Chapter 92 (2/2)
Ci Ji Hall was this era’s charity. Ruan Yu was too lazy to make friends with some brainless women and had been friends with Dong Fang Hua for a while now. After Xuanyuan Zong Zhi’s information network, Tian Wang Embassy, had been established, Nangong Xun had assumed its heavy responsibility and Dong Fang Hua had been so busy assisting her husband, she hadn’t had time to call upon Ruan Yu.
Ruan Yu was isolated and was also unwilling to have dealings with opinionated women, so if she was free, she would roam around Ci Ji Hall. Under the flag of doing charity, she would contribute money and donate clothing. In the beginning, it was to pass the time but she became obsessed after she ran into a man.
“That mister is very young and handsome, but I do not know what his clan name is. The first time I met him was in the back street of Ci Ji Hall. I was afraid they had closed the city gates, and because I was rushing home, I used the back door and ran into him.”
Guan Ju Villa was on the banks of the Lan River, outside of the city. Although Ruan Yu had a pass token given to her from her Brother-in-law, she rarely used it because of the inconvenience it would bring.
“You can’t have simply liked him without anything happening; something had to have happened, right!”
The two sisters were sitting in the carriage. They had just entered the city when unexpectedly, something troublesome occurred.
Because the new year was approaching, the commoners had all come out to shop and the streets were extremely crowded. Carriages followed carriages, workers hauled poles on their shoulders, and the teeming streets buzzed with people pushing small carts.
Ruan Zhu called for the coachman to reduce the speed; they absolutely could not hurt anyone. They approached a narrow stone bridge with pedestrian using either sides while carriages drove by in the middle. Two vehicles could cross side-by-side with no problem but three carriages would result in an accident.
There were numerous noble clans underneath the Son of Heaven’s feet and some of the insanely proud ones would inevitably appear. A carriage directly appeared in front of them. Perhaps they were in a rush to get on the road, as they very quickly, attempted to charge at the gap between the vehicles of Ruan Zhu’s and another family’s.
The other vehicle was a donkey cart that was truly out of luck. They flipped over in an instant, blood-curdling screams coming from the cart, and it could be assumed their injuries were not light.
The Ruan carriage was superbly made from mahogany and pulled by four horses that were all good colts from central Asia that had received training. The expert coachman was highly skilled. When they were forcefully struck by the carriage in front, he backed up their carriage by two meters and the carriage quickly stabilized.
But the two sisters inside the carriage had still been thrown about. A corner of the skin at Ruan Yu’s forehead had split and blood flowed out. Ruan Zhu crawled up from underneath the seat and fished out a handkerchief to wipe her blood before using ning xiang lu on the injured areas.
Ruan Yu endured the pain and wanted to go outside to demand for justice. She hadn’t yet left the carriage……The coachman who had caused the accident got down from his own vehicle and slashed his whip towards Ruan Zhu’s driver: “You blind dog slave didn’t see a carriage coming? This is but the carriage of the wife of Shun Tian Hall’s magistrate. Are you able to compensate after injuring my family’s Eldest Miss?”
Everyone wore thick cotton clothes in the cold winter and the whip slash did not hurt too much. But ever since his Eldest Miss had become a Princess, the Ruan residence’s coachman had even been praised by those above in being one with ability and his face shone with light. Whenever he went in and out of the neighborhood, who among the neighbors didn’t place him highly in their eyes? He had never been slashed by a whip in the middle of the street before.
The Ruan clan’s coachman glared as he hollered abuse back: “You’re the one that’s blind. You can’t even properly follow the road; you must be urgently heading towards reincarnation, ah? Has your head been kicked by a donkey? What kind of status does the magistrate’s Young Miss have, ah? Fuck, you’re all brainless.”
Ruan Zhu came down from the carriage at that time. Hearing those sentences, she gloomily supported her forehead with her hand. How come even the servants had picked up her way of speaking?
The owners of the carriage that had caused the accident descended, and Ruan Zhu was stunned as there was someone she recognized–among them was a man gorgeously dressed with a handsome complexion, who was also a blood relative.
Wei Jia! Ruan Zhu thought she had already long forgotten that name.
