After Constable Wang left, Fan Changyu sat in the wrecked house holding her younger sister, together with Old Madam Zhao and Carpenter Zhao. None of them spoke for a long while.

After what felt like an eternity, Old Madam Zhao finally muttered, “Taking in a live-in husband… how could that be easy? At my age, I’ve only ever heard of rich landlords with only daughters doing such a thing. A poor family like ours with nothing to our name—who would willingly marry into the wife’s family?”

Fan Changyu remained silent.

The solution Constable Wang had suggested was for her to quickly recruit a live-in husband. That way, it would count as her father having a son, and naturally the family property would belong to her.

But after the Song family broke off the engagement and the rumors of her being a cursed lone star spread, even marrying normally would be difficult for her now, much less taking in a husband.

The legal advisers she had previously asked around for probably already knew about her family situation, which was why none of them had even considered suggesting this as an option.

After all, in this world, becoming a live-in son-in-law was seen as deeply humiliating. Once a man married into his wife’s family, it was tantamount to abandoning his ancestral surname. No matter where he went, he would never be able to hold his head high again. Even idle hooligans and loafers generally refused to do such a thing, let alone ordinary men.

Carpenter Zhao rested his calloused hands on his knees. His wrinkled face seemed even older than before as he sighed and said, “Marriage is a lifelong matter. You can’t just find someone at random and bow before the ancestral hall together. Otherwise, the one who’ll suffer in the future is still Changyu herself.”

Hearing that only made Old Madam Zhao feel more heartache for Fan Changyu.

When other girls married, which one didn’t have parents carefully investigating the man’s character and family background before marrying them off in grand fashion?

But Fan Changyu had already lost both parents. Now that she urgently needed to find someone willing to marry into the family, she could hardly afford to care about his character. As long as he wasn’t hideously ugly, that would already be good enough.

Old Madam Zhao was just about to wipe away her tears when something suddenly occurred to her. Her gaze paused, and she looked up at Fan Changyu.

“The young man you saved… does he already have a family?”

The moment the words left her mouth, she denied the idea herself.

“He probably doesn’t. You said before that he fled from the north as a refugee and that he’s the only one left in his family.”

Naturally, Fan Changyu understood the implication behind Old Madam Zhao’s words, but she sat there stunned for quite some time.

Seeing no reaction from her, Old Madam Zhao had no choice but to make herself clearer.

“Wasn’t he saying he had nowhere to go with all those injuries? How about… I ask that young man what he thinks?”

Perhaps because she had already started entertaining the thought of matchmaking them, the more Old Madam Zhao looked at Fan Changyu, the more suitable she thought the two were together.

Changyu herself was capable. Even if that young man truly ended up crippled, she could still support the household alone in the future.

Moreover, after being turned away by the Song family earlier that day, Old Madam Zhao hated that ungrateful Song Yan to the core. The thought that the young man’s looks were even more handsome and upright than Song Yan’s made her even more satisfied.

Fan Changyu’s thoughts were a complete mess at the moment. She only said, “Please don’t ask him yet, Auntie. Let me think it through carefully first. Once I’ve decided, I’ll ask him myself.”

Old Madam Zhao knew Fan Changyu had always been someone with her own ideas, so after hearing that, she said nothing more. She and her husband helped tidy up the house before finally returning home.

Changning had the habit of taking a midday nap, and after crying herself tired earlier, she had already fallen asleep. Fan Changyu carried her onto the bed.

She herself lay down fully clothed as well, staring blankly at the canopy overhead with an empty mind.

Song Yan and the man calling himself Yan Zheng appeared alternately in her thoughts.

Come to think of it, although she and Song Yan had grown up together and been engaged since childhood, there were pitifully few memories between them.

Song Yan had always been busy. Before entering the county academy, he had devoted himself entirely to studying. Although their families lived in the same alley, she rarely went looking for him so as not to disturb his studies. Even when she did go, it was usually because her parents had asked her to deliver something to the Song family—sometimes meat, sometimes pastries.

Back then, Song Yan’s mother had always treated her warmly and kindly, often saying that Song Yan studied so hard because he wanted to pass the imperial examinations one day and let her live a blessed life.

Later, Song Yan entered the county academy, where room and board were provided. He spent even less time at home, and seeing him became harder and harder for Fan Changyu.

Once, she followed her father into the county town for market day. Song Yan’s mother had made him a new set of clothes and asked them to deliver it to him.

It was Fan Changyu’s first time visiting the academy. She had only thought the school buildings looked impressively grand. After the gatekeeper passed on the message, Song Yan came out to see her. She handed him the new clothes his mother had made, and he thanked her with a calm, indifferent expression.

One of his classmates passing by jokingly asked who she was. Song Yan answered that she was his younger sister.

That entire day after returning home, Fan Changyu felt stifled and miserable.

She could tell that Song Yan actually didn’t want her to come looking for him.

Having a fiancée who was the daughter of a butcher probably embarrassed him greatly in front of his classmates.

