The Legitimate Daughter in the Coffin - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

On the day of Huo Shuyue’s burial, a heavy snow fell over the capital.

I did not use the white funeral banners sent by the Huo Family, nor did I allow a single member of that family to attend.

I dressed her in a light green gown, a style she never had the chance to wear in life, and pinned a simple camellia blossom into her hair. Nanny Zhou told me that when Shuyue was a child, she loved watching the camellias bloom behind the manor, but there was never anyone to pluck a branch for her.

Before the casket was lowered into the earth, I placed the complete moon-shaped jade lock into her hand.

“I’m returning this to you,” I whispered.

“In the next life, don’t try to be like me anymore.”

“Just be Huo Shuyue.”

Snow fell upon the coffin lid, quickly accumulating into a thin, white layer.

Suddenly, I was no longer sad. I only felt as if a breath I had been holding for many years had finally, slowly, dissipated.

Later, the investigation into the Huo case went deep.

Huo Yanzhi was stripped of his office and imprisoned for embezzling the old assets of Lady Gu, conspiring with salt merchants, and murdering his own daughter to silence her. Luo Yingxue was also sent to prison for her involvement in the plot against Huo Shuyue and for forging identity documents. Some members of the Huo Family clan tried to plead for mercy, arguing that this was ultimately a family scandal and there was no need for such ruthless extermination.

When I heard this, I only replied with one sentence:

“When they were shoving a living person into a coffin, they never thought about leaving any room for mercy.”

After the dust settled, I moved out of the Huo Mansion.

The Gu Family had an old residence in the south of the city. It sat by the river-quiet and suitable for a fresh start. I brought the ancestral tablets of my mother and Shuyue there, personally offering incense on the first and fifteenth of every lunar month. Nanny Zhou stayed by my side, finally free from the burden of living in constant fear while guarding a secret.

When spring arrived, Shen Xingjian visited once more.

This time, he brought no official documents or marriage contracts. He only brought a box of freshly made almond cakes from the south of the city, claiming he had simply bought them in passing.

I opened the box and tried one. It was excessively sweet.

“The Heir’s methods of coaxing people are a bit too clumsy,” I remarked.

He looked at me and offered a rare smile. “Then perhaps Miss Huo could teach me.”

I gazed at the crabapple buds just beginning to sprout in the courtyard. I suddenly remembered that a long time ago, I too had truly looked forward to a grand wedding, hoping I could spend my life as a protected noble lady. But looking back now, I realized that more important than whom I married was first digging myself out of that coffin.

I had once come so close to being buried alive by the Huo Family under the reputation of a “fake legitimate daughter.”

If Huo Shuyue hadn’t lain in there first, tearing open a gap for me, I probably would never have known how muddled my life had been all these years.

So later, when Shen Xingjian asked me again if the marriage contract should be renewed, I did not agree immediately, nor did I refuse.

I simply said to him, “If you want to marry me, you may. But you are not marrying the legitimate daughter of the Huo Family, nor are you marrying the Gu Family dowry, nor a chess piece that can help you solve cases.”

“If you marry, you marry the person that is Huo Lingning.”

He looked at me for a long moment before nodding solemnly.

“Alright.”

At that moment, a breeze blew across the river, making the bronze bells by the window chime softly.

I suddenly felt that if Huo Shuyue could see this, she would be happy for me.

Because from now on, I finally do not have to live under someone else’s name.

And she, too, finally no longer has to lie in that nameless coffin, being the “legitimate daughter” whose identity others debated.

The one lying in the coffin was never an enemy who stole my identity.

The one lying in the coffin was the daughter the Huo Family had owed for eighteen years-the daughter who arrived eighteen years late.

Her name was Huo Shuyue.

I am Huo Lingning.

From now on, we shall both simply be ourselves.