At the sound of his wife’s name, Wan Gui spun around and fixed his eyes on the doorway.
The door swung open with a soft creak. A young woman walked in, her face streaked with tears.
“You — you’re still alive?” Wan Gui stared with undisguised disbelief.
“Does it disappoint you that I didn’t die?” Qi Fang wiped her face and bit her lip.
Lan Fenghuang looked at the tearful young woman with surprise, then glanced at Song Qingshu with an expression that was somewhere between amusement and understanding.
Wan Gui’s face went through several changes before he settled on a smile. “What are you saying — knowing you’re safe and well makes me happier than anyone.”
“Still trying to deceive me?” Qi Fang said bitterly. “Taohong told us everything. You wanted your wife dead so you could marry into a powerful family. How could anyone be so despicable?”
Wan Gui’s face twitched. His attention had caught on the name Taohong — and now, connecting it to what Song Qingshu had said earlier, the picture assembled itself. “So that’s how you survived. You’ve been with Song Qingshu all along. Shameless, faithless woman.”
“You —!” Qi Fang trembled with fury, and for a moment found no words.
Song Qingshu said nothing, simply watching — letting Qi Fang see her husband in his full truth.
After a long silence, she drew a slow breath and steadied herself. “I didn’t come here today to argue about any of that. The moment you arranged for Taohong to kill me, whatever feeling existed between us ended completely. I came back for two reasons — to take Kongxincai, and to ask you one thing. My senior brother was one of the most honest, decent people who ever lived. Why did you have to destroy him?”
“Why?” Wan Gui let out a laugh. “You’re asking me why? When you and your father came to the Wan household, every last one of our disciples was struck by your beauty the moment he saw you. From the first time I set eyes on you, I swore I’d have you. But no matter how I presented myself — how fine my appearance, how good my family — your eyes were only ever for that fool. Watching the two of you together made me half mad with rage. If I wanted you, I had to remove Di Yun first.”
“It was Shen Shidi who thought up the scheme. Zhou Shixiong and Bu Shixiong disguised themselves as lechers, luring that fool to Taohong’s room in the middle of the night. The gold and silver objects under his bed were placed there by Wu Kan himself. If we hadn’t used that scheme, how would we ever have kept you at the Wan household?”
The words hit Qi Fang like blows. The room swam before her eyes. “I wronged him,” she whispered. “I wronged an innocent man.” She swayed on her feet and nearly fell. Song Qingshu reached out and steadied her. “I half didn’t believe it when Song Qingshu first told me,” she said, her voice hollow with grief. “I thought he might be deceiving me. Now I understand — my husband really was capable of something this vile.”
Wan Gui’s gaze locked on the hand Song Qingshu had placed on his wife, and his eyes burned. “Take your filthy hands off her!” He lurched forward as though to throw himself at Song Qingshu — but the Spotted Poison Scorpion’s venom had left him dizzy, and he collapsed back into the chair.
Song Qingshu ignored him and looked at Qi Fang. “His plot against me I could overlook — for your sake. But for what he did to Di Yun, I will have satisfaction.”
Qi Fang’s lip was close to bleeding. Tears shone in her eyes. “I’m the one who wronged my senior brother. Whether you act or not — I would avenge him myself.”
Song Qingshu leaned close to her ear and said quietly: “Wan Gui knows he’s finished and wants it over quickly. Given how much he made Di Yun suffer, killing him cleanly would be letting him off. I have something else in mind.”
Thinking of the childhood companion she had grown up beside, Qi Fang turned her most ferocious look on Wan Gui. “Don’t hold back on my account. Do whatever needs to be done.”
Song Qingshu’s expression took on a peculiar quality. He said softly: “What I’m about to do may offend you. Don’t be angry afterward.”
“Why would I be angry?” Qi Fang blinked. “You’d be avenging my senior brother — I’d be grateful.”
“Remember you said that.” He gave a quiet laugh, then turned and stood over Wan Gui. “Would you like to know how I survived the Heavenly Devil Flower?”
Wan Gui gave a cold sniff, but curiosity flickered in his eyes despite himself. Lan Fenghuang laughed softly from the side. “I’m curious too, if I’m honest. I consider myself something of a poison specialist, and if I’d been struck by the Heavenly Devil Flower, I’d have had no answer for it.”
“I don’t mind telling the honoured leader — only please don’t think too poorly of me afterward.” Song Qingshu’s expression turned odd. “Nothing is truly beyond remedy. The Heavenly Devil Flower is formidable — but there is one thing that can temporarily suppress its toxin.”
“What is it?” Wan Gui couldn’t stop himself asking.
Song Qingshu glanced back. Qi Fang had already gone crimson. He turned back to Wan Gui. “A woman’s —”
The last two words were not loud, but everyone in the room practised martial arts and had sharp ears. Lan Fenghuang flushed slightly and made a dismissive sound. Wan Gui looked at his wife, and his face changed.
Song Qingshu continued as though unaware of the reaction. “When your Heavenly Devil Flower struck me in Yangzhou and your people were hunting me down on all sides, I was like a stray dog with nowhere to turn — until chance put me on your wife’s boat.”
“Your wife is a woman of exceptional kindness. Seeing me in distress, she took pity. When it became clear by chance that nursing milk could suppress the poison in my body, she put aside all thought of her own reputation to help me purge it. A heart of true compassion.”
The more warmly Song Qingshu spoke of Qi Fang, the harder Wan Gui’s jaw clenched. He stared at his wife, his fury mounting. No man could bear this.
Qi Fang, for her part, wanted to disappear into the floor. ‘Why is he saying all this in front of other people — one of whom is my husband?’ Broken as the bond between them was, the peculiarity of the moment still hit her.
Watching Wan Gui’s face contort, Song Qingshu smiled with satisfaction and pressed on. “Perhaps heaven itself couldn’t tolerate your crimes. You laid the poison — and heaven arranged for your wife to be the one to cure it. As the saying goes about Zhou Yu’s clever scheme: lost the lady and lost the battle both.” [G: 赔了夫人又折兵 — a classical Chinese idiom from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, referring to the story where the strategist Zhou Yu’s scheme to lure Liu Bei into a trap through a marriage alliance backfired spectacularly — resulting in the loss of both the lady and his soldiers. It became the standard expression for a plan that costs the schemer more than it was ever worth.]
Wan Gui was sharp enough to see through the strategy — Song Qingshu was deliberately baiting him — and he forced himself to appear unbothered, managing a magnanimous tone: “Fang’er has always been kind-hearted. She’d help an injured dog on the side of the road. Helping you is nothing remarkable. And she had to express that milk anyway and discard it — giving away something she’d have thrown out is hardly a great sacrifice.”
Song Qingshu’s smile turned peculiar. “Did I say she expressed it first and then gave it to me? The Heavenly Devil Flower’s toxin is unpredictable — the timing of each episode is never fixed. When it struck, there was no time to prepare anything in advance.”
A bad feeling broke over Wan Gui.
Song Qingshu’s next words fell like a hammer. “Your wife’s compassion knows no limits. In the end, she simply held me and let me drink directly.”
Qi Fang closed her eyes and wished with every part of herself that the floor would open up and take her.