We barely made it through dinner without having them pester us anymore even as w heard the arrest going on. It was rather refreshing to experience peace and silence for a few hours and my husband and I even tried to attempt to make up with each other a little. We both sorely missed my nephew and we desperately wanted to invite him over for a while in order for him not to feel left out whilst his mother had no choice but to split her time between her 2 sons and her own husband, which was something that Chul was deeply unhappy with as my brother's firstborn son and the most beloved in my father's village. But we knew that we couldn't bring him into the city where all of our enemies were. We were in the middle of planning our visit in bed when they came storming up to our door again and incessantly banged on our door until we agreed to hear them out. Anger wasn't enough to describe how I felt in that moment where I had everything I could possibly ask for apart from the peace of mind that I had worked hard to achieve. I was far from the wild and unruly brat that I was in my youth and I just wanted to become the best mother, wife and aunt that I could possibly be, so why did everyone around me continue to try my patience like this? This was surely the reason why my man e=kept holding onto HuiJae, because she had become as submissive as he wanted me to become whilst I had to fight for us both and my Seo Clan including all of my father's villagers, and I was already more exhausted that I should have been at my age.
"Nephew, please listen to me! You haven't met your cousin ye, but he has really always looked up to you and he came over here especially to meet you, so please help him to get out of the dungeons!" "Which cousin is his now? You should relax aunt; the most he will be accused of is social climbing and carelessness; so just leave us alone will you!" "Won't our sons be exiled or forced to serve in the army?" "Most likely; it all depends on who snitched on him and why, and who can't accuse you of turning on them right after reaping the benefits of being in the company of those woman." "But my son has never even set foot in brothels before, never mind setting hie eyes on a concubine or a wife yet at all! He has no experience with women whatsoever as his father forbid it…" "Whilst he created his own harem in your home that could easily rival an amateur Prince?" "Well…" "By your power and capacity today, could you pull your cousins out of trouble?" "Before you supported The Mistress Han into demoting me several times over, then yes I could, but not now. Maybe I have the power to get one cousin out of the dungeons, but not both, that is for sure. I am already demoted enough that nobody will listen to my pleading or begging for favours like everyone else, but…" "And…what do you want in return for such a favour?" "I have 2 request for you; after this wedding business is over I want you all to return to your respective homes and never cross paths with me or my family again. Do not even think about keeping spies around my children to keep yourself up to date since my children will all be Seo children; The Nam Bloodline dies with me as far as I am concerned. And my second request is that I am leaving a part of me with your Nam Bloodline to take her rightful place in your ancestry book and a tomb in your halls; my mother. Embellish her into your shrine with a name tablet to return justice to her. I am leaving her with your family so you had better consider my request carefully before turning me down outright."
"Other than consenting to him, we truly do have no other way; I will even pull out my old face and say that we were far too emotional to make the decision much earlier." "Dream on sister! I need to win my husband back, and how can I possibly save my marriage my going against his ancestral rules like this?" "Really? So you will sacrifice your own maternal clan for a man that never wanted to marry you in the first place? Has your husband even come around when he heard the news of his own sons's arrest!" "Has yours!" "My husband is currently with his future daughter=in=law, tying to do anything and everything go get my son out of trouble from there! But how will you compensate your nephew from the ill behaviour your family has had towards him? This deal benefits us without costing us anything at all since all we have to do is this small thing and he will rescue our sons for us! The grandsons of The Nam Clan!" "He cannot possibly go against all of us whilst following his father's path! If we stand strong for long enough, then he will eventually surrender to us!" "And how long will that take! Every day you 'stand against him' is a day more that we go without our children right when my son should have been married! And how many sons have you lost already sister? Don't you understand that your marital family befell disaster as soon as you tried to kill the children of the woman that you were always jealous of! And now your bad luck has rubbed off on my own children! I will not have my son exiled 800 or 3000 miles away! And when Nam Jeon's first family passed away, of course he needed a woman's company, so what wrong did she do really?"
"There was no sound or care for my mother at all when she died; and if I didn't bring glory to this clan before my marriage, then everyone would have already forgotten her, isn't that so aunt? I have had it on good authority that both cousins have been receiving beatings every single night; one of them has lost most of their teeth and the other one has fallen gravely ill with fever." "What! No! Our children were raised so preciously with 3=4 servants watching his every move and waited to tend to him when the opportunity arose….no, they cannot bare this and neither can I!" "Their plight now is of their own seeking; do not forget who put them in the dungeons in the first place! Who indulged them to seek pleasure in brothels, social climb and collude in alliances? But rest assured, you can always adopt children into your family registry book by the time you all come to a decision and your sons are long dead!" "Do not splash dirt water on us, nephew!"
"Enough of this nonsense! I have here in his jewellery box he rest of our wealth combined to hand over to you to manage on this clans's behalf! We can give you everything apart from our shops since we also need a path to survive on, don't you agree? And here are your father's official list of assets that he kept hidden from The Emperor that you can also claim for yourself and…" "Sister!" "Have you lost your mind daughter! We also need that to survive on…" "…farmlands and banks….but the shops are ours like I said! There is even some rare art that you can see for yourself and these are the ironclad documents to back up our claims! It is even recorded here in his division of assists in his will and…" "Sister! Did you steal that from my private quarters! How dare you do such a thing!"
"I remember being punished almost every single day in the early days of my stay in y father's yangban in the ancestral hall where I was not allowed to leave once it got dark at night. A child who is afraid of the dark can only look for fire by himself when his mother is murdered in cold blood." "Your father needed caused your mothers death and he has been relatively harsh on you since your birth. You in turn have developed grudges and hatred, so much so that this clan has fallen apart during your metaphoric rise in the palace and now we are on our way to loose our noble title and even huge military camps are still submissively loyal to your commands. I will have my daughter=in=laws support on the matter and I will personally deliver you The Royal Decree in my hands for your mother's conferment." "Sister! I will never allow such a thing to come to pass!" "How skilled you are in making the others into targets aunt." "Excuse me?" "Regarding to this case of rebellion; other criminals have been arrested and interrogated; and we have found out that more than 10 of them have come from families of nobility and the degree of their crimes also vary. Nobody will tolerate this crime of rebellion light aunt's, have you even heard any news from the bride recently? Will she back up her fiancé or is she ready to cut him loose? You have already lost my support and I can imagine that you need hers now more than ever."
"So what can you do in The Emperor's Court? What will your defence be?" "I can at least plead that there is no proof that they wiling sought out the women or exchanged any crucial information, but I will have to carry out a search of their chambers myself just to be sure. But remember that our Goreyo Dynasty still has its laws that are backed up by Confucius rules and it is very difficult to plead mercy to criminals." "Criminals! Butt your cousins's are not…" "And harbouring benevolence and filal piety and offering to repay harsh treatment with kindness still has a small chance of working. Everyone will be angry at me for acting by myself without any regard to the rules in front of my peers in the High Court and even pressuring them." "Very well, you plead to the court on our behalf first and…" "Not a chance, I will go to plead for your sons after you have carried out my request first and nothing can change my mind at all."