed, her face frozen.
"How many people in the capital could match my second sister at swimming? Not many men could. A woman who slips and falls into water — and then falls into a coma? Marquis, don't you find that laughable?"
Jin Dexiao's chest tightened with frustration.
"Regardless — Bai Second Miss is a daughter-in-law of the Zhongyong estate. She is one of us now! And you Bai clan folk think you can simply drag her off at will? You hold the Zhongyong Marquis household in contempt!"
As Bai Jingyan lifted her head, her face was full of blazing fury.
"Very well — my second sister married into your house, so she is yours. But it was your two young misses who left her hovering at death's door! And the Zhongyong estate hasn't spared her a single thought, yet you demand her own family simply abandon her? Should even my grandmother, the Grand Princess, be expected to let this pass? Is your household preparing for a wedding — or a funeral?"
"Insolent girl!"
Jin Dexiao's face flushed an ugly shade of purple with rage.
"Marquis, am I the insolent one? Then swear it — will you stake the lives of your two young misses on it? Can you swear that they never struck my sister on the head, that they never drove her into the water?"
With calm steps, Bai Jingyan ascended the stairs of the Zhongyong estate, her blazing eyes fixed on Jin Dexiao. The air around her was suffocating, and every word she spoke cut straight to the bone.
"And can you make Lady Hu swear it? If she laid hands on my second sister's dowry, then let her whole family be stricken with filthy sores until their bodies rot and they die — swear it, I say!"
Terrified by the feral aura Bai Jingyan had honed on the battlefield, Lady Zhang grabbed at Jin Dexiao's sleeve.
"Marquis……"
"I asked whether Lady Hu and the two young misses of your house dare to swear it! If they claim they can, then I, Bai Jingyan, will drink poison and take my own head as an apology — today!"
Her tone was steady yet rapid. With a few crisp words she laid the whole affair bare, and the onlookers began to murmur among themselves.
"Good heavens — laying hands on a daughter-in-law's dowry like that. So they coveted her wealth and tried to take her life besides!"
"They say the Zhongyong estate even has an heir by the primary line. Anyone thinking of sending a daughter to marry into that house must be cursed with the worst luck imaginable."
Jin Lang, who had rushed back from Fansheng Tower the moment he heard the news, gazed at the Zhongyong estate's gates from a distance. The entrance was choked with people and carriages, and Bai Jingyan's ringing voice carried clearly through the crowd. His heart pounded so violently he did not dare approach.
Jin Dexiao ground his teeth, fists clenched tight, and then threw out his words with iron hardness.
"First you run wild inside the Duke of Zhenguo's estate, and now you've turned another family's front courtyard into a madhouse. You have not a speck of breeding and none of the virtue a woman ought to possess — fine, let that pass! But you swing weapons about day and night, and now you publicly berate your elders in broad daylight on the street! If the daughters are this unruly, does the Duke of Zhenguo not fear that people will say he and his heir raised them terribly?"
Bai Jinchi and Bai Jindong were already seething to the tips of their hair. Bai Jinchi had climbed down from the carriage — if Bai Jindong hadn't held her back, she would have marched straight up to the Marquis long ago to settle the matter with her whip.
Bai Jingyan's gaze on Jin Dexiao remained calm and clear. Yet she raised her voice, anger lacing every syllable.
"If you wish to drag down my grandfather and my father, drag away! The daughters of the Bai clan may never have learned a woman's virtues or a woman's proper conduct — but we learned how to defend our nation, how to shed blood alongside tens of thousands of soldiers and drive back the enemy! We learned unbending loyalty: that the people and armies of Jin must never, ever be made to bow in humiliation — even if it means fighting to our last breath, torn limb from limb! The children of the Bai clan stand unashamed before heaven, and hold their heads high before anyone! If living honestly and honorably — without petty squabbles, without deceit and treachery — is arrogance, then I, Bai Jingyan, will live arrogantly, today and every day hereafter!"
"Well said!"
"To live honestly and honorably! The whole house of the Duke of Zhenguo — men and women alike — has iron in their spine!"
Someone cried out loudly.
The onlookers remembered how the daughters of the Duke of Zhenguo's estate had gone to bleed on the frontier when the nation stood at the edge of ruin.
They remembered that the Duke of Zhenguo had taken every son of the Bai clan to the far-off Southern Border, and was still there defending the country.
More than half a year had passed since the Duke marched to war in the Southern Border, and the grand sight of their departure remained vivid before the people's eyes. Every member of that household had cried loyalty at the top of their lungs and always stood tall. The Bai men in their battle armor had stood like mountains beneath the sky — steadfast, unyielding, radiating righteous valor.
