"What are you standing there for? Beat her," Madam Wang said, looking at the stunned house guards with displeasure.
The house guards immediately came to their senses, grabbed their weapons, and charged at Wu Caiwei. She happened to feel her body stiffen from sitting for so long and thought it was time to stretch her muscles.
Wu Caiwei landed a punch or a kick on each of them. Madam Wang was dumbfounded. She had never imagined that a woman could possess such strength, and that so many men were no match for her. All the house guards lay on the ground, and Wu Caiwei slowly walked towards her with ill intent.
"You... what do you want to do?" Madam Wang backed away nervously.
Wu Caiwei cornered her against the wall. Seeing her trembling all over, she was finally satisfied and said meaningfully, "I originally didn't want to join the Wang family. It was you who insisted on marrying me. I figured since you wanted to marry me so badly, I'd go ahead. After all, the Wang family is the wealthiest in the county. I also want to wear gold and silver, eat delicacies, and live the life of a young mistress. Speaking of money, I'm a bit short on cash right now. The Wang family is so wealthy, they surely won't be lacking for me, will they?"
Madam Wang immediately understood and nodded frantically, "Don't worry, I'll have someone send it over in a while."
Wu Caiwei left with satisfaction. The moment she left, Wang Zifeng arrived. He was dumbfounded by the scene in the room. When he heard that it was all Wu Caiwei's doing, he felt a genuine sense of fear in his heart.
Perhaps Madam Wang truly thought Wu Caiwei, having come from the countryside, had never seen the world. She only sent fifty taels. Wu Caiwei glanced at it, sneered, and didn't even accept it.
The maid quickly took her leave. All the servants had heard of her heroic deeds and knew that the young mistress was not to be trifled with. She was dissatisfied and afraid that she wouldn't be able to handle Wu Caiwei if she started a fight.
Wu Caiwei watched the maid flee frantically, then went to the dressing table and looked in the mirror, muttering to herself, "Am I that scary? They all look at me as if I were a wolf or a tiger."
"What? She's not satisfied? What kind of person has our Wang family married? This is truly a misfortune for our family." Madam Wang looked at Old Master Wang, who was leisurely drinking tea, and felt overwhelmed with grief. When the tea was brought in that morning, she had been the one clashing with Wu Caiwei, while the master sat there majestically. Now he was unhurried, and she couldn't help but feel resentful.
"Give her one hundred taels," Old Master Wang instructed, ignoring his wife's laments.
Only when no one else was in the room did he step forward to comfort his exasperated wife. "I know you've been wronged, but don't forget, our superiors want her life. We can't beat her, and pressuring her with our status as elders might not work either. We can only resort to other methods."
"What method?" Madam Wang, still angry, became interested. In all these years, she had never encountered such a stubborn woman, who trampled her dignity on the ground and crushed it wildly. If she couldn't subdue her, she wouldn't sleep peacefully.
"Poisoning," Old Master Wang stepped forward a few paces and whispered in a voice only they could hear.
Madam Wang's eyes lit up, and she slapped her thigh in annoyance. "That's right, how did I not think of that?"
Wu Caiwei, who had eaten and drunk well in the bridal chamber and ordered the maids around like servants, never expected them to use such a method against her when she received the money. However, for other women, the drug might work, but these drugs were a waste on her.
During dinner that day, Wu Caiwei noticed something added to her food. The maid serving her behind her was anxious when the young mistress didn't drink the bowl of soup and couldn't help but persuade her, "I saw that the young mistress liked this soup, so I specially ordered the kitchen to make it. Why doesn't the young mistress try it?"
"Go back and tell your madam to stop using these underhanded tactics. You went to such great lengths to marry me into the family, only to try and poison me? Why bother with all this trouble? Just send an assassin; it's faster." Wu Caiwei didn't want to play hide-and-seek with them. She got straight to the point, wanting to see them try to get rid of her but fail.
"Clatter." The soup slipped from the maid's hand and fell to the ground. She looked at Wu Caiwei in disbelief. "You... how did you know?"
"It means your homework wasn't done properly. Didn't you check what my family does? These petty tricks are no good against me." Wu Caiwei continued eating, unfazed, as nothing was more important than filling her stomach.
When the maid reported this time, not only Madam Wang but even Old Master Wang couldn't sit still. "How could we forget this? Didn't our people say she was just a little medicine boy by her father's side? How did she see through such good medicine the moment it was served? If she hadn't just entered the mansion yesterday, I would really suspect she had an insider here."
"What do we do now? Think of something. We can't marry an ancestor, can we? Furthermore, if we let her live comfortably in the mansion, enjoying the title of Wang family's young mistress, how will we explain to our superiors?"
Wu Caiwei paid no mind to the anxious couple. After dinner, she went to rest comfortably. As she was sleeping, she suddenly felt something was wrong. She quietly climbed out the window and onto the roof to admire the moon and stars.
The two men guarding her room, though a little intimidated, had been given the task by the master and madam and couldn't refuse. They pushed the door open slowly and entered.
The two men trembled, holding hands and encouraging each other, as they slowly approached the bed. They found the bed empty and were startled. They lit candles and searched the room, but couldn't find her anywhere.
The two exchanged glances and quickly left, intending to report the situation to the master and madam. As they reached the courtyard, Wu Caiwei said slowly, "Leaving just as you arrive? Next time you use sleeping gas, can you make the smell a little better? This is too inferior."
The two men, bathed in moonlight, saw her sitting on the roof and bolted.
"Are you sure you saw correctly?" Old Master Wang stared at them intently. Having been in business for so many years, he had never been so flustered.
"How could we be mistaken? We personally entered her room. There's no ladder in the courtyard. Who knew the roof was so high? How did she get up there? If she hadn't spoken, we would have thought she had snuck away quietly." Recalling this, the two were still trembling, their hearts pounding like drums.
After the two men left, Old Master Wang sat alone at the table, lost in thought. Madam Wang emerged from the inner room, looking at him with a worried expression.
"Madam, I'm afraid this time we've hunted geese all day, only to be pecked by them. You keep her stable for now, and I'll quickly report this situation to our superiors. This person is clearly not here with good intentions." Madam Wang nodded solemnly at her husband's grave demeanor.
She had been here for three days and hadn't seen Wang Zifeng. It seemed he had no intention of showing his face. This wouldn't do. The original owner had hated him to death when she was alive. She had to make him pay double.
Wang Zifeng had heard about the commotion Wu Caiwei was causing in the mansion. The more this was the case, the more he dared not approach her. The incident where he had led people to snatch her still lingered in his memory, and he feared retaliation from Wu Caiwei.