TN | The Malicious Empress

Chapter 70: Birthday Celebration

The third day of the eleven month was a day where the sun hung up in the sky brightly, and it was rare to have such a good weather in winter, which also happened to coincide with Old Shen Furen's seventieth birthday banquet.

The inside and outside of the General's residence was cleaned up and money was taken out from the public fun to buy new stuff. Naturally the birthday banquet was held in the Eastern courtyard, as it had a beautiful and elegant ambience and the flora and fauna were pruned tidily. The maids wore clean and tidy uniform dresses and their behaviour conformed to no conventional pattern, and each of them were well-behaved. When one walked in, one would feel that it was an air worthy to be considered as a big family.

Old Shen Furen sat at the highest position in Rong Jing Tang and there were already a number of Furen and young ladies that went up to greet. The Shen family is considered a first class general lineage family in Ming Qi, thus officials and nobility would often take into consideration the social relationship and came over. Ren Wan Yun was also busy greeting the guests.

Even though now it was Chen Rou Qiu who was temporarily holding the power of managing the family but in the previous years, Old Shen Furen's birthday banquets were organised by Ren Wan Yun. Thus Ren Wan Yun could do better than Chen Rou Qiu in dealing with these noble Furens. Chen Rou Qiu at the end still had the air of a scholar but Ren Wan Yun was different. She was able to cope appropriately to the occasion, and in a short time Rong Jing Tang was filled with laughter.

Shen Yuan Bo was clinging onto Old Shen Furen eating honey milk sweets. From time to time, the Furens present complimented him for being so clever at such a young age and would be someone worthy in future. Old Shen Furen heard all this and was beaming with joy and those compliments also evened out the haze in Ren Wan Yun's heart, that due to Shen Qing's accident was swept away in pain.

On the contrary it was Chen Rou Qiu who felt uncomfortable when she saw everyone praising Shen Yuan Bo and Shen Yuan, who was in a post in another county. The thing that the Third household was most afraid to talk about was about sons. Everyone knew that Chen Rou Qiu has been married to Shen Wan for so many years and other than having Shen Yue, there had been no sons. Against expectations, Shen Wan was not interested in other females, even though Old Shen Furen wanted to give a few concubines to Shen Wan as to spread the family branches out, but Shen Wan rejected it. Old Shen Furen was thus angry at Chen Rou Qiu and so Ren Wan Yun apparently had more of Old Shen Furen's favour than compared with Chen Rou Qiu.

"However, why is the Eldest Young Lady and Fifth Young Lady of the Shen family not seen today?" Yi Furen said with a smile.

Ren Wan Yun was responsible for the reception of these Furens, so naturally Shen Yue went to linger with those noble young ladies. She brought them to the garden to drink tea and eat some snacks. But there was no sight of Jennie and Shen Qing.

When Ren Wan Yun and Old Shen Furen heard of this, both of their faces sank at the same time and Chen Rou Qiu's lips twitched.

Shen Qing's health had recovered fully and now she was able to meet others, but she continue to speak of wanting to shred Jennie into thousands of pieces. These words could not be heard by outsiders, thus Ren Wan Yun kept comforting Shen Qing these days so that she would not have any suicidal thoughts. As for how to comfort, what Chen Rou Qiu could only think of was, the promises of what kind of miserable fate would Jennie end up with.