Chapter Text
As the younger sibling of the wealthiest, most prominent merchant in the Jiangnan region, since young, Shi Qingxuan has been coddled and sheltered by his brother, and given only the best to eat and wear.
It is Shi Qingxuan’s fortune and He Xuan’s misfortune when a chance encounter brings the pampered young master and the humble farmer’s son together.
Quickly taking a fancy to the brusque, cold He Xuan, Shi Qingxuan spends his idle days constantly pestering He-xiong in the fields, offering to treat him to lavish meals and buying him uselessly expensive gifts.
Naturally, once Shi Wudu discovers this, he will not deny his precious little brother anything. As the Shi family is influential enough to not need to forge a marriage alliance, a disgruntled Shi Wudu pays He Xuan’s family a great sum for their eldest child - this ‘common stone’ which Qingxuan fancied when he could have had priceless jade - to 入赘 or marry into the Shi family, taking on the surname Shi and moving into their fine manor after the wedding.
Afraid of Shi Wudu’s wealth and power, and influence, He Xuan has no choice but to agree.
His betrothal to his childhood sweetheart is swiftly broken, and he marries a blissfully unaware Shi Qingxuan - who had only been told by Shi Wudu that He Xuan had agreed to the marriage proposal, that he should thank the heavens and the earth that the lovely, charming and eligible Qingxuan had picked him out of the mud.
On the wedding day, Qingxuan, attired in finely embroidered silk, wearing the most gaudy jewelry and opulent makeup, waits for his groom at the ancestral altar.
He Xuan performs the three bows without emotion, and spends the wedding banquet eating and drinking wine, paying no attention to his beautiful new spouse.
That night, he blows out the red candles and sleeps early, placing a great distance between his body and Shi Qingxuan’s on the marital bed.
Sweet but naive, Qingxuan does all sorts of things to win He Xuan’s heart, but the extravagant gestures push him further away instead.
Having witnessed He Xuan’a voracious appetite, he orders the household servants to prepare all sorts of delicacies his new husband might like, but He Xuan expresses disinterest in them all, disgusted by how cavalierly Shi Qingxuan orders the dishes to be taken away and disposed of as He Xuan rejects each one.
(Unbeknownst to him, the dishes are brought to the temple to feed the local beggars, but Shi Qingxuan does his good deeds in silence, making He Xuan grow to loathe this wasteful young master even more.)
“How can you be so useless?”
He exclaims in disbelief after Qingxuan burns a whole fish that would have been shared by his entire family for the spring festival dinner in a good year, rendering it inedible while trying to personally cook his husband a meal.
Shi Qingxuan, who is not so naive that he does not realize his husband does not love him by now, continues to give sweet, empty smiles in the face of He Xuan’s indifference, spending his days getting more and more drunk.
(Qingxuan had first fallen in love with the solemn youth when He Xuan had found the disguised young master Shi drunk outside an inn, yet had taken Shi Qingxuan to his own home to spend the night without taking advantage of his pretty face and body, or stealing the gold on his person.
He Xuan, who had scolded him gruffly instead of using honeyed words to win his favor once he had sobered, who had carried him with gentle hands that did not stray, who Qingxuan had pestered relentlessly after, offering him snacks and water while he worked out in the fields.)
While Qingxuan finds comfort in vats of wine, He Xuan finds solace in books.
Intelligent with scholarly inclinations, his new position allows He Xuan to focus on studying for the imperial examinations, a pursuit he would not have had the time and resources for before as a commoner.
Shi Qingxuan procures all the books, tutors, paper and ink He Xuan desires with the Shi family’s limitless wealth, paying for everything, yet He Xuan still barely acknowledges Qingxuan within the house.
Three years pass this way. They are now both 22, having been born in the same year, in the same month, on the same day, yet the married couple still treats each other as guests, sleeping on different sides of the same bed.
The night before He Xuan is due to leave for the capital to take the imperial examinations, he gets extremely drunk on Qingxuan’s wine, having received the news that his childhood love had just celebrated the one-month birthday of her first child with her husband, having grown to love the man she had married after her engagement to He Xuan was broken off.
While drunk, He Xuan airs his grievances to a stunned Shi Qingxuan, who learns the truth amidst He Xuan’s rambling: that his elder brother had forced He Xuan into the marriage, threatening to destroy the He family’s livelihoods if he did not accept.
Far from being one half of a pair of harmonious mandarin ducks, Shi Qingxuan had actually been the rich evil tyrant to break the destined lovers apart.