The crowd could no longer simply stand and watch. They began muttering in low voices.
"The Zhongyong estate is slandering the Bai family precisely while their men are away from home!"
"Damn the lot of them — they've no shame at all. Don't they realize this peace and prosperity they enjoy in the capital was bought with Bai blood in the Southern Border? Have some decency, at least. Tormenting the young misses of the Duke of Zhenguo's house!"
"They say the Bai girls lack womanly virtue and only know how to swing weapons. But among all the women perfect in wifely virtue, how many would dare march to a battlefield? The Zhongyong Marquis wears the title 'Zhongyong' — loyal and valiant — yet when has he ever once taken the field? For a man lesser than the daughters of the Bai clan to spew such shameless filth, I can't fathom it!"
Jin Dexiao, teeth clenched, turned purple with rage. He pressed his thumb hard against his laced fingers behind his back.
"Eldest Bai Miss, what a magnificent way with words!"
"One can hardly rival the dazzling eloquence of Madam Hu — the lady who looks straight at black and calls it white!"
Bai Jingyan showed not a trace of fear before the Marquis's imposing presence, her fury laid plainly bare.
Jin Lang could bear it no longer. He pushed his way through the crowd and bowed in greeting to the Zhongyong Marquis and his household. Unable even to look at Bai Jingyan, he kept his head lowered and bowed so deeply to Madam Yu that his hands nearly touched the ground — a long, formal bow, hands clasped and lowered again and again.
"Mother."
Bai Jingyan regarded Jin Lang with an expression of utter calm.
Madam Yu's reddened eyes glared at him as if they would split at the corners. Her fury surged so hot she nearly struck his face on the spot.
"I thought Jin Heir was a man of rare talent and renown, a fine husband scarcely found in the whole capital — I never knew you were so heartless! Your wife lies unconscious on her bed, schemed against by two of her own sisters-in-law, while you — her husband — sit reciting poems at Fansheng Tower! Are you even human?"
Madam Yu clutched her chest and wept aloud.
"She cannot wake?"
Jin Lang started in shock and turned to Lady Zhang.
"But Mother told me clearly that……"
"Marquis!"
Lady Zhang panicked and cut in before Jin Lang could finish.
"It was I who sent the heir to the poetry gathering! I believed that no matter how grave a matter arose within a household, a man must never delay his own future! I was shortsighted — I never dreamed Jinxiu would be hurt this badly! The moment she was injured, I sent my own dowry tally to summon the imperial physicians at once! The physician said she only needed a few days of good rest. But today, the quack this Second Madam brought in claims Jinxiu hovers between life and death — how am I to know whose word to believe?"
Lady Zhang could not very well have Jin Lang repeat, before all these people, the lies she had told to keep him away. So she arrayed herself in every manner of grievance and embarrassment she could muster.
Standing beside the carriage, Bai Jindong, the third Bai miss, spoke with grave, level eyes.
"A quack, you say? This is the first I've heard that the senior martial brother of Imperial Physician Huang, chief judge of the Imperial Medical Bureau, is called a quack!"
Jin Lang fell silent. The hand at his side clenched until the tendons stood out, and his face darkened by the moment.
He could not very well announce, in front of all these onlookers, that Lady Zhang had held him back. She had claimed that a man near bloodshed brings bad luck, and forbade him from going to see Bai Jinxiu. She had lied that Jinxiu was recovering but needed to root out the illness, so he must rest well in bed. Then she had sent her own nephew from her maiden home to escort him to the poetry gathering at Fansheng Tower.
Bai Jingyan sneered.
"So Lady Hu's words mean my second sister is an unfilial daughter-in-law, feigning sleep just to grieve her aunt? Lady Hu, which imperial physician exactly did you summon? I shall have Nanny Zhang take Grandmother's tally right now to bring Chief Judge Imperial Physician Huang as well. Let the three physicians examine my second sister's condition together!"
Lady Zhang, wife of the Zhongyong Marquis, went white as a sheet. She had not known that the famous Physician Hong was lodging at the Duke of Zhenguo's residence — much less imagined that the Bai family would summon him to examine Bai Jinxiu's pulse.
"Lady Hu! Tell us which physician you summoned!"
Bai Jindong pressed her relentlessly.
Jin Lang shut his eyes, swept back the front of his robe, knelt before Madam Yu, and bowed low and heavily.
"Mother, this is all my failure."
"I cannot bear to be called 'Mother' by the likes of you! That word is no form of address — it is a talisman hastening my daughter's death!"
Climbing into her carriage, Madam Yu shrieked in a voice raw with fury.
"Let us go!"