Song Prime Minister was the most suitable person to wear the first green hat.
Xie Yushu remembered that in the script, after Pei Shilin threw her into the water, she fainted, and when she woke up again, Pei Shilin personally brought her a bowl of cooling tangyao and fed her, speaking in a rare gentle tone: “Song Prime Minister’s chronic illness has relapsed. He wants you to go to his mansion and take care of him for one night. My brother’s case—just one word from him and it can be settled privately.”
The real [Xie Yushu] couldn’t accept that her newlywed husband would send her to another man, so she cried her heart out, making a scene between life and death.
But Pei Shilin only sneered coldly and said,
“What are you crying for? Do you think Song Prime Minister would take a fancy to you? Do you think he wants to do anything to you? He just likes your face because you look like Xie Jianing. He wants to use you as her substitute to serve him while he’s seriously ill. Stop flattering yourself.”
He didn’t even have the patience to keep pretending, and said directly,
“If you can’t even do this for the Pei Family, then I’ll have to listen to my mother and divorce you.”
When she read this part of the script, Xie Yushu was so angry her head hurt.
But now, things were different.
She couldn’t wait to try on the green hat…
Ah no, the Wanrenmi System.
So after Pei Shilin finished speaking, she took the initiative and said,
“How about I use this face to beg Song Prime Minister for you?”
She didn’t expect Pei Shilin to be stunned instead, and after a few seconds, he suddenly got angry and said,
“Xie Yushu, do you even know what propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame are? You used this face to gain wealth and marry me, and now you want to use this face to seduce Song Prime Minister? Do you think Song Prime Minister would be interested in you…”
“Don’t you know if he’ll be interested in this face or not?”
Xie Yushu sneered as well, shaking off his hand and leaning weakly against the red pillar.
“What do you mean, using this face to gain wealth? Back then, it wasn’t my mother who seduced Yong’an Marquis and insisted on giving birth to me, was it? I am Marquis Yong’an’s Daughter, born with this face, so wealth and honor are what I deserve. This marriage was something you begged for yourself.”
Pei Shilin was so angered by her shameless words that his face turned pale.
“Shameless!”
“So my husband does know what shame is?”
Xie Yushu retorted sharply, making Pei Shilin so angry he felt dizzy.
The maid hurried to support him, and not far away, someone called out anxiously,
“My son!”
Xie Yushu turned around and saw an old mama supporting another noble lady, both rushing over in a flurry.
The lady rushed to Pei Shilin’s side, supporting him, calling “Shilin” and “Lin-ge’er” over and over.
It must be Pei Shilin’s mother, Mother Li Huixian.
In the script, this Li Huixian looked down on Xie Yushu as a daughter-in-law.
After Xie Yushu married in, she immediately found an excuse to take Xie Yushu’s jiazhuang into her own hands.
All the money spent to save her younger son came from Xie Yushu’s jiazhuang.
With her life value at 1, Xie Yushu really felt unwell, and couldn’t be bothered to watch this mother and son act out.
She went straight into the room, took off her wet clothes, drank two sips of tea from the table, and heard Mother Li Huixian whispering outside to Pei Shilin,
“At a time like this, why argue with her? Saving your brother is what matters. Since she’s willing to go, it saves us an argument. We’ll divorce her sooner or later anyway…”
Such a loud conspiracy, huh?
Xie Yushu drank her tea while glancing outside.
The old mama realized she could hear, and immediately closed the door.
The voices outside soon faded.
Pei Shilin and his mother had gone elsewhere to plot.
Only one lamp was lit in the room, making it especially dim in the rainy night.
Not a single maid was present.
The supporting female Xie Yushu was truly miserable.
The Houfu didn’t care about her, her jiazhuang wasn’t much, and she only had two newly bought maids and a shouxi pozi as her dowry attendants.
The reason was that none of the more prominent maids in the Houfu were willing to serve her, so Lady Marquis Yong’an could only buy two fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girls for her.
Only that shouxi pozi volunteered to serve her and accompany her as her dowry.
But on the very first day after she married in, Mother Li Huixian found an excuse to transfer all her maids and the pozi to the kitchen for menial work.
That’s why, when Pei Shilin bullied her and threw her into the water, there was no one to speak up for her.
She’d basically married into a pit of fire.
Xie Yushu sat in the room, ate some fruit from the table, but still felt suffocated and weak.
The system prompted her that with 1 point of life value, she could only live for ten days.
She needed to complete missions quickly to survive.
She desperately needed to put a green hat on Pei Shilin.
Xie Yushu simply got up to tidy herself up, looked in the mirror, and found her appearance hadn’t changed.
Even the small mole on her nose was still there.
Did she transmigrate in body?
The system responded,
“Yes, Shouxi.”
That was good.
She didn’t feel any guilt about occupying the supporting female Xie Yushu’s body.
