When Chang Jin regained consciousness, the first thing of his surroundings he became aware of, was the sound of voices, males, two people seemingly arguing. They weren't shouting but it wasn't really a peaceful conversation either. Without opening his eyes, he perked his ears to listen, trying not to influence his breath too much, not wanting them to realize he had already awakened. The voices were familiar, he didn't need to open his eyes to recognize them.
"-words."
"What words! I was talking nonsense and you listened? Couldn't you hear all those instances I talked about hearing him out first!"
"What's there to hear? Just a pill and he would be speaking the truth for the rest of his life. I find it very much fitting for the likes of him."
Hearing that, old physician Luo was so angry that he pushed the other outside on a useless errand while saying that he would first check their prisoner's condition.
Once confirming that Shun was truly gone, Jin opened his eyes and tried sitting, but found that his hands were bound behind his back. Trying his best, he shifted his position to be able to see the person who just entered the room that was dimly lit by the sun through the half-opened windows. One glance and he recognized the one in front of him.
What kind of scammer was this! Money was taken yet the transaction wasn't accomplished! Jin glowered at him, he said bitingly, huffing and puffing,
"Good, you're so very good Luo Zhang! That's how you do business!" He whisperingly roared. "He's alive and kicking!"
At the very least, the other had some semblance of shame across his features though it didn't last,
"Well, he isn't one to stay dead." He replied in a barely audible voice, not expecting that the reunion with this patron would be under these circumstances.
Jin had a mocking smile and a sneer form on his face, listening to the utter rubbish that the man didn't even try to make into a plausible story. The idea that the other man messed up his painstakingly prepared plan for his own amusement rang like a certainty to him. If he could, he would strangle this old fool with his own hands! So angry was he that he ended up saying something, that had Luo Shun been here, would have him thinking,
"Even taking my brother as your gameplay, bored enough to teach him nonsense!"
The old man scowled then, his temper picking its ugly head,
"What nonsense? Receiving my teachings, do you know how many would dream of it? Though I didn't expect thanks, I didn't expect insults either! Such insolence, if it's like that, I won't free you!"
Saying this, he huffed and sat down far from the chained Jin, turning his head, and pouting like a child. If he could, Chang Jin would bite his head off!
"Luo Zhang!" Jin gnashed his teeth, "We had a deal, what did you bring him back here for!"
"So we did." Acknowledged the old man, "And if you didn't see, your dearest brother is as good as new and he didn't lose any hair on his body, did he? What are you dissatisfied with? I'm to protect him, not jail him. His two legs grow on his own body and he is the master who chose where they take him to. What? Want me to break them and stop him from moving around?"
Jin was seething with rage.
"How can you do business like this?"
"Young master, it's been five years, don't you think that that paltry sum has already dried up since?"
Jin was so angry that he laughed. "Paltry sum! Good, very good. Shun'er money from his stores and mine, which is it that can't permit a family to leave comfortably for a few decades? And you had both! Dare say it isn't enough!"
"You're stingy!"
Jin huffed. In the end, old Luo helped him remove his bounds. Massaging his sore wrists, the young master sat down, a frown on his face still,
"What have you been telling him, his eyes were so-"
"terrifying? Scary? You did it to him yourself!" Interrupted the old physician, quick to defend himself.
Jin gulped back the reproaches he was about to hurl, unable to find the correct words for a time. Luo Zhang didn't let him that respite though,
"His beloved brother plotted to have him killed. Did you really think that when meeting again he would laugh and toast to your long life?"
After a moment of silence, Jin opened again, "he was supposed to start anew somewhere else. With his temperament, he would have closed up everything that happened here and never wished to come back. Forgetting everything, never wishing to remember… Why didn't he? Why did he rather..." The young man frowned and then looked at the older person who was avoiding his eyes, suddenly understanding. His first conjecture was the correct one and this old fox was just trying to dupe him! "It was you, wasn't it? You goaded him!" He whispered-yelled.
"I just proposed that path and he took it. It was obviously his choice."
"It was not. You took him for your puppet, even teaching him about poison." Jin narrowed his eyes, menacing, "My brother is not your jianghu disciple."
The old man's expression was calm, unimpressed, a great contrast to his usual childishness,
"Aren't you quite selfish, single-mindedly choosing what's good for him or not? Doesn't he have a say?"
Jin sighed frustrated, "…You said you wouldn't intervene."
"I wasn't planning to… until I saw him. He let me remember things from my past."
"Nothing good then."
"You aren't helping him. You're slowly killing him. The pillar of his life betrayed him this way… You are simply underestimating your value in his eyes."
"That important?" Jin didn't know if he was sad or happy. Old Luo doused those feelings with cold water,
"For now, he's dancing with the thought of killing you."
Jin started coughing, blood appearing at the corner of his mouth. The old man took his wrist to examine, frowning deeply.
"How did you become such a mess again? Those pills I made for you, did you think they were decorations!"
Angry, he got up and started rummaging through the room, looking for something.
Tiredly, Jin said, "You really shouldn't have brought him back here."
"He's already here, might as well stay and uncover the whole truth."
"You're enjoying it, aren't you?"
"Who knows? Ah, here they are" he exclaimed, taking the small box in his hands and going back to sit in front of Jin. As he opened the box and took out the golden needles, he commented seemingly offhandedly, "I heard you played with fire when I wasn't looking."
"... I didn't. The fire wasn't even lit."
"I already told you, should someone die, it's obviously not supposed to be you!"
Jin merely smiled, frustrating the old man to the core. At that time, Chang Jin really wished to die. He remembered the feeling all too well even now and most of all the desperation of the time hadn't left him until today. Then, in the middle of his brother's possessions, he was really at ease, ready to leave the world like that.
