Chapter 7

Chapter 7

As the ancestral hall descended into chaos, Huo Yanzhi suddenly let out a cold sneer.

“Even so, what of it?” He looked toward the presiding official from the Imperial Clan Court. “The matter of the twins is a Huo Family scandal. The death of a mere concubine-born foster daughter is hardly a major case. As for whether Huo Lingning is real or fake-as long as the Imperial Clan Court’s records remain as they are, she still lacks sufficient evidence.”

My heart sank.

He was right.

We could now prove that Huo Shuyue had died a wrongful death, but we were still missing that final blow-the one that would definitively solidify my identity and pin both him and Luo Yingxue to the wall.

Just then, Nanny Zhou seemed to reach a sudden resolution. She reached into her robes and pulled out a blood-stained cloth doll.

“This old servant has one more thing!”

The doll was very old, and its belly had been stitched up crookedly, as if it had been sliced open and then hurriedly sewn back together. With trembling hands, Nanny Zhou unpicked the threads, and a small roll of thin silk fell out.

It was the naming slip Lady Gu had left for her two daughters before she died.

“Lingning, eldest daughter, wears the Half-Moon Jade Lock, moon-shaped birthmark on right ankle.”

“Shuyue, second daughter, wears the Full-Moon Jade Lock, red mark on left shoulder.”

At the end of the slip was Lady Gu’s private seal.

More importantly, a shorter line of text was written on the back of the silk.

“If Huo Yanzhi uses the twins to harm my daughters, open my casket and examine the burial hairpin; inside are the hidden ledgers of the Huo Family’s deficits.”

Huo Yanzhi’s expression changed instantly. For the first time, he truly looked panicked.

Shen Xingjian, however, seemed to have been waiting for these words. He immediately ordered his men, “To Madam Gu’s old tomb!”

It clicked for me then.

The Gu Family’s dowry, the marriage to the Shen family, Huo Shuyue being raised as a body double-all of it was just the surface.

What truly terrified Huo Yanzhi enough to kill his own daughter to keep her silent was the ledger my mother had left behind.

The Huo Family had maintained an image of integrity for years, but behind the scenes, they had been laundering salt tax deficits for others. Lady Gu was the only daughter of the Gu Family; she had held the keys to the Gu Family’s trade routes and accounts. Upon her death, Huo Yanzhi had naturally swallowed the Gu Family’s assets into the Huo Mansion. If I were to marry into the Shen family with full honors, the Gu Family’s dowry inventory and old ledgers would inevitably leave the house with me. Once they fell into Shen Xingjian’s hands, the Huo Family’s financial holes could no longer be hidden.

That was why he first used a coffin to destroy my identity, and then used the existence of the twins to cover up a murder.

A father, for the sake of money and his career, had personally turned both his daughters into pawns.

That afternoon, Lady Gu’s old tomb was opened.

The burial hairpin was indeed there.

Hidden inside the hollow pin was a roll of extremely thin Fish-Scale Ledger. It was filled with the amounts of silver Huo Yanzhi had exchanged with salt merchants and provincial officials over the years. On the final page, there was even his personal signature and seal.

The official from the Imperial Clan Court turned pale the moment he finished reading it.

Huo Yanzhi finally lost his composure. He lunged forward, unsheathing a sword from a guard standing near the clan elders, and charged straight at me.

“You slut!” His eyes were bloodshot. “If I had known it would come to this, I should have strangled you along with her back then!”

Before I could dodge, Shen Xingjian was already standing in front of me. He grabbed Huo Yanzhi’s wrist with a reverse grip, and the long sword hit the ground with a loud clang.

At that moment, a commotion suddenly erupted outside the ancestral hall.

It was the pallbearers.

I had ordered them to bring Huo Shuyue’s coffin to the entrance of the ancestral hall.

Everyone fell silent.

I walked to the coffin and personally pushed aside the lid.

“You all kept insisting she was a fake, a servant girl, one of the twins who shouldn’t have lived.” I looked up at everyone in the Huo Family. “But if she hadn’t risked her life to leave me that message, the one being nailed into a coffin today would have been me.”

“She didn’t steal my identity.”

“It was all of you who stole her life.”

The wind blew into the ancestral hall, making the white funeral banners rustle.

For the first time, I spoke her name aloud before the crowd.

“Her name is Huo Shuyue.”

“Even if she never spent a single day as the legitimate eldest daughter of the Huo Family, she deserves to be buried with dignity, under her rightful name as a daughter of the Huo house.”

Luo Yingxue collapsed onto the ground, finally unable to even cry.

As I looked at the face in the coffin so similar to my own, I suddenly understood the true irony of the title ‘The Legitimate Daughter in the Coffin.’

Lying in that coffin was not a sister who had stolen my identity.

It was a kinswoman who had been deliberately raised by the Huo Family to be a ‘double,’ and who in the end had almost been left without even a name.