Chapter 8: Which Part Offended You?

The car drove for an hour, heading north from the bustling city center, passing through one upscale neighborhood after another until it turned onto a wide, tree-lined avenue.

The plane trees on both sides were tall and dense, their branches interlocking overhead to form a green canopy.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves, scattering patches of gold across the ground.

Sui Nuo looked out the window. At the end of the road stood a black wrought-iron gate. The gateposts were solid bluish-gray granite, bare of any sign or nameplate—only a stone lion atop each post, intricately carved and imposingly majestic.

On either side of the gate, courtyard walls stretched on and on. They weren't high, but vines crawled all over the tops, and through the gaps in the foliage, glimpses of greenery showed from within.

Sui Yuanshan parked at the entrance, rolled down his window, and said awkwardly to the access camera:

"H-hello, this is the Sui family, here to... to discuss some matters."

His voice was as small as a mosquito's buzz; the camera probably couldn't pick it up at all.

Ms. Qin couldn't stand it anymore. She leaned over and raised her voice toward the camera: "Sui family. We have an appointment with Elder Xie."

The iron gate slid open silently to both sides.

Sui Yuanshan swallowed hard and drove through.

The car crept along a winding driveway, and Sui Nuo finally saw the full extent of the Xie estate.

It wasn't the dazzling mansion she'd imagined.

No Roman columns, no marble sculptures, no gilded fountains.

What met her eyes was green in every shade—broad lawns flanked the driveway, trimmed as flat and smooth as velvet carpet.

In the distance lay an artificial lake, wild ducks paddling across its surface.

At the center of the lake stood a small pavilion, gray-tiled and white-walled, as simple and rustic as if cut from an ink wash painting.

Further off rose a three-story building in the Chinese style, gray brick and dark tile, with upturned eaves. A row of copper bells hung beneath them, ringing out clear and crisp whenever the breeze passed.

The whole estate gave off not luxury, but stillness.

A stillness accumulated over generations, owing nothing to outward ornament.

Every brick and tile bore the marks of time,

as if they had stood here for decades, for centuries,

having witnessed too many people and too many things to need to prove anything to anyone.

Sui Nuo stared, transfixed, from inside the car.

She had grown up in the capital and seen plenty of old residences, but none had ever given her this feeling—not a relic put on display,

but a house still breathing, still alive, with its own pulse and heartbeat.

It struck her suddenly that what she was about to step into wasn't the home of a wealthy family, but the root and lineage of a clan.

The thought made her already anxious heart sink a little lower.

The car stopped beneath the portico of the main building, and someone came out at once to meet them.

A middle-aged man in a gray uniform, butler-like, around forty, thin, with a lean face, wearing white gloves, walking without a sound.

He opened the rear door, bowed slightly, and smiled with just the right amount of warmth: "Miss Sui, this way please."

Sui Nuo blinked—her father was driving, she was in the back seat, and the butler had come to open her door first. Something about that detail stirred a vague, indefinable feeling in her.

Not courtesy. Something more like... order.

An order in which everyone in this household knew exactly what to do and whom to do it for.

She took her handbag and stepped out, standing before the car door on a floor of blue stone slabs, fine moss growing in the cracks between them.

The afternoon sun fell warm on her skin, but she felt a little cold.

Sui Yuanshan and Ms. Qin got out too.

Sui Yuanshan stood by the door, his legs visibly shaking, but he forced his back straight, trying to look less nervous than he was.

Ms. Qin walked over to her daughter, gave her hand a subtle squeeze, then let go.

The three of them stood before the heavy vermilion wooden door and, without planning to, paused at the same moment.

Sui Yuanshan took a deep breath, clenched his fist, and whispered:

"Sui Yuanshan. You can do this."

Ms. Qin glanced at him and whispered back:

"Qin Rulan. Stay calm."

Sui Nuo looked at her father, then her mother, and murmured:

"Sui Nuo. Jiayou."

The three exchanged a glance, all wearing the same expression that said "we are genuinely walking to our deaths," then nodded at one another in silent mutual encouragement.

The butler's face kept its proper smile throughout, as though he had seen nothing and heard nothing.

He angled himself slightly and gestured: "This way, please, all three of you."

The moment she crossed the threshold, Sui Nuo's senses were flooded.

Inside was a vast front hall, its floor laid with dark old elm planks that felt warm and smooth underfoot, nothing like the icy bite of marble.

There was little furniture. At the center stood a long rosewood console, and on it a blue-and-white porcelain vase holding a few dried lotus pods.

On the wall hung a scroll of mountains and water, its brushwork vigorous, a vermilion seal stamped at the signature.

Past the front hall, another courtyard. Through that, another.

Sui Nuo felt as though she had stepped into a folded space, each step redrawing her sense of "big." Not the emptiness of an endless horizon,

but a depth that unfolded layer by layer, like a book—turn one page and there's another, each heavier and quieter than the last.

She stole glances around her—wooden couplets on the pillars, painted bracket sets beneath the eaves, pomegranate trees in the courtyards with their fruit still green.

Nothing was showy, yet everything told her, silently: the people who lived here had no need to show off.

Sui Yuanshan walked in front, his steps deliberately steady, but Sui Nuo noticed his leather shoe skid once on the marble floor—not the floor's fault. His legs had gone weak.

Ms. Qin reached out and steadied him at once, quick as if she'd rehearsed it.

The butler led them through the last courtyard and stopped at a carved wooden door. He knocked softly, pushed it open, and stepped aside:

"The Old Master is just finishing up some business. Please wait here for a moment."

The reception room was much larger than the front hall, but not the empty kind of large—it was cleverly divided into several functional spaces.

Near the entrance sat a set of rosewood sofas arranged in a U around a coffee table, the cushions deep blue velvet, soft and substantial.

By the window stood a massive huanghuali desk, spread with several thread-bound books and a purple clay teapot.

Along the wall ran a row of bookshelves—not decorative fake books, but real old volumes that had been read and flipped through and dog-eared, the gilt on their spines long faded.

Sunlight filtered through fine gauze curtains, laying soft shadows on the floor.

The whole space was done in deep wood tones and warm beige. It wasn't cold—it was almost reassuring, if you ignored the knowledge that every piece of furniture in here might be worth more than their entire house.

When Sui Yuanshan lowered himself onto the sofa, he let out an extremely faint hiss, as if unsure how much the seat beneath him cost and whether sitting on it might damage something.

Ms. Qin sat beside him, her back ramrod straight, hands folded in her lap, posture dignified enough for a magazine cover.

Sui Nuo sat next to her mother, handbag on her knees, her ten fingers already twisting together again.

The three of them sat in a row like small animals led into unfamiliar territory, hardly daring to breathe.