My Heart for You, My Lady - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Hall of Righteous Assembly fell silent in an instant.

The uncles and elders who usually swaggered around barking orders and killing without blinking all looked like roosters with their necks wrung, awkwardly holding their wine bowls, unable to either drink or set them down.

My father froze. He rubbed his palm-big as a palm-leaf fan-over his forehead and scraped off a layer of dirt.

“Th-That sort of thing isn’t easy to rob. Li the Rich doesn’t have one, and Zhao the Squire’s household… well, he does have a few concubines, but they reek too much of powder and perfume. Your old man is afraid the smell would choke you.”

“I don’t care!”

I threw away the chicken bone in my hand and rolled around on the floor.

“The brats from the other mountains all have mothers to sew their clothes! I’m the only one dressed like a little beggar! I want a mother! I want a mother!”

The thing my father feared most was me crying.

The moment I cried, all of Cangwu Mountain was bound to quake.

He gritted his teeth and slammed the table so hard it shook the hall.

“Stop howling! I’ll go rob you the best one right now! And if I can’t rob one… if I can’t, then I’ll go wipe out that nunnery at the foot of the mountain!”

That night, my father led a hundred brothers down the mountain in a grand procession.

I lay on the watchtower by the stronghold gate and let the cold wind blow over me all night.

Only when the sky began to pale did I finally see a line of men and horses inching back along the winding mountain path like ants moving house.

My father was riding a tall horse, and in his arms, he seemed to be carrying someone sideways.

I didn’t even bother putting on shoes. I ran down barefoot.

“Father! Did you rob me a mother?”

My father swung down from his horse with a face full of bad luck, yet there was an inexplicable excitement in his eyes.

He carefully set the person in his arms down, as if he were handling a fragile piece of porcelain.

It was a woman, bound hand and foot.

I swear, I had never seen anyone so beautiful in my life.

She didn’t wail to heaven and earth the way I had imagined, nor was she dressed up in gaudy finery like Zhao the Squire’s concubines.

She wore plain white clothes. Though they were speckled with mud, she still looked like a cold plum blossom standing in the snow.

Her hair was a little disheveled, but that face was as cool and clear as the moon in the sky.

Most importantly, she didn’t cry.

She simply stood there quietly, her eyes sweeping calmly over the fierce, vicious bandits around her before finally settling on me.

There was no fear, no disgust, only something I couldn’t quite describe… pity?