The Walled Garden
In the humid, teeming labyrinth of Cangqian, where the canals ran thick with the effluent of dyers and the ferment of bean curd, the Yang estate was less a home than a celestial rebuke.
It stood apart, severed from the common dust by whitewashed walls that soared twenty feet high, capped with tiles the color of storm clouds. Behind those walls, the air did not smell of sweat and vinegar; it smelled of crushed sandalwood, wet stone, and centuries of accumulated silence. This was the seat of the Yang clan, a lineage whose blood ran bluer than the indigo of the local weavers.
At the center of this fiefdom sat Lord Yang Naiwu.
At twenty-seven, Yang was a creature of terrifying refinement. He was not merely a scholar who had clawed his way up the greasy pole of the imperial examinations; he was born to the purple. He possessed the languid, heavy-lidded elegance of a man who has never once considered the price of rice. Tall, with shoulders squared by fencing and hands smoothed by the brush, he moved through his courtyards with the predatory grace of a leopard pacing a silk menagerie.
To the people of Yuhang, Lord Yang was a local deity. He did not haggle; he gestured. He did not walk the muddy streets; he floated above them in a sedan chair. His "righteousness" was famous, but it was the noblesse oblige of a feudal lord settling squabbles among his serfs—distant, benevolent, and unreachably high.
His household was a clockwork mechanism of opulence. Servants in stiff livery ghosted across polished marble; his wife, Lady Zhan, was a pale, fragile ornament who moved like a paper lantern in a draft; and his sister, the formidable Dowager Lady Ye, guarded the family honor with the ferocity of a temple lion.
It was into this gilded cage that Madam Yu and her ragged brood were invited—an act of charity that would unravel a dynasty.
The Widow's Sanctuary
The arrangement was a whim of superstition. The sprawling western wing of the estate stood empty, and Lady Ye, fearing that vacuum invited fox spirits, sought "human breath" to fill the void. Madam Yu, a respectable widow fleeing the petty cruelties of her step-sons, was the chosen vessel.
When the family moved in, bringing their bundles of rags and the lingering scent of poverty, the contrast was violent.
Ge Pinlian—the man the town called "The Dwarf"—shuffled across the pristine flagstones, his bowed legs and stunted frame casting a grotesque shadow against the elegant moon gates. Third Girl, the "Withered Vegetable," stared slack-jawed at the gilded eaves, drooling onto the moss.
And then, there was Little Cabbage.
The Pearl in the Dust
She was eighteen. In the grime of the tofu shop, her beauty had been a smudge of light, easily ignored. Here, against the backdrop of the Yang estate, she shone with a clarity that hurt the eyes.
She was a peasant, yes. Her tunic was rough cotton; her hands were red from the washboard. But her face possessed a symmetry that shamed the powdered, painted ladies of the gentry. Her eyes were deep, liquid pools of melancholy, and her skin, despite the harshness of her life, had the translucent quality of fine porcelain held up to a lamp.
When she walked through the garden carrying a basket of laundry, she did not look like a servant. She looked like a lost princess from a ghost story, disguised in rags to test the virtue of mortals.
Lord Yang Naiwu noticed her immediately.
He was a man dying of boredom. He had tired of the endless rounds of poetry and the cryptic, stifled conversations of his own class. He craved authenticity. He craved life.
From the balcony of his study, he watched her. He saw the curve of her neck as she bent over the well. He saw the flush of exertion on her cheeks. And he saw, with an aristocrat's discerning eye, the brutal comedy of her marriage.
Why, he wondered, swirling tea in a jade cup, has Heaven cast a pearl before a swine?
He began to curate their encounters.
"Little Sister," he would say, his voice a rich baritone that seemed to vibrate in her chest. "The burden looks heavy. Leave it for the servants."
For Little Cabbage, Yang Naiwu was not a man; he was an avatar. He smelled of rare incense and clean linen. His robes were woven of silks she dared not touch. When he spoke to her, he did not bark like her stepfather or grunt like Pinlian; he spoke in cadences that sounded like music.
She began to look in the mirror, and then at her life. She looked at Pinlian, snoring on their straw mat, smelling of stale bean curd. Then she looked at the lit window of the main house, where the silhouette of the young Lord moved in golden light.
A dangerous resentment began to bloom in her heart, a poisonous flower fed by proximity. Why, she asked the darkness, was I born to the mud?
The Festival of Ghosts
Two years of this simmering silence passed. The tension in the western wing became a taut wire, humming in the wind.
Then came Qingming—the Festival of Pure Brightness, the day of sweeping tombs.
It was a solemn day for the aristocracy. The Yang clan, a caravan of sedan chairs and white-robed mourners, departed for the hills to feed their illustrious ancestors. Only Lord Yang remained behind. He pleaded a migraine—a convenient ailment of the bored—and stayed in the silent, sprawling manor.
In the western wing, Ge Pinlian dutifully took his sister to sweep the humble dirt mound of their father. Madam Yu was away.
Little Cabbage was left alone.
