Ch. 36: Sink

Meifeng sank like a stone into the now-disturbed waters of the artificial lake. She could still make out the surface though, where Lin Xiao was gaping in surprise before turning around and wailing, "It's no good! Second Miss and Fourth Miss have pushed my mistress into the water! Oh, what shall I do? Quick, someone, come save her!"

Miniature bubbles rose to the top as Lin Xiao's tearful face grew further and further away. Shen Meifeng wondered if she would die. She wondered if she even could die. The thought did not induce horror and terror within her, but rather a detached curiosity. After all, for her to wind up in this new world, she had to have died before.

Meifeng could hear and feel a disturbance in the waters above her, drawing herself out of her thoughts. There was a large, sturdy figure churning the lake as it grew closer and closer, revealing itself to be one of the heavier set maids who were used to doing the more intense labor of the rear court since no grown men were allowed to work there. The girl's lips were pressed into a line, air bubbles burst out of her nose like a fuming bull. She grabbed Meifeng none too gently and reversed towards the surface with ease, allowing both of their heads to break out of the water in tandem.

"Young Miss! Young Miss!" Lin Xiao yelled from the shore, clear relief in her tear-filled eyes. There was already a gathering crowd, but the most prominent of them was the meek Second Madam and Lady Ning, both equally shocked by the scene they'd witnessed.

Once Lin Xiao was able to confirm Shen Meifeng's safety, she was able to put her all into her performance. Her knees gave out beneath her and she fell to the ground, staining her maid's dress without care. All while blubbering, she crawled to Lady Ning's feet.

"Madam, they have gone too far! Young Miss is too kind to complain about the bullying, but today they tried to kill her! You only have this one daughter, what will you do without her?" Lin Xiao begged, tugging at the elegant skirt of the speechless Lady Ning. It was not proper for a maid to do so, it could result in Lin Xiao being flogged, but her words had an underlying meaning that kept Lady Ning and her maid, Cui Lan, from protesting.

What Lin Xiao had uttered was not a plea borne of emotion, but great calculation. Even System felt a chill at the back of his neck at how swiftly Lin Xiao had learned from her benefactor-turned-mistress. The only reason Lady Ning had been able to make it back through her prestigious natal clan's doors was due to the fact that she had a young daughter. If it weren't for her "child", they would have closed their eyes and ears to her desperate cries to return home.

Married daughters were like spilled water, the old saying went. The harsh existence Lady Ning had endured when her husband's clan had fallen apart and she was left to fend for herself like a commoner had taught her that. This particular instance hadn't been her first attempt to return home. When the cracks had first begun to appear and she could see that the Shen family would not weather the might of the imperial family's stormy rage many years before, she had fled home by carriage, a discreet black one pulled by a single horse.

While a bit fearful of her future, up until that point, Lady Ning had enjoyed the generous shade the Ning family had provided up until that point. She had an aunt who was an empress. Her father was a high-ranking imperial official. Her family had maintained the dukedom they had been awarded a few generations prior during the wars that had established the current dynasty. Naively, Lady Ning had thought to borrow her family's shade one more time in order to survive the onslaught that would ruin the Shen family, and then marry again discreetly a few years later.

It went without saying that this fantasy hadn't happened. The doors didn't open that night. Or the next night. The third evening, she had been discovered as she snuck out of the Shen residence. Her husband had forced all the maids to watch over her, cruelly proclaiming that since she had married into the Shen family, she would live and die with them. The exile had been brutal, compounded by her newly discovered pregnancy and the pain of betrayal.

That old memory from her tumultuous past stung Lady Ning's heart again as she watched the quick servant girl pull Shen Meifeng from the water. Although her fake daughter's body was nearly limp, she wasn't sure why she thought she saw a faint smile flash upon her face. But it wasn't a pleasant, sweet smile. With her soaking wet hair that had fallen free of a young maiden's double buns and now hung around her face like a sheet, "Shen" Meifeng, her fake daughter, looked like a ghost.

Lady Ning jumped and trembled like a leaf.

