and Chen Rong was sitting in the courtyard that had been newly remodeled while bowing her head to tune the zither.
“Miss,” Nurse Ping came over and whispered to her.
“Hmm?”
“We are running out of money and fabric,” she said, before adding: “Some furnishings will need to be replaced. You’ll also have to acquire new clothes as you have very little right now. Miss, should we mention this to the master?”
Chen Rong’s eyes did not move from the strings when she replied with a no.
“But miss…”
Here, Nurse Ping thought to the extraordinary way her mistress had conducted herself along the journey and calmed herself down as she awaited Chen Rong’s instruction.
Chen Rong placed the zither to the side, looked up to Nurse Ping and said, “Tell Old Shang to listen around and see whether my uncle Chen Gongrang has returned.”
“Aye.”
Seeing Chen Rong starting to play with the strings again and looking to be slightly absent-minded, the nurse asked in curiosity, “Miss, what have you been thinking about these past few days?”
What has she been thinking about? What else but the events that had happened in her previous life? For whatever reason, her memory was becoming blurrier and blurrier. She completely couldn’t recall some of the pieces of the past; even a few of the more crucial events did not come to her mind until the very last minute.
It was making Chen Rong ill at ease.
At this time, laughter rang out from the courtyard next-door.
Chen Wei’s courtyard.
Nurse Ping sighed and couldn’t help herself from saying: “The rooms have been visiting one another in these past three days. But when I tried to make appointments on your behalf, people from the Chen house of Nan’yang would only give lukewarm responses and look to be rather unhappy.”
“I know.” Nan’yang was suddenly overcrowded by people like her and other migrants. Even if the Chen house of Nan’yang was prosperous, she wasn’t exactly a favorite guest. Since they didn’t want these people to come, they would put forward all kinds of conditions once they asked for a visit.
Of course, she was mainly shunned due to her inferior line. Chen Wei next-door had long mingled with other girls in the clan while her place had been deserted for the past three days with not a single soul stopping by.