Fan Changyu found it strange. Just as she was about to continue on home, however, the woman gave her a peculiar look and said, “The people from the gambling house went to your home again. Your husband…”

Before the woman could finish, the figure before her suddenly blurred. Fan Changyu grabbed a shoulder pole leaning against the wall and hurried straight into the alley.

扁担 (biǎndan) or shoulder pole is more precise than “pole.” It’s the traditional woohousepole used to carry loads, usually balanced across the shoulders.

The woman hadn’t expected Fan Changyu to be so quick to panic. She called after her, “Your husband wasn’t hurt! He’s the one who crippled someone from the gambling house!”

Unfortunately, Fan Changyu was already too far away to hear her clearly.

From a distance, she could already see quite a crowd gathered outside her house, watching the commotion. Her heart immediately tightened. Her grip on the shoulder pole grew even firmer as she shouted, “Make way!”

Seeing her charging toward them with a shoulder pole in hand, the onlookers hurriedly scattered to either side.

Just then, the gambling house’s underling, Master Jin, came storming out through the entrance of the Fan house, its main gate having been torn down. He leaned on a long staff, baring his teeth with a vicious look. Before he could even react to the sight of the furious Fan Changyu, a single swing of her shoulder pole sent him flying sideways. He crashed to the ground and lay there motionless.

Fan Changyu planted the shoulder pole against the ground and looked into her own courtyard. She had been about to demand an explanation, but when she saw the gambling-housethugs staring at her in terror, even the man who had been dragging himself out on one leg began scrambling backward instead.

Yet beneath the eaves at the far end of the courtyard sat a stern, cold-faced man in a grand armchair, a cane in his hand.

Grandmaster Chair (太师椅 - Tàishī Yǐ): A traditional high-backed armchair featuring rigid, angular armrests.

Caught between advancing and retreating, the gambling-housethugs huddled together in the courtyard, trembling like leaves. Each was a burly, hulking man, yet at that moment, they looked like a miserable patch of little cabbages battered by the elements.

Fan Changyu: ?

She stared at the man sitting beneath the eaves in disbelief. He had beaten all these people?

He was injured so badly that he needed a cane just to walk. How could he still handle a fight?

The neighbors gathered at the entrance, thinking Fan Changyu was about to give the men another beating, hurriedly tried to stop her. “Changyu, don’t hit them anymore! Your husband already beat them up! Look at them, they’ve all had their legs broken! Who knows how much you’ll have to pay for their medical expenses!”

The moment Fan Changyu heard that she might have to pay, she hurriedly grabbed Master Jin, who was lying on the ground pretending to be dead, by the collar and hauled him to his feet.

Master Jin’s face went deathly pale. With two streams of blood pouring from his battered nose, he begged for mercy. “Fan Da Guniang, Fan Da Guniang, please, show some mercy and let me go! I swear I’ll never dare do it again!”

He threw both hands up to shield his face. “Please, don’t hit me anymore…”

Fan Changyu glared fiercely as she pointed at the front gate of her house, which had been torn down. “You bullies are just dogs who rely on its master’s power! You tore down my front gate, how are you going to pay for it?”

She had to tally up the damage to her own house quickly. Better yet, they had already broken their legs—hopefully they wouldn’t have the gall to make her pay their medical expenses on top of that!

Her gaze swept farther into the courtyard. Apart from the gambling house thugs huddled together in a frightened cluster, she found, to her surprise, that not a single jar or vase had been smashed.

The man beneath the eaves sat in a grand armchair. Though his face was pale, his presence was so imposing that it was downright oppressive. The door behind him was also perfectly intact. Clearly, the gambling house men had never even made it inside.

Fan Changyu could only look at the man over several times. When she finally spotted a little blood seeping through the front of his robe, she at last found another reason to be angry and continued scolding them: “My husband is injured! You had the numbers on your side and ganged up on him, beating him into this state! Forget the external wounds—who knows how serious his internal injuries are. Just imagine how much tael of silver it’ll cost to have a physician examine him!”

Master Jin hurriedly reached into his robe and rummaged around, pulling out a handful of broken silver taels and wen coins. He thrust them all toward Fan Changyu. “I’ll pay! I’ll pay! Fan Da Guniang, please let me go!”

Fan Changyu: “……”

She had only meant to scare these gambling-house men. Somehow, though, things seemed to be taking a rather strange turn.

Distracted for a moment, she loosened her grip on Master Jin’s collar. The latter was so terrified that he nearly lost his wits. After placing the bits of silver and coins on the ground, he immediately scrambled away, rolling and crawling as he fled.

The trembling thugs in the courtyard saw this. After freezing for a moment, they too fished some wen coins out from inside their robes, placed them on the ground, and then promptly limped out through the Fan house’s front gate.

