He could hardly believe the sight before him. Shuyin, the poised woman who’d spent breakfast planning corporate warfare and psychological torture, was now completely unrestrained and rolling in mud like a delighted child. Yuyan shrieking and sliding alongside her with abandon. And Chen Xiao, usually so quiet and reserved and careful, grinning with pure delight as he joined the chaos without fear of consequences.
By the ti they paused to catch their breath, completely exhausted, the garden looked like a genuine war zone. Mud-slicked soil stretched everywhere. Flattened flowers lay scattered and broken. Expensive pots were overturned and cracked. A series of shallow puddles glistened in the sunlight, reflecting blue sky in muddy mirrors. Shuyin lay flat on her back, laughing so hard that tears ran down her mud-streaked cheeks, cutting clean tracks through the dirt. Yuyan rested on her stomach nearby, giggling uncontrollably, unable to stop even when her laughter turned to hiccups. Chen Xiao knelt between them, and in a final act of joyful rebellion, flung one last playful handful at them both before collapsing in the mud himself with a satisfied sigh.
The three of them sat in a sloppy, muddy heap, panting, completely soaked, utterly exhausted, but exhilarated in a way that had nothing to do with revenge or strategy or careful planning. For this mont, there was no imprisonnt to rember, no stepmother to defeat, no corporate warfare to wage. Just laughter and joy and the freedom of a childlike mont they would all rember forever.
Shuyin wiped her muddy hands across her face, leaving even more streaks that made her look completely ridiculous, and glanced up at Lu Yuze still standing in his clean clothes at the garden’s edge. "See?" she said, voice muffled by lingering laughter. "Sotis reclaiming what’s yours ans getting dirty. Really, truly, completely dirty."
Chen Xiao let out another small, delighted laugh. Yuyan, with mud literally dripping from her hair in thick clumps, giggled so hard she almost fell sideways again.
And for once, just for this perfect mont, the mansion wasn’t a place of sches or careful strategy or calculated revenge. It was theirs. ssy and chaotic and full of life.
Perfect.
Lu Yuze sighed loudly, but the sound carried more amusent than exasperation. "All right, all of you get up," he called from his clean vantage point at the garden’s edge. His gaze swept over the three mud-covered figures sprawled in various states of collapse, taking in the complete disaster they’d made of themselves. Really childish, the whole spectacle. But watching them, seeing Yuyan laughing without restraint and Chen Xiao actually smiling, seeing Shuyin reliving sothing she’d probably never experienced growing up, he couldn’t bring himself to be anything but glad.
Shuyin pushed herself up from the mud with a groan that was half-laughter, half-exhaustion. Her clothes were completely ruined, mud caked into every fold of fabric. Her hair hung in wet, dirty strands that would probably require serious effort to untangle. She looked absolutely ridiculous and utterly magnificent in her complete lack of dignity.
Then sothing shifted in her expression. The playful exhaustion transford into sothing else entirely. She looked around at the partially destroyed garden, at the broken plants and muddy chaos, and instead of satisfaction, her eyes sparked with renewed purpose.
"Actually," she said, her voice carrying a sudden energy that made both children look up with imdiate attention, "we’re not done. Not even close."
Yuyan blinked mud out of her eyes. "What do you an?"
Shuyin gestured broadly at the remaining orchids, the still-standing bonsai arrangents, the ticulously maintained sections they hadn’t yet destroyed in their water-fight chaos. "All of this. Every single piece of her garden. It needs to go. Completely. Every orchid, every imported plant, every carefully arranged stone. I want it all removed."
She stood with renewed determination, pulling Yuyan up with one muddy hand and offering the other to Chen Xiao. The little boy took it carefully, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. "Co on," Shuyin said, that wild energy infectious. "Let’s finish what we started."
What followed was systematic destruction disguised as gardening. The three of them attacked the remaining garden with focused purpose, no longer playing but working. Shuyin showed Yuyan how to dig deep enough to get the entire root systems and how to leverage the shovel for maximum effect. Chen Xiao, with his characteristic precision, carefully loosened soil around bases, making the larger plants easier to extract.
Within twenty minutes, they’d made significant progress. The garden that had looked rely damaged now looked truly devastated, plants uprooted and piled in growing heaps of green and brown.
That’s when the household staff began to notice. The head gardener appeared first, drawn by the sound of destruction. His weathered face went pale when he saw what they were doing. "Miss Shuyin," he said, his voice carrying shock barely contained by professionalism. "What... what are you doing to Madam’s garden?"
"Removing it," Shuyin said simply, not pausing in her work. She wrestled with a particularly stubborn bonsai tree, its roots refusing to release their hold on the earth.
"But... but these plants are very expensive, very rare, so of them took years to cultivate properly before transferred...."
"I don’t care." Shuyin’s voice was flat, brooking no argunt. She finally won her battle with the tree, pulling it free with a grunt of effort and tossing it onto the growing pile. "I want every single plant that she put here removed. Completely. Today."
More servants had gathered now, drawn by the commotion and the head gardener’s distress. The head maid, a woman who’d served the household for decades, stepped forward with wringing hands. "Miss, please, perhaps you should reconsider. When Madam Chen returns from... from wherever she is..." the woman clearly didn’t know about the jail cell, "...she’ll be very upset to see her garden destroyed. And Master Lin, he paid substantial amounts for many of these specins. The consequences....."
"There will be no consequences," Shuyin interrupted, her voice cold and certain. She straightened from her work, muddy and disheveled but carrying absolute authority. "Because this garden never belonged to Madam Chen. It never belonged to Lin Feng."
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