Chapter 367: The Resurrected Zhenzhu

The clerk smiled. “You mean the lady who was just here? That’s Miss Gu, the owner of our silver building.”

The woman blurted out, “The owner?”

She quickly covered her surprise with a smile. “I never would have guessed. She doesn’t look very old, yet she’s already the owner of a silver building!”

The clerk said with a touch of pride, “That’s nothing. Our owner has several other shops. That inn just up the road? She opened that too, and business is booming.”

The woman’s mind was reeling. She absentmindedly bought a golden hairpin, paid the silver, and then hurriedly left with her maid.

She hadn’t gone far when she saw an inn on the side of the street. It had an impressive three-bay facade, with a row of lanterns hanging under the eaves. At the entrance, several clerks dressed in clean, neat, fine-cotton clothes smiled warmly at passersby.

The woman glanced up at the sign, then raised her round fan to cover half her face and hurried past.

After walking a little farther, the woman had her maid hail a carriage.

The moment she got into the carriage and lowered the curtain, her face twisted into an ugly expression. She wrung the handkerchief in her hand until it was a tight rope.

This woman was none other than Zhenzhu, a maid from the Pingyang Marquis Mansion.

She couldn’t understand it. How had that bitch Jadeite also made it to Ping’an City? And how had she now become the owner of a silver building, of all things!

On the day the Pingyang Marquis Mansion was raided, she had schemed to have Gu Fei killed, but her plan had backfired and she had nearly died herself.

After twenty blows from the plank, Zhenzhu had lost consciousness, leaving her with only a single breath of life.

Once the soldiers had finished looting the mansion, they slapped a seal on the entrance and left, not bothering with the bodies littering the ground.

That night, the cold wind revived Zhenzhu. She woke up, but her injuries were so severe she couldn’t move at all.

But it seemed fate wasn’t ready for her to die.

That night, a band of thieves broke into the Pingyang Marquis Mansion.

In the past, they would never have dared to enter.

The mansion had guards patrolling at night; getting caught would have meant certain death.

But now, the entire Pingyang Marquis Mansion was deserted. What was there to fear?

The thieves reasoned that even though the residence had been officially raided and all the gold, silver, and jewels confiscated, things like bedding, curtains, clothes, shoes, pots, pans, and even furniture would have been left behind.

Most of those things were of no interest to the soldiers, but if the thieves could get them out and to a pawnshop, it would mean silver.

The men made several trips back and forth. As one of them passed by Zhenzhu, she suddenly grabbed his ankle.

“Please, save me—”

The thief was so startled he dropped the quilt he was carrying. Taking a closer look, he saw a young woman lying on the ground.

In the moonlight, he could see that despite her disheveled hair, her features were actually quite delicate.

An idea sparked in the thief’s mind. After carrying out a few more loads, he took Zhenzhu with him as well.

But Zhenzhu was no fool. Earlier, when she had spied on Gu Fei and Lan Zhi hiding their valuables, she had taken her own silver bracelet, a golden hairpin previously gifted to her by Lan Zhi, and her Agate earrings, and hidden them in her undergarments.

Once they arrived at the thief’s home, Zhenzhu produced a silver bracelet and begged him to exchange it for silver to buy her medicine.

The thief had already intended to keep Zhenzhu to warm his bed, so how could he refuse when she was offering to pay for her own recovery? The very next day, he returned with medicine, both for her to take and to apply to her wounds.

Zhenzhu was bedridden for a full month before she could finally get up.

The very day she was able to get out of bed, the thief took her virginity.

When the thief discovered she was a virgin, he decided he wanted to make her his proper wife.