Chapter 381: Convergence(1)_1
Xiao Hong and Xiao Qing brought Cai Wei’s bedding from the West Ear Room and carefully placed it on Lady Mei’s kang, before carefully retreating.
In the face of the missy of Fourth Aunt’s family, they always felt an inexplicable awe, getting nervous at the sight of her. Even though the young miss was always pleasant and had never lost her temper with them, for some reason, her light smile always had a chilling undertone that was hard to decipher, making anyone who saw it shiver involuntarily.
It was getting late, and Cai Wei asked her maternal grandmother, Lady Mei, and Fei’er to lie down.
After they lied down and blew out the candle, the three generations huddled in bed, chatting nonchalantly. Lady Mei, who had endured a lonely and hard life, finally had someone to talk heart-to-heart with and inevitably became more talkative. As they were talking, they touched upon Lady Mei’s past.
As it turned out, Lady Mei did not come from an average family. Her father was the supervisor of the Jiangnan Weaving Bureau, handling all sorts of textiles for the royal court. He held the fifth rank and their family was once thriving.
However, her father was caught off guard when he ordered a batch of fabric woven with a design of a Xiyan flower, a flower that only blooms at night and wilts overnight, symboling a short life. This fabric provoked the wrath of the Empress of the previous dynasty. She filed a complaint before the Emperor, which enraged him. As a result, their family fell from grace, and her father was convicted of a serious crime and thrown into prison. Their whole family, dozens of people, was demoted to slave status.
As the Mei family held the unique skill of Shu embroidery, after their fall, many prominent families in the capital dispatched people to Jiangnan to redeem the female members of the Mei family to become embroiderers. Lady Mei was acquired at that time by the Duke An’s mansion. Not long after, she caught the Duke’s eye and became his concubine.
As for the rest of the story, Cai Wei and Cai Fei already knew it. Nevertheless, they could not help feeling a profound sense of empathy and sigh at the revelation of their grandmother’s arduous past!