Liu’er shook them off.
"What are you doing! You bastards!" she yelled angrily, glaring at the servants.
"Miss Liu’er," they started with a smile. "Don’t hurt yourself in anger. You might hurt your hands. It’s not worth it."
Liu’er spat contemptuously.
"I’m not a fool," she delivered. "Do you think I can’t tell you’re protecting that hussy?"
She said this with pain and anger.
"You aren’t just bullying me, you’re bullying my family’s young miss!" she shouted. "Do you think we’re scared of you? Let me tell you, I’m not afraid! Even if there were more of you, I wouldn’t be scared!"
She slammed her head into Lingzhi who was hiding to the side.
Lingzhi shrieked and ran, but she was still one step slower than Liu’er.
Liu’er crawled over her.
"If you don’t drink it, then I will wring your neck," she declared, clenching a hand around Lingzhi’s neck.
The servants lept forward in fright.
Concubine Yuan and Concubine Su didn’t dare watch the activity. They were about to step forward when Lady Fang arrived.
Cries of "Lady is here!’ could not get Liu’er to loosen her grip.
Lady Fang did not reprimand her. Rather, she waved a hand, and several of the servants behind her stepped forward. While consoling Liu’er, they attempted to stop her.
One of the servants took out a bowl of medicine from the food tray and swapped it with the medicine Liu’er had brought.
Concubine Yuan and Su were shocked, but they understood.
Lady Fang had come. As expected, she wouldn’t let go of their hope. She wouldn’t let that servant girl who had had a sexual encounter with Fang Chengyu to take the medicine.
Concubine Yuan gave a ‘I told you so’ look to Concubine Su.
"Okay, okay, come here now."
After seeing that the servants had switched the medicine, Lady Fang spoke.
Without hesitation, the servants pulled Liu’er and Lingzhi apart.
Liu’er saw Lady Fang and got even angrier.
"Not even the emperor dares go against my young miss’ orders!" she declared, struggling violently. "Unless you choke me to death, don’t even think of stopping me."
Lady Fang frowned at her.
"She didn’t take the medicine? What’s this fuss for. Go and take it."
Liu’er was stunned, while Lingzhi paled.
"Miss Liu’er, is it this one?" Concubine Yuan held up the bowl of medicine Lady Fang had swappped out. "I will feed it to her."
She speedily advanced over to Lingzhi, reaching out to grab her chin.
Lingzhi cried and shook her head and shrunk back.
"I want to see Young Master, I want to see Young Master," she sobbed.
If a servant girl was like this some other time, Lady Fang would have directly slapped her. She could not act so.
Why would Chengyu favor this servant girl.
This was her fault, but who would have thought Fang Chengyu could reach the point. At this age, they hadn’t given him his pick of people.
As a result, he took to the first servant girl.
"I told you to drink it so you’ll drink it. You can’t see young master," she said, brows furrowed.
Lingzhi’s tears wouldn’t stop.
"Why are you listening, girl!"
Concubine Yuan seemed anxious. She gripped Lingzhi’s chin, forcefully tilting it upwards.
"Right, hurry up and drink."
"You do not know true hardship."
"If you don’t drink, should we just sell you?"
The servants caught on to Concubine Yuan’s intentions and began to shout. The room became noisy.
Concubine Yuan leaned in close to the distressed Lingzhi.
"Lady already switched the medicine. It’s now good for you. Lady would not hurt the person Young Master favored," she whispered. "This is to deceive Young Lady."
Lingzhi’s eyes showed her shock.
Concubine Yuan pushed her again.
"Drink it," she commanded.
Liu’er pushed the servants blocking her away.
"I’ll do it myself," she said, wrestling away the bowl from Concubine Yuan’s hands.
Liu’er did not directly feed it to her, first taking a look at the bowl.
She remembered clearly that she had used the famille rose bowl.
That’s right. And there was enough medicine left after splashing.
"Leave," Liu’er said, relieved. She squeezed past Concubine Yuan and grabbed Lingzhi to pour it down.
This time, LIngzhi cried but seemed unable to avoid drinking it. She choked and coughed as it went down.
Liu’er would not let even one drop remain.
"You slut dirtied my hand," she declared. She threw the famille rose bowl on the ground, then swaggered off.
Lingzhi fell to the ground unable to catch her breath.
"Look after her," Lady Fang said, then left.
