Chapter 12 — Wedding Hall, No Groom

Winter arrived earlier than usual at the Grand General Manor, casting a bitterness that bit much deeper than in years past. The news of Xiao Huai being stripped of his official rank and ordered to confine himself in strict repentance swept through the estate like a frigid gale, extinguishing the very last traces of warmth within its walls. The sycophantic relatives and flattering acquaintances who had once crowded their gates now avoided the residence as though it harbored a deadly plague. The sprawling manor stood desolate, its front gates eerily silent, the sight of a passing carriage a rare occurrence.

Madam Xiao had taken to her bed from the very day the decree was handed down. It was not that her physical body had truly succumbed to illness, but rather that her mind and spirit were utterly broken. Her son’s brilliant future had been reduced to ashes, her husband regarded her with the chilling detachment of melting ice, and their once-revered lineage had overnight become the laughingstock of the entire capital. These successive blows shattered the noblewoman who had lived a life of pampered ease. She lay abed, weeping tears that flowed without end day after day. The words tumbling from her lips in a repetitive, feverish drone were no longer praises for Liu Yunwei, but venomous curses directed at Shen Shuyan, whom she now reviled as vicious, alongside bitter lamentations of her own past blindness.

Such is the fickle nature of the human heart, relentlessly pragmatic to its core. When Liu Yunwei had promised to secure a Grand Tutor as a father-in-law for her son, she was the epitome of an ideal daughter-in-law. The moment Liu Yunwei brought about her son’s utter ruin and disgrace, she was instantaneously transmuted into a malignant demon bringing misfortune.

Naturally, the existence of Liu Yunwei within the manor grew abruptly and intolerably wretched. Xiao Huai was confined deep within the ancestral hall, locked away by the strict command of the old General: absolute prohibition against anyone approaching the sacred space. On several occasions, she attempted to bring freshly brewed soups and delicate pastries, only to be met by the stony, unyielding faces of the elite guards stationed outside who blocked her path without a word.

Madam Xiao vented the entirety of her accumulated rage and despair upon the young woman. The exquisite dishes and precious medicinal tonics that had once been lavished upon Liu Yunwei vanished entirely, replaced by cold rice, tepid broth, and the pointed, contemptuous stares of the household servants. The domestics no longer bothered to offer respectful bows when she passed; instead, they watched her with a mixture of disdain and malicious glee, lingering at a distance just to whisper and mock behind her back.

She had fallen from grace in the span of a single night—tumbling from the pedestal of a revered, pampered mistress-in-training to a status far more awkward and humiliated than the lowest-ranking bondservant in the household. The sheer magnitude of this precipitous drop nearly drove Liu Yunwei to the brink of madness. She refused to accept her fate. She had poured an unimaginable amount of effort into her schemes, rehearsing countless emotional performances. Victory had been so agonizingly close, just one final step away; how could it all collapse at the very threshold?

That very afternoon, she personally brewed a bowl of potent ginseng soup and carried it once more to the forbidding doors of the ancestral hall.

"Please, allow me to enter." She pleaded softly with the two guards flanking the heavy wooden portals, her voice dripping with manufactured fragility. "I have brought broth for Brother Huai. His constitution is delicate; he cannot simply go without nourishment!"

The two guards remained utterly expressionless, rigid as statues cast in iron.

"Without the personal command of the old General, no one is permitted to enter."

"Show a little compassion, I beg of you. If Brother Huai falls ill from starvation, will either of you bear the responsibility?" Realizing that softness was yielding no results, Liu Yunwei’s tone sharpened, attempting to use Xiao Huai’s name to press her authority over them.

Yet, precisely at that moment, a voice saturated with profound hatred and biting acid pierced the air directly behind her.

"You still have the shameless audacity to show your face here? You wretched star-crossed jinx! Is it not enough that you have driven my son to this wretched state?"

Liu Yunwei whipped her head around to find Madam Xiao standing there, draped in a drab, ash-colored robe, her hair wildly disheveled, supported on either side by two maids. The older woman’s eyes burned with a vicious, venomous resentment as she locked her gaze onto the younger woman. Every vestige of her former aristocratic elegance had been stripped away by despair.

"Madam..." Liu Yunwei instinctively slipped back into her well-practiced repertoire, her eyes instantly brimming with glistening tears. "I... I was merely concerned for Brother Huai..."

