Chapter 74 Don't Cry, Lest You Soil Her Path of Reincarnation

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“My father’s wife never guarded against me. As always, I roamed freely in and out of her quarters and stole her most intimate clothing. I handed these to my mother, then falsely accused my father’s wife of having an illicit affair. My mother in turn gave the clothes to a distant cousin of hers who managed the family business in the Chu household. For the first time in my life, I lied, claiming to be an eyewitness to her secret tryst. Because I had always been honest and upright in the household, and because my father’s wife both cared for me and I appeared to respect her, everyone believed my testimony without a shadow of doubt... Everyone believed it, without question...

At that time, my father was far away in the capital. My grandparents, furious, ordered that my father’s wife be imprisoned and wrote to my father, urging him to return and handle the matter himself. But my mother, fearing her plot would be discovered, brought the accusation of adultery to the clan patriarch. He persuaded my grandparents to act, lest the scandal tarnish my father’s reputation. Before my father could return, they... they secretly subjected her to torture...

I remember those days, hiding outside the crumbling walls where she was held, listening to her screams of pain. More than once, her cries made me weep in secret. I told myself: my father loves her so much—once he returns, she will be released. I swore I would be a dutiful son to her, no matter what others thought; I would treat her as I always had. But my father never came in time, and neither did she live to see him again.

Shen Zhao restrained her urge to strike him, her anger almost too much to bear. The wife of Chu Mu’s father certainly wasn’t worthy of her pity—her fate was largely of her own making—but the old woman and her son were truly hateful. Especially the eldest son, who could make his selfish acts sound almost noble.

“My grandparents, acting in my father’s name, divorced his wife and forced her to sign a confession admitting her supposed adultery. The very next day, they... they drowned her in the pond... My grandparents completely forgot that the old lady of the Yu family once saved my father’s life. My father’s wife married into the Chu family partly out of gratitude for this, and partly because my father truly loved her. When my father finally returned, exhausted from travel, she had been dead for days. The patriarch and my grandparents had already erased her name from the family records and forbade my father from bringing her memorial tablet into the Chu household.”

The eldest son paused before continuing, “My father broke with my grandparents and took her nameless tablet with him to the capital. Because my youngest brother was still a child, and because my father’s wife and my mother had always seemed close, he allowed my mother to accompany him to care for the child. He never knew it was my mother, his wife’s supposed friend, who had engineered the whole plot.

I was too ashamed to follow my father to the capital, too ashamed to face my youngest brother or my father’s wife. I stayed behind in Jinzhou, and every year, on the anniversary of her death, I go to the place where she died to pay my respects.”

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After listening to all this, Shen Zhao was left speechless. That wretched old woman was truly vicious—not only did she plot someone’s death, she wouldn’t let her rest in peace, shamefully smashing her memorial tablet every year on her death anniversary.

In the end, good and evil will always reap their due. The old woman would never die a good death; her end would be miserable. And as for the eldest son, what right did he have to mourn the woman he had helped destroy? Even now, he wept as if his tears could cleanse his guilt. He was not worthy. His selfish tears would only defile her path through the cycle of rebirth.

Chu Mu gazed at his elder brother, wounded. So this was how his gentle mother had been wronged and driven to her death. This was how she had borne a lifetime of shame, though she had always treated others with such kindness. In the end, she met such a tragic fate. No wonder his father kept his distance—perhaps it wasn’t that his father disliked him, but that his every glance reminded him of his lost wife.

“Chu Renqing... Let me ask you: what about the marriage contract between the Yu and Chu families? If Father married Mother out of gratitude, why did such an agreement remain? Especially after Mother’s reputation was ruined—how could the engagement persist?”

Hearing Shen Zhao call him by name, a flicker of pain crossed the eldest son’s eyes. The younger brother had always addressed him as “Elder Brother,” whether in letters or in person. Now, knowing the truth, his youngest brother must hate him deeply. He would never hear that term of endearment again.

“Later, after my father and mother went to the capital, I could no longer bear the torment of my conscience. I confessed everything to my grandparents about how my mother and I framed my father’s wife. Stricken with regret, my grandparents sent the old marriage contract between the Yu and Chu families back to the Yu family. At first, the Yu family—tainted by the scandal—wanted nothing to do with it. But because of the disgrace and their declining fortunes, for the sake of their descendants, they reluctantly accepted the contract.”

He looked at Shen Zhao, saying, “Don’t blame our grandparents. They were deceived by me. All the blame is mine. They, too, suffered a lifetime of remorse and guilt.”

Shen Zhao glanced at Chu Mu. She wanted to curse them all, but she was not Chu Mu, and wondered how this wooden-headed man felt upon learning of his mother’s wrongful death.

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If it were her, she would want nothing more than to see the Chu family utterly destroyed. Did remorse and guilt truly atone for the crimes they had committed? That was a living, breathing human being they had killed. And she doubted Chu Mu’s father truly loved his wife so deeply. In the capital, free from the constraints of the Chu family, why couldn’t he at least enshrine her properly? Now, in the ancestral hall of the Grand General’s mansion, only her father’s tablet stood in a place of honor, while her mother’s bore neither name nor surname, shoved in a dark corner, repeatedly smashed in petty fits of spite.

If the eldest son and the grandparents truly felt remorse, why had they never restored her mother’s name to the family records? Why allow the world to revile her, to let her carry the shame even after death, dragging her family down with her? Their repentance was useless—nauseating, even.

Chu Mu staggered to his feet, glancing once at Chu Renqing, who was still sobbing uncontrollably. He spoke slowly: “Chu Renqing, stop crying. Don’t sully my mother’s path to the next life. If you truly regret what you’ve done, go and make public all that you and your mother did. Give my mother the justice she deserves. Clear the name she has borne in disgrace for over twenty years!”

He hated—hated everyone who had driven his mother to her death, hated himself for his ignorance, for not seeing the truth sooner, for mistaking the villain for a mother, for elevating his mother’s killer.

Chu Renqing, lost in his own grief, failed to notice the shift in the atmosphere. That these words came from his third brother’s wife did not strike him as odd; after all, the two were deeply devoted, and it was only natural that she would grieve on his behalf.

Just then, a sudden knock sounded at the door, and a voice rang out that left the eldest son utterly stunned.

“By order of the matriarch, I have come to take Master’s pulse.”

How could it be him!