The dust from Lord Wei's horsemen hadn't even settled before Su Wan's "family" descended on her like vultures.
"The formula, Mother! Give it to me!" Su Ren shouted, his face flushed with greed. He had forgotten all about his terror from moments ago. "If that tiny bottle is worth fifty gold, we're rich! We don't need Lord Wei. I can take it to the regional governor and—"
"And the governor would cut off your head and take it for free," Su Wan interrupted, her voice cutting through his hysterics like a cold blade.
She stood up slowly, leaning heavily on the wooden cane Ling'er had brought her. Her 50-year-old bones ached, a sharp reminder that she didn't have much time to fix this family's fate.
"You don't have the formula, Su Ren. You don't have the ingredients. And most importantly," she leaned in, her eyes narrowing until he stepped back, "you don't have the spine to stand up to men like Wei. From now on, you are not a 'master' of this house. You are a laborer. If you want to eat, you will work."
"Work?!" Su He cried out from the porch. "We are scholars! We are the sons of the Su lineage!"
"The Su lineage is currently a pile of debt and rotting wood," Su Wan snapped. "Su He, you will go to the market. I need glass vials—the thin ones used for expensive oils. If you come back with anything less than twenty, don't bother coming back for dinner."
She turned to the maid, Ling'er, who was watching her with a mixture of fear and newfound worship. "Ling'er, take the children to the back courtyard. Keep them away from their fathers. And bring me the old ledgers of my late husband's study."
"Yes, Madam!" The girl scurried away, dragging the wide-eyed twins and Xiao Chen with her.
Su Wan made her way to the study. It was a room frozen in time, coated in a thick layer of grey dust. In the original novel, the "Matriarch" never entered this room; she was too busy weeping in the ancestral hall. But Su Wan remembered the "Dragon's Breath Map" Lord Wei had mentioned.
If it was hidden in the foundation, her husband—a man known for his obsession with architecture must have left a clue.
She began pulling books from the shelves, ignoring the way the dust made her lungs burn. She wasn't looking for poetry or philosophy. She was looking for blueprints.
In the modern world, I was a chemist, but I worked in industrial manufacturing, she thought, her fingers tracing the spines of the journals. If you want to hide something in a building's foundation, you have to account for the weight distribution. There would be a 'blind spot' in the floor plan.
After two hours of searching, she found it. A leather-bound journal titled The Geometry of Silence.
Inside were sketches of the Su Manor. To any ancient scholar, they looked like artistic drawings. But to Su Wan's trained eyes, the lines were clear. There was a hidden cellar beneath the ancestral hall a space that didn't appear on the official taxes for the property.
"Clever man," she whispered.
Just as she closed the book, a shadow fell across the doorway.
Su Wan didn't jump. She didn't have the energy for it. She simply looked up.
A young man stood there. He wasn't one of her sons. He was dressed in the simple, rough grey robes of a servant, but his posture was all wrong. He stood too straight. His hands, though calloused, were clean, and his eyes dark and piercing were far too intelligent for a common stable hand.
"Ah," Su Wan said, setting the book down. "The 'Invisible Son.' Or should I call you by your real name, Yan?"
In the novel, the Su family had a silent servant named Yan who was actually a fallen noble seeking revenge. He was supposed to be the one who eventually burned the manor down after the Matriarch died.
The young man stiffened, his hand twitching toward the hidden dagger in his sleeve. "How does the 'Mad Matriarch' know my name?"
"I know many things, Yan. I know why you're here. And I know that burning this house won't give you the revenge you seek. It will only make you a fugitive."
She stood up, using her cane to steady herself. "I am going to rebuild this family. Not into the weak, corrupt mess it was, but into an empire that even the Emperor cannot ignore. I need eyes. I need ears. And I need someone who knows how to kill quietly."
Yan stared at her. The "Old Madam" he had watched for months was a ghost a dying woman who couldn't even manage her own sons. This woman... this woman had fire in her eyes that felt older than the stars.
"And what do I get?" Yan asked, his voice a low, dangerous rasp.
"Justice," Su Wan replied. "And more gold than your noble father ever dreamed of. But first, you're going to help me dig."
"Dig where?"
"Under the ancestors," Su Wan smiled, a sharp, predatory expression. "We're going to see what my husband was so afraid of Lord Wei finding."