Concubine Yuan reminded the servants to help Lingzhi, but Concubine Su had walked over first and extended her hand.
"Don’t cry. Crying will only irritate people," she said. She wiped the medicine spilled over Lingzhi’s body with a handkerchief.
Lingzhi was overwhelmed by favor from her superior.
Was this a benefit of becoming Young Master's favored person?
"Hey, don’t mind her. There’s a lot of people here," Concubine Yuan told Concubine Su. "Let’s get going."
She turned around and left. Concubine Su let go of Lingzhi and tucked her handkerchief back in her sleeve before leaving.
.......
"How is he?" asked Old Lady Fang when she saw Lady Fang enter.
"She [1] is fine. I have someone looking after her." She paused. "I didn’t ask one of the older maids to look after her body…"
"I wasn’t asking about her," Old Lady Fang said with a frown. "I was talking about Chengyu."
Lady Fang couldn’t contain her excitement.
"Mother, Chengyu is great! Even after doing that kind of thing he is not tired at all. His mind is sharp," she reported excitedly.
Because she had heard it from Miss Jun before, Old Lady Fang wasn’t that excited by Lady Fang’s reaffirmation.
Instead, she was solemn because of the impending danger.
"Mother," began Lady Fang uneasily. "Is Zhenzhen unhappy because of what Chengyu did?"
But it was clearly said to be a fake marriage. Chengyu sleeping with another servant girl shouldn’t be too bad. Would she even let her be like that?
Old Lady Fang gave her a look. She didn’t blame her for being preoccupied with this trivial matter. Fang Chengyu being cured was too big of a deal for a mother.
"What’s that servant's name?" asked Old Lady.
This time she was asking about that servant girl.
"Her name is Lingzhi," Lady Fang said. "She has been with Chengyu for five or six years. Although she only did miscellaneous chores, she was very thoughtful when waiting on Chengyu."
Old Lady Fag repeated the name several times.
"She volunteered?" she asked.
Lady Fang broke out into giggles.
"Mother, Chengyu is better, but he can’t even stand straight. If she didn’t want it, how could Chengyu do such a thing?"
It was like saying her son was a sex offender.
Lady Fang could not help but press a hand to her face, embarrassed.
"That’s good," she said. "Did she drink the supplement?"
Lady Fang nodded.
"Mother, could she have taken with child in just one try?" she asked excitedly.
Old Lady Fang rubbed her forehead.
"You will just have to see, now that she’s taken the tonic." Then more seriously she added, "Be careful of someone trying to take action."
"Yes, Mother. I will keep her near me, to prevent Liu’er from hurting her."
Old Lady Fang looked at her with a strange expression.
"What will Liu’er do to her? Now that everyone knows Chengyu is well and could get a servant girl pregnant, our enemy definitely will know too. We need to guard against them. What are you thinking about?" she asked.
As if lighting had struck, Lady Fang broke out of her delirium.
She was too happy. She had forgotten about this.
"Mother, we need to investigate the people who leave here in the next few days." She became calm again.
Since Jun Zhenzhen had brought up an enemy hurting three generations of their male heirs, they had investigated everyone in the house. Indeed, there was a lot of strange activity, but to prevent beating the grass and scaring the snake, they had to pretend they didn’t know what was happening. They could only secretly strengthen the guard.
Now Fang Chengyu had taken a better turn, so to prevent him from regressing, they would need to eliminate those people.
"There is no meaning in doing that now. That would just expose us," said Old Lady Fang.
But haven’t they already been exposed? Chengyu was obviously much better. Wasn’t the marriage cover up for treating Chengyu been completely revealed?"
"Of course we haven’t been exposed."
Old Lady Fang thought of what Miss Jun had said in the study.
She had lifted the brush and wrote down characters on the paper.
"We only verified the rumor that we want Chengyu to have a child. We still don’t know that Chengyu was poisoned, we can’t know who the person behind this is."
She took the paper and then passed it to Old Lady Fang with a smile.
"They don’t know we know. We must wait for them to come to our door to act. We are not the meat on the chopping block. They are."
Old Lady Fang subconsciously took the page and looked at the names of the drugs written on it. It was another prescription.
But her attention was not on the prescription.
"So you’re saying we will soon meet our enemy?" she asked.
Miss Jun put down the brush and smiled.
"Yes. Aren’t you happy?"