Sure enough, before she finished speaking, a bright smile appeared on Yu Sili's face. He happily ran to An Ran's side through the path cleared by the servants. "Fairy sister, do you still remember me?"
Hearing how he addressed her, An Ran couldn't help but chuckle.
The maids and servants serving them all burst out laughing.
"Isn't my sister beautiful!" An Mu didn't laugh; instead, he looked proud and said, "She's almost like a fairy!"
Yu Sili nodded vigorously, looking very convinced.
The adults were amused by the two children's innocent words and actions. Seeing that the two children were both lovely and cute, and with Anran's permission, they gave them some snacks.
"Sili, are you alone again today?" Anran thought that since Anmu could hang out with Yu Sili, Yu Sili must live nearby. Remembering how he had been bullied by older children, she wondered if his family had intervened.
With his mouth full of pastries, Yu Sili could only nod. After he finished his pastries and took a sip of tea, he didn't take the jujube cake that Cuiping offered him. Instead, he focused on replying, "My brother went to the city with my mother. I didn't want to go, so I stayed."
An Mu asked from the side, "Are you coming along? There are so many delicious foods and fun things to do in the city!"
Yu Sili's bright, grape-like eyes suddenly dimmed, and he said in a low voice, "If I go, the oxcart will cost an extra person's fare. I won't go."
Seeing his well-behaved and sensible appearance, An Ran couldn't help but feel a pang of heartache. An Mu also knew that she had said something she shouldn't have, and that she had hurt Yu Sili.
An Ran quickly picked out a piece of steamed chestnut flour cake with osmanthus sugar and handed it to Yu Sili with a handkerchief.
"Thank you, fairy sister!" Yu Sili accepted it shyly.
An Ran quickly said, "Just call me 'sister' like Xiao Mu does."
Yu Sili nodded.
After a while, Yu Sili became more familiar with An Ran and stopped holding back so much. He answered all of An Ran's casual questions.
“Actually, going to the city isn’t so bad. I know Mother and Brother are going to inquire about Father’s whereabouts.” Yu Sili said without any reservations, “My father went to Jiangnan, saying he was doing business with the Chen family. He hasn’t come back for many years. My brother found out that the young master of the Chen family is in the capital, so he thought he would try his luck there.”
The Chen family of Jiangnan?
An Ran's heart suddenly tightened. Was it the Chen family she was thinking of?
Chapter 89
With doubts in her mind, An Ran simply asked more about Yu Sili's family situation.
She learned that Yu Sili had an older brother and a mother. Their father had gone to Jiangnan to do business before Yu Sili was born, and there had been no news of him since. Just because he had mentioned the Chen family once, his mother and brother remembered it.
Yu Sili was only five or six years old, and it was already quite an achievement that he could learn these words; he couldn't say any more.
Is it really such a coincidence?
An Ran pondered deeply, wondering if there were any people with the surname Yu in Chen Qian's family in her previous life. Although she had lived in the Chen family for three years, she only had a vague understanding of many things and was not clear about them. The young master of the Chen family in Jiangnan was in the capital, and Chen Qian fit this description!
The Chen family is extremely powerful in Yangzhou, and it's hard to say whether there are other Chen families in Jiangnan that she doesn't know about.
Anran calmed herself down.
Chen Qian's repeated harassment terrified her. First, he gave her a handkerchief, and then he accurately delivered a box with a note inside to her. Just thinking about Chen Qian gave her a chill.
His cunning was beyond her ability to handle, and his ruthless methods sent chills down An Ran's spine.
But she had already been betrothed to Lu Mingxiu!
An Ran repeatedly reminded herself that no matter how capable Chen Qian was, the Emperor had decreed the marriage, and the other party was the powerful Marquis of Pingyuan. What could Chen Qian do? He was merely relying on his years of experience as a royal merchant to further enhance the wealth of the Chen family.
If he causes any trouble, the imperial merchant of Yangzhou will probably have to be replaced next year.
Seeing An Ran's displeasure, Yu Sili, who had been intently eating pastries, stopped what she was doing and asked with concern in her large, grape-like eyes, "Sister, are you feeling unwell?"
An Ran then came to her senses.
Seeing the worried looks on the faces of the children in front of her, she quickly put on a smile again.
"I'm fine!" An Ran smiled gently, her beauty blooming like a spring flower. She patted Yu Sili's head and said, "I also lived in Yangzhou for a long time, and I was thinking of helping Sili find this family."
Yu Sili's eyes immediately lit up.
"Thank you, sister!" Yu Sili said excitedly, "I'll tell my mother and brother when I get back, and see if we can find my father!"
An Ran suddenly remembered an old story.
In her previous life, shortly after she married into the Chen family, their business in the north was greatly affected. It was said that a wealthy merchant surnamed Yu had stolen the Chen family's business and almost forced them to withdraw from the north.
By then, she had already been placed under the tutelage of Madam Ding. Madam Ding attributed all the misfortunes to her, saying that she was a jinx who brought bad luck to her husband's family.
Later, the Yu family gradually grew and prospered, eventually becoming the richest family in Yangzhou.
Chen Qian still respected her back then and even protected her in front of Ding Shi. Seeing that Ding Shi's attitude was not good, he simply took An Ran out for a walk to clear his head.
An Ran remembered that when they had lunch at the Yaoyue Pavilion by the lake, she had seen the head of the Yu family from afar. He was about the same age as Chen Qian, with a reserved demeanor, but one could vaguely glimpse a sharp and decisive nature.
The only discrepancy is in the age.
If he had a son as old as Yu Sili's brother, then when An Ran saw him again, he should have been in his forties. But the head of the Yu family looked to be only in his twenties.
An Ran had initially wondered if Yu Sili's father was a heartless man who had made money doing business in Jiangnan and no longer cared about his first wife and two sons.
This kind of thing is commonplace, both in real life and in plays.
An Ran specifically asked Yu Sili what the character of his surname was, and after receiving a definite answer, An Ran felt that she had been overthinking it. It wasn't the same character at all, and the age didn't match up, so An Ran put it aside.
She cared about Yu Sili's father for two reasons: first, she saw that they had a hard life, living in the countryside and often being bullied; second, she wanted to find a way to deal with Chen Qian, as she was always being led by the nose by him and was too passive.