Chu Lian had swallowed down the hasma like it was bitter medicine. However, she saw that Matriarch He and Madam Zou were slowly savouring it. They would alternate between taking a single bite of hasma and drinking a mouthful of soup, as if they were eating some rare delicacy. If she hadn’t personally seen that charred hasma being split between the three bowls, Chu Lian might even have thought that they had been served different dishes.
All the tea served here was sencha. Chu Lian didn’t dare to deviate too much from common sense in front of Matriarch He; essentially, she was stuck. She couldn’t ask for another drink, but she couldn’t stomach drinking the sencha, either.
After the meal, Matriarch He and Madam Zou were given wet handkerchiefs by the maidservants. They then elegantly dabbed at their lips and rinsed their mouths.
Matriarch He wanted to take a nap in the late afternoon, so Chu Lian took the chance to escape back to her own Songtao Court.
She really didn’t dare to stay any longer, lest Matriarch He force her to eat something else equally weird.
He Sanlang still hadn’t returned in the afternoon. When Chu Lian got back to her courtyard, the first thing she did was gulp down three cups of plain water before gargling with some fine salt. Only then did she manage to get rid of that strange taste in her mouth.
After being tormented for half the day, Chu Lian was finally able to rest. She leaned against the sofa by the window, relaxing as she enjoyed the cool summer breeze. It was gentle as it blew in from the outside, perfectly comfortable to take a nap in.
Xiyan and the other maidservants noticed how drowsy she looked. They brought over a thin blanket to drape over her before they quietly retreated, leaving her in peace.
When Chu Lian finally woke up, almost two hours had passed. The moment she raised her arm, she caught sight of the red jade bangle on her wrist and thought of what her sister-in-law, Madam Zou, had told her that morning.
She wrinkled her brows for a moment before calling out, “Xiyan!”
Xiyan hurriedly walked in. “Third Young Madam, do you have any orders for this servant?”
Chu Lian got up from the sofa. Her right hand toyed with the lustrous bangle on her left wrist as she said, “Let’s go. I want to look at my dowry in the storeroom.”
“Ah? You want to look at your dowry?” Xiyan clearly hadn’t expected that Chu Lian would abruptly ask for something like that. The dowry had been selected before the wedding, and Chu Lian had overseen the addition of every item on the list. She was probably the one who knew best how much everything was worth. Why did she still want to look at the dowry?
“Yes, what’s wrong? Am I not allowed to look at my own dowry?”
Xiyan quickly shook her head. “Please wait for a moment; this servant will go and retrieve the key to the storeroom now.”
Chu Lian was a little excited as she waved Xiyan away with a smile. “Go, go.”
At the very least, she was a legitimate daughter of House Ying. Although she wasn’t a favoured one, the House of Duke Ying had to have given her a decent dowry. She had been married out to the House of Count Jing’an, after all.
In her previous life, she had had to earn every single cent of her money. However, after coming to the Great Wu Dynasty, she had gotten a fortune that was all hers without having to do anything at all. Just thinking about it made her quite happy.
In the Great Wu Dynasty, all daughters who married out of their houses had their dowries recorded with the local authorities. Their dowries were their personal assets. Even if they divorced their husbands later on, the women could take every single bit of their dowries away with them, no questions asked. This was one of the laws of marriage in the Great Wu Dynasty. Thus, the more dowry the new brides brought with them, the more respected they would be in their new households. In this thriving capital, the amount of dowry was a measure of how favoured the daughter was in her maiden family. With a thicker dowry, they would be able to hold their heads high, even in gatherings with all the other noble wives later on.
The novel had not described Chu Lian’s dowry, and since Chu Lian had entered this Great Wu Dynasty right at the time of her wedding, she hadn’t had any time to take a look for herself. Thus, she was still in the dark about the size of her personal wealth.
