Chapter 27

Chapter 27: The Buddhist Scion Cousin’s Debauchery in Broad Daylight

Xiao Man burst out of the bathhouse with her heart still pounding like a drum trapped in a cage. Her face was hot enough to fry an egg, and she was still clutching that unlucky towel in a death grip.

She wanted nothing more than to find a crack in the ground and vanish into it.

Instead, she looked up—and collided with someone standing at the courtyard gate.

A young miss, thirteen or fourteen at most, dressed in pale-yellow brocade, hair arranged in neat twin buns, stared at Xiao Man with wide almond eyes and a small mouth hanging open.

Her expression was pure, horrified disbelief—the look of someone who’d just watched a ghost walk through a wall.

She was Lin Yu Ning, the youngest third miss from Lin Qing Xuan’s second uncle’s household.

Lin Yu Ning had come under her two sisters’ “secret order,” claiming she had questions about Buddhist teachings so she could sniff around—and, while she was at it, take a look at the maid said to be stirring trouble.

Old Chen Tou had told her that cousin was bathing and asked her to wait in the hall.

As if she could sit.

She’d wandered out hoping for an “accidental” meeting with Xiao Man, only to witness a scene that seared itself into her mind.

Xiao Man—clothes slightly rumpled, cheeks blazing, a white towel clenched in her hand—had just run out of cousin’s bathhouse like her life depended on it.

That image.

That timing.

That state.

A mushroom cloud went off in Lin Yu Ning’s head.

Every lurid, thrilling storybook scene she’d ever read flooded in at once. In that moment, she forgot Buddhist principles, forgot her mission, forgot every stitch of proper decorum.

Terrified out of her wits, she grabbed her skirt and bolted.

She ran faster than a startled rabbit.

Lin Yu Ning sprinted all the way back to the General’s residence, threw herself into the pavilion in the back garden, and nearly collapsed, panting. Her face had gone pale, and her hair ornaments had tilted crooked.

“Yu Ning! What kind of behavior is this?”

Eldest sister Lin Yu Wan frowned the moment she saw her. “Where are your manners?”

Lin Yu Ning braced one hand on the cool stone pillar, gasping for air. With the other, she pointed wildly toward Auspicious Cloud Residence, her small chest heaving, her voice sharp with disbelief and the edge of tears.

“Eldest Sister! Second Sister! It’s not that I have no manners—cousin has no manners! Debauchery in broad daylight! He’s debauching in broad daylight!”

“What?”

“My little ancestor—what nonsense are you saying?” Lin Yu Jiao jolted and lunged forward, clapping a hand over her sister’s mouth. Her face went pale. “Do you want to die? You can’t say things like that!”

Lin Yu Ning struggled, muffled sounds spilling out. She pried Lin Yu Jiao’s hand away with all her strength and blurted out what she’d seen, every word faster than the last—and twice as embellished.

“It’s true! I saw it with my own eyes!”

“That maid had to be Xiao Man. Her hair was all messed up, her face red as a baboon’s backside, and she was clutching a white towel like it was her lifeline!”

“She ran out of cousin’s bathhouse—ran so fast! The way she looked—like she’d done something terribly guilty!”

“Cousin must still be in there. He must still be inside the tub, and he definitely isn’t wearing anything!”

“It wasn’t even dark! If that isn’t debauchery in broad daylight, what is?”

Silence fell over the pavilion so suddenly it felt like the world had stopped breathing.

Lin Yu Wan’s teacup knocked against the stone table with a hard clack, scalding tea splashing out. She didn’t even notice. Her composed face was caught between shock and bewilderment.

Lin Yu Jiao covered her own mouth now, eyes round as coins—stunned, and beneath the disbelief, faintly, guiltily thrilled, as if her entire understanding of her cousin had shattered into glittering pieces.

Lin Yu Ning stood there trembling, wearing the triumphant look of someone who had delivered indisputable evidence… and still looked half ready to faint.

Three sisters, three different expressions, one shared thought ringing through them all:

Their cousin—the cold, untouchable Buddhist Scion—

played this wild?