A Single Tie Of Long Hair Seals A Lifelong Commitment - Chapter 44

The stream’s surface was like a mirror.

The manor house had no antique pavilions or terraces; instead, it mostly consisted of ordinary wooden structures with thick black tiles on the roofs.

The only striking color was the simple, ancient vermillion bridge.

There were no wind lamps burning through the night, and few lanterns were visible. The people in the mountain manor retired at sunset, leaving a scene of deep tranquility.

Occasionally, a chirping insect could be heard from the grass.

A shrill, tragic cry broke the silence of the mountainous night.

Lanterns lit up from all directions.

The sound came from a courtyard behind the vermillion bridge.

“Let’s go see.”

Xie Wenjun grabbed Chen Liangyu’s hand and walked across the vermillion bridge.

The surrounding houses were dark, with only one wooden carved window showing a faint yellow light.

Two silhouettes were visible on the window paper.

One was slumped on the floor, and the other was standing, hunched over.

The old wooden door was ajar. Looking through the gap, the pregnant woman they had met earlier outside the pharmacy was clutching her abdomen, with a pool of blood beneath her.

Presumably, “A’Yuan” was Ye Weiyuan, the eldest daughter of the Ye family of Jiuhua Mountain Manor.

Pei Danxing slowly knelt down.

His eyes were a mix of pain and despair, his brow furrowed as if to lock all his suffering within.

A low, suppressed sob escaped his throat.

Many people had gathered in the courtyard, whispering and hesitating.

“What happened to the eldest young lady and the manor master?”

“I don’t know. Don’t ask what you shouldn’t ask.”

The female thief who had climbed over the wall into the manor earlier also rushed over upon hearing the noise.

She was still in the same black outfit as during the day, her face covered with a veil, and her hair hiding half her face.

She ran quickly, pushed the door open, and seemed to be stung by the fresh red blood on the floor, her hand stopping mid-air.

Her body suddenly jolted, and she quickly began rummaging for something.

Bottles, jars, and paper packets were scattered everywhere. Finally, she pulled out a small, flat, white bottle from her clothes and rushed to Ye Weiyuan’s feet, feeding her a pill. Then, in a flurry, she righted a cup, filled it with water, and helped her swallow it.

She muttered, “Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding first…”

Only a small sip of the warm tea was sent into Ye Weiyuan’s mouth, just enough to wash down the pill.

Ye Weiyuan pushed her away, spitting out the medicine. “I don’t need your false concern. Go! Don’t ever come back!”

The female thief put another pill into her mouth, clamped her jaw, and forced her to swallow it.

“I will leave,” she said.

Her voice was husky, as if smoked by thick fumes. “Today is father’s memorial day…”

Ye Weiyuan suddenly went wild. “That person is your father, not mine! He only acknowledged you as his daughter!”

Amidst her heartbreaking screams, two lines of clear tears streamed down her face.

“Why? Twin children from the same mother, yet he chose for you to live, and me to die.”

The female thief seemed to have run out of energy, completely losing the fierce demeanor of the bandit who had robbed a horse in the street during the day.

“I will return the home, the identity, and the appearance to you,” she said.

“Return? Those things were mine to begin with, why should you return them?” Ye Weiyuan’s face was pale with sickness, all color drained away. “Since he didn’t acknowledge me, I will take what belongs to me myself.”

Her gaze shifted to Pei Danxing. “Everything I want, I will get.”

Ye Weiyuan reached out and stroked Pei Danxing’s face, a face marked by the passage of ten-plus years.

She had deeply loved the man who raised her since she was a child.

“Master, we will have a child, we will still have one! We certainly will!”

“A’Yuan…”

Pei Danxing closed his eyes in agony.

“Did you give her the abortion medicine?” the female thief questioned Pei Danxing.

Pei Danxing neither affirmed nor denied it.

He only said, “A’Yuan cannot give birth to this child. Her body cannot withstand such a great depletion from childbirth.”

The corners of Ye Weiyuan’s mouth twitched, and she let out a series of nearly hysterical laughs, looking up at the sky.

She laughed at the cold-hearted man for his self-righteousness.

He personally brewed the medicine meant to kill their child, personally brought it to her, and personally told her, “A’Yuan, be good. Drink this.”

Yet, he claimed to be worried about the depletion of her body.

Ye Weiyuan had poured the abortion medicine down her own throat. After all these years, she suddenly felt a sense of exhaustion.

Twenty years ago, Madam Ye of Jiuhua Mountain Manor went into premature labor. After a day and a night, the twin fetuses in her womb still hadn’t been delivered.

Old Manor Master Ye was away, practicing medicine to accumulate good fortune for his wife and daughter, and had not returned.

To save the lives of the children in her womb, Madam Ye dismissed everyone else, keeping only a trusted maid. She instructed the maid to prepare scissors and a needle and thread, pulled the bed curtains, and cut open her own abdomen.

Unexpectedly, the twin fetuses in her belly were a monster with two heads, four arms, and four legs.

