The Divine Lady looked at him, yet it seemed she was looking past him. “Luo Daoqing, you ask how they could?”
“I shall tell you: because this is feudal ethics.”
“Under the oppression of feudal ethics, women cannot display their talents, let alone appear in public or meet men outside the family. They cannot have their own thoughts, and even their names will be forgotten...”
Above the Sky Curtain, the Divine Lady’s gaze fell, like a beam of moonlight, into those red-gated manors.
Those kneeling inside the great manors trembled.
Upon regaining their senses, they all looked up in unison at the Divine Lady on the Sky Curtain, as if looking at a lighthouse, or a mirror.
What was reflected in the mirror was not their faces, but their lives that had been consumed.
In some mansion, in some courtyard, a young girl locked behind red gates suddenly spoke. “The Divine Lady can actually see our suffering...”
Her nanny’s face changed drastically as she covered the girl’s mouth. “Oh, my little ancestor! You mustn't let the master hear those words!”
Though her mouth was covered, her eyes were speaking.
There were no tears in those eyes, only a raging fire that burned brighter and brighter.
She pushed her nanny’s hand away, her voice trembling, but each word was spoken with extreme clarity. “Nanny, the Divine Lady is right. I wrote exactly one hundred and thirty-two poems, but not a single one bears my name. They all became my elder brother’s, claiming that only this way could they bring glory to the family!”
“But why? It is clearly my work! Why must it be credited to someone else?!”
Deep within another great manor, in some corner.
A young woman stood up, making the maid beside her turn pale with fright and desperately grab her sleeve.
Ignoring her, she walked step by step to the window and looked up at the Divine Lady on the Sky Curtain, her soul seemingly lost.
“I married into the Qian family at fourteen.” Her voice was not loud, but it was terrifyingly clear. “I used my own dowry to support the Qian family for a full ten years, yet in the Qian family’s genealogy, I am but a few sparse words: Lady Sun, legal wife of Qian Lei.”
“No one knows my name is Sun Huilan.”
“What a ridiculous life!” As she spoke, a clear tear slid from the corner of her eye and was scattered by the wind.
Inside the city, within the separate courtyards that resembled cages, something was being completely ignited.
“Burn them! Burn them all!” The furious voice of a middle-aged man pierced through the courtyard walls.
He burst into his daughter’s bedroom, snatched the books from her hands, and threw them into the brazier.
Tongues of fire surged up, licking at the elegant and neat handwriting as the pages curled, blackened, and turned to ash.
The young girl knelt on the ground.
Watching her life’s work turn to ash in the fire, her face was covered in tears, yet she did not utter a single plea for mercy.
After a moment of silence.
She suddenly raised her head and looked at her father.
This was the first time she had looked her father directly in the eye, and she actually saw panic in the eyes of the man who had always been arbitrary and dictatorial.
“Father, do you think that by burning these books, you can burn the words in my mind?”
The middle-aged man’s hand froze in mid-air.
“You can lock me in the embroidery tower, you can forbid me from leaving the house, and you can bind my feet, but you cannot control what I think in my mind!”
She stood up, her knees numb from kneeling, her figure swaying slightly, but her back was held perfectly straight.
That spine, which had always been bent, for the first time in sixteen years, held her body upright.
“I originally thought that because I thought differently from others, I had some strange illness.” She looked into her father’s eyes, word by word. “Now that the Divine Lady says feudal ethics is the persecution of us women, I finally know that I am not the one who is sick. It is all of you who use feudal ethics to oppress me!”
The middle-aged man took a step back.
The daughter he had raised for sixteen years had always been as gentle and soft as a kitten, but now she was like a young tiger, baring claws and teeth she had never shown before.
Instinctively, he wanted to scold her, but he didn’t have the courage to contradict the words of a deity. He could only remain silent.
The wind blew through the empty courtyard, swaying the faded lanterns under the eaves and making a dull creaking sound.
In that moment, the men in those noble estates discovered a terrifying fact.
They could control the hands, feet, mouths, and bodies of women—they could even control their life and death—but they could not control their awakening hearts.
Yun Shu watched all this happen and said no more.
Some things did not need to be said again.
For the fire had been lit, and the wind had begun to blow.
All that remained was to wait for it to burn.
“Luo Daoqing, you have two more chances.”
“Xu Yi, courtesy name Zichuan. After ten years of hard study, he finally succeeded in the imperial examinations, but his status as the Number One Scholar was stolen by another. With no way to appeal, he ultimately died with deep resentment, hanging himself.”
Hearing this, Luo Daoqing only felt wronged.
“Divine Lady, although I’m no saint, I swear to heaven that I would never do something as despicable as stealing someone else’s academic achievements. Never!”
Before transmigrating, he had not only been exploited by his mentor but had also frequently had his research results stolen by others.
Therefore, what he hated most were those rich playboys who came to the lab just to pad their resumes, taking credit for the experimental data he had painstakingly worked on late into the night with just a few words.
“Whether that is true, you will know once you live as Xu Yi.”
Luo Daoqing thought to himself that since Xu Yi died by hanging, he might be able to escape death this time.
As long as he didn’t commit suicide, wouldn’t he survive the three days?
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