At last, the horses came to a halt in front of a grand mansion where several maid-servants stood anxiously waiting at the door, clearly expecting their arrival.
Su Yu stepped down firmly, the sound of horse hooves falling silent, then followed the maid-servants' meticulous guidance through the carved wooden doors and into a courtyard filled with a clamor of voices.
Inside the courtyard, there was a bustle of people, each face etched with an anxiety they could not hide, as if the hearts of all present had grown heavy beneath a sky laden with dark clouds.
In the air mingled a faint scent of medicinal herbs, a fragrance that was both reassuring and slightly worrying, yet in this place, which should have been filled with the pain and joy of childbirth, there was no sound of a laboring woman's moans—an ominously unusual silence.
Quickly stepping indoors, the scene before Su Yu's eyes made her heart tense.
