Ch. 22: Mistakes

The next day reaps surprising rewards the moment Lin Xiao opened the bamboo slat door of their humble dwellings at the temple. Seated on the single step to enter the small room, there sat a cuju ball. Its color was bright, streaked with red and green, and stitched with a few auspicious clouds. It was far more expensive and lovely than the current one Meifeng owned that she had found abandoned in one of the courtyards she had cleaned out.

"Benefact- Young Miss!" Lin Xiao exclaimed, lifting the ball. Meifeng took it eagerly, inspecting it quickly before her eyes crinkled further in pleasure.

"This is far nicer than my old one, isn't it?" she said, tossing the ball a few times in her hand to ascertain its springiness.

"It's a symbol of love, don't you think? That the young lord Wen must love me?" Meifeng followed up, looking at Lin Xiao curiously with her youthful grin.

"Yes!" Lin Xiao suddenly appeared bashful as she reflected on how Wen Chuyi gazed longingly at Meifeng over the past few days they had known one another. Yet Meifeng was adept at playing hard to get, her coquettish personality luring in the young man despite her harsh words.

"Young Miss, will you marry him?"

The ball froze in Meifeng's hands, the temperature seeming to drop several degrees. Lin Xiao felt as if she had perhaps crossed into forbidden territory.

"My apologies, I have asked a sensitive question," she hastily apologized.

Meifeng shook her head, a weird smile on her face.

"Marriage? That is very important for a woman, no?" she commented, looking at Lin Xiao in curiosity.

Lin Xiao nodded very seriously. "When my family wasn't poor and we were still living in Jiangnan, my mother was already looking for a wife for my brother and was speaking with a spice merchant about a potential betrothal to his youngest son for me."

Her lips curled into a childish pout, the discussion of marriage touching on a sore subject.

"Ah? You don't like marriage?" Meifeng asked, maneuvering so the two girls could they could sit more intimately on the thin, hay woven mats that doubled as their beds.

"En. That boy always threw stones at me when he saw me. Who would want to marry someone who always wants to hurt you?" Lin Xiao pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Indeed. Who would?" Meifeng stood up with a huff, tucking the ball lovingly into a corner of the room. "Don't worry, I do not wish to become his woman. Remember how I said we will leave this place soon?"

A weight visibly dropped from Lin Xiao's shoulders and she eagerly rushed to follow Meifeng who was leaving their dwelling with their brooms in tow.

"I rememb- Achoo!"

A vicious wind tore past the girls in their thin nun's habit and Lin Xiao let out a loud sneeze, her nose becoming even redder as she rubbed at it.

Meifeng adopted a look of concern, patting Lin Xiao's head even though she was a little shorter than her. "You are cold? Do not worry, before long I will find a way to warm you up properly, all the way down to your bones."

After all, the worst part of staying at the temple was the ever-present chill, especially since their room didn't have any coal braziers to warm themselves over.

"It's alright." Lin Xiao replied with a sweet grin, her heart feeling warm. "Besides when we first arrived there were rats scurrying around our room by the dozen, but now I can sleep without hear a single rustle from one!"

System felt bile crawl up its throat at the vile memories Lin Xiao's words evoked while Meifeng just smiled, her teeth appearing especially sharp under the weak morning light.

"That's good. Maybe the heavens heard your prayers," she said, her words the complete opposite of what had really happened to the rodents that were well fattened from generously stealing the temple's grain.

Lin Xiao wrinkled her nose, letting out a snort. "Heaven? There is no heaven in this world. I realized that when I was dragged away from my home."

Meifeng nodded in satisfaction, although Lin Xiao didn't see. "It's good you know. In this world, you can only have faith in two things. Yourself... and me."

Meanwhile, Madam Fang sat wordlessly in the seat of honor of her temporary courtyard, her lips pursed as a kneeling maid recited what she had seen over the past few days. Sensing the foul aura around her mistress when she had finished speaking, the maid further dropped her head, visible tremors running through her body.

"You've done well. Reward her," Madam Fang said in an even voice that hid her rage, her well experienced personal maid handing a small pouch of broken silver as the maid gratefully scurried out.

"Madam..." The maid asked hesitantly.

"To think that even a temple would have this kind of woman. Get me the senior nun!" she ordered, smacking her palm on the wooden table. The lower class maids who stood by the door trembled and cursed their luck for being brought on such a trip. For amongst the help in the Wen family home, who did not know that the serene-looking Madam had a penchant for beating servants whenever her mood was bad?

"Yes, Mada-"

"Wait!" Madam Fang had an unstable light in her eyes and she stood from her seat, her maid rushing to support her forearm. "I would like to see this hussy for myself." Her maid barely had time to throw on a fur-lined cloak before the old woman swept out the door into the snow.

Female onlookers quietly prowling the grounds could only watch in bewilderment and astoundment as Madam Fang and the unnecessary horde of maids she had brought with her to the temple barged into a small storage room in an easily overlooked corner of the spacious, nature-filled grounds. A loud din ensued, along with ungainly shrieking as a distraught Nun Ling rushed from the area with tears from her eyes and a conspicuous red mark on her cheek.

From the first strike, word had begun to spread across the temple grounds. Madam Fang had gone mad and begun beating a nun. A shameless nun of the esteemed Yonghe Temple attempted to seduce a young shaoye. For a temple such as this, with an illustrious and pristine reputation within the empire, it was akin to throwing black paint upon a pure white canvas. Irrevocable. Senior Nun Wu collapsed from her chair in a dead faint when the news reached her in her comfortable dwellings.

