Chapter 404 — Rage

This tea room was where the women who came to burn incense had their hot water boiled and their offerings steamed; it was barely half a zhang across. Besides a small charcoal stove, there stood a low chest against the window and two long benches, and with several grown men crowded inside, turning around was a matter of some difficulty.

Song Yan told Duan Bing and Xia Lian, "Go and keep watch outside."

Duan Bing and Xia Lian withdrew with a respectful sound, and Chen Jia perforce had to hold Li Liang up.

Song Yan sat down on one of the benches.

The medicine was beginning to work. Half of Li Liang's body was still numb and he could not move it, but the pain was gone.

Chen Jia hooked a foot around the little board beside the stove, the one used for tending the fire, and drew it over for Li Liang to sit on, then retreated to the doorway.

Song Yan asked Li Liang, "What happened that year?"

His tone as calm and unhurried as ever.

Chen Jia could not help glancing at Song Yan.

Li Liang said in surprise, "Was it not Lord Zhenguo who sent you?"

From the very moment he set eyes on Yigui, matters had grown too strange to credit, and Song Yan knew that his own understanding had gone off the mark.

He said vaguely, "Everyone tells it differently. I only want to know what really happened that year."

At those words Li Liang's eyes went bloodshot at once, like a bull goaded to fury.

Chen Jia feared he would again, as he had a moment ago, throw caution to the winds and curse the Songs roundly — which would ease his own heart and nothing more, and only inflame Song Yan, perhaps costing him his life for no purpose at all.

He made haste to remind him: "As for what happened that year, the Young Lord has only heard the elders speak of it. Had he believed it wholly, why would he have set his subordinates to look into Miss Yigui? And had he not looked into Miss Yigui, how would he ever have saved her..." It occurred to him that Song Yan would in no case speak to others of what Yigui had suffered. But if Li Liang did not know what she had truly gone through, he would most likely, as before, feel himself to have earned merit by raising her, and would speak to Song Yan with insolent self-importance. Better that Li Liang should be sick at heart and shamed than that Song Yan should lose his temper.

Chen Jia paused, then simply lowered his voice and told Li Liang everything about Yigui.

Song Yan did not stop him.

Let this man Li know just what he had done; better that than have him shamelessly style himself her "uncle" and turn one's stomach.

Li Liang's eyes went wide.

He looked at Song Yan, whose face was still as water, then at Chen Jia, grave and heavy, and croaked, "Impossible!" Then: "You are lying to me. You must look down on the Wei family, and so you lied to me, to make Yigui divorce Wei Bairui..."

He said it, but in his heart he knew it was nine parts true; otherwise, with the Song family's eminence, why would Song Yan keep his silence, and why did Yigui look so wasted and frail?

He covered his face and wept: "It is all my fault... If only I had held firm then, and not married Yigui to Wei Bairui... I knew well enough that Wei fellow's eyes were not straight, my heart misgave me, and yet that woman in my house hoodwinked me, and I married Yigui off just like that... One year at most — had I kept her but one year longer, and you had come looking, Yigui might still have married into a decent house..."

How had Li Liang's wife come into it now?

Chen Jia muttered inwardly, supposing Song Yan must be just as puzzled, and said, "What has Yigui's marrying that Wei fellow to do with your wife?"

There are some people who are forever fond of shifting the blame onto someone else.

Li Liang said, "When I took a wife I made it plain from the first: there is a widowed mother at home, and a sister who has come back to us for good, with her daughter. Whichever girl can abide my sister and her child, her I will marry. But who would have thought that as the years went on the woman would show her true face — not content with scorning my sister, she urged me to marry Yigui out early. Yigui was still young; I meant to keep her two years more. But the household grew poorer by the day, and my wife kept harping on Yigui's dowry, saying that if we married her out now we could still put together a decent portion for her, whereas in a few years she would have to take some broken-down nobody. And just then Wei Quan came asking for her hand, and so I married her out..." He said bitterly, "It is that woman who ruined Yigui's prospects!"

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Brothers and sisters, here is today's update.

Begging for pink votes... o(n_n)o~