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nThey returned to the living room. According to Tang Qiu, their business was done and they could go. She didn’t matter to the Fengs, and she didn’t care that the rules mandated that she must return home to them. If it were possible, she would have been content never to see them again in this lifetime.

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nBut when she voiced her thoughts, she was met with an uncharacteristically insistent reply from Jiang Shaocheng: “We will wait.”

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nIf he had been ignorant to the kind of life Tang Qiu had endured in the Feng family, he might have been willing to let things slide. But having witnessed it with his own two eyes, he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.

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nTwenty minutes later, Fang Guo’an arrived, flustered and in a hurry. Having Jiang Ming in his house filled him with equal parts excitement and nervousness. When the second young master of the Jiang family had first approached his family looking for prospective partners–and later settling on Feng Lu–Fang Guo’an had assumed he was finding a bride for himself. Only afterwards had he discovered that it was the elder brother Feng Lu was due to marry.

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nIt was said that the eldest son of the Jiangs was frail and sick, with a disfigured face and broken legs, ill-favored by his family. The Fengs hadn’t expected them to abide by the rule of letting Tang Qiu return home after the marriage.

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nJiang Ming’s patience had all but whittled away during those twenty minutes of being forced to wait. “Fang Guo’an, you’re truly something. We agreed that Feng Lu would marry my brother, but you deceived us and broke our bargain by swapping her out for Tang Qiu. Do you take the Jiang family for fools?”

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nFang Guo’an removed his hat, willing his legs not to tremble in fear. They would have to be fools not to take the Jiangs seriously. The Jiang family was the most powerful in their circle of elites; the Fangs were as small and insignificant as ants compared to them. But Feng Lu had refused to marry a man sickly unto the point of death, and Feng Guo’an had been reluctant to ship his pretty younger daughter off to meet such a fate, however, leaving him with his bastard child.

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nHe thought that everything would be resolved after Tang Qiu had married that weak, listless man. He certainly hadn’t expected that the second young master of the Jiangs would come back to settle the score after the wedding.

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nFeng Guo’an was racking his brains trying to figure out how to explain the situation to placate Jiang Ming, when his second daughter Feng Yao spoke up. “Second Young Master, it wasn’t that my elder sister refused to marry your brother. It was Tang Qiu. She cried and cajoled and pleaded with my sister, saying that she had loved Young Master Jiang in secret for ages, and how badly she wanted to marry him. My sister, naive fool that she was, actually bought into her nonsense and left the country, so that Tang Qiu could take her place on the wedding day. My father was left with no choice in the matter.”

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nJiang Ming swore. Were these people incapable of speaking up? If they had just said something, he could have simply picked some woman off the streets to replace Feng Lu–anything but letting a beauty like Tang Qiu fall into the feeble trembling hands of his brother!

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nTang Qiu was on the verge of refuting the distorted picture of events Fang Yao had painted, when Jiang Shaocheng suddenly took hold of her hand, quieting her. “Hold on a while. Don’t worry.”

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nJiang Shaocheng’s gentleness was oddly comforting; Tang Qiu felt her anger slowly fade away. Her eyes drifted to their intertwined hands. Her husband’s hand felt icy, perhaps due to his poor health. Without thinking, she grasped him back, trying to provide him with her own warmth. In truth, it was no rarity for Feng Yao to twist the facts and use them against her. She had been incensed at being wronged the first few times, of course, but eventually she had gotten used to it.

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nLatching onto Feng Yao’s story, Feng Guo’an said to Jiang Ming, “My deepest apologies, Second Young Master. Tang Qiu was raised amongst our family, and she is close to both her sisters. We must have spoiled her too much, the silly girl, for her to make such a foolish mistake. Tang Qiu is still young and ignorant. If she has done something to enrage you both, allow me to beg for forgiveness on her behalf.”

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nFang Yao suddenly stood and said indignantly, “Dad, Tang Qiu is twenty. She’s not a child anymore. You keep letting her get away with little things, just because you raised her, and what do you get in exchange for your softheartedness? She tricked her sister into going overseas, all so she could don her wedding gown and make use of her identity to marry Young Master Jiang. Was she thinking about our family then? Did she even care that we would be the ones to suffer for her mistake if she was found out?”

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nChen Man wiped a single tear from her eye. “That’s enough, Yaoyao. It’s all my fault. I took pity on Tang Qiu for being an orphan amongst our family and was too indulgent with her. How could I have known that she would grow to become so bold and land us all in such a fiasco?”

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nTang Qiu listened to their fabricated sob story, complete with snot and tears, each sentence punctuated with choked weeping. If she didn’t know better, she could almost find herself being moved by their performance.

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nJiang Ming, however, couldn’t care less what they had to say. He only had one request: “Since we got the wrong bride, I’m giving you a day’s time to find Feng Lu and bring her back.”

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nOnly then would the beautiful Tang Qiu belong to him.

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