In truth, from that time onward, she had already considered breaking off the engagement if Song Yan truly disliked her. But her parents seemed very fond of him, believing him to be ambitious and promising.

At the time, Song Yan’s mother also liked her very much. She often told people that once Song Yan succeeded in the examinations, they would finally have enough face to marry her into the family openly. Everyone praised Fan Changyu for her good fortune.

So Fan Changyu only privately brought up the matter of dissolving the engagement with Song Yan once.

At the time, Song Yan had been studying. Upon hearing her words, he lifted those usually emotionless eyes and asked her, “Marriage is arranged by parents and matchmakers. Do you treat it as some kind of child’s play?”

Fan Changyu had taken that as his refusal to dissolve the engagement. After learning his stance, she never brought it up again.

And after that came the deaths of her parents, followed by Song Yan’s mother coming to break off the engagement using the excuse that their birth charts were incompatible.

Perhaps losing her parents had already exhausted all her sorrow. Or perhaps there had never been much affection between them to begin with.

Now, when she thought of Song Yan again, she felt no sadness at all.

As for the man she had rescued, the one called Yan Zheng, she knew even less about him.

Likewise, he barely knew anything about her. To suddenly ask whether he was willing to marry into her family while he was gravely injured and had nowhere to go—it really did carry the feeling of repaying kindness with coercion, even taking advantage of someone in a vulnerable position.

Her engagement with Song Yan had existed in the first place because her parents had once helped the Song family.

Fan Changyu did not want to repeat the same miserable experience she had endured with Song Yan, yet at the moment she truly had no other choice.

After much thought, she finally decided she should discuss it with the man called Yan Zheng and ask whether he would be willing to pretend to become a live-in husband.

All she needed was to protect the family property.

Once his injuries healed, he could leave or stay as he pleased.

If he wanted to leave, Fan Changyu naturally would not stop him. She had saved his life, and he would help her through this difficult period by pretending to marry into the family. After that, the debt between them would be settled.

If he wanted to stay…

Fan Changyu thought about that face of his, clear and cold as moonlight on fresh snow.

She didn’t seem to be losing out either.

—

In the loft above the Zhao family home, Xie Zheng had just removed a letter tied to the leg of a white gyrfalcon when he suddenly sneezed.

He frowned impatiently, wondering if he had somehow caught a cold.

The pure white gyrfalcon clung tightly to the wooden window frame with claws like iron hooks. Tilting its head slightly, it stared at its master with bright, intelligent little eyes.

Xie Zheng unfolded the letter. But the moment he saw its contents, his face instantly darkened, and a cold mocking smile appeared at the corner of his lips.

As expected, that person could not rest easy for even a single day without seeing his corpse.

So soon, they had already sent people to Huizhou to take over his forces—and the one they sent was that particular individual.

The letter was tossed into the charcoal brazier beside the bed and quickly burned into ashes.

Leaning against the headboard, Xie Zheng sat silently as the cold wind pouring through the open window stirred the loose strands of hair before his forehead, though it could not dispel the gloom covering his face.

The person who had taken over his military authority in Huizhou likely wanted him dead even more than the one in the capital.

At present, his former subordinates could barely protect themselves. They absolutely could not make any reckless moves, lest that man catch the scent like a hunting dog and trace it back here.

Until his injuries healed, he could only remain hidden here and make plans slowly.

Xie Zheng glanced at the fresh bloodstains spreading across his robe, and the irritation and disgust in his expression deepened.

“Guh?”

After waiting a long time without receiving instructions, the gyrfalcon tilted its head in the other direction and continued staring at its master with those beady eyes.

“Get lost.”

Xie Zheng closed his eyes impatiently. Because his face was far too pale, that handsome visage rarely showed a trace of fragility.

The gyrfalcon seemed used to hearing those words. Upon receiving the command, it immediately flapped its wings happily and flew away.

—

Xie Zheng really had come down with a cold.

Fan Changyu had spent the entire afternoon rehearsing what she wanted to say to him. That evening, she even specially prepared two stir-fried dishes and sliced up a plate of braised pig head meat to bring him.

Unexpectedly, after calling several times outside the loft door, nobody answered.

Worried something might have happened to the man inside, she pushed the door open directly, only to discover him lying on the bed. His face was flushed with an unnatural redness, and he was clearly feverish and delirious.

Fan Changyu hurriedly called for Carpenter Zhao.

After checking his pulse, Carpenter Zhao flipped through his tattered old medical book for quite a while before prescribing the safest possible remedy for treating a cold.

Late at night, Fan Changyu went pounding on the closed doors of the pharmacy to buy medicine. After bringing it back and forcing the decoction down his throat, he soon broke into a heavy sweat.

However, when Carpenter Zhao wiped down Xie Zheng and changed his bandages, he discovered that the wound seemed to have reopened. Even the gauze had been stained with quite a bit of blood, which left him puzzled.

—

When Xie Zheng woke again, it was already the following morning.

