When the coachman saw the face of the woman who had nearly collided with the carriage, he immediately pulled on the reins.
"Whoa!"
"Young Mistress, where are you going with that bundle on your back?"
It wasn’t that the coachman recognized Ye Chutang—it was that she bore a striking resemblance to her mother, about sixty or seventy percent alike.
Inside the carriage, Ye Jingchuan lifted the curtain the moment he heard this.
It had been fifteen years since he’d last seen his legitimate eldest daughter, whom he had abandoned in the countryside.
The woman before him had rosy lips and pearly teeth, gentle and lovely—just as gullible as her mother had been back in the day!
He forced a doting smile. "Chu'er, do you still remember your father?"
Ye Chutang looked at the hypocritical scumbag of a father from her past life and rolled her eyes hard.
"Why should I remember a beast who abandoned his own daughter?"
Ye Jingchuan: "..."
He took back his earlier thought.
Aside from her face, this girl was nothing like her mother.
Crude, disrespectful, and venomous with her words!
The coachman, seeing Ye Chutang insult Ye Jingchuan, scolded, "Young Mistress, you mustn’t be so rude to the master!"
Ye Chutang let out an exaggerated gasp.
"Wow, the servants of the Minister's Mansion are so impressive—daring to lecture their own mistress!"
With that, she slapped the coachman twice across the face.
The coachman tried to dodge but failed, his weathered cheeks swelling instantly.
The Young Mistress knew martial arts?
He gaped at Ye Chutang in shock, "Mmm—"
He tried to speak, but his jaw had been dislocated, rendering him mute.
Ignoring the coachman, Ye Chutang turned to Ye Jingchuan, who was glaring at her furiously.
"What? A servant oversteps his bounds, and I can’t discipline him?"
Of course, Ye Jingchuan couldn’t outright say that masters weren’t allowed to punish their servants.
But even when beating a dog, one must consider its master!
"Chu'er, you are the eldest daughter of the Minister's Mansion. Mind your manners!"
Hearing this, Ye Chutang immediately understood—Ye Jingchuan was here to take her back to the mansion, and he was definitely up to no good.
"I had a mother to birth me but no father to raise me. Isn’t it only natural that I lack manners?"
Ye Jingchuan, humiliated and enraged, leaped down from the carriage and swung his hand toward Ye Chutang’s face.
"Silence! I won’t tolerate such nonsense—"
Slap!
Before he could finish, Ye Chutang intercepted his strike with a sharp slap of her own.
Ye Jingchuan stared in disbelief at his reddened, throbbing palm, trembling with fury.
"Ye Chutang! Have you no sense of propriety or filial piety?!"
How dare she raise a hand against her elder—this was outright rebellion!
Ye Chutang blinked innocently.
"Wasn’t it you who wanted a high-five? I obliged. How filial of me."
"Who wanted a high-five?! I was clearly—"
"My mistake. So you actually wanted to hit me."
Ye Chutang tilted her fair-skinned left cheek toward him.
"Go on, then. Strike me. Once you do, we’ll be even for the debt of my birth, and we can cut ties for good."
She knew full well that Ye Jingchuan wouldn’t dare sever their relationship—he needed something from her.
Otherwise, the esteemed Minister wouldn’t have bothered coming to this backwater village to acknowledge her.
Blinded by rage, Ye Jingchuan raised his swollen hand.
But as he took in Ye Chutang’s breathtakingly beautiful face, his eyes flickered with calculation, and the blow never landed.
Ye Chutang lost patience.
"Minister Ye, my neck is getting sore from leaning. Are you hitting me or not? If not, I’m leaving."
Ye Jingchuan lowered his hand with a cold snort.
"What ‘Minister Ye’? I am your father!"
Ye Chutang rolled her eyes again.
"You abandoned me in the countryside for fifteen years, and now you suddenly show up playing the loving father? What’s your scheme?"
"What scheme could I possibly have? I simply thought that after all these years of recuperation, you must be well enough to return home."
Just then, the guard who had been chasing after them finally arrived.
He dropped to one knee and clasped his fists. "Master, I failed to keep watch over the Young Mistress. This lowly one deserves punishment."
Ye Chutang arched a brow.
How convenient his timing was!
