Chapter 5 Impure Hatred

Chapter 5: An Impure Hatred

"Haven't I told you already?"

Her thick, raven-black lashes fluttered gently as Yan Xuerui opened her eyes. "Why ask about this again?"

From childhood, Ming Wei had noticed her family was different from others. Not just compared to other noble households in the capital, but even within the Marquis's own residence—her third uncle had died in the Wu King's rebellion, leaving behind his wife, several concubines, and maidservants. Every time she visited the third branch, she was overwhelmed by a multitude of sisters and cousins, making her head spin.

As a young child, she didn’t understand and foolishly went to ask her father. Her father lifted her onto his knee and said softly, "Because your mother is someone I cherish. Though there are three thousand weak waters, one ladle is enough."

Though her father spoke to her, his gaze drifted toward her mother, who sat quietly embroidering on the couch. Ming Wei watched as her mother paused for a moment, looking both flustered and embarrassed. Her mother put down her embroidery and glared fiercely at her father before retreating to the inner room.

Her father laughed, his chest shaking with amusement. Curious, Ming Wei pestered him with questions, and her father patiently and gently answered each one. Regarding how they first met, her father recounted:

"Back then, I was ordered to go to Jiangnan to handle a case and was ambushed by bandits. In a daze, I caught a whiff of a refreshing fragrance and scaled the wall into that household to hide."

"That was the first time I saw your mother. She was terrified."

Her father chuckled, as if recalling her mother’s reaction at the time. He continued, "Later, I revealed my identity, and your grandfather invited me to recuperate at their residence. Their hospitality was impossible to refuse."

"As we spent more time together, your mother, taken by my handsome looks and dignified demeanor, began exchanging letters with me. We pledged our love for three lifetimes…"

"Gu Yan, you’re talking nonsense!"

Her mother emerged from the inner room again, her eyes red with anger. "It wasn’t like that at all."

"Oh?"

Her father smiled gently and asked, "Then how was it really, Rui'er? You tell us."

Ming Wei looked at her mother with expectant, innocent eyes. Her mother met her gaze but suddenly fell silent.

In the end, her mother said nothing, only glaring at her father with red-rimmed eyes. Her father set Ming Wei down and wrapped his arms around her mother from behind, coaxing her softly. Compared to her father’s tall figure, her mother’s frame was frail and slender, her struggles pitifully weak. Ming Wei couldn’t make out what they were saying, but her father’s voice was gentle, while her mother seemed to be sobbing. Later…

Later, she was led away by a maid. From then on, in young Ming Wei’s heart, her parents were a match made in heaven. No tale of talented scholars and beautiful ladies or heroes saving beauties from the operas could compare to the story of her father and mother.

......

"Come on, Mother, tell me more."

Ming Wei lifted her head, persistently asking, "Back then, you said Father was wrong. So tell me your version."

She would go ask her father and see who remembered correctly.

Seeing the eager gleam in her daughter’s dark eyes, Yan Xuerui knit her delicate brows, helplessly. "You’re becoming more and more mischievous. What’s there to say about this?"

If she were to go into detail, Gu Yan hadn’t lied to Ming Wei. Every word he said was true.

It was true that he had scaled her courtyard wall, true that he had recuperated at the Yan residence, and true that they had exchanged letters and pledged their love for three lifetimes.

But the reality was nothing like that.

Back then, she had been undressing for bed when a noise came from the courtyard. Then a dark figure vaulted over the wall, covering her mouth and nose.

She was a young woman awaiting marriage, and a man had broken into her bedchamber in the middle of the night. Even though he claimed not to be a thief and behaved like a gentleman that night, Yan Xuerui didn’t dare let her guard down. In the morning, she brought him healing salve for his wounds, but immediately afterward, she went to the authorities to report the intruder.

To her surprise, he really was an official of the court, which put Yan Xuerui in an awkward position. To atone for the offense and also in hopes of climbing the social ladder by befriending a noble from the capital, her father warmly invited Gu Yan to recuperate at the Yan residence.

The Yan residence wasn’t large, and whenever Yan Xuerui went out, she almost always crossed paths with Gu Yan. In Yangzhou, the strict separation between men and women wasn’t as heavily enforced. The two chatted and played chess, gradually becoming familiar with each other. It wasn’t until later that she belatedly realized the noble from the capital, recuperating there, was casting more and more frequent and intense glances her way.

