Chapter 797: Chapter 796: Madam Zhou’s Past

Madam Zhou awoke from her sleep, staring blankly at the canopy above her. She placed her hand over her chest where her heart thumped wildly, full of joy.

She slowly sat up; the silk-cotton quilt slid off her. Her face flushed, Madam Zhou gently bit her lower lip.

After so many years, when she thought her heart had become still like stagnant water, she had dreamt of that man once again, dreamt of the year they met.

That year, she was merely a young girl, just reaching the age of maturity. Having read many storybooks, she had a naive understanding of the affairs between men and women and harbored unknown yearnings.

But she also knew that those affairs described in the storybooks were meant for the sons and daughters of noble families, not for a girl from a scholar’s family. How could she dare to hope for such?

Yet, which young girl does not harbor the stirrings of spring, not daring to hope, but still unable to stop dreaming?

Zhou Yingmei was proud and had been cherished by her father since childhood. Following him in reading and writing, she was naturally different from the illiterate, coarse village women. She looked down on those bumpkin men who gazed at her as if she were a white and plump steamed bun.

Her father, too, had no intention of marrying her off to a farmer; he had already set his eyes on a literate man, waiting only for her to come of age to arrange their meeting.

It was during that time that Zhou Yingmei made a rare trip to the town to purchase embroidery thread for her needlework and met the cinnabar mole in her heart.

That refined gentleman spoke with such a pleasing voice, gracious and polite; adept at both poetry and prose. Wasn’t he the ideal husband she had envisioned?

Zhou Yingmei knew her lowly status well and dared not entertain such lofty dreams, so she could only covertly admire him. But the gentleman, so cultured and genteel, expressed his affection for her, for her gentleness and propriety.

This confession, like a giant stuffed bun falling from the sky, left her dizzy with joy. She forgot her inferiority, her status, and her shame, and like a moth to a flame, threw caution to the wind and plunged headlong into love, giving her all.

Those days were sweet, wonderful, and intoxicating.

Until she discovered that she was pregnant with their child. Her face beaming with joy, she told him, but before his promised grand eight-bearer palanquin arrived, she received the tragic news from his family’s messenger.

Zhou Yingmei understood that filial piety was paramount to scholars. She understood his difficulties, his suffering, and his future prospects. That’s why she was willing to wait.

Little did she know, that wait would last fifteen years without a sight of his return.

During those fifteen years, Madam Zhou had endured countless snubs and censures. She tolerated them all and could accept his failure to return, but she could never, and dared not imagine that he might never come back.

Wufu had now grown up and come of age. She too dared not think any longer, nor wished to think anymore.

Yet at this moment, she dreamt of that man again, dreamt of the scene when they first met.

A single glance lasts a thousand years; love begins unknowingly and deepens profoundly.

Madam Zhou got out of bed and lit the oil lamp, then took a small, old wooden box from the bedside. Opening it, a piece of paper lay inside.

She picked up the paper with gentle movements, treating it as if it were some fragile, peerless treasure, and carefully unfolded it. The writing on it was elegant and forceful—the handwriting of the man from the past.

It was a marriage certificate, a promise, containing the content of the lifelong union between the two of them.

Madam Zhou touched the name of the man, her heart aching, and her tears began to fall drop by drop.