Chapter 31: Severing Blood Ties for Five Silver Pieces

Before dawn, frost clung to the windowpanes like a layer of grey, pallid mud.

Shen Guilan was colder than the frost.

She slipped into the kitchen without a sound, crouched in the corner, and pried at a loose blue brick with her fingernails. When she pushed the brick aside, a dark, hollow cavity in the wall was revealed. She reached in, and her heart plummeted.

It was empty.

There was nothing. Not five taels of silver, not even a single copper coin to be found.

That was the money she had stitched together, needle by needle, through three months of sleepless nights. It was the lifeline for her and Xiuwei to escape this quagmire of a life.

Yet, there was no panic on her face, nor did she cry out. She pushed the brick back into place as if nothing had happened. Those eyes, usually so submissive and downcast, were now as cold as shards of ice.

She lit the fire, cooked the meal, and combed her daughter’s hair as usual. Only after they had eaten did she say, "Mother is taking you to town to buy some cloth. We’ll make you a new outfit for the New Year."

Xiuwei’s eyes brightened, and she nodded obediently.

Mother and daughter walked one after the other onto the dirt road leading to town. Shen Guilan did not go to the fabric shop; she headed straight for the largest establishment in town: the Dechang Pawnshop.

"Shopkeeper," she said, handing over an old slip of paper, her voice as flat as well water, "I’m asking on behalf of a relative. This is the pawn ticket for an item. Is it still here?"

It was the receipt for five taels of silver—the capital she had saved to open an embroidery workshop, and the proof of what she had deposited. She did not mention that the money was stolen; she simply took a roundabout way to find out where it had gone.

The shopkeeper squinted as he took the slip, flipped through his ledger, and let his finger travel slowly across the lines.

"Found it," he nodded. "This item was redeemed just two days ago, three months after it was pawned."

Shen Guilan’s heart skipped a beat. "Who redeemed it?"

"A young man, surname Shen," the shopkeeper recalled. "He was a stranger, but he claimed to be the only heir of the senior branch of the Shen Village family, sent by his elders. His paperwork was in order, he paid the money, and he took the item."

The Shen Village, the only heir of the senior branch.

Shen Yongzhi!

Shen Guilan dug her nails into her palms, but her face remained motionless. She thanked the shopkeeper and pulled Xiuwei away.

She did not head home. Instead, she ducked into the filthiest alley in town—the back door of the Juyi Gambling Den. The stench hit her like a wall. She shielded Xiuwei behind her and tucked herself into the shadows of the corner.

She didn't have to wait long before she saw the shadow she was looking for.

Shen Yongzhi was being pinned firmly against a wall by a man with a face full of jowls and teeth as yellow as excrement.

"Zhao Danya, give me a few more days! My mother... my mother will have the money soon!"

Zhao Danya spat a mouthful of phlegm onto his face. "Bullshit! Your luck is as rotten as dog shit. You’ve lost three taels and you’re trying to welch on the debt? If you don’t bring the money today, I’ll break your leg!"

"Don’t! Spare me, Brother Ya!" Shen Yongzhi shook like a sieve. "My mother really has money! She hid it away to open an embroidery shop. I took it to redeem my father's jade pendant, and the rest... I wanted to win some back..."

"Still trying to lie?" Zhao Danya slapped him hard. "Gambling away your mother's life-saving money? Are you even human? I’ve been a gambler my whole life, and I’ve never seen a beast like you!"

In the shadows, Shen Guilan’s gaze was cold enough to kill. She watched until Zhao Danya dragged Shen Yongzhi into the den before she slipped away without a sound. There was no warmth left in her eyes.

On the way back to the village, before she even reached her house, she saw a crowd gathered outside the woodshed. At the front was her mother-in-law, Madam Zhang, sitting on the ground, slapping her thighs and wailing. "That heartless, heaven-forsaken woman! My grandson already said it—you hid the money and wouldn't give it to him! You drove him to the gambling den just to earn a bite to eat! You haven't killed my son enough, and now you want to drive my grandson to his death?"

The villagers pointed and whispered, looking at Shen Guilan as if she were a venomous snake.

She did not argue or curse. She pulled two pieces of paper from her sleeve. One was the pawn ticket stub, and the other was a bill she had bought for ten coppers from a worker at the gambling den.

She walked to the stone platform at the entrance of the village, held up the papers, and spoke in a voice that was not loud, yet every word struck like a hammer: "This was my five taels of silver, earned through three months of embroidery, pawned here. The money was stolen by my 'good' son, Shen Yongzhi."