Old Luo's face became black as he checked the young man's body more carefully. "How come there is more poison now? Are you stupid, always eating what that woman is giving you!" He roared.
"… 'You're my pride' she said to me"
The old man sighed heavily.
"And you'll die for lies like that! What is your brain made of? Are you a dog, wagging your tail for other's to admire no matter how many times you're kicked?"
"I thought, as long as Cheng inherited, then it would be the end of it. Somehow."
"It would end with your death, you stupid idle person! Haven't I already told you this? Take off your clothes and lie down, I'll try to ease the damages!"
Jin sighed, obediently turning around, took off his upped clothes, and when there was nothing left but his chest bandages, he laid down, muttering to himself, "And what a death it would be."
Old Luo grumbled as he massaged him, before thrusting needles in his body, black matter oozing from it.
Jin frowned from the discomfort, asking, "What are Shun'er's plans? Is he going against the whole of Chang's family?"
"His mother died killed by yours, his father's died killed by yours and he thought he would have died by your hands hadn't he been lucky. You tell me, in his position, what were you going to do?"
Jin sighed. "Who asked you to tell him about his father?"
"I didn't, he looked through things like the big boy he is!"
"Really, he had the opportunity to live such a peaceful life, why give it away."
Old Luo smacked his back, "What opportunity! Your selfish move? Don't talk, I don't want to listen to your nonsense anymore!"
Jin stayed silent, while Old Luo continued his administration.
Chang Jin had met this person when he was fourteen, almost fifteen. That was when most of the truths around him started to be deciphered by him one by one. The man was a poison master of the jianghu, who was living in secrecy in the city under the guise of a retired physician. At the time, his personae had yet to retire, and, Chang Jin, who had had a breakdown while at the market, was brought to his place by the passersby. Far from the residence's physicians, he finally learned the nature of his sickness. What illness? He had just been poisoned with a slow-acting poison and by the looks of things, he had been ingesting that for years, had he been told.
Jin's first reaction had been ecstasy. After all, there was finally a possibility to recover. After that, thinking deeper, his joy died. To have the ability to poison him and masked it as illness, buying every one of the physicians brought to the family for so long, there was no way the person didn't have high authority in the family. The first young master became suspicious of everyone and started eating at the Pavilion of Flowers. He investigated things for a long time. The more truths he was uncovering, the sadder he became and, for a while, had nursed the idea of taking his own life, disgusted to the core. He really couldn't understand. What had he done wrong? Hadn't he been obedient enough? Hadn't he always done exactly what was expected of him? Why such treatment?
Why must it be her?
Out of everyone, why his own mother?
He could have taken it if it was everyone else... just not her. He would have preferred it ten times if it had been the handiwork of his father's concubines or their children or even if it was his father himself because he had finally learned about the shameful secret of his birth. Why was reality so different?
Chang Jin's first real memory was that of a crying woman. His mother, at the time, liked to cry a lot. She was still a concubine in those years and his father only had two women in his rear court: his mother, Mei Ren, and Chang Shun's mother, Luo Qing.
Actually, if the matter was left to his father's choice, Father Chang certainly would have not married Mei Ren, or maybe not that year. It had been an arrangement made between the families without his consent, one that he couldn't extricate himself from and in the end, instead of the position of the main wife like planned, after heated disputes with his family, he finally married Mei Ren as a concubine. Later, he married the woman he was really in love with. However, under the pressure of his family, he couldn't give her the main wife's position and could only marry her as a concubine as well.
Marrying another just a couple of weeks after the first woman. For Mei Ren, such an act was a deep provocation that humiliated her a lot. But she wasn't a vulgar woman and knew better than to display her anger like a fisherman's wife. Instead, she thrived hard to give birth to a boy. Chang Jin. The first young master.
How much had Chang Jin come to hate this identity?
"You're the young master of the house, the eldest son." Using that excuse, what was it that Jin hadn't been forced to do? He couldn't play, couldn't do anything without it being tossed to his face. He even had to turn into a man. Indeed, biologically stating, Chang Jin had always been a woman. However, this person had never considered herself as such. How could she? She never knew the meaning of it. Younger, she simply didn't know the difference. But later, it just didn't matter. How could it, when her mother almost killed her just to make her the first young master?
At the time, the two wives fell pregnant almost at the same time, and quite quickly, for merely seven months after their wedding they already ushered in babies.
Some weeks before the delivery, Luo Qing had an alarm and it was speculated she was going to give birth earlier than the due date. Mei Ren was unreconciled. Thus, that woman, to make sure she was the one who was going to be the mother of the eldest son, Mei Ren took something to provoke an earlier birth, risking the life of her unborn child in the process. Knowing that she gave birth to a daughter instead of the boy she dreamed of didn't deter her at all. The joy of knowing she had successfully given birth before the other concubine was far greater and concerning the child's gender, she simply lied to the world and made sure to keep everyone who knew about it quiet. Killing the midwives and only letting her loyal servants in the know.
Using the child's prematurity as an excuse to hide him until he could grow stronger, she let the baby grow up, closely by her side, surveying his every movement, every word. It wasn't like the child would go around naked, so the secret stayed well hidden all through the years and the mother's fears of being found out diminished with each passing day. And either way, the master of the house spent long days outside his residence in order to stabilize his own affairs thus the women were left to their own devices.
The second concubine, who had a false alarm of premature birth after a shock, in the end, safely gave birth two months later. A boy. Learning of the child's gender, the first wife was happy with her play. In the absence of the main wife, the one who was going to inherit would most certainly be the first son. Confident with her dupery, she guarded her child well until his third year, never letting him out of sight. Meanwhile, she kept on plotting to harm the child of the second concubine.