It was the way a man looked at a woman. He even personally draped a cloak over her shoulders when the wind picked up.

Yan Xuerui didn’t dare offend him but her anxiety grew. Fortunately, she was soon to be married. The red wedding dress she had embroidered for half a year was finally going to be put to use. On the eve of her wedding, the Yan residence was suddenly surrounded by troops. That was the first time she saw Gu Yan enraged—a faint smile on his lips, but his eyes were icy cold, his handsome face as fearsome as the King of Hell.

He stood aloof and noble on a high platform while the Yangzhou Prefect bowed and scraped before him, immediately signing and stamping a document for taking a concubine. In black and white, it was clear: her parents had "sold" her to Gu Yan to be his concubine.

......

Later, she grew increasingly gaunt. Her mother came to visit her, held her, and wept, finally revealing the truth—it turned out that her younger sister, Xue Fang, had fallen in love at first sight with the devastatingly handsome noble from the capital and had been sending him love letters daily to express her longing.

The signature on the letters was a snowflake, which led to a tremendous misunderstanding.

Yan Xuerui had been taught since childhood that as the eldest sister, she should yield to and care for her younger sister. Usually, her parents also favored Xue Fang more, but Xue Fang always competed with her in everything. Though the two didn’t get along well, when making scented stationery, Yan Xuerui always used a flower heart as her mark, while Xue Fang used a blade of grass. This time, however, Xue Fang had used "snow," which they both shared in their names!

She didn’t know why Xue Fang had done it, but what was done was done. By then, she was already Gu Yan’s woman.

But she was so afraid. She feared the man’s unpredictable temper and the intense pressure in his gaze. She would rather shave her head and become a nun than marry Gu Yan.

And it wasn’t even marriage—it was becoming a concubine. She was the daughter of a respectable family—how could she become a concubine?

Even after the misunderstanding was cleared up, she resisted fiercely, unwilling to follow Gu Yan back to the capital. But Gu Yan said, "I, Gu Yan, have been clever all my life and have never been made a fool of like this."

"You have no choice."

It was only much later, after giving birth to Ming Wei, that Yan Xuerui learned Gu Yan had turned down a marriage arrangement with Princess Pingyang for her sake. He had also sent a letter to the Marquis's estate, saying he had fallen in love with a young woman and wished to marry her. Though she came from a humble background, he hoped his mother would not look down on her.

......

Yan Xuerui closed her eyes in pain. Even when her mother-in-law showed her that letter, she couldn’t connect the Gu Yan in the letter with the one she knew. The words between the lines were reserved and proper—how could they belong to the frosty-eyed and stern Gu Yan? He had been so terrible to her.

She both feared and hated him, often wishing she could kill him.

But at times, he was so good to her, giving her piles of gold and jade, treating her with unparalleled respect and honor. He always carried her favorite candied fruits in his sleeves, and he would bend down to help her put on her silk socks, as though she were a unique treasure in the world.

It made her hatred not so pure.

"Mother?"

Ming Wei looked carefully at Yan Xuerui’s pale face. "Are you tired?"

Ming Wei had never doubted her parents’ feelings for each other, nor did she think she had said anything wrong. She simply assumed Yan Xuerui was weary. She immediately lay down properly and pulled up the brocade quilt.

"Mother, you should sleep. I won’t talk anymore... We can talk more tomorrow... in detail."

Yan Xuerui sensed something off about Ming Wei, but she was too exhausted. Over the years, she had rarely dwelled on the past. Her relationship with Gu Yan was a karmic entanglement—tangled and messy, impossible to cut through or sort out. It was unclear where things had gone wrong, but one misstep had led to another. Since she couldn’t escape it anyway, Yan Xuerui had stopped thinking about it. As the saying went, ignorance is bliss.

Now life was stable and peaceful. It was better to focus on the present.

The dim, yellowish candlelight grew fainter until it finally went out completely. Yan Xuerui stared at the double lotus and ruyi-patterned gauze canopy above her bed. After a long while, she closed her eyes in the darkness.