The crowd fell silent.

She held up the second paper, her gaze sweeping over them like a blade. "This is the bill from the gambling den—Shen Yongzhi lost three taels and owes another three! He took the money I needed to survive and gambled it all away!"

"You’re full of it!" Madam Zhang jumped up. "You’re faking this! My grandson would never go to a gambling den!"

"Faking it?" Shen Guilan sneered, her voice rising sharply. "Go check the pawnshop! Ask at the gambling den! Zhao Danya is right outside; he can tell you exactly how your grandson cried and whined about his mother refusing to give him money, ruining his future!"

No sooner had she finished speaking than shouting erupted from the village road. Two burly men were dragging Zhao Danya toward them.

As soon as Zhao Danya saw the crowd, he broke free, slapped the stone platform, and roared, "Who is Shen Yongzhi? Get out here! This little beast lost money in my place yesterday, crying and howling that his mother would rather open a shop than give it to him! Bah! I’ve never seen such a bastard who would gamble his own mother’s funeral money!"

With witnesses and evidence in hand, Shen Yongzhi’s face turned as pale as a corpse; he slumped to the ground. Madam Zhang tried to cry injustice, but the villagers’ gazes had shifted from hatred toward Shen Guilan to disgust for the grandmother and grandson. No one believed a word she said anymore.

Shen Guilan did not even look at them. She turned and, holding the evidence, walked step by step toward the most solemn place in the village—the Shen Ancestral Hall.

She slammed the pawn ticket and the bill onto the incense table and roared at the ancestral tablets: "Article Thirteen of the Shen Family Code: Any descendant who steals from their parents shall be punished by kneeling in the ancestral hall for three days and stripped of their inheritance rights! I am still alive, and he dared to steal my life-saving money; once I am dead, will he dig up my grave and sell my bones?"

The words fell like thunder. The elder, Old Man Sun, had wanted to shield Madam Zhang’s only grandson, but seeing the black-and-white evidence, hearing Zhao Danya still cursing outside, and seeing the villagers’ teeth-gritting rage, he relented.

"Approved!" he gritted out. "Someone! Drag Shen Yongzhi in and make him kneel before the ancestors!"

Two clansmen dragged Shen Yongzhi in and forced him to his knees. Shen Guilan personally thrust a confession she had written into his hands. Her voice was as cold as ice: "Read it."

"I... I have committed the crime of unfilial behavior, I stole my mother's money..." The youth read, trembling. With every sentence he read, someone outside cursed him for getting what he deserved.

Madam Zhang lunged forward like a madwoman to pull him away, but was stopped by Liu the Blacksmith. Liu said coldly, "Aunt Zhang, these family rules were established by your own husband when he was alive. Are you trying to destroy the rules your own husband set?"

Madam Zhang was silenced on the spot, collapsing to the ground, watching as her grandson knelt there, his reputation and future shattered.

Night deepened, and the wind and snow raged. In the ancestral hall, Shen Yongzhi was shivering, his body turning purple from the cold, curled up by the threshold, nearly numb. Outside the hall, there was dead silence.

Suddenly, there was a sound on the roof. A dark figure swept across the eaves like a cat and landed at the entrance of Shen Guilan’s house. Gu Changshan took an oil-paper parcel from his cloak and tucked it gently into the door crack.

Finished, he darted behind the back window of the ancestral hall and tapped three times with a small stone.

Inside the house, Shen Guilan had not slept. Hearing the signal, she opened the door and picked up the parcel. Opening it, she found several bags of medicinal herbs for injuries and cold. Beneath the medicine lay a blank piece of mulberry paper.

She held it up to the oil lamp, and a faint trace left by medicinal water appeared on the back—a drawing of an arrow and a maple leaf.

It was identical to the life-saving mark in her memory.

She gripped the herbs tightly, standing in the wind and snow, looking toward the ancestral hall, and whispered, "You bring medicine but refuse to enter—are you afraid of dirtying yourself? But do you know... for the first time in my life, I feel like a human being."

Up in the old locust tree, Gu Changshan watched her quietly. He looked at the lamp that refused to go out in the wind and snow, and finally tucked another map—the "Nanling Survey Map" with a route marked on it—into a hole in the tree.

His path could wait no longer.

The snow fell harder, as if to bury the entire village’s scandals and curses. The door of the ancestral hall creaked in the wind, and the kneeling youth slumped to one side, completely unconscious.

The world was silent. This night was destined not to greet the dawn in peace.