The onlookers stared at Fan Changyu and her sickly, pale-faced live-in husband as though they were some kind of strange freaks.

The gambling house thugs not only collected gambling debts, but often prowled the streets collecting protection money as well. This was the first time anyone had ever managed to take money from them instead.

保护费 is protection money—money extracted from people/businesses by threatening or claiming to “protect” them.

Fan Changyu was a little bewildered herself.

Only after the onlookers had dispersed did she point at the front gate, which had apparently been kicked hard enough to snap its hinges and leave it leaning inward, and ask, “They were the ones who tore down the gate, right?”

The man beneath the eaves nodded.

Only then did Fan Changyu let out a sigh of relief.

At least she hadn’t wrongly accused them!

With mixed feelings, she picked up the pieces of silver and wen coins from the ground. Then she walked over and asked, “I noticed the bandages on you have soaked through with blood. Did your wounds split open again?”

Xie Zheng said nothing.

Remembering how all the gambling-house men had limped away, Fan Changyu said, “You’re injured. If something like this happens again, try to bear with it if you can. At least wait until I come back and let me deal with it…”

The other party remained silent, leaving Fan Changyu feeling a little awkward. After all, all these troubles had arisen because of her family affairs. She added, “If your wounds keep splitting open, you’re the one who has to suffer for it.”

Xie Zheng finally spoke. “They were too noisy.”

The sunlight slanted across him, with the bridge of his nose dividing his face in two. The upper half was cloaked in the shadow beneath the eaves, while sunlight illuminated the lower half. His pallor gave his features a crystalline clarity, like ice and snow. His expression was cool and distant, and he truly had an exceptionally handsome face.

His temper, however, was decidedly less impressive.

Hearing his reason, Fan Changyu was at a loss for words for a moment.

Xie Zheng clearly had no desire to say anything more. He rose and went back inside.

Little Changning timidly poked half her head out from the kitchen and called for Fan Changyu, “Ah Jie.”

Fan Changyu walked over and gently rubbed her younger sister’s head. “Did you get scared?”

Changning nodded, then shook her head. “Da Gege… Jiefu is so amazing!”

大哥哥 (dà gēge) is an affectionate way for a child to address an older young man, while 姐夫 (jiěfu) is older sister's husband / brother-in-law.

Fan Changyu paused at the way she addressed the man, guessing that Auntie Zhao must have taught her to call him that. She asked, “Amazing because he beat up the bad guys?”

Changning nodded. “Those people called Jiefu a little white face and even called him a cripple, but Jiefu beat up all their legs until they were crippled too!”

小白脸 is a particularly interesting insult. It literally means “little white face,” but refers to a pretty-faced, effeminate man, often with the implication that he is dependent on a woman. In this context, the gambling-house men are insulting Xie Zheng's appearance and masculinity.

Her eyes shone as she recounted it all. “Ah Jie, what does ‘little white face’ mean? Does it mean Jiefu’s face is really white?”

Remembering what she herself had just said earlier, Fan Changyu’s feelings suddenly became complicated. She told her younger sister, “That’s an insult. Ningniang isn’t allowed to say it, understand?”

Little Changning nodded obediently .

Fan Changyu gave her the packet of maltose candies she had bought and told her to play in the courtyard and not wander too far. She then went to fetch some of the medicine they kept at home for treating injuries. When she reached Xie Zheng’s door, she hesitated briefly before raising her hand and knocking.

“What is it?” came the man’s cool yet resonant voice from inside.

“I brought you some medicine,” Fan Changyu said.

There was no response from inside for quite some time.

Fan Changyu pressed her lips together. In the end, she still said, “I’m sorry. I should have thought of it sooner. After you married into my family, they were bound to say all sorts of hurtful things about you…”

The door suddenly opened, cutting her off mid-sentence.

He seemed to have been tending to his wounds just moments ago. His outer robe was draped over his shoulders, while only the lower ties of his inner garment had been fastened. The topmost ones had yet to be tied, leaving his well-defined collarbones and a small portion of his firm chest exposed. His handsome, strikingly sharp features wore a displeased expression.

“You think breaking one of their legs wasn’t enough?”

Fan Changyu hurriedly shook her head.

Xie Zheng’s eyelids lifted slightly. “I’m not so petty as to take the words of a few pieces of trash to heart. Like I said, they were simply too noisy.”

He turned and went back inside. Fan Changyu followed and instinctively asked, “Do you need me to help?”

The man suddenly turned his head and gave her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. Then he tied the final fastening of his inner garment. “It’s already taken care of.”

Fan Changyu: “……”

He made it sound as though she had some ulterior motive for helping him apply his medicine!

She was still holding the new hair ribbon she had bought. Giving it to him now would only make it seem as though she really did have improper intentions toward him. So when his gaze swept toward her, she expressionlessly tied it around her own high ponytail.