And to think the chaos of the day had only just begun.

"It wasn't me! Madam, I have not met with your son!" Nun Ling shrieked, her arm grabbed by a sturdy older maid as she was forced onto her knees before Madam Fang. Her eyes were tinged red with rage, the breaths huffing from her clouding the air thickly so much so that Nun Ling struggled to make out the noblewoman's face. But Nun Ling was not too dull and was able to quickly piece together what may have happened as the chilly snow bled into her clothes.

"I-I can help you find the real girl! She is beautiful and... and she used to work in a brothel!" Nun Ling exclaimed eagerly, crawling forward on frozen knees as she tried to tug at the bamboo embroidered brocade of Madam Fang's cloak. It was too bad for Nun Ling though that only after a few excruciating hours of pain and the permanent blinding of her left eye did Madam Fang begin to believe her words.

There had been a mistake, an unintentional one of the many intentional decisions that had led to this day. Nun Ling's constant visits to go bully Meifeng and Lin Xiao was mistaken by Madam Fang's spy as Nun Ling being the insidious woman who lived in the storage room and seduced Wen Chuyi. As for where Meifeng, the true and somewhat innocent perpetrator of the madness, was?

She had briefly paused to watch the chaos before moving to her true location, the quiet courtyard perched at the highest point of the hill, where Pushan Nun resided. A grim-faced Pushan Nun sent away a harried-looking junior nun, presumably the one who had carried the news that had spread across Yonghe Temple like a plague and would soon make its way into the metropolis below.

Meifeng's steps were slow and measured as she came before Pushan Nun, both women regarding the other with an expression that would not be deemed unfriendly, though their eyes pricked the other like thorns.

As Pushan Nun watched longer, Meifeng's head slowly and alluringly tipped to the side, the corner of a red lip quirking up into a smile. A burst of mild fear unexpectedly cropped up at the sight of the peculiar girl prompting Pushan Nun to capitulate first, turning and entering her room in a relaxed manner as if the temple she had made her name at wasn't on the verge of collapse.

Meifeng followed her in naturally, with Lin Xiao doggedly following her steps with a confused expression. But Lin Xiao did well with instructions and did not question Meifeng's matters despite how peculiar the situation had become. All three entered a simple room, furnished by a simple, low rise sandalwood table and a fine porcelain tea set.

"Sit," Pushan Nun said calmly, beckoning to the pillows on the opposite side of the table. For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the pouring of tea and the soft rustle of the paper windows struck by winter winds perhaps stirred by the madness below.

Two cups were placed before Meifeng and Lin Xiao which Meifeng readily accepted. Tilting her head back, she finished the small cup's contents in a single and somewhat crass swallow. The remaining cups on the table were untouched.

"You. What do you want? What is your purpose?" Pushan Nun asked without any friendly foreplay, her lips pressed in a line to show her displeasure.

"Me?" Meifeng answered slowly, drawing out the word and making eye contact with the older woman across from her. "I want what you want. What you really want."

Her words came out smoothly and almost innocently, but who would've thought that they would make the woman before her burst into a sudden fury.

"Don't speak nonsense!" Pushan Nun spat, slapping the table suddenly and startling Lin Xiao. The stormy mood flared up within a heartbeat, but disappeared just as quickly, like a lightning bolt in a cloudy sky. Meifeng visibly watched Pushan Nun become undone, the rage ruthlessly tearing apart her calm visage, before the woman stitched herself back together again. There was a new wariness in her eyes as if promising she would not be caught unawares by such emotion again.

"Don't lie. You're happy, this temple is about to sink, aren't you? Before today is over, Yonghe Temple's affairs will hang on everyone in Jiangnan's lips. By tomorrow, wealthy sponsors and visitors shall withdraw their support. As such a well-known and well-respected nun, you will have to leave to protect your own reputation, and then it's on to the next place. Isn't it?" Meifeng recited quietly.

Pushan Nun sat still quietly neither confirming nor denying Meifeng's words.

"The temple won't fall from this, it will blow over," Pushan Nun finally answered.

"It won't."

"It will."

"We both know it won't," Meifeng said with a certain finality, "But I can help you. We can both leave," Meifeng leaned in slowly to say with a playful glint in her eye as if it were all a game.

"I have already given you this big gift, it would only be suitable if you gave me something in return, no?"

Pushan Nun took the first sip of her jasmine tea.

"And what would you want in return?" she asked icily.

"Your name. That is to say, your late child's name." Lin Xiao, who had supplied the information to Meifeng, nearly choked at the words coming from her benefactor's mouth. And she was not alone. System sputtered in shock at Meifeng's sudden proposition.

"Master, do you want this woman to kill you? Do you not see how she is looking at you already?"

Yet to everyone's surprise, Pushan Nun actually cracked a slight smile, resembling once more the kind, welcoming face that had invited them into Yonghe Temple the first night they had arrived.

"I see," she answered slowly with an indecipherable glint in her eye. "And why would you want to the daughter of the disgraced Shen clan and outer niece of the first-ranked Ning clan?"

There was a pregnant pause and Meifeng weighed her next words carefully.

Finally, she looked up, her previous smile and carefree demeanor gone. Pushan Nun's unease crawled at the stony expression on the young girl's face as if she had seen much and experienced more than she should've in her short life.

"Would it be enough," Meifeng replied darkly, her dark eyes downcast, "if I just said that like you, I want to burn it all down?"