"Minister Ye, it seems you weren’t here to take me back after all. You starved me for three days, and yet I didn’t die. Disappointed?"
Ye Jingchuan stared at Ye Chutang’s radiant complexion, speechless.
She looked nothing like someone who had gone without food for three days.
"Chu'er, you are my flesh and blood. How could I wish for your death? If I didn’t care, why would I come personally to bring you home?"
His words dripped with sincerity, but Ye Chutang didn’t believe a single one.
She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glaring sun.
"Then why did you have people confine me to the estate, forbid me from leaving, and withhold my meals?"
If not for her plan to reclaim everything that rightfully belonged to her in the Minister's Mansion, she would have long since sent this two-faced bastard flying with a single slap!
Why bother wasting time playing nice under this scorching sun?
Ye Jingchuan, too, was sweating from the heat.
Watching her gesture, he said, "Chu'er, you’ve misunderstood. Why don’t we return to the estate and discuss this properly?"
"Fine!"
Ye Chutang yanked the coachman—still clutching his dislocated jaw—off the carriage, then climbed onto the driver’s seat and took off alone.
Ye Jingchuan watched the carriage kick up a cloud of dust, his expression dark.
He turned to the kneeling guard. "Why is she nothing like the girl you described?"
Uncle Fu and the guards, who took turns overseeing the granary, would stay at the estate for periods to watch over the wheat and rice harvests.
Whenever they returned to the Ye family, they would report on Ye Chutang’s condition.
Timid, foolish, shameless, selfish, lazy…
The list of insults was endless.
Yet the Ye Chutang before him bore no resemblance to their descriptions!
The guard was equally baffled.
"Master, as an outsider, I rarely saw the Young Mistress. Everything I knew came from Nanny Liu."
Now, all three members of the Liu family were dead, and the truth had died with them.
Ye Jingchuan didn’t press further. Under the blazing sun, he began the long walk back to the estate.
The guard hastily removed his outer robe and held it over Ye Jingchuan’s head for shade.
The coachman, Chen Zhong, endured the pain as he reset his dislocated jaw and followed.
"Master, the Young Mistress knows martial arts."
Ye Jingchuan halted and turned to him.
"Those slaps she gave you—you couldn’t dodge, or you failed to dodge?"
"Both. But this lowly one can confirm that the Young Mistress is highly skilled."
Ye Jingchuan frowned.
Nanny Liu had kept Ye Chutang under constant surveillance. Where could she have learned martial arts?
If not for her near-identical resemblance to Tang Wanning, he might have suspected she’d been replaced by an imposter.
"Chen Zhong, go to the village later and gather information about Chu'er."
Once they returned to the Minister's Mansion, he would test her skills himself.
Ye Chutang was far too valuable to his political ambitions—he couldn’t afford to lose control of her!
"Yes, Master."
The guard then mentioned how Ye Chutang had been spreading slanderous rumors about Ye Jingchuan in the village.
But since the entire village owed him favors, Ye Jingchuan dismissed it, confident they wouldn’t dare spread the gossip further.
Accustomed to a life of luxury, he finally reached the estate after what felt like an eternity under the scorching sun.
Parched, he spotted Ye Chutang drinking water beneath a crabapple tree and strode over.
"Chu'er, pour your father a cup."
Ye Chutang had no intention of sharing her spiritual spring water with Ye Jingchuan.
She tipped the teapot back, wrist angled downward, letting every last drop pour into her mouth.
"All gone."
Ye Jingchuan: "..."
His palm itched again.
But the lingering sting reminded him—if he struck now, the only one who’d suffer was himself.
"Chu'er, your father has been occupied with court affairs and couldn't find time to visit you, but I’ve never stopped thinking about you.
I never ordered anyone to confine you or withhold your meals. The moment I heard of your troubles, I made time to come at once."
Ye Chutang slammed the teapot onto the stone table with a thud.
"Lord Ye, instead of sweet-talking, why not offer something more tangible?"
A sense of foreboding rose in Ye Jingchuan’s heart. "Chu'er, what exactly do you want?"
"Join me in cursing the beast who tried to starve me to death."
"?"
"I wish him—his bowels to rot, his line to end!"
"!"
"I wish him—destitution and a cuckold’s shame!"
"!!"
"I wish him—his family ruined, his corpse left unburied!"
"!!!"