“This is a hair ribbon I bought for myself.”

Dark blue wasn’t exactly a color suited to women, yet once she tied it on, it gave her an unexpectedly dashing, almost heroic air.

Xie Zheng’s expression grew somewhat subtle.

Fan Changyu felt she had managed to save face. She was not one to hold a grudge for long. After placing the bottle of medicine on the table, she told him about what had happened at the yamen earlier that day.

“Wang Shu told me that Fan Da has submitted a formal complaint to the county office. Until the case is settled, I can’t transfer the house and land into my name yet. I figure the gambling house must still be holding a grudge over the humiliation they suffered last time. After getting in touch with Fan Da, they probably decided to use this method to scare you away.”

In the eyes of those gambling-house men, he was an outsider in Lin’an Town, with no connections there, and he was injured to boot. They couldn’t have found an easier person to bully.

After all, an ordinary person would have been scared out of their wits if a group like that showed up at their door to intimidate them.

If her live-in husband ran away, then all her efforts making him marry him into the family would have been for nothing, and the house and land would eventually go back to Fan Da.

The man who had seemed completely uninterested in what she was saying suddenly remarked, “Under the Great Yin Code, in the section concerning the establishment of female households, another provision should be added: an orphaned girl should also be permitted to register a household in her own name.”

女户 (nǚhù): female household / household headed by a woman.

Fan Changyu knew that widows were allowed to head their own households and register themselves as household heads, but she had never heard of an orphaned girl being allowed to do the same.

For girls like her, who had lost both parents, the usual practice was for their clan relatives to take possession of the family’s house and land, and then raise the girls until they were old enough to be married off.

How those relatives chose to “raise” them, however, depended entirely on whether they had any conscience. Those with none could sell a girl straight into a brothel. More commonly, they would order the orphaned girl around and treat her like a servant. Then, once she reached marriageable age, they would marry her off like livestock, giving her to whoever was willing to pay the most.

When Fan Changyu’s parents had first passed away, Fan Da and his wife had come to her home and said they would take her and Changning in and raise them as their own daughters. How could Fan Changyu not know what sort of people the couple were? She refused no matter what they said.

That was how Fan Da’s repeated attempts to come and seize the land deeds began.

She clearly didn’t take his suggestion seriously as she said, “The laws are all made by those high-ranking officials in the capital. Which of those lords doesn’t have three wives and four concubines, with children filling the household? They’d never be the ones left without an heir. Even if disaster befell a family and only an orphaned girl remained, she’d be taken in by relatives who had some standing. She wouldn’t lack food or clothing. Those officials don’t even know what life is like for orphaned girls among the common people, so why would they make laws to protect them?”

Xie Zheng remained silent. Before he had fallen on hard times, he truly hadn’t even heard of the plight of orphaned girls among ordinary people.

Seeing that he wasn’t responding, Fan Changyu assumed she’d shut him down a little too harshly. She scratched her hair and awkwardly tried to make up for it. “Still, if some official happened to learn about the situation of orphaned girls and was willing to propose laws for their protection, that would certainly be a good thing.”

Xie Zheng, however, was considering whether allowing orphaned girls to establish their own households was actually feasible. “The court reduces corvée labor and taxes for female-headed households. If orphaned girls were permitted to register as heads of their own households, they should receive the same exemption. But if an orphaned girl married or took a husband into her household, thereby adding a man to the family, she could no longer be exempt from corvée labor and taxes. The paperwork involved would be rather complicated.”

Fan Changyu listened with a bewildered expression. “You know this much about the Great Yin Code?”

Realizing that he had said too much, Xie Zheng lowered his gaze. “I’ve simply traveled around a fair bit and picked up more knowledge along the way.”

Fan Changyu didn’t suspect a thing. She reached into the pocket of her robe and pulled out the household registration document. “Oh, right. Your household registration document has been sorted out. The county officials are arresting refugees and beggars on sight now, and outsiders entering the city without household registration papers or a travel permit can be thrown into prison. Getting a replacement household registration isn’t easy these days. Wang Shu had to call in a favor to get yours done.”

At this, Xie Zheng’s gaze immediately darkened. “The officials are arresting refugees?”

Fan Changyu nodded. “I even saw it with my own eyes on the way back. I heard they changed the Military Commissioner in the northwest, and he issued the order because he was afraid bandits and brigands would raid people’s homes during the New Year.”

As she spoke, she suddenly looked up at Xie Zheng. “I also heard that Marquis Wu’an died on the battlefield in Chongzhou. You came here as a refugee from Chongzhou, do you know if it’s true?”

“I don’t know.”

Fan Changyu sighed. “If Marquis Wu’an really did die, that would be quite a pity.”

A smile appeared on the other’s pale face, carrying a hint of something that was neither quite a smile nor quite mockery.

“Why would that be a pity?”