The silence of the estate was heavy, magnified by the chirping of early cicadas. The spring sun beat down on the empty courtyards, baking the stones. Little Cabbage sat in her small, dim room, feeling the walls closing in. The boredom was physical, an itch under her skin. She needed to verify that she still existed.
She crossed the moon gate. The garden was empty, the peonies drooping in the heat. She approached the open doors of the Lord's private study, intending only to steal a glance at the luxury she was denied.
But he was there.
Yang Naiwu lay on a daybed of carved rosewood, a book of poetry resting open on his chest. His outer robe was unbelted, revealing a tunic of snowy white silk. He looked like a fallen god, resting between miracles.
He heard the scuff of her cloth shoe and opened his eyes.
"Ah," he said, a slow, lazy smile spreading across his face. "The house is empty of ghosts, but full of flowers."
Little Cabbage gasped, stepping back into the sunlight. "My Lord... I... I thought you were gone."
"And leave the house unguarded?" He sat up, swinging his legs off the bed. "I am keeping watch. Just as you are."
He stood and walked toward her. In the rigid hierarchy of their world, she should have knelt. She should have run. But his gaze pinned her to the spot like a butterfly on a board.
"Come in, Little Cabbage," he said, using the town's nickname for her—a shocking intimacy on his tongue. "Do not stand in the sun. It will ruin that complexion, and that would be a tragedy greater than the fall of a dynasty."
He gestured to the cool, shadowed interior. It was a room of books, jade, and secrets.
Trembling, she stepped over the threshold.
"My husband... he is at the graves," she whispered, invoking Pinlian's name like a talisman.
"The Dwarf?" Yang laughed softly. It was a cruel sound, elegantly delivered. "Let him sweep the dust. He belongs to the dust. You... you do not."
He moved to a cabinet of lacquered ebony and retrieved a bottle of cut crystal. "Do you know what this is?"
She shook her head, her eyes wide.
"It is Rose Dew," he said, the crimson liquid glugging into two cups thin as eggshells. "It comes from the imperial cellars in Beijing. It is distilled from a thousand petals. It tastes of summer."
He held the cup out to her. "Drink with me, Little Sister. The world has left us alone. Let us enjoy the solitude."
Little Cabbage looked at the cup. She knew, with the instinct of a hunted animal, that taking it was a crossing. To drink with the Lord was to accept his favor, and his favor came with a price.
But she looked at him—so tall, so clean, so powerful. And she thought of the straw mat. She thought of the smell of beans.
She took the cup.
"To beauty," Yang murmured, raising his own glass.
The wine was sweet fire. It burned away her fear, leaving a warm, heavy lassitude in her limbs.
"You are unhappy," Yang said, stepping closer. It was not a question. "I see it in your eyes. You are a phoenix trapped in a chicken coop."
Tears pricked her eyes. The alcohol and the kindness—however calculated—broke her defenses. "I am cursed," she whispered. "I am married to a half-man. I am nothing."
"You are everything," Yang said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper. He reached out and touched her cheek. His fingers were cool and smooth, utterly unlike the rough, callous hands of her husband.
"Why should the gods make a mistake like this?" he mused, tracing the line of her jaw. "Why put a face like this on a peasant?"
He poured her another cup. "Drink. Forget him. Forget the millstone. Today, you are the mistress of this house."
Little Cabbage drank. The room spun gently. The scent of sandalwood and the Lord's expensive musk filled her senses. She felt a hunger she had never dared to name—a hunger for softness, for beauty, for a man who matched the image in her mirror.
Yang Naiwu leaned in, his arrogance replaced by a seductive intensity. "Let me correct the mistake of the gods," he whispered.
He pulled her into his arms. The silk of his robe felt like water against her rough tunic. She did not resist. She melted.
The Eye in the Garden
But the illusion of privacy was just that—an illusion.
While the Lord and the peasant girl lost themselves in the haze of Rose Dew and forbidden touch, the garden was not as empty as it seemed.
Crouched behind a cluster of dense bamboo near the window was Liu Zihan.
Liu was a man of low character, a former stable hand of the Yang estate who had been flogged and dismissed by Lady Ye for theft. He held a grudge that burned like acid in his gut. He had crept back into the compound today, knowing the family was away, intending to steal a silver brazier from the veranda.
Instead, he found something far more valuable.
Through the lattice of the study window, he saw everything. He saw the Noble Lord Yang Naiwu, the paragon of Confucian virtue, pouring wine for the tenant's wife. He saw the touch. He saw the embrace. He saw Little Cabbage, her face flushed with wine and desire, sinking into the arms of the aristocrat.
Liu Zihan lowered himself to the ground, a slow, malicious grin splitting his dirty face. He forgot about the brazier. He had stolen a secret that could destroy the House of Yang.
In a town like Cangqian, where envy of the rich was the favorite pastime, this scandal was a weapon. The "Dwarf's Wife" and the "Noble Lord." It was a story that would set the teahouses on fire.
Inside the study, oblivious to the doom watching from the bamboo, Yang Naiwu whispered into Little Cabbage's ear. "You are mine now. Not his."
And Little Cabbage, drunk on wine and dreams of nobility, believed him.
To know how this secret unraveled the empire, read the next chapter.