A nearby maid assumed it was because Lin Xiao had grabbed ahold of the simple, yet fine dove gray skirt Lady Ning wore and startled the Old Madam's only daughter.

"Let her go!" the maid quickly jeered, eager to endear herself in the eyes of the returned First Miss who was highly regarded in the rear court due to her proximity to the highly respected Old Madam. It surprised the maid when Lady Ning sharply snapped at her instead.

"Silence!" she hissed, her voice much harsher than anyone could have expected. The girl shrunk her head down and slunk to the back of the pack, where the other maids gave her subtle looks of sympathy and disdain. Lin Xiao lowered her eyes to hide the cheeky grin in them and then let go of the skirt, leaving behind a wet handprint from when she had tried to catch Shen Meifeng and nearly fell in herself.

"Young Miss! Young Miss!" she wailed again as Shen Meifeng was lain to recover on the shore opposite of the commotion.

Her body was nearly limp, pieces of hair sticking to her face like seaweed and framing the delicate features that had become completely bloodless and pale after her tumble into the water. Shen Meifeng coughed weakly, a delicate sound that tugged at the heartstrings of most, save for a few people.

The loudmouthed Ning Caixin was horrified, but her previous bout of foolishness had given way to good sense which told her to be silent. Meanwhile, Ning Caiyue hid her mouth behind a handkerchief, trembling in the arms of her maid to make herself appear too weak and delicate to have done the crime Lin Xiao loudly accused her of. Behind her handkerchief, she viciously tore at a neatly clipped nail with her teeth, thinking hard about how she would evade the heavy charge Shen Meifeng had placed upon her.

Her mother had been right. Dogs that bit did not bark.

"Feng'er," Lady Ning fell into her role after Lin Xiao's warning, placing a shaky hand on Shen Meifeng's forehead with a look of fear. Shen Meifeng opened her eyes, the stark blackness seeming to swallow Lady Ning whole. There was faint warning within them, along with amusement. As if this were all just a fun game.

"Mother," the girl on the ground coughed to her "mother". "I thought you had forgotten me. I worried that I would die without fully performing my filial piety to you."

"My good daughter..." Lady Ning's voice trailed off. To those behind her, they simply assumed that she was overcome with emotion. Ning Caiyue began to sidle closer to the bridge in an attempt to draw herself away from the mess unfolding before her. But her new position instead allowed her to see things from an angle the others did not, namely the misplaced terror on Lady Ning's face.

Lady Ning brushed away the strands that clung to her daughter's face with shaking fingers.

"Mother will get justice for you," Lady Ning promised aloud. Only Meifeng could hear the plea underneath. With the look in her mother's eyes, she could only surmise that her mother was recalling the events at the temple and recognized the importance of remaining on Shen Meifeng's good side.

"I know," Shen Meifeng looked Lady Ning in the eye, seeing a woman whom life had taught a hard lesson that few would be eager to experience again.

After years of suffering, lying, and carefully manipulating her way into the position of a powerful abbess, Lady Ning had long learned that the Ning clan, despite wealthy they were, would not even give out a bowl of rice for descendants who were useless. Later that evening, she would eventually ponder why exactly both she and her daughter had been allowed to return home if they served little purpose on the surface. But at that moment, her thoughts were consumed with the present.

"I know," Shen Meifeng lovingly repeated again. She rubbed her face in her mother's arms like a cat.

Feeling that her daughter was no longer in immediate danger, Lady Ning's lips pressed into a thin, furious line. Although she was no longer a nun, she still wore the cap as her hair was just beginning to grow back and she still had the demeanor of a superior abbess who lorded over others. When she rose to her full height and pinned her young nieces with a hard stare, they both immediately began to squirm like bugs that had been exposed to the light.

Lady Ning had grown up in the backyard and knew there was something tricky in whatever had just occurred, given how relaxed Shen Meifeng appeared about the situation. However, even if the scene was staged by Shen Meifeng, her nieces must have laid down the kindling that set the entire situation ablaze. Time was running out before her eldest brother's wife would arrive to save her child, so Lady Ning would have to strike quickly.