Clutching the shards of a broken wine jar with his bare hands - which have never labored for even a day - for fear He Xuan cut himself and hinder his chances at excelling in the exams, Qingxuan stutters, the blood from his tender palms dripping onto the floor.
“I - I have been a burden to…to He-gongzi.”
Screaming and laughing at once, Qingxuan exclaims.
“Me and ge, me and ge have wronged you!”
While the servants watch, he wipes He Xuan’s face with a warm cloth and bloody hands, tending to him until He Xuan falls asleep.
When Shi Qingxuan wakes, late in the morning, He Xuan is gone.
Talented and hardworking, He Xuan earns distinction and honor in the imperial examinations, making a name for himself in merely three years.
Having attained a position of great influence, it is well known among the officials in capital that the upright and impartial Official He’s first act was to order a search on his own brother-in-law’s manor, to seize the account book that he knows exists from years of living there, which Shi Wudu has carefully concealed in a secret hiding place - the account book containing evidence of Shi Wudu’s crimes.
Remembering Qingxuan’s naive and innocent kindness, Official He sends a subordinate to retrieve the second young master Shi and offer him a way out to escape.
But Qingxuan refuses to leave, standing by his da-ge as they are arrested and thrown into prison.
Within the damp and cold cell, Qingxuan learns that his beloved brother, who had raised Qingxuan singlehandedly and had not left the sickly second son for dead in the wake of the Shi household’s collapse in their younger years, had made the family’s wealth not by legitimate business but by being a mountain bandit, enhancing their fortunes by smashing others’ mills and businesses before setting up his own and resorting to extortion, raising grain prices exorbitantly in famine years (A/N: a crime).
Together with his associates, Official Ling Wen and General Pei, Shi Wudu had enlarged the Shi’s ill gotten gains year after year, while others - while He Xuan’s family - had suffered through bitter famine.
“It’s all da-ge’s fault for being too greedy, thinking the emperor would not get rid of us for having grown too prosperous.”
“It’s me…I’m the jinx to the Shi family.”
Shi Qingxuan whispers in the dark.
In prison, Qingxuan takes a beating in place of his da-ge - as Shi Wudu watches, the resentful guards, bearing a grudge against the greedy merchant family who had caused their hardships, thrash Qingxuan into a pulp.
“Qingxuan! QINGXUAN! Let him go, let him go! I - I still have money stashed somewhere, I’ll - I’ll pay you…”
“Who wants your blood tainted money!”
“ - Break your arm and leg, see how you wretches can continue to harm people like this!”
Having spent anxious days waiting, the Shi brothers are finally hauled out and paraded through the streets in an open carriage as they are taken for sentencing.
(Shi Qingxuan’s former dog and pig friends, whom he idled and drank wine with, are amongst the crowd jeering and throwing stones.
Actually, while presenting smiling faces, afraid to offend, everyone had hated them.)
Fortunately, heaven does not wish to exterminate the Shis altogether, thanks to General Pei’s influence and Official He’s plea for mercy, the brothers are spared from execution and are instead stripped of their fortune, and Shi Wudu is beaten with the rod.
After the punishment is meted out, a humbled Shi Wudu, dressed in rags, agrees to go with General Pei (who controls the army and is thus powerful enough to protect both Shi siblings) to his manor far away.
Shi Qingxuan, unable to face his elder brother and wishing to atone for his sins, declines.
“I’ll hide him away in my residence, even the emperor can’t touch him there.”
(In the end, the womanizing General Pei had only been faithful to his da-ge.)
A filial son, Official He brings his mother, father and sister to live with him in his new residence.
“Qingxuan? Where is our family’s Qingxuan?”
His aged mother demands as she crosses the threshold.
“We were not allowed to visit him during his imprisonment, after the trial, did you take him home?”
He does not understand.
A headstrong woman, his mother had accepted the marriage, but had never regarded his new spouse in high esteem despite Shi Qingxuan’s wealth and status due to the circumstances of the marriage.
(In the years that He Xuan had been away studying in the capital, Shi Qingxuan had fulfilled his husband’s filial duty to his parents without complaint, taking care of them in illness, lighting firewood in winter, massaging his mother’s aches, sweeping his ancestors’ graves, helping his sister arrange her marriage to her sweetheart.
“Mother, let this one serve you.”
“My son has married into your family, to be acknowledged as mother, I wouldn’t dare, Shi-gongzi.”
Shi Qingxuan had not grumbled or said a word of resentment, only smiled, silently taking care of He Xuan’s family and the beggars in town.
Eventually, this sincerity, how could it not be acknowledged?)
“I - I didn’t know.”