Chapter 1 - The Mountain of Ashes
The wooden handles of the sedan chair dug deep into the meat of my shoulders, grinding against bone with every staggering step I took up the slate staircase of Mount Jing.
The air was thin, cold, and heavy with the scent of damp moss and mountain pine. Blood—warm, sticky, and metallic—was slowly trickling down my right calf, soaking through the thick linen wrapping and pooling inside the heavy iron brace that bound my fractured knee.
I was seven months pregnant.
My stomach was a prominent, heavy mound beneath my faded embroidered tunic, pulling my center of gravity forward with every upward heave. Beneath my skin, my child kicked weakly, as if feeling the desperate, ragged pounding of my heart.
"Keep your balance, Lin!" Madam Han’s sharp, shrill voice rang out from above my head. She sat comfortably on the velvet cushion of the sedan chair, her silk robes flowing over the carved armrests. She adjusted her silver hairpins, her heavy gold bangles clinking rhythmically. "You’re swaying! Do you want to pitch me over the cliff side? A worthless daughter-in-law who can’t even carry a litter smoothly!"
"Mother... please," I gasped, my voice barely a thread in the howling mountain wind. My lungs burned as if filled with broken glass. "My leg... the brace is slipping..."
"Stop whining!" my husband, Julian, barked from five steps ahead. He didn't turn around. He wore an pristine crimson groom’s robe, embroidered with golden thread, his long back straight, his head held high. "It’s my mother’s sixty-sixth birthday and our ceremonial renewal walk! The entire Jing City elite is waiting at the summit garden! Do you want my family to lose face because you're lazy?"
"Julian..." I whimpered, my knees trembling violently. "The doctor said... bed rest... the baby..."
"The doctor said you need exercise to facilitate labor!" Julian snapped, stepping higher without glancing back. "You’ve done nothing but sit in the villa for seven months, eating my family’s food! Carrying Mother up the mountain is your duty as the eldest daughter-in-law. Show some respect!"
Beside me, walking on the jagged rocks just off the stone path, was my own mother, Mrs. Chen.
She was fifty-two, but looked seventy, her face lined with deep grooves of fear and resignation. She wore a simple gray cotton dress, her knuckles white as she clutched my frayed sleeve, pushing upward to bear a fraction of the weight.
"Lin-lin," my mother whispered, her voice trembling, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks. "Just hold on, child. Just get through these nine hundred steps. Once we reach the garden... once today is over... you can rest. You can agree to sign the papers and end the pregnancy. After that, no one will force you anymore."
Her words cut through my heart deeper than the iron brace digging into my flesh.
End the pregnancy.
For three months, my husband's family and my own mother had been pressuring me to undergo a late-term labor induction to terminate the child in my womb. They told me the baby was sickly, that my fractured leg required immediate bone-graft surgery that couldn't be performed while pregnant, and that keeping the child would make me a permanent invalid.
My own mother had begged me on her knees to give up the child so Julian wouldn't divorce me.
"Push, Lin-lin! Just thirty more steps!" my mother sobbed, her cold, dry hands pushing against my lower back. "Do it for your husband! Do it for the Chen family!"
I looked down at my right boot. Red blood had completely saturated the leather, dripping onto the gray slate steps, leaving a crimson trail behind us.
Every step felt like standing on molten iron. My vision swam with dark spots. Yet, Julian walked ahead like my agony was nothing more than an inconvenient delay to his grand entrance.
We reached the archway of the Celestial Garden at the summit.
The courtyard was filled with over a hundred wealthy guests—business tycoons, city officials, and reporters holding cameras. Silk banners fluttered in the breeze, and classical musicians played soft zither music beside a grand stone fountain.
BANG.
My leg finally gave out. The iron hinge of my brace snapped with a sickening metallic pop.
I collapsed forward onto my hands and knees. The heavy wooden sedan chair tilted violently. Madam Han let out a frantic shriek as she tumbled out of the velvet seat, landing awkwardly on the paved garden courtyard.
The music stopped instantly. Whispers rippled through the crowd like wildfire.
"Incompetent beast!" Julian roared, sprinting back and striking me across the face with his open palm.
The force of the slap threw me onto my side. My head cracked against the marble stone, red fire exploding behind my eyes.
"You ruined Mother’s entrance!" Julian yelled, towering over me, his face contorted in rage. "Look at you! A bloody, useless cripple making a spectacle in front of our guests!"
Madam Han scrambled up, her face red with embarrassment. "My back! My silk dress! You wretched girl, you did that on purpose!"
She raised her heavy, beaded leather handbag to strike me across the head.
But as she swung her arm, the clasp of her expensive crocodile-skin bag snapped open.
The bag flipped upside down.
A rain of personal items scattered across the white marble floor—gold lipsticks, compact mirrors, velvet jewelry boxes, and a stack of folded paper receipts.
Four official white sheets with red medical seals slid across the smooth stone, stopping right in front of the feet of the senior director of the Jing City Medical Board, who was standing in the front row of guests.
Silence descended over the garden.
May you like
Nobody was looking at my bleeding leg anymore.
Everyone was looking at the papers.