She sat in front of the dressing table to do her hair.
When she was an influencer, she’d done makeup and hair tutorials, and she was very familiar with Xie Jianing’s hairstyle in the original drama, so she styled it with ease.
When her hair was almost done, the door was pushed open.
Pei Shilin personally brought in a bowl of tangyao.
Seeing Xie Yushu, dressed only in her inner clothes, sitting at the dressing table doing her hair, the fire he’d suppressed started to rise again.
Xie Yushu didn’t even lift her eyelids when she heard him come in.
She just focused on inserting her hairpin and drawing her brows, her face showing no emotion.
As if she wasn’t the one who’d been made dizzy with anger, but him.
“Looks like Madam’s summer heat has dissipated.”
Pei Shilin put the tangyao on the table, lifted his robe, and sat down to wait for her.
“I have something to say to you.”
Xie Yushu didn’t respond, still drawing her brows.
Pei Shilin tried to suppress his anger.
“You know very well that Song Prime Minister takes you as a stand-in for Xie Jianing.”
His tone turned sarcastic.
“Song Jie’s chronic illness relapsed and he wants you to dress up as Xie Jianing and go to the Prime Minister’s Mansion to take care of him for a night. You must be delighted, right?”
Xie Yushu glanced at him through the bronze mirror and sneered,
“You want me to beg Song Prime Minister to save your brother, right? You sell your wife for glory but won’t admit it?”
Pei Shilin was infuriated, slapping the table and making the tangyao spill.
Before he could speak, Xie Yushu said first,
“Why slap the table? Did I say I wouldn’t go?”
Pei Shilin was stunned.
She—she agreed so easily?
In the dim room, Xie Yushu turned around, showing him her carefully styled face, and asked,
“Do I look like her?”
The gentle wind and drizzle from outside wafted in, the candle flickered on her face, and somehow she’d made her eyes droop slightly, looking even more like Xie Jianing.
She looked so much like her that Pei Shilin’s heart skipped a beat.
He knew the woman before him wasn’t her, but seeing her smile so sweetly, he felt dazed, forgetting what he wanted to say.
“From your expression, I look a lot like her, don’t I?”
Xie Yushu turned back, satisfied, to choose her earrings, speaking businesslike: “Since you want me to do something, you should show the proper attitude of someone asking for a favor.”
Pei Shilin looked at her back, still a bit dazed, his tone much softer,
“How do you want me to ask you?”
He didn’t want to take this step.
No matter how much he disliked Xie Yushu, she was still his wife.
If he weren’t desperate, what man would want to send his wife to serve another man?
But he couldn’t watch his own younger brother die, or see his own career ruined.
Mother was right.
At the very least, he should coax Xie Yushu to get through this crisis, say some soft words, coax her a bit.
She’d admired him for so many years, surely…
“With money, of course.”
Xie Yushu’s answer cut off Pei Shilin’s thoughts.
He looked like he hadn’t heard clearly, and asked in shock,
“What?”
“First: Have your mother return my jiazhuang exactly as it was, not a single coin less.”
Xie Yushu instructed crisply,
“Second: Immediately send back my maids and the pozi who came with me as dowry. Third: I don’t want much money. For helping your family with this, just give me one thousand taels of silver.”
“One thousand taels of silver?”
Pei Shilin was so shocked he jumped up, storming over.
“Your jiazhuang is only being kept by my mother for safekeeping. The Pei Family would never swallow a wife’s jiazhuang! As for maids or pozi, you can have as many as you want. But Xie Yushu, do you think you’re worth one thousand taels?”
Xie Yushu looked at his flustered expression and thought:
Was that too much?
How much is one thousand taels in RMB?
The system immediately replied,
“Shouxi, according to this world’s currency, one thousand taels of silver is about 500,000 RMB.”
So much!
“If I’m not worth a thousand taels, your brother is.”
Xie Yushu thought of the money and felt no anger at all.
“Your career is worth it too. Husband, think carefully.”
Xie Yushu carelessly went to the wardrobe to look at her clothes.
Pei Shilin behind her was fuming, breathing like a bull.
Soon enough, he shouted orders to have her jiazhuang brought back and one thousand taels of silver prepared!
No matter how unwilling Mother Li Huixian was to return the jiazhuang, she couldn’t ignore her younger son’s life at this point.
She could only grit her teeth and do as Xie Yushu said.
After all, Xie Yushu had already married in; her jiazhuang would be used to supplement the Pei Family sooner or later!
Before long, servants from the Pei Family carried large and small boxes into Xie Yushu’s newlywed courtyard.
Two young maids supported the shouxi pozi into the room.
Seeing Xie Yushu, they knelt and wept.
The shouxi pozi, with tears streaming down her face, asked if she’d been bullied.
