Chapter 51

Chapter 51: The River Goddess?

The busybody shook with anger. “This place isn’t even close to the capital! Your fields are, at best, second-grade. You’re ripping people off in broad daylight, and you still dare claim you’re giving Marquis Yong Chang Manor’s madam face?”

The old farmer didn’t answer.

He tossed the hoe aside, dropped onto the ground, and sat there with the stubborn calm of a man who’d decided to play dead.

“Brother,” Li Ming De said, voice flat, “should we just find somewhere else?”

Were these fields planted with silver? Did they bury gold in the dirt?

This old farmer’s mouth was truly a lion’s.

Su Xuan Ming—dazed for a beat—snapped back at Li Ming De’s words. He let out a long breath, then said, “Buy it. We’ll draw up the contract right now.”

“Brother!”

“Su Da Lang!”

Su Xuan Ming waved them down, smiling as if it were nothing. “Mother said it yesterday. If we can’t rent it, then we buy it.”

The old farmer kept glancing at him, muttering under his breath. “Could the marchioness really be an immortal descended to the mortal world? How can she see things so perfectly?”

The busybody’s jaw dropped. He swallowed, throat gone dry. “Mother of me… are you all putting on a show? Is there really someone who never misses a single step?”

Su Xuan Ming didn’t care what anyone believed. If Mother had already pointed to a road, why wouldn’t he walk it?

Even the heavens seemed to oblige. The sky stayed heavy and overcast, yet not a single drop fell—right up until Su Xuan Ming and the old farmer returned to the capital and signed the deed.

The moment the busybody stepped back into familiar streets, people swarmed him from all sides.

“Song Da! Did you follow them all the way? The boatman said Si Li Bridge collapsed—is it true? How can that be?”

“Song Da! I saw Su Da Lang go to the yamen with a farmer—did something happen?”

“Song Da—”

Overwhelmed by voices—neighbors he knew and strangers who acted like they did—Song Da climbed onto a stool and cleared his throat.

“Don’t rush, don’t rush!” he called. “Let me drink a cup of tea first, then I’ll tell you everything.”

He had barely sat when a shop clerk from Fu Quan Teahouse appeared with a polite smile. “Song Da, our proprietor says a fine horse deserves a fine saddle. You’ve worked hard—why not come upstairs for tea and pastries?”

As he spoke, the clerk pressed a small piece of silver into Song Da’s palm.

Song Da weighed it, his smile blooming instantly. He hopped up and headed straight for Fu Quan Teahouse.

The teahouse’s resident storyteller, unwilling as he was, had to give up his best seat. He sat below with a sulky face, listening while Song Da took the stage and spilled gossip.

“We followed the Hui Min River west,” Song Da began. “When we were close to Si Li Bridge, we saw it collapse with our own eyes. Su Da Lang laughed and said this was exactly the place the marchioness meant. Then we went ashore and found a little courtyard…”

The telling was plain, almost dry—but it was firsthand, and it was hot, and that was enough. People crowded in all the same.

The storyteller listened, eyes turning, spinning and polishing the tale in his head. By the next day, his version drew even more guests.

“Marquis Yong Chang Manor’s madam,” he declared, “was once the River Goddess in human form—cast into the mortal world to pass a tribulation.”

“She told Su Da Lang, ‘When the boat reaches the bridge, it will straighten itself.’ It sounded like comfort, yet every word hid a deeper meaning.”

“When Su Da Lang followed her guidance to Si Li Bridge, she sent down forty-nine bolts of heavenly thunder! In an instant, she blasted the centuries-old bridge into rubble!”

“With his road cut off, Su Da Lang climbed ashore—and there, in rolling mist, a white-bearded old farmer appeared and presented the deed with both hands.”

Commoners of the age trusted Buddhism and Daoism, and they loved a ghost story. They listened with shining eyes.

A more clear-headed onlooker raised a hand. “If the marchioness is the River Goddess, why was she so ordinary for decades before now?”

The storyteller snapped back without missing a beat. “A god’s soul in a mortal body—she was suppressed for ten whole years by Marquis Yong Chang Manor. But once she met a golden dragon, she turned into rain!”

The crowd nodded as if enlightened, the explanation somehow satisfying.

A rugged man with a thick beard—so dense his face was hard to see—cut in. “That day the sky was dark, but no one saw lightning.”

The storyteller rolled his eyes. “Sun in the east, rain in the west. The capital didn’t thunder, but the south did!”

Someone echoed, “It’s true. I heard dull booms that day, like they came from very far away.”

The rugged man lowered his head, eyes deepening.

No rain, yet muffled thunder… was it truly heavenly thunder, or some other weapon?

After all, Marquis Yong Chang Manor’s madam—Gu Nan Xi—was the only daughter of War God General Gu.

As the storyteller gathered his things to leave, another guest stood up.

He was only twelve or thirteen, skin sun-browned, features strikingly handsome. His hair was braided into dirty little plaits, and his official speech carried a foreign accent.

“If she’s the River Goddess,” the boy asked, “why didn’t she give the deed directly to her son?”

The storyteller flicked open his fan, leaning in like he was sharing a secret. “Even the eminent monk of Tang had to pass eighty-one trials to gain the true scriptures. The River Goddess wants to temper her son—so even if there’s no hardship, she makes one.”

The foreign boy’s pupils tightened.

So that was it.

He glanced sideways at the silent strongman beside him, then spoke in a low, steady voice. “I’m going to Marquis Yong Chang Manor. Heaven has guided me. I believe Marquis Yong Chang Manor’s madam is my destined benefactor.”

The rumor of the River Goddess spread like wildfire. Even on Da Xiang Guo Temple’s open day that month, believers asked about her.

Meanwhile, Gu Nan Xi stayed at Marquis Yong Chang Manor and couldn’t catch a glimpse of Su Xuan Ming or Su Yun Ting for days. Even Su Yun Yan—who used to check in at the main courtyard daily—hadn’t come in several days, busy preparing her shop.

“Lu Mei…” Gu Nan Xi started, then sighed. “Forget it.”

She considered helping Su Xuan Ming find another location.

Then she remembered—she knew the capital less well than those boys did.

In silence, she opened her money box and counted out a few banknotes. If Su Xuan Ming truly ran out of options, she could still support them a little more.

“Master,” Lu Mei said hesitantly, “there are rumors in the capital…”

Gu Nan Xi’s temples throbbed.

The capital’s gossip was truly insane.

Just thinking about the previous “lover” rumor made embarrassment burn up her neck all over again.

“Lu Mei,” she said, forcing calm, “rumors stop with the wise.”

Remembering what the young emperor had said—that the rumors had started at Marquis Yong Chang Manor—Gu Nan Xi warned the servants again. “Don’t spread nonsense everywhere.”

The moment Lu Mei stepped outside, servants swarmed her.

“Sister Lu Mei, what did Master mean?”

Lu Mei lowered her voice as if it were a sacred secret. “Rumors stop with the wise. When believers asked Master Hui Ming of Da Xiang Guo Temple about the river god, he said all things have spirits. What he meant was that Master is the River Goddess!”

She swept her gaze over them, sharp and warning. “Master has entrusted us with something this important. We must not speak carelessly. Do you understand?”

“Understood! Don’t worry, Sister Lu Mei!”

That afternoon, a new rumor spread through the city with astonishing speed.

Confirmed.

Marquis Yong Chang Manor’s madam personally admitted it—she was the river god.