***

She slept dreamlessly through the night. The next day, mother and daughter affectionately had breakfast together. Yan Xuerui still remembered Yao'er, the maid connected to Cousin Zhixu, but compared to her daughter, Yao'er seemed insignificant.

She quietly instructed Bi He to look after Yao'er and make sure she stayed out of Gu Yan’s sight. Afterward, Yan Xuerui dabbed the corners of her mouth with a silk handkerchief and looked at Gu Ming Wei.

"Ming Wei."

She weighed her words carefully and said with difficulty, "Do you... do you... have a sweetheart?"

"Pah! I’d rather fancy a dog than him!"

Ming Wei's dark eyes widened, round like a bristling cat. The moment the words left her mouth, she knew she had let it slip. She paced around the room a few times before burying her face in her mother's soft, fragrant embrace, her voice muffled: "Mother, I was just talking nonsense."

Just as she thought!

The heavy stone hanging over her head finally fell, but Yan Xuerui’s heart was filled with mixed emotions. Ming Wei had reached that age—if not for her own unexpected pregnancy two years ago, she would have long begun arranging marriage prospects for her daughter. But now that the moment had arrived, she felt unexpectedly uneasy.

Ming Lan, as the eldest grandson of the main branch, had his own pursuits beyond the household. If Ming Wei were to marry, the reluctance to part would be secondary—her bright, lively, free-spirited Ming Wei should not be confined to the women's quarters.

The thought alone made her sad.

Yan Xuerui reached out to stroke her daughter’s dark, silky hair, her elegant brows furrowed tightly. "Is it… a schoolmate from the academy? Or a young master from some family?"

"No, not one of those young masters from the capital."

After a long moment, Gu Mingwei lifted her head from Yan Xuerui’s shoulder and said softly, "I like him, Mother. I really, really like him."

There was no need to hide in front of her gentle mother. The young girl poured out her pent-up feelings she had kept bottled up for so long.

"Father said it was love at first sight for the two of you. I don’t know what 'love at first sight' means."

Ming Wei looked at Yan Xuerui with envy and continued, "But the moment I saw him, I felt… even in a glittering crowd, my eyes were only on him."

Yan Xuerui’s heart sank. Her daughter was deeply infatuated—this was not a good sign.

She studied Ming Wei’s expression carefully and said cautiously, "If your eyes were only on him, perhaps it was because his clothes stood out that day? Ming Wei, there’s no such thing as love at first sight. Those are just lies from storybooks."

"Between a man and a woman, the most important thing is compatibility."

"Do you understand him? What kind of person is he? Tell me about him."

Yan Xuerui gently coaxed the details out of Gu Mingwei. In the eyes of the beholder, in Ming Wei’s words, her beloved was as handsome as jade, of noble character, defied authority, and brilliantly talented.

The more Yan Xuerui listened, the more alarmed she became. It wasn’t that the man sounded exceptional—it was that her daughter was clearly head over heels!

When a man falls in love, he may free himself, but when a woman falls, she is truly lost.

She hurriedly interrupted Ming Wei, saying, "No one is perfect, my dear. When you spend your life with someone, what matters most is whether you can accept their flaws."

"Is he truly flawless, without a single shortcoming?"

Yan Xuerui had intended to dampen her spirits and bring her back to reality. But instead, Ming Wei’s previously lively voice grew quiet, and her radiant face suddenly clouded over.

"You’re right. He’s perfect in every way."

She let out a bitter laugh. "Except he can't stand me."

...

Yan Xuerui felt her head spin, and for a moment, she could hardly speak. She was both exasperated with Ming Wei's naivete and resentful of the man who had stirred her daughter’s heart, but above all, her motherly heart ached.

She took a deep breath, her fingertips turning white as she clenched them inside her sleeves. Forcing down her turbulent emotions, she advised, "My daughter—" she said hurriedly.

"Greetings, Marquis."

Just then, the maids’ greetings echoed one after another, interrupting them. Gu Yan crossed the threshold unhurriedly. Both mother and daughter looked up at him—the younger one downcast, the older one…

She seemed surprised by his arrival, but unusually, she showed no resistance or rejection. Instead, there was a hint of vulnerability and dependence in her expression.

It took him by surprise.

"What’s wrong? Why the gloomy faces?"

Gu Yan gave a light chuckle as he walked toward the mother and daughter.