The fever had subsided, and his head no longer felt heavy, though his throat burned painfully dry.

To make it easier for him to pour himself water, the elderly Zhao couple had specially placed a small round stool beside the bed with a teapot and coarse pottery cup on top.

Xie Zheng propped himself up halfway and was just about to pour a cup of water when the door suddenly opened.

The young woman entered carrying a large bowl. Seeing what he was about to do, she said, “The tea’s already cold. You only just recovered from the fever, so don’t drink it. I made you a bowl of pig lung soup instead.”

Carpenter Zhao had said pig lung soup could clear heat, stop coughing, and nourish the lungs. Since there was still a bucket of offal left from the pig slaughtered yesterday, Fan Changyu had used the lungs to make soup.

Xie Zheng thanked her hoarsely.

Since this time the food was not intestines, he accepted it without any psychological burden and began drinking.

But the moment the soup entered his mouth, his expression turned strange.

Under Fan Changyu’s gaze, he silently swallowed the mouthful before asking, “You made this?”

Fan Changyu nodded. “Yes. What’s wrong?”

Although it was her first time making pig lung soup.

Xie Zheng held the bowl but did not take another sip.

“Nothing.”

He simply found it difficult to believe that this pig lung soup and the previous bowl of intestine noodles had both come from the same person.

Fan Changyu continued persuading him. “Drink it while it’s hot. Uncle Zhao said pig lung soup is good for stopping coughs and nourishing the lungs. It’ll help your body recover.”

Xie Zheng: “…It’s a little hot. I’ll drink it later.”

He had assumed that after saying that much, the woman in front of him would leave.

Unexpectedly, she pulled over a chair and sat down instead.

“I don’t think I ever told you my name before. My surname is Fan, and my given name is Changyu. Everyone in town just calls me by my name. You can call me that too from now on.”

Xie Zheng nodded faintly.

He had already heard the old woman call her that before, so he had known her name long ago.

Since he was not one for conversation, silence once again filled the room.

Even Fan Changyu felt awkward forcing conversation with him, but remembering the purpose of her visit, she could only brace herself and continue.

“You said before that your surname is Yan and your given name is Zheng. Which Yan? Which Zheng?”

Xie Zheng answered, “Yan as in ‘reasonable,’ and Zheng as in ‘upright gentleman.’”

Perhaps thinking that Fan Changyu had never studied and might not understand which characters he meant, he dipped his finger into the cold tea and slowly wrote the characters “Yan Zheng” on the stool beside the bed stroke by stroke.

The two characters were formed by taking radicals from his real name.

His fingers were long and slender, with clearly defined joints like bamboo branches. They should have been a pair of hands beautiful for holding a brush.

Yet both his fingertips and the backs of his hands were covered in scars of varying depths, making it hard to imagine what he had experienced before this.

Even using his fingertip in place of a brush, the characters he wrote carried a forceful elegance.

Fan Changyu somehow found herself staring in a daze.

Only after he finished the final horizontal stroke of the character “Zheng” did his deep, hoarse voice sound out.

“These two characters.”

Only then did she abruptly snap back to her senses.

When she spoke again, there was hesitation in her voice.

“You used to be a scholar too, didn’t you?”

His handwriting was exceptionally good—even more spirited than Song Yan’s.

Yet Xie Zheng replied, “I’m merely a crude martial man. How would I dare call myself a scholar?”

Though the words sounded humble on the surface, they inexplicably carried a trace of arrogant mockery, as though he deeply disliked those so-called scholars.

Fan Changyu secretly relaxed a little and asked another question.

“Then what kind of work did you do before?”

A nearly imperceptible frown appeared between Xie Zheng’s brows. He felt she was prying unusually deeply today.

Still, considering she had saved his life and allowed him to stay here while recovering, it was only natural for her to ask for clarity.

After some thought, he answered, “Nothing particularly respectable. I used to work for an escort agency.”

Unexpectedly, delight immediately appeared on the woman’s face.

“That really is fate! My father also worked as an escort guard when he was younger!”

Xie Zheng: “…What a coincidence.”

Fortunately, she did not continue questioning him about the escort agency.

Instead, clasping her hands together nervously, she asked him another question.

“Then… are you married?”

Xie Zheng studied the woman before him.

Under his gaze, she appeared somewhat embarrassed, but there was not the slightest trace of shyness.

For a moment, he could not figure out what she meant by asking such a thing.

So he answered honestly, “I am not.”

Fan Changyu had practically pinched her own hands red before finally giving up entirely on preserving her dignity and blurting it all out.

“Well… I want to ask you for a favor. My family has run into some trouble. After my parents passed away, my eldest uncle became determined to seize our house and land. Yesterday he failed to snatch the property deeds by force, so next he’ll probably file a complaint with the authorities. If the government rules on the matter, then because my parents had no son, the house and land will legally belong to my uncle. The only way for me to protect the property now… is to quickly recruit a live-in husband.”

Xie Zheng’s eyelid twitched violently.

“You want me to marry into your family?”