Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“Come, young mistress. You should be hungry. Drink some soup.”
Yu Shuya was thinking about the herbs she needed to cure her angina when she saw Yu Niang coming in with a bowl of soup. It was a bowl of white rice soup without a single grain of rice.
She did not ask why they had not stolen some food for themselves since they were the only cooks in the kitchen. She knew she would face scolding and humiliation for sure if she did.
The two skinny women and a skinny child sat at the kitchen entrance with a bowl in their hands. They were drinking a bowl of white rice soup without rice each.
“Yu Niang, I’ll deliver the meal with you.”
Yu Shuya got a little impatient when Yu Niang seemed determined to not
let her follow them to the front hall for the food delivery.
She knew she was in no rush to familiarise herself with the nunnery. But, another day of delay would mean another day of living in fear for them.
“Yu Niang, just let me follow you. I promise to be obedient.” Yu Shuya hugged Yu Niang’s arm tightly, determined not to back off this time.
Yu Niang squatted down to Yu Shuya’s height and caressed her little face before she spoke. “Young mistress, listen to me and stay here obediently until I return. The front hall is full of jackals and wolves. I won’t be able to protect you out there.”
Yu Shuya loosened her hand when she saw tears welled up in her eyes.
“Alright, Yu Niang, I’ll be a good girl and wait for you here. I won’t go anywhere.”
Yu Niang and Master Yuyan threw each other a glance when they saw the sensibility of the young mistress. Then, they lifted the wooden bucket filled with porridge and continued their way into the hall.
Yu Shuya’s smile was gone once both Yu Niang and Master Yuyan left. She turned around and returned to the kitchen, shedding all the pretense she put on earlier. A calmness that should not belong to a ten-year-old appeared on her face.
Yu Shuya thought carefully about what Yu Niang told her. She described the nuns in the front hall as jackals and wolves. Pious religious devotees should be saviors to the distress and relievers of those who suffer. Could it be that all of them were like Miao Jun if Yu Niang described them that way?
Compared to Miao Jun, she felt that Master Yuyan was the one who should be worshipped and praised. Master Yuyan was like the reincarnation of the Goddess of Mercy, the savior of those in despair and fear.
However, she had no idea who Master Yuyan was before she was a nun and how she had fallen into the lowest rank in the nunnery.
Yu Shuya anxiously stood up when she thought of this. She still had no idea which dynasty she was in, who was in power, and whether it existed in history.
Sitting in a small corner of the kitchen, she stared at the sky through the narrow wooden door.
She knew herself. She was independent, unwilling to be ordinary, and under the control of others.
But how could she thrive and lived up to herself in ancient times being a woman?
Her heart ached a little when she thought of this.
Although she had not coughed up blood since she was in this body, death would soon claim her, like her original self, if she did not get her heart disease treated.
Reminded of Yu Niang’s next task of watering the vegetable farm at the back mountain later, she clenched her fist.
“I’m sorry, Yu Niang. I may have to go back on my words again.”
In her heart, Yu Shuya kept blaming herself for breaking her promise to help Yu Niang with her work. But she might need to search for the herbs that might cure her heart disease in the coming days.
Yu Shuya bent her fingers and knocked at the stool as her brain worked. It was her habit when she was thinking.
How would she explain her medical knowledge when she found the herbs that could cure her disease?
She was, after all, just a sickly child raised in a nunnery for years.
After all, she was still an illiterate, sickly child raised in a nunnery for years.
She would need to come up with a better plan. Such a headache!
An idea popped up just as she thought of Master Yuyan.