One side of their waists was connected.

The maid was terrified.

Madam Ye, barely alive, asked the maid to use the needle and thread to sew her up.

In her shock, the maid failed to properly stitch the wound. By the time Manor Master Ye rushed back from practicing medicine, Madam Ye had already passed away, leaving behind the wailing monster.

Manor Master Ye searched through ancient medical texts and finally found a way to separate the infants’ bodies when they were six months old.

But only one could survive.

The waist of the slightly larger infant was cut away by half, and its cries gradually subsided until they were completely extinguished.

Manor Master Ye held the tiny body, took one last look, and placed her in a bamboo basket, handing her to an old woman.

Infants who died young were not interred in the ancestral grave, for fear of affecting the lifespan of the living. Manor Master Ye only instructed someone to find a spot on the back mountain, dig a pit, and bury her.

Few people went to the back mountain. It was desolate, and occasionally one might step on the gnawed remains of an animal hunted by a beast, where a rotten smell permeated the air.

Deep in the woods, the strange calls of a night owl would echo. Occasionally, a cold gust of wind would blow through, causing the leaves and dead branches to rustle.

It was enough to make one’s skin crawl.

The old woman was afraid, so she casually tossed the bamboo basket containing the infant’s corpse beneath a tree.

That year, a major event occurred in Liangxi City: the Pei family of Lingxiao Mountain Manor was exterminated overnight.

Pei Danxing miraculously escaped and hid in the back mountain of Jiuhua Mountain Manor.

The massacre was incurred simply because Pei’s father wanted to curry favor with the powerful and offered the court a secret technique manual he had found in Dongyin. To ensure there were no issues, Pei’s father first had a few medicine apprentices test it. After confirming it was mostly fine, he had the manual taken away, waiting for the new emperor’s accession to recognize him as a meritorious subject who had helped establish the dynasty, thereby gaining promotion and nobility.

He had advised his father that this path was wrong.

But his father, blinded by greed, would not listen to any counsel.

Instead of a promotion and nobility, what came were black-clad, masked assassins.

Pei Danxing crawled out of his hiding cave to search for food and saw the bamboo basket under the tree, thinking it was a hunter’s lunch.

Seeing no one around, he rushed over, grabbed the basket, and ran.

The wind whistled past his ears, as if someone were chasing him. He ran back to the cave without stopping.

Lifting the cloth covering the bamboo basket, he saw not food, but an infant.

It seemed to be an infant that was already dead.

He stumbled in fright, hitting his head on a pile of rocks. With that bump, his ears seemed to have suffered an auditory hallucination.

The dead infant in the bamboo basket seemed to let out a faint cry.

He mustered his courage and leaned in for another look.

The infant’s eyelid seemed to have twitched.

As a young boy, Pei Danxing’s clothes often tore, so he always carried a needle and thread for mending. Fortunately, he still had the needle and thread with him when he fled for his life.

There were many medicinal herbs on the back mountain of Jiuhua Mountain Manor, and having studied medicine since childhood, it wasn’t difficult for him to find some.

He stitched the infant’s bloody wound, applied herbs, and since the cloth used to cover the child in the basket was still relatively clean, he folded it, wrapped it around her waist, and bandaged the wound.

He had no breast milk, and he couldn’t even get a bowl of thin gruel. So, he cut his finger and fed her his blood.

“Whether you can survive is up to you,” Pei Danxing thought.

He was almost completely without hope that the child would make it.

There was little to eat on the mountain, but many beasts.

To avoid being eaten by a wild animal, he took the bamboo basket down the mountain and begged for food from door to door. On a lucky day, if he met a family who had just had a child and had leftover breast milk, he could beg for half a bowl to feed the little one in the basket.

Fortunately, the child lived.

During the day, he sneaked around the city, and at night, he returned home to collect the bones of his family. He also had to live in constant fear that the group of black-clad men who slaughtered his family would find him.

Luckily, no one pursued him again.

After his family was buried, he continued to walk with the bamboo basket.

He intended to go elsewhere to make a living.

On the road, he couldn’t beg for food, so he stole a bun when he was too hungry. He was caught, and when he couldn’t produce the one coin for the bun, he was beaten half to death.

But he was generally lucky.

They met a traveling doctor who admired his talent and took the two of them back to his medical hall.

He then became an apprentice at the medical hall.

Life in the master’s sect was not easy. Whenever he received praise from his master, he would be subjected to open and veiled bullying and exclusion from his senior apprentices.

To secure a roof over his head and enough gruel to eat, he began to learn how to read expressions and flatter. He did all the dirty and exhausting work himself. In winter, he even had to go to the frozen river to break the ice and wash everyone’s clothes, shoes, and socks. Whenever he came back from washing, his hands and feet were chapped and his limbs were stiff.

When the female infant grew to be a teenager, he brought her back to Liangxi City.

