Chapter Twelve: “A Murder Case”
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“Ah, but I wrote that before I met you!” the young girl said, snatching back the letter with some embarrassment.
Truthfully, she felt that the lyric she had composed was not bad. It was merely somewhat too negative in outlook, with emotions leaning more toward sorrow and resentment.
“I could hardly have been as broad-minded then as I am now—I was even thinking of throwing myself off a cliff to end it all!”
“That is certainly true.” Su Changling nodded. When she had rescued the girl from the cliff-top above the gorge, there had been scarcely any vitality about her.
She was far more lively and carefree now.
That was a good thing.
As Su Changling watched the young girl carefully put away the short lyric that had once embodied the feelings of a particular period in her life, she inexplicably recalled the mute woman she had seen in the mirror back then.
She did not know whether all the women in this world were like that.
But it seemed that most of those trapped inside the layers of towers and little pavilions were young women.
“Speaking of which, Miss Cheng.” Su Changling lowered her eyes and looked at her slender, pale fingertips. Back then, they had almost touched the surface of the mirror.
Cheng Yingxue turned at the sound of her voice. “Hmm?”
“Does your family have any old courtyards that no one lives in?”
The young woman thought for a moment, then added two more qualifications to the courtyard she had in mind. “I mean, one that has stood vacant for a long time and is nearly abandoned.”
“An abandoned courtyard that has been vacant for years…” Cheng Yingxue murmured in response. After a moment, she hesitantly furrowed her brows. “Sister Su… You must mean Looking Spring Garden, don’t you?”
“The one you reach by going out from here and walking that way.” As she spoke, the girl pushed open the window and leaned out to point. “There. From here, you can probably still see the roof ornament atop the small building over there.”
“That is the one.” Su Changling leaned out after her and immediately caught sight of the faint traces of sinister energy that had yet to dissipate from the rooftop.
It was the very courtyard that had imprisoned her for most of the night.
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“While I was pursuing a demon last night, that ghostly creature lured me into that place.” Su Changling turned her gaze toward the young girl’s curiosity-filled eyes. “I discovered that the courtyard was desolate in a way that was far from ordinary.”
“Miss Cheng, does Looking Spring Garden conceal some unspeakable history?”
“If you mean something that truly cannot be spoken of, then no.” Cheng Yingxue lowered her lashes thoughtfully. “But Looking Spring Garden is indeed not a good place to live.”
“It was once the finest place in the Cheng family estate from which to admire the spring scenery… yet within a hundred years, several deaths occurred there.”
“Deaths?” Su Changling raised a brow.
Cheng Yingxue drew in her chin. “Yes, deaths. Although no one else sees it that way, I have always felt that the loss of those lives was exceedingly strange.”
“It began a hundred years ago, in the generation of my great-grandfather. One of the young masters took a wife.”
“I do not know what I should call my great-grandfather’s kinsman of the same clan, so for convenience, let us call him an ‘ancestor.’ According to my grandfather, that ancestor was remarkably learned. He became a licentiate at a very young age, and before marrying, he had already passed the provincial examination and become a recommended candidate for office.”
“Had nothing gone wrong, he might have gone on to pass the metropolitan examination and become a palace graduate, thereby escaping his merchant status and entering officialdom.” The young girl’s gaze grew distant. “Unfortunately, he died suddenly on the very night of his wedding.”
“My grandfather and the others said that he had drunk too much, which suddenly triggered an old illness within him. A few clan elders claimed that he had drawn resentment by displaying too much brilliance, and that someone had cursed him to death.”
“In any case, a death on one’s wedding night was considered terribly inauspicious. After the family reported it to the authorities, they summoned a coroner, who examined the body carefully and found nothing unusual. The matter was then allowed to fade away without further investigation.”
“After all, when everything was said and done, the only truly pitiful ones were the new bride and the ancestor’s mother.” Cheng Yingxue could not help letting out a long sigh.
“The Cheng family had merely lost a ladder that might have helped someone climb higher. But those two women had truly lost a son and a husband.”
“That was the first soul I know of to have died suddenly in Looking Spring Garden. The second was the new bride herself.” The young girl raised her eyes toward Su Changling. “On the day her husband was buried, that girl suddenly hanged herself. Everyone said she had died for love, sacrificing herself for her husband. They called her death glorious and praised her as a rare paragon of chastity and virtue.”
“But I have always found that explanation strange.”
“Sister Su, tell me—would a normal person sacrifice herself for a man she had barely even seen a few times before their wedding?”
Cheng Yingxue’s brows drew tightly together. “If it were you, would you?”
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“Impossible.” Su Changling answered without hesitation. “I am not insane.”
Even if it had been her master and senior fellow disciple—even if the Spirit-Seal Daoist and the others had been killed on the spot by the Demon King—at most, she would have drawn her sword and slain demons to avenge them. She absolutely would not have lost the will to live and killed herself.
“Exactly! That is what I think too!” The young girl clapped her hands repeatedly. “If the two of them had grown up together and shared the affection of childhood sweethearts, then perhaps the words ‘die for love’ might have made some sense.”
“But those two did not know each other at all before they were married! At most, they had seen each other briefly twice—when they exchanged their birth records and when the betrothal gifts were delivered.”
“Even if my ancestor was famous for his talent, and many unmarried girls secretly admired him… surely that alone would not have made someone die for him?”
“For an ordinary person, it would already be remarkable enough for her to remain faithful to him. If one examines the matter closely, my ancestor died before they had even entered the bridal chamber. At most, they had just completed the ceremony before Heaven and Earth—they had not even drunk the nuptial wine. Whether the wedding rites could truly be considered complete was debatable. How could their affection possibly have taken such deep root?”
As Cheng Yingxue spoke, a trace of indignation crept into her voice. “But everyone said it was so, and a falsehood eventually became accepted as truth. Because of it, the Cheng family and that girl’s maternal family were each granted another chastity-and-filial-piety archway by the imperial court.”
“Now that thing, carved from Yixian green stone, stands in the garden to the left of the Cheng family’s front courtyard. Every time I see it, I feel a chill for no reason.”
“It was built by pouring a woman’s life into it, and I cannot imagine what they have to feel proud of!”
“It is simply… Ah, I have strayed from the subject.” The young girl was full of righteous anger. Whenever she mentioned the several chastity archways standing in the Cheng family’s grounds, some inexplicable fire rose in her heart.
“In any case, after two lives had been claimed in succession, Looking Spring Garden was temporarily left vacant on the grounds that its feng shui was unfavorable. It remained so until twenty years ago, when my cousin Yingrou turned five. She thought the courtyard had beautiful scenery and pleaded with my eldest uncle to let her move in.”
At this point, Cheng Yingxue’s voice faltered.
“…At the time, my eldest uncle thought that the place had stood vacant for several decades, and that no other members of the family had died there without apparent cause. Perhaps its feng shui was not truly so terrible after all, he reasoned, and so he gave his permission.”
“Later… my cousin married. Within half a year, her husband also died. She remained with her husband’s family, diligently serving her parents-in-law and raising her younger brother-in-law, waiting for her father-in-law to pass away and for the boy to come of age…”
“She, too, eventually left behind a suicide note and followed my cousin-in-law onto the road to the underworld.”
“And so Looking Spring Garden was abandoned completely.”
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