While Huang Yaning was unconscious, she dreamed of some fragments from her previous life.
For example, there was a banquet once where Sheng Mingzhu’s friends bullied and humiliated Minmin.
Those people covered their noses and looked at Minmin with disgust, saying that Minmin had a strange smell on her…
“Ladies, please be more understanding. My younger sister has had a hard time since she was little, so her temperament is a bit… peculiar…
“At home, she doesn’t like eating refined foods. Instead, she prefers to eat… some rather unusual things…
“Maybe that’s why she’s picked up some kind of odor…”
Sheng Mingzhu explained hypocritically.
Those people thought Minmin wasn’t fit to stand with them; they were just deliberately taunting Minmin.
Upon hearing this, they quickly asked, “What does your younger sister like to eat?”
Sheng Mingzhu put on a troubled expression, and then her personal maid, Tian Zhang, stepped forward.
“The Seventh Young Miss loves eating moldy mantou and rice, and rotten meat…”
As soon as the noble ladies heard this, they pinched their noses and moved away from Minmin, looking at her as if she were a rat in a gutter.
Someone even covered her mouth with a handkerchief and started dry heaving.
At that time, Minmin’s face turned deathly pale, and she stammered,
“That’s not true… I don’t like… eating spoiled food…”
“Why deny it, Seventh Young Miss?” Tian Zhang sneered.
“I’ve seen it twice myself. Once, you were eating a moldy mantou, and you seemed to enjoy it so much—
“Another time, you were eating meat that reeked of rot, but you still ate it, didn’t you?”
“That’s not true… it’s not that I like it… it’s that the food was already spoiled when it was brought to me…”
Minmin said, her words jumbled and her hands trembling.
“Pah—” one of the noble ladies shouted at Minmin in anger.
“Get lost, right now!
“I thought you were just vicious, jealous beyond reason, harming your sister over and over again, and a thief to boot—
“But I never imagined you’d be this disgusting!
“You have all sorts of delicacies to eat, but instead you deliberately eat such repulsive things. Who are you trying to disgust?”
The other noble ladies chimed in agreement, with Sheng Mingzhu hiding among them, a victor’s smile on her lips.
Meanwhile, Minmin’s body swayed unsteadily, her head spinning, her vision blurred by tears…
Huang Yaning could feel the waves of grievance surging through Minmin’s body, nearly suffocating her.
Her heart ached as if stabbed by a knife. In her previous life, she had never known that Minmin’s situation in the Sheng household was as lowly as that of the humblest servant.
The servants in the manor actually dared to feed Minmin spoiled food…
Her Minmin didn’t like eating spoiled food—she just had no choice…
If she obediently ate the spoiled food, she would get a few days of normal meals; if she resisted, things would only get worse and worse…
And outside the home, Minmin wasn’t well-liked. Huang Yaning had assumed it was because Minmin had grown up in the countryside and had a… timid and shrinking… personality.
She had no idea that, in places she couldn’t see, Sheng Mingzhu was colluding with a group of official’s daughters to bully and humiliate Minmin.
Did Minmin have to endure so much malice every time she went out?
Why had she never noticed anything unusual?
Was it because those thankless wretches hid it too well?
Or was it because, deep down, she found Minmin… embarrassing?
Subconsciously, she had rejected paying attention to or thinking about anything related to Minmin…
In the dream, after the noble ladies left, Minmin gathered her courage and begged Sheng Mingzhu.
“Elder sister… Father, Mother, and the brothers—I won’t compete with you for any of them…
“I can’t win against you anyway… so… can you please just leave me alone…”
But Sheng Mingzhu’s smile instantly turned into tears, crying as if she had suffered a terrible injustice, tears streaming down her face.
The next second, Prince Qi and Sheng Mingjian and his brothers appeared, hurling more cruel words at Minmin.
Huang Yaning felt that everyone else was blind, was stupid! Including herself!
Later, she dreamed of more fragments from the household.
Minmin went to the garden to pick some wildflowers to dry and make tea.
But she ran into Sheng Mingjian and Sheng Mingbo, who were comforting Sheng Mingzhu in the garden.
Sheng Mingbo said that Minmin acted meek and obedient in front of outsiders.
But where outsiders couldn’t see, she bullied Sheng Mingzhu, with a sharp tongue and vicious mouth…
He actually used “sharp tongue and vicious mouth” to describe Minmin…
He even said Minmin was disgusting and that they should find her a hot-tempered husband to straighten out her character.
At that moment, Sheng Mingjian suggested marrying Minmin off to some man.
As soon as Huang Yaning heard that man’s name, her heart ached until it went numb.
Because although that man was a third-rank official, he was over sixty years old, had a violent temper, and had once beaten one of his concubines to death…
Such a piece of garbage, and yet Sheng Mingjian thought Minmin’s reputation was so bad that she was only fit to be that man’s concubine…
Why?
Just when she thought she had some understanding of Minmin’s suffering in her previous life, reality would strike her another heavy blow!
Just how much hardship and grievance had Minmin endured in her past life? Huang Yaning didn’t dare to think too deeply…
She recalled the fragments from her dream, and the aura around her grew darker and darker…
Added to that was Sheng Mingjian’s miserable state and the two bloody corpses lying in the courtyard—under the bright daylight, everyone felt a chill run through them.
A few servants’ legs began to tremble, and some started having second thoughts.
The most terrified, of course, were Sheng Mingbo and Sheng Mingzhu. Horror filled their eyes.
They struggled to escape, but they were tied up too tightly…
“Is what I asked for ready?”
Suddenly, Huang Yaning spoke.
“Miss, everything is ready.”
Qing Tian quickly replied respectfully.
She waved toward a spot farther away, and immediately a young maid carrying a tray stepped forward.
On the edge of the tray was a large pair of pliers.
There was also a food box. Qing Tian opened it.
The next second, everyone smelled a pungent, foul stench.
It smelled like rotten fish, mixed with the smell of dead rats, along with a kind of fishy odor.
Even in such a blood-heavy place, the smell was unbearably foul.
Then everyone saw inside the food box were seven or eight long bamboo tubes.
One end of each bamboo tube was sealed with a natural bamboo node, while the other end was wrapped with oil paper and tied tightly with a long red slipknot.
The stench was coming from inside the bamboo tubes. It didn’t take much imagination to know that nothing good was inside.
“What… what are you going to do…”
Sheng Mingjian finally snapped back to reality. When he saw the bamboo tubes, his eyes first turned fierce, his bloodshot eyes looking like they might pop out.
Then he fell apart, as if he had never imagined things would come to this.
“Haven’t you ruined me enough? How can you be so vicious?”
Huang Yaning returned his words with a sweet smile.
“Since Big Brother calls me vicious, I can’t let that reputation go to waste for nothing. Of course, I have to show you just how vicious I can be…”
With that, she admired the terrified expressions of Sheng Mingbo and Sheng Mingzhu, then studied the bamboo tubes and asked casually,
“What’s inside?”