The young girl wore clothes made from repurposed burlap sacks and followed him, carrying a basket to gather herbs. Her hair was braided into two neat plaits on either side of her head, and her eyes were clear and untouched, like an elf who had fallen into the mortal world.

Pei Danxing accidentally discovered that the child had an extremely high talent for medicine, not inferior to his own when he was young. Before the Pei family’s incident, he was known as the “Little Genius Doctor.”

Thereafter, he consciously taught her to read and identify medicine. Her body was disabled, and it would be better if she could learn a skill to support herself.

“Master,” she looked up and asked him, “Why are you Master and not Daddy?”

Pei Danxing smiled. “If A’Zhu wants to call me Daddy, that’s fine too.”

She had grown up in a bamboo basket, so Pei Danxing named her A’Zhu (A’Zhu meaning ‘bamboo’).

Since A’Zhu was the child he raised, he felt he deserved to be called Daddy. Who else but him would give her away when she married?

The young girl said, “That won’t do. I want to marry Master.”

Pei Danxing said, “That’s not allowed. However, Master will choose a good husband who will love and cherish you for A’Zhu.”

After saying this, he noticed a hint of displeasure on the girl’s face, so he hunted a wild chicken and prepared it for her dinner.

He didn’t remember the taste of that night’s dinner.

When he woke up, he was naked, lying on A’Zhu’s bed. On the messy bedding, there were traces of luohong (blood from the first intercourse).

He suddenly sat up and shrank into the corner, waking the young girl from her sleep.

“Master, can you marry me now?”

The girl smiled innocently, but Pei Danxing felt a chill run down his spine.

After that, he began to eat separately from A’Zhu.

He started teaching A’Zhu how to wash clothes; before, he had always hand-washed hers.

He also bolted his bedroom door when he slept.

Everything seemed futile because A’Zhu became pregnant.

He lied to her and made her drink a bowl of abortion medicine, ending their first child’s life.

On one chance occasion, he learned that Madam Ye of Jiuhua Mountain Manor had given birth to twins that year, but now only one daughter remained. Remembering that he had found A’Zhu in the back mountain of Jiuhua Mountain Manor, he wondered if A’Zhu’s background was related to the Ye family.

It coincided with Manor Master Ye descending the mountain to dispense medicine, so he took A’Zhu with him.

He saw the face of the Ye family’s eldest daughter, Ye Weiyuan, which was identical to A’Zhu’s.

A’Zhu naturally saw her too.

She went to acknowledge her relatives, but Manor Master Ye insisted that his wife had only given birth to one child and refused to acknowledge her.

Twins, one lives, one dies. She clenched her fist.

That night, a large fire broke out in Jiuhua Mountain Manor, and Manor Master Ye perished in the flames.

She watched the fire grow larger and larger, like the hatred that had sprouted and wildly grown in her heart.

Born of the same mother, why did the person who looked exactly like her receive all the favor and love?

She watched her rush into the fire, trying to rescue their father from beneath the burning timbers, only to have her face burned by the falling flames and her body crushed beneath the bricks and tiles.

Bucket after bucket of water was thrown, but the fire showed no sign of diminishing. No one dared to rush into the fire to save her.

Pei Danxing arrived and pulled “Ye Weiyuan” out of the fire. His ten fingers were blistered.

“A’Zhu, what have you done?”

For the first time in his life, he lost his temper with her.

“Master, I didn’t start the fire,” A’Zhu said.

She had only locked the door from the outside when the fire started.

“Also, my name is not A’Zhu. From now on, I am Ye Weiyuan. Master, I have a home. Aren’t you happy for me?”

She got everything that belonged to “Ye Weiyuan”: her identity, her name, and her home.

Things kept collapsing and bursting in the fire. The thick smoke was pungent and choked one almost to the point of being unable to breathe. The flames behind him were still licking at the houses and trees. Pei Danxing’s back was hot from the heat, but his heart grew colder little by little.

It seemed he had not raised this child well.

“Master, marry me. Let us get married.”

She said.

They were not truly married; they had not bowed to heaven and earth or to their parents.

Sometimes, Pei Danxing wanted to let go of all the hatred in his heart and only wished to share warm wine and tea with her, relying on each other for life.

He was tormented inside, yet he let Ye Weiyuan do as she pleased. He loved her without any bottom line.

But on the matter of having children, he never yielded.

Ye Weiyuan was missing a kidney. Her body could not withstand the trauma of pregnancy and childbirth on the mother.

Compared to losing his beloved forever, he did not mind being childless.

Pei Danxing held the blood-soaked Ye Weiyuan in his arms, resting his chin on her forehead.

She no longer wished to be called “A’Zhu,” so he indulged her and called her “A’Yuan.”

That year, after “Ye Weiyuan” learned everything, she told her, “My nickname is A’Ying, and my mother’s surname is Zhu. From now on, I will change my name.”

A shadow.

It was hard to say which of them was the other’s shadow.

For Pei Danxing, the greatest regret was that if those events twenty years ago had not happened, he might have been able to marry this girl openly and legally, making her his wife.