The Sun family's daughter-in-law was no heroine from some prestigious sect.
Yet she had grown up in wealth, dressed in fine silks and fed on delicacies. To give his daughter some ability to protect herself, her father had sent her to a martial arts school to pick up a few skills.
She had lived up to his hopes, training quite well.
Later, captivated by romantic notions of the jianghu, she joined an escort agency alongside fellow disciples from the school.
Her plan had been simple: run a couple of escort missions, witness the wonders of the martial world, and then dutifully return home.
Who could have foreseen that they would cross paths with bandits along the way? After a frantic struggle, the escort party was scattered.
Injured and exhausted, she struggled onward until she stumbled upon the Sun residence—just like Fang Shuwen and Zhou Qingmei—hoping to spend the night under their roof.
That single night… marked the beginning of a nightmare lasting nearly twenty years.
She had been a fledgling girl with little worldly experience, viewing what people called the jianghu through rose-tinted glasses.
As a result, she never suspected that the food and tea had been laced with a knockout drug.
When she woke, she found herself bound hand and foot.
The man named Sun broke her legs, then used the blunt back of an axe to shatter her pipa bones bit by bit, leaving her hands so weak that to this day she could not even truss a chicken.
She was forcibly taken.
At first, she refused to accept her fate. She tried to escape, but crippled, sapped of strength, and stripped of everything she had learned, she stood no chance.
Gradually, she learned to endure.
She did everything she could to earn the Sun family’s trust, and at last, she succeeded.
When Sun went to town, he brought her along.
Even then, she did not act rashly. She bided her time.
With her lame leg and powerless hands, she needed someone’s help.
Trip after trip to the city, she behaved submissively, finally winning his complete trust.
Only then did she pick out the person who seemed most suitable, confided her plight, and begged to be rescued from that living hell.
What she never expected was that the man who had seemed so trustworthy turned around and reported her to Sun, receiving two taels of silver in return.
Those two taels of silver cast her straight back into the abyss.
Sun was furious, accusing her of being a loose woman who could not stay quietly at home and wanted to seduce city men.
In a fit of rage, he disfigured her with a blade. Reckless with his strikes, he blinded one of her eyes in the process.
From then on, her days grew worse and worse. Sun despised her scarred face—acting as if it were not his own handiwork—and subjected her to constant beatings and verbal abuse.
Had they not discovered she was already pregnant at the time, she likely would not have survived to this day.
Yet even so, her life had become pure purgatory.
What plunged her into deeper despair was that the son she carried for ten months and gave birth to turned out to be the spitting image of his father.
He had the same harmless facade, and the exact same cruelty.
Whenever travelers came seeking lodging, she tried every way she could to warn them, but it was futile.
Sun seemed blessed with devilish luck, succeeding time and again, and when she pleaded with her son not to follow in his father's footsteps, she was met with fists and kicks from her own flesh and blood.
Slowly, she gave up.
She was nothing more than a ruined cripple. She could change nothing.
Yet she still believed retribution would come for this family.
And in truth, she had lived to see it.
Sitting on the stone steps of the courtyard, she recounted her past in a flat, unrippled voice, laying it all bare just as it had happened.
She had once believed that witnessing the Sun family's downfall would bring her boundless joy.
Yet now, she felt not the slightest flicker of happiness.
Her entire life had been ruined… and the future held only darkness and despair.
What was there left to be glad about?
Within her heart lay only dead silence.
Zhou Qingmei remained quiet, and Fang Shuwen was equally at a loss for words.
It only impressed upon them that the wicked in this jianghu were not merely those who cultivated demonic arts; some people possessed no martial arts at all, yet their cruelty and malice were just as abhorrent.
Fang Shuwen hesitated for a long while before finally asking, "Do you want us to take you home?"
By all rights, he should not have asked.
They had their own mountains of trouble to deal with.
The Black Fiend Cult pursued them relentlessly, and those villains were far more terrifying than anyone in the Sun family.
Taking her along would not only burden them, but might also drag her into mortal danger.
Yet Fang Shuwen could not bear to walk away without a word…
Though he had suffered hardships in his youth and seen the coldness of human nature, that sliver of conscience had never been extinguished.
He knew that if they left her here, she would soon die.
Once a person's heart died, the death of the body was merely a matter of time.
The disfigured woman shook her head, faint yet resolute.
"No need."
Just two words, delivered without hesitation.
Zhou Qingmei opened her mouth to say more, but Fang Shuwen raised a hand to stop her.
"Understood."
A rare smile touched the woman's face.
"Thank you both."
With that, she stood up, shuffled back into her room, and shut the door.
"Why didn't you try to persuade her again?" Zhou Qingmei asked, her expression sorrowful. "She can't survive in a place like this on her own."
"Tell me… if we brought her home, what do you think would happen?" Fang Shuwen asked in return.
Zhou Qingmei blinked, startled. "If her family is still alive, wouldn't they be overjoyed to see her? She has suffered so much… Her family would surely ache for her and take good care of her."
"Or they might view her as a disgrace."
Fang Shuwen's words carried an unsympathetic, detached chill.
"Even if things went as you said and she survived for a few more days, the better and more unusually they treated her, the more wretched she might feel. Inner torment isn't something material comfort can always cure. But if things unfold as I described, she will only die sooner, and far less decently."
Zhou Qingmei fell silent.
What Fang Shuwen had described was no mere speculation.
It was bloody reality.
"So… we just leave her be?" Zhou Qingmei said, reluctant to accept it.
Fang Shuwen patted her shoulder. "Has Eldest Young Miss Zhou forgotten our own situation?"
"…Still, my heart can't bear it."
Zhou Qingmei looked up, her usually sharp, cold brows softening with uncommon vulnerability.
"That is why I put the question to her, letting her make the choice for herself," Fang Shuwen said with a sigh. "And she has already chosen… Eldest Young Miss, eight or nine times out of ten, life does not go as one wishes. Not everything unfolds the way we envision. The kindness we think we are offering might turn out to be the very hand that shoves someone into the abyss. Leaving well enough alone is the best we can do."
Knowing Fang Shuwen was right, Zhou Qingmei nodded.
She then walked over to the Black Fiend cultist, who could neither die nor flee.
Drawing her broken sword, she thrust it down hard—only to hear a sharp clink.
A look of grave seriousness rose in Zhou Qingmei's eyes.
"Speak! Is the Black Fiend Cult in Guangning City? What on earth are you plotting?"
Chapter 18