Chapter 493 — Celebration
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
Miao Anping came staggering out of the tavern, drunk as a lord.
The fists fell everywhere on his vital spots; clearly, someone meant to kill him.
His head cleared at once. Pleading for mercy, he bellowed, "I am the elder brother-in-law of the Second Master of the Yingzhen Ducal Estate! Let me go, and I will give you money—money, or power, whatever you want—I swear I will not go back on my word!"
His attackers paid him no heed.
Cold dread seeped through Miao Anping. He shook with terror—and then he lost control of his bladder.
Then came a clatter of hurried footsteps, someone shouting, "Over here!"—and a group charged in to fight the men who wanted Miao Anping dead.
Miao Anping tore the black cloth bag from his head and saw that both sides wore black masks and coarse short jackets, so that he could not tell friend from foe at all.
He scrambled out of the alley on hands and knees.
Passersby shrieked at the sight of him.
Some recognized him and hurried away at a distance.
Miao Anping stumbled home.
The house was thrown into an uproar, and Mother Miao clutched her son and wept a river of tears. "What happened? Who was so bold as to bully you? I will have your father go to the yamen and report this at once! If Magistrate Xie does not give us satisfaction, we will take our grievance all the way to the palace and see to it that he loses his post!"
Miao Anping was speechless with fury. He shoved his mother aside. "What do you know?" Then he cupped his hands to his father and said, "Someone is trying to murder me!"
He told them the whole story.
The Miaos looked at one another, at a loss—whom had Miao Anping offended, and who had saved him, and why would anyone save him?
And Miao Anping, recalling the fists that had landed on him, felt a lingering chill of dread. He could sit still no longer. He rose and said, "No. I must go find Sixth Sister and have her think of something for me!"
Miao Fu was still seething over Miao Zhi's falling-out with Song Han, and snorted. "What can she do? Without the Yingzhen Ducal Estate, she is nothing—not worth a dog's fart."
"What do you know!" Miao Anping had no patience to argue with his father. "Sixth Sister lives on the Yingzhen Ducal Estate's farmstead now, under the Heir's protection. So long as she keeps her virtue, she is a thousand times better off than she ever was with Song Han." With that, heedless of his father's bulging eyes and huffing, he went off to the farmstead where Miao Zhi lived.
However worthless this brother of hers might be, he was still her own flesh and blood. Faced with a matter of life and death, Miao Zhi could not simply stand by.
Her heart pounded as she heard him out, and she went to beg Dou Yan: "My brother is a troublemaker. You need only send two guards to watch over him, so that no one can waylay him in the dark. As for the rest—just pretend you never saw it."
Miao Zhi wanted only to keep Miao Anping alive.
Dou Yan thought it over, then reminded her, "Even if I set two guards over your brother, that cannot last forever. I think the one who tied the knot must be the one to untie it—you would do better to have your brother go to the Second Master."
At first Miao Zhi did not grasp Dou Zhiwei's meaning. Only when she was seated in the carriage back to the farmstead did it come to her.
She could not help an "Ai yo!" and ordered the driver, "Back to Four Lane Alley."
The carriage turned. They had gone nearly half an hour when Miao Zhi's dejected voice came again from within: "Never mind. Let us go back to the farmstead after all!"
The driver turned the carriage again.
Miao Zhi flung herself onto the great bolster and wept without a sound, grinding her teeth in fury.
All she had done was squeeze a few hundred taels out of him, and he could take a man's life for it—what coldness of heart that showed. If she went on wearing him down like this, one day she might well lose her life.
No, she had to find a way to get away from Song Han quickly.