"Shut your filthy mouth!"

With a sudden, violent motion, Madam Xiao threw off the hands of the supporting maids and lunged forward, fiercely swatting the bowl from Liu Yunwei’s grasp. The scalding ginseng soup splashed violently across the cold flagstones, and the fine porcelain bowl shattered into a myriad of jagged fragments.

"Concerned? If you genuinely harbored a shred of care for him, you would not have staged that ridiculous farce of throwing yourself into the lake during your own wedding ceremony! If you truly cared, you would not have cajoled him into purchasing that worthless, cursed tea set that utterly humiliated him before the entire capital! You malignant demon! Give me back my son!"

Madam Xiao had seemingly lost her mind, pointing a trembling finger directly into Liu Yunwei’s face as she unleashed a torrent of abuse. Every accumulated error, every drop of resentment that she dared not direct toward her husband, the Grand Tutor’s estate, or the Emperor himself, was now violently unloaded upon the adopted daughter she had once favored above all others.

Stunned by the ferocity of the attack, Liu Yunwei’s face drained of all color, utterly unprepared for Madam Xiao to discard her affection with such chilling swiftness. The unyielding, stubborn arrogance buried deep within her own nature finally flared into open rebellion.

"Madam! How can you utter such cruel words to me?" She snapped her spine upright, her eyes still shimmering with trapped tears, but her voice now laced with a sharp, defensive edge. "Who was the one who previously professed to adore my gentle and understanding nature? Who was the one who declared that the haughty Shen Shuyan was utterly unworthy of crossing the threshold of the Grand General Manor? Now that Brother Huai has met with misfortune, you heap all the blame squarely upon my shoulders? You are going entirely too far!"

"You... you actually dare to talk back to me?" Madam Xiao trembled from the sheer height of her fury.

"And why should I not dare?" Liu Yunwei let out a cold, humorless laugh, completely tearing away the last remnants of the sweet, submissive mask she had worn for years. "Do you have any idea how much I have sacrificed for Brother Huai? If not for me, he would still be suffering under the cold, unfeeling stare of that unyielding harridan! It was I who taught him the true meaning of genuine passion and devotion! I have done nothing wrong. The one who is at fault is Shen Shuyan—she is the one with the narrow soul and the vicious, venomous heart!"

"Get out! Get out of the Grand General Manor this instant!" Madam Xiao pointed a shaking hand toward the grand outer gates, shrieking in a state of frantic derangement.

"Get out? Why should I leave?" A wild, unstable glint flickered within the depths of Liu Yunwei’s eyes. "I am already truly a woman belonging to Brother Huai! Who knows, perhaps even now, an heir of the Xiao family is already growing within my womb! If you drive me away, you are driving away your own flesh and blood, your own legitimate grandchild!"

The declaration fell like a sudden thunderclap shattering a clear sky, freezing Madam Xiao instantly in her tracks, her breath catching in her throat.

Deep within the gloomy confines of the ancestral hall, Xiao Huai heard every single syllable of the quarrel echoing clearly through the heavy silence. The world seemed to tilt violently on its axis, a thick, metallic taste of blood surging up his throat. He reached out, his fingers desperately clutching a freezing wooden pillar to steady himself as he spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the floor.

He had heard her declare, "I am already a woman belonging to Brother Huai," and listened as she shamelessly weaponized a fabricated or perhaps dubious child in her womb to coerce and threaten his mother. He felt only a profound, suffocating wave of mockery and utter disgust wash over him. The pure moonlight he had once believed her to be had dissolved into nothingness, revealing only a vicious, manipulative vixen adept at performance, her every utterance spun from deceit.

"Xiao Fu," he called out, expending the very last reserves of his waning strength.

The loyal steward, keeping vigil not far away, rushed instantly to the threshold.

"Young Master?"

"Convey my decree," Xiao Huai rasped, his voice stripped of every trace of human warmth, descending into an absolute, freezing void. "From this day forward, Liu Yunwei is strictly forbidden from setting even half a foot near the ancestral hall. Tell her this: I, Xiao Huai, sever all ties of emotion and loyalty as of this life and this hour, and she shall never again have the slightest relation to me for the rest of our days."