Chapter 232: 101
Lu Rou said, "Eat slowly, be careful not to burn yourself."
Lu Qian picked out a few more for her to cool down.
After she had swallowed a whole one and was reaching for the second, Lu Tong caught a glimpse of Lu Qian’s bruised and swollen face, hesitated for a moment, and felt inexplicably dejected.
Seeing that she had lost her appetite after glancing at him, Lu Qian asked in confusion, "What’s wrong?"
"Your face is too ugly..."
The young man erupted in anger, "Lu San, you don’t even consider who I did this for!"
Lu Tong responded listlessly, "I was thinking, if I skip a meal I get so hungry, does that mean I’m doomed to be a fat pig for life?"
Lu Rou frowned and said, "Tong Tong, you’re in the midst of growing, you must eat. Don’t listen to the nonsense from Liu Zide and Liu Zixian."
"But they said I’ll never get married off..."
"Who asked them to worry about it," Lu Qian said irritably, "We didn’t eat from their family’s rice, let them say whatever they want."
Lu Tong felt a sorrow well up within her, "But none of you are like me... could it be that I’m not the biological child of our parents?"
Lu Qian replied, "...are you asking for a beating from father?"
Lu Rou let out a sigh and reached for a sweet potato herself, "Then we’ll also eat with you, and we can all become little pigs, okay?"
Lu Qian brightened up, "Then there would be three little pigs in the Lu Family? Alright, I’ll eat one too... it smells so good!"
Sitting beside her siblings, the steaming sweet potatoes warded off the cold of winter days, and amid the sweet aroma filling the kitchen, Lu Tong wiped away her tears. For some reason, her heart didn’t feel as heavy anymore.
The next morning when her mother went into the kitchen at dawn, she found the burned-out charcoal and sweet potato peels in the corner. With tears and laughter, she tapped Lu Tong’s forehead and scolded her, "You think too much. Eat your meals well, and rest assured, we Lu Family are all beauties, we won’t be ugly."
"In the future, you too will grow up to be as beautiful as your sister!"
Back then, Lu Tong always felt that her mother’s words were meant to comfort her.
Latter...
Latter she was taken by Lady Yun up to Luomei Peak, and they roamed the mountains far and wide gathering and testing herbs. Maybe it was the exhaustion, the hunger, or perhaps it was just the right time for her to sprout, but after a while, one day while washing clothes by the stream, she caught her reflection in the water, a face unfamiliar to her—a young girl’s face.
Cheeks like peach blossoms, eyes like apricots, a graceful and elegant beauty, nothing like the chubby, sticky-faced little girl she used to be.
She lay by the stream staring for a long time.
It turned out that what her mother said was true; she had indeed grown up to be as slim and delicate as her sister, a beautiful young lady.
It turned out... without her realizing it, she had grown up.
A sound broke the silence—the sound of Yin Zheng closing the window. The autumn night was desolate and silent, and the smile in the eyes of the little girl in the mirror gradually faded away, replaced by another delicately made-up woman gazing indifferently at her.
A glint flickered in Lu Tong’s eyes.
She had grown up from a naive and cheerful young girl to a slender and graceful young lady, but unfortunately, not a single member of her family—her parents, siblings, nor the Lu household—had seen her transformation.
They had not witnessed her grow up.
Those long-imagined embraces and tears of joy upon reunion in her dreams were abruptly halted, like the charcoal fire in the small kitchen years ago, extinguishing forever in the cold winter night.
Never to spark again.
But the fire inside her heart blazed ever fiercer.
The window had been shut, and the late autumn night was cold.
"I want to go to Yuxian Tower," Lu Tong said suddenly in the silence.
Yin Zheng, who was just reaching the door, turned back reflexively, staring at Lu Tong in astonishment.
Lu Tong stretched out her finger, lightly tracing the eyebrows and eyes of the reflection in the mirror.
The reflection’s gaze was calm as still water, yet within the quiet, invisible currents surged.
She withdrew her hand.
"On the first day of the tenth month, Qi Yutai’s birthday..."
"I want to go to Yuxian Tower," she declared.