Their crying made Xie Yushu’s heart ache too. In the script, this mama was called Xi Zhi.
She was a favored mama by the old madam in the Houfu, but broke her leg slipping on snow in winter.
The supporting female Xie Yushu had delivered medicine and applied hot compresses for her—not just to have Xi Zhi speak well of her before the old madam, but she had truly taken care of her for quite some time.
That’s why Xi Zhi was utterly loyal to Xie Yushu.
After the old madam died, she volunteered to serve Xie Yushu, even following her out in marriage.
She was one of the very few people in the story who truly cared for her.
“Get up, I’m fine.”
Xie Yushu helped Xi Zhi up, then looked at the two young maids, thinking: old, weak, sick, and disabled.
The two maids, Jin Ye and Yin Ya, were only fourteen, still growing, skinny with not an ounce of flesh.
Their hair was yellow and malnourished, and after being beaten in the kitchen these last few days, their faces and hands were covered in red marks.
Sigh, when a person is too weak, even those around her suffer.
Xie Yushu gave them all the pastries and fruit on the table, telling them to eat, and handed the silver note for one thousand taels she’d just received to Xi Zhi: “Mama, go exchange this note tomorrow, find someone to build a small kitchen in our courtyard. From now on, we’ll cook for ourselves and eat our own food.”
Xi Zhi took the silver note, looking at her in shock, wiping her tears, and asked,
“Did the young master allow you to build a small kitchen?”
“I don’t care if he allows it or not.”
Since she’d transmigrated, she wouldn’t let herself suffer as in the original story.
The supporting female didn’t just suffer from men; from the first day of marriage, she was bullied by Mother Li Huixian.
At meals, she had to stand and serve her mother-in-law, only eating the leftovers after her mother-in-law finished.
Is that a life for a person?
She patted Xi Zhi’s hand.
“Don’t worry, Mama. I have plenty of ways to make him agree.”
Xi Zhi was still uneasy, worried she’d be too weak and bullied to death by the Pei Family, or too tough and get divorced.
The only one who’d been good to her, the old madam, had passed away.
The Marquis and Lady Marquis Yong’an wouldn’t back her up or let her return to the Yong’an Marquis Manor…
“Are you satisfied now?”
Pei Shilin walked in from outside, face dark and eyes cold as he stared at her.
Xie Yushu flashed him a smile and said to Jin Ye in a businesslike tone,
“Help me find that Hai Tang Red dress. The first time Song Prime Minister mistook me, I was wearing that. I’ll wear it tonight to see him.”
She was beaming with a lively spirit she’d never had before.
Pei Shilin noticed that she’d already styled her hair and chosen earrings, all matching the look she had when Song Jie mistook her.
That day was an early spring outing.
On Xiangshan, the always-cold Song Prime Minister suddenly lost control and rushed into the begonia grove, grabbing Xie Yushu’s arm regardless of propriety.
He’d been standing right next to Xie Yushu at the time, and saw with his own eyes the iceberg-like Song Jie so out of character.
She was so eager—had she always wanted to see Song Jie?
Was she smitten from the first meeting?
After all, she was such a vain woman, and how could a mere Tan Hua Lang compare to the all-powerful Song Prime Minister?
Suppressing his displeasure, he left the room.
Soon, Xie Yushu came out with Jin Ye, instructing Xi Zhi and Yin Ya to stay in the courtyard and organize her jiazhuang—clear it all out.
The Prime Minister’s Mansion’s carriage was already waiting outside the back gate of the Pei Family.
The one sent to fetch her was Song Jie’s personal attendant, Cang Shu.
Pei Shilin escorted her to the back gate, wanting to say something, but she was already impatiently holding Jin Ye’s hand, walking to the carriage, and gently said to the coachman,
“You’re Cang Shu, right? I remember Song Prime Minister called you that during the spring outing.”
She even remembered the name of Song Jie’s attendant—she must pay a lot of attention to Song Prime Minister.
Pei Shilin felt a nameless anger and heard her sweetly say to the attendant,
“Cang Shu, can you help me up?”
There was no mounting stool under the carriage, and the maid supporting her looked weak and thin.
She really couldn’t get on the carriage herself.
Pei Shilin suppressed his annoyance and wanted to help her himself, but saw the tall, broad-shouldered attendant in a bamboo hat bend down, clasp his hands, and place them by Xie Yushu’s Hai Tang Red skirt, saying stiffly,
“Madam, step on me.”
Xie Yushu couldn’t help but smile, saying,
“Is this really okay?” while placing her hand on Cang Shu’s strong shoulder and stepping onto his hands.
What did that expression mean?
She was really happy.
Once she was seated in the carriage, Xie Yushu reached out and lightly draped her Tian Qing Handkerchief over Cang Shu’s hand, which she had just stepped on, and said from inside the carriage,
“Thank you, wipe it off.”