Not only had Rongyao bribed Cook An, she had also paid off a young maid who tended the kitchen fire, tasking her with keeping a close eye on every move Cao Kuan made.
Even that did not feel like enough to her.
Rongyao then dragged Chenxiang out of the manor with her.
She had Chenxiang steer the carriage to the end of an alley on Kyoto's South Street.
Chenxiang could never bear to see her cry, so she first went to report to her own mother, spoke up for Rongyao to put in a good word for her, and brought along two strong, strapping young male servants before her mother finally allowed her to leave the manor.
She had come to South Street to find someone. That person was named Chu Mingyi, the kind older sister who had treated her so well in the palace in her past life.
Sister Mingyi once told her that she had studied medicine alongside her grandfather since she was a child, and had long dreamed of becoming a female healer to tend to the sick and help all those in need.
Tragically, after her grandfather passed away, her father gambled every single day, losing all the family's money and even selling off the small medicine shop that had been their livelihood.
As their days grew worse and worse, Sister Mingyi's father even tried to sell her to a human trafficker to get more gambling money.
In her past life, Sister Mingyi was forced by her father to marry an elderly widower who beat his wives every day. Fortunately, less than half a year after the wedding, that cruel old man died. But soon after, her gambling-addicted father sent Sister Mingyi to the palace in exchange for silver, and never cared about her life or death ever again once he got the money.
Back then when Rongyao first entered the palace, her health was poor and she often fell ill with fevers. She would never have pulled through without Sister Mingyi looking after her. She had also been naive and clumsy back then, and was constantly bullied by others, but Sister Mingyi had always stepped in to protect her. Yet good people never seemed to get their due: in the end, Sister Mingyi was killed by Noble Consort Chen after she helped Lady Lü discover that someone had poisoned her soup.
She was such an exceptional, brilliant female healer, and she never deserved to meet that end like she did in the past life...
Right at that moment, in the run-down house at the end of the South Street alley in Kyoto,
inside the dilapidated courtyard, Chu Mingyi was on her knees, her face streaked with tears, her thin, gaunt hands clutching tight to the hem of her father's tunic.
"Father, I don't want to get married! I won't marry that old man!"
Chu Mingyi's father shoved her away roughly, his face twisted with irritation. "You're not a little girl anymore, it's high time we sorted out your marriage! Once you're wed, our whole family will live a better life! Look at how we're scraping by now? Your two younger brothers are so hungry they're nothing but skin and bones, and your mother is embroidering handkerchiefs from dawn till dusk until her eyes are almost worn out! You don't get a choice in this matter!"
Chu Mingyi scrambled back up and grabbed the hem of his clothes again. "I know medicine! I can treat people and cure their illnesses! I will definitely be able to earn silver! Father, please don't force me to marry that man!"
Seeing that her father would not budge no matter what she said, Chu Mingyi turned to her mother, who was standing to the side sobbing into her sleeves. "Mother, please talk some sense into him! Don't make me marry that man! He beat his last wife to death! If I go to his house, he will surely beat me too!"
Chu Mingyi's mother was shaking all over as she cried, holding her daughter's hands tight. "Mingyi, those are just rumors people made up. You're not getting any younger. That man is a bit older than you, and it would be a hard, unfair life for you, but his family is well off. If you marry him, you'll be able to help your two little brothers get by. Even if you know how to heal, you're just a woman at the end of the day. What great things could you ever accomplish? A woman's place is to marry into a good, stable family as soon as possible."
Chu Mingyi let go of her mother's hands, her face streaked with dried tears, her eyes hollow and empty, and let out a bitter, broken laugh.
Her father was a gambling fiend who had dragged the whole family into destitution.
Her mother doted only on her sons, and spent every spare copper they had to pay for her brothers to study and practice calligraphy.
Both of them were willing to sell her off, to give her away to a widower who was even older than her own father.
What was the point of her even being alive? That so-called skill of healing the sick and saving the dying? All it ever brought her was scolding, from people who said it was absurd for a woman to study medicine. She must have been out of her mind to even try.
"What about me? Have any of you ever treated me like a human being!" Chu Mingyi roared.
Her father slapped her hard across the face, his voice sharp with rage as he berated her, "You ungrateful girl! How dare you speak to us like that!"
Chu Mingyi crumpled to the ground, and all the light in her eyes went out.
At that very moment, Rongyao had finished asking around the neighborhood, and finally found Chu Mingyi's residence.
"Miss, what have we come all this way here for?" Chenxiang could not help but ask.
Rongyao said, "There is a lady living here who knows medicine. She is incredibly skilled. I want her to come back home with me."
Before Chenxiang could ask anything else, Rongyao trotted over to the rickety wooden door and knocked on it. "Hello? Is anyone there?"
An irritable voice called out from inside the house. "Who is it? What's all that racket for?"
The door was pulled open quickly, and a man in tattered coarse clothes, with an unkempt beard and a limp, came into view.
The man was clearly in a foul mood, but after he sized up Rongyao and Chenxiang's fine clothing, he forced a fawning smile, bent over, and spoke to Rongyao in a sugary tone. "Which family's young lady are you? Did you lose your way?"
Rongyao looked him over too. This man must be Chu Gen, Chu Mingyi's father — the compulsive gambler who had gambled away their entire family fortune and even tried to sell his own daughter.
Rongyao glowered at him, not bothering to be polite, and craned her neck to look into the yard. At a glance, she spotted the girl lying on the ground, curled up and not moving at all.
She knew at once that the girl on the ground had to be Sister Mingyi.
Holding back the urge to run to her, she looked up at Chu Gen and asked, "Your place was making so much noise just now. What was going on?"
Chu Gen gave a sheepish grin. "My daughter is being disobedient. I found her a very good match for marriage, but she threw a fit and refused to go through with it. As her father, of course I had to teach her a proper lesson."
"Can I go in and see her?" Rongyao asked.
Chu Gen, who was always overly eager to please wealthy people, immediately nodded and said yes with a wide smile.
Rongyao stepped into the Chu family's yard without trouble, and Chenxiang and their groom who had driven the carriage hurried in right behind her.
Rongyao walked over to Chu Mingyi, squatted down beside her, and looked at that familiar face, confirming she had found the right person.
She tilted her head up to look at Chu Gen and said, "She looks far too young to me. Why are you forcing her to get married?"
Chu Gen laughed in a forced, friendly way. "Young lady, you come from a good home, so you have no idea how hard life is for us poor folks. My family is desperate for money. If I marry my daughter off, we'll get a sum of silver, and that way we won't go hungry for days on end."
Rongyao nodded as if she understood perfectly, then pointed at Chu Mingyi and asked, "Can she cook?"
Chu Gen answered at once, "Of course she can! What woman can't cook? All the meals in my house are made by her!"
Rongyao spoke in a haughty, commanding tone. "My household is in need of a new cook. I will give you a hundred taels of silver, and you can sell her to me."
Seeing Chu Gen's face go completely shocked and that he did not say a word, Rongyao tilted her head and said, "You don't want to? That's fine, I won't force you. I'll just go find a cook somewhere else then."
"I'll sell! Of course I'll sell!"
"Your Grace, wait for me! Wait just a moment! I'll be quick, I'll be very quick!"