Standing next to Wei Jia was a young female who was rather familiar-looking. Oh right, wasn’t this the daughter of Shun Tian Hall’s magistrate?
The magistrate was the Crown Prince’s henchman so his daughter had been promised to the crippled Zhao Hai. During that time in the capital, Zhao Hai’s life had been caught in her plan for him to ride the wooden donkey and the magistrate’s daughter had also become a laughingstock.
The magistrate’s daughter’s face was entirely tinted with anger: “From where did these untouchables come from to dare disturb this lady’s mood of going to see the plum blossoms with my concubine?”
Wei Jia had become the magistrate’s daughter’s secondary husband and knew how to curry favor just like his father! Ruan Zhu silently cursed them in her heart.
The Wei Jia on the side opened his mouth: “This slave recognizes these two females; they are from a lowly merchant family.” When he saw the two Ruan sisters coming down from their carriage, his face instantly became gloomy.
Disgust was all over the magistrate’s daughter’s face: “So they are of the merchant stratum; I was thinking how they could be so coarse. Zhou Er, go over and viciously slap them for me. If they die, they deserved it.”
The coachman called Zhou Er sprang towards the Ruan family’s driver, fists flailing, and the two men came to blows.
But how could Ruan Zhu’s coachman be ordinary? He had grown up together with the two Yun brothers and had learned a few martial arts moves. He very quickly restrained the other onto the ground and fiercely beat him up.
Ruan Zhu also smiled. Copying the words of the magistrate’s daughter, she directed towards her coachman: “Viciously slap them for me. If they die, they deserved it.”
She had only said that to scare the magistrate’s daughter and didn’t actually mean for him to fatally hit anyone. She knew that her coachman normally acted with propriety, which is why she had specifically worded it that way.
But Ruan Yu was not concerned with any of that and coldly sneered: “If you wish to hit, then you ought to hit the master. I would actually like to see how disgusting the appearance of Shun Tian Hall’s magistrate’s wildly arrogant Eldest Miss is when she’s beaten such that she’s sprawling on the ground.”
The stone bridge became a cacophony of noise as the commoners encircled them to watch the scene.
When the patrolling officials discovered this, they loudly yelled for the crowd to disperse and came over to ask the reason for the trouble.
Ruan Zhu had been sitting in Yun Shi Yi’s carriage that was without any marking of a princess, but the engraving on the carriage of the magistrate’s daughter was clearly visible. Thus when the officials saw it, smiles immediately stretched across their faces as they spoke a few pleasant pandering phrases.
Wei Jia had long been waiting for a day when he could take revenge. His heart bursting with a proud anger, he coldly looked at Ruan Zhu before bursting into laughter: “Thirty years of the river in the east turns to thirty years of the river in the west.[a] It hasn’t even been two years and I can trample you Ruan clan to death like ants. That so-called ‘civilians do not fight with the officials’–this nobleman offers you the advice of hurriedly kneeling and begging for forgiveness. If my mood is good, perhaps I may only invite all of you inside Shun Tian Hall’s prison. If my mood is not good, even if all of you are killed on the spot, it would be in vain.”
How could there be so many narcissistic people in this world? He even calls himself a ‘nobleman’?
Ruan Zhu indifferently responded: “Wei Jia, my Ruan family does not owe you. Raising you to this age was already showing extreme benevolence and doing one’s utmost duty. It is all of you that do not know how to be grateful. All right then. I would actually like to see what ability you have to be able to send me into prison or even kill me on the spot.”
Ruan Yu’s anger had long been ignited: “You bastard without a conscience, you lowly thing, unable to tell good from bad. We should have sent your entire family to be sold off in a distant place so that the dog would not come back to bite Lu Dong Bin[b].”
[a] 三十年河东三十年河西 is an expression meaning the pendulum has swung back, basically saying the world has its ups and downs. The basis of the saying lies in the Yellow River of China that naturally changes course over time because of an increase in sediment along the bottoms of its channels, forming natural dams. So, the river may flow along the west for a few decades then switch to flowing along the east and so on.
[b] 吕洞宾 Lu Dong Bin is one of the Eight Immortals. (Wikipedia) His name was probably thrown in here because he is like a Western equivalent of a saint.