"In the few years since I left this Duke of Ning mansion, has the training for our young ladies fallen this low?" She softly critiqued, the barbs hidden within her words rather than her tone. "Is this how you treat your blood-related cousin?"

Neither Ning Caixin nor Ning Caiyue held too much respect for Lady Ning, but as she was an elder they had to pay respects. Both expressed the proper greeting, bending their knees and bowing their heads.

"Greetings, Aunt," they said. Typically, a loving elder would immediately exempt them from the posture, but Lady Ning did not say a word as she watched the two of them with stern eyes.

Meifeng smacked her dry lips, a pitiful wisp of a thing in her mother's embrace. "Mother… don't blame them. They didn't do it on purpose." She coughed weakly, casting a pleading glance in the direction of Ning Caixin and Ning Caiyue as if to say with her eyes, 'See? I am lying to cover up what you've done. Don't bully me anymore.'

Although the two girls could see the mockery in their cousin's eyes, in the eyes of others, Shen Meifeng's pleading look all but solidified the fact that the two had indeed done something wrong. Lady Ning balked on the inside, knowing that her fragile status in her maiden home could be affected if she kept pursuing this. But she had to fulfill her side of the deal. And thus, after sucking in a deep breath for courage, Lady Ning's expression hardened.

"I must go tell my mother how my daughter and I are not welcome here," she said, her voice never rising but still accurately conveying her fury. To Lin Xiao, she said, "Take good care of your mistress. If she takes ill after this, you will be punished."

Things were not looking good. To her maid, the seemingly weak Ning Caiyue fiercely urged, "Go, tell my mother. Tell her that I have been set up." Her handkerchief crumbled in her grasp, with both shock and anger nearly overtaking her mood as she encountered the first problem she'd ever encountered since she had transmigrated into this new world.

And so Lady Ning began to austerely march towards Yixin Pavilion and Ning Caiyue's maid discreetly ran off to alert the First Madam of the oncoming trouble to her youngest, sickly daughter. Ning Caixin began to grumble that she wasn't afraid of punishment as she had done nothing wrong, but Ning Caiyue knew things weren't so simple. Even a situation as small as supposedly pushing her cousin into the lake could affect something she had come to deeply treasure in this new world: her reputation. In order to reach the very peak of this world and become the sole woman above millions, it would need to be spotless.

Ning Caiyue had her suspicions about why her down-and-out paternal aunt and cousin had decided to come beat the autumn wind at such a pivotal time when the court was soon to ask all eligible young women to participate in the draft to choose the women who would further the imperial bloodline, which was alarmingly thin despite years of peace and prosperity. Now it seemed like her question was answered, which distressed her as she saw the fox-like, wicked temperament of her younger cousin reveal itself for the first time.

Ning Caiyue knew she would be entered in the upcoming draft to represent the Duke of Gao Mansion, hence why her parents had dragged their feet in choosing her a husband despite her already having her hair-pinning ceremony. She knew she was all but guaranteed a high-ranking position in the imperial harem. Her maternal aunt was Empress Chu and her great-aunt was Empress Dowager Ning.

But if she entered with such a black mark on her reputation, it could ruin become a knife in the hands of those who did not wish to see another girl from the Ning family rise in power. Ning Caiyue had never been an overconfident fool, she knew that now more than ever was the time for caution.

Lin Xiao helped Shen Meifeng to her feet, who wavered in the weak wind like a willow, her every movement pitiful and oblivious to the venomous eyes staring her down a short distance from she stood.

"Who are you?" Ning Caiyue finally couldn't help but murmur under her breath as she prayed her maid would get to the First Madam before Lady Ning told the whole fictitious story to Old Madam Ning. "Where did a wicked spirit like you come from?"

Shen Meifeng's hearing had always been unusually keen and she heard her cousin's musings, even with the distance between them. She could not help but cast a taunting smile over her shoulder, particularly once she detected the faint panic in the other girl's eye.

After all, today's little swim had just been Shen Meifeng testing the waters.