At this moment, a few idle young servants gathered behind a tree near the second gate, craning their necks to look inside, hoping to catch a glimpse of a beautiful figure passing by.

News had just spread in the residence that a group of maids who had reached marriageable age were to be released for marriage. Although the best among them would likely not be available to them, who didn’t have a bit of wishful thinking? What if, by chance, one of them caught the eye of a prominent maid?

“They’re coming, they’re coming!”

With this suppressed, excited shout, all the young servants widened their eyes, holding their breath as they watched a pair of feet in unusually ornate embroidered shoes approach along the winding path. But they quickly realized that those legs were exceptionally short—even the shortest maid in the residence couldn’t possibly have such a figure.

When the overly lush foliage could no longer conceal the upper body of the approaching person, they were all dumbfounded.

A face as delicate as carved jade, a bright red blouse embroidered with butterflies, spring green pants sprinkled with floral patterns, a heavy gold-and-gem collar hanging around the neck—he looked just like the child of fortune from a New Year’s painting.

Who was this from inside?

As someone was muttering, one with a good memory had already answered the question: “It’s Mr. Henry.”

“What Mr. Henry? He’s just a kid they picked up!”

The one who said this with a huff was the tall, handsome Brian Carter. At this moment, his jealous gaze stabbed toward Chad Sullivan like needles.

The other three young servants knew exactly why Brian Carter was speaking so spitefully. One of them chuckled and said, “Brian Carter, Mr. Henry was picked up by the old master, but you were picked up by the third master. That’s a different fate.”

“That’s right. The third master handed you over to Steward Lin to raise, and you were chosen at eight to serve the seventh young master. That’s already pretty lucky. But look at Mr. Henry—he was picked up by the old master himself and raised as a grandson!”

“Our Yue family has four generations under one roof: the old master, three masters, eight young masters, and the younger generation like Young Master Carter. If they wanted to pick someone to adopt for the fourth master who left, it wouldn’t be hard. Why would the old master bother to raise a child with a different surname?”

They were all servants. Faced with someone whose origins were much like their own, yet who had soared to become a “phoenix on a high branch,” the young servants chattered away, and naturally, not a word was kind.

In the end, Brian Carter just snorted, “The family used to think he was the illegitimate child of the fourth master, and the old master couldn’t bear to let the family bloodline drift outside, so he personally brought him back. If the old master hadn’t let it slip a few days ago that he saw a dying woman on the road, with a child lying beside her, and out of pity, had the woman buried and brought the child back, who would have known the truth? Not to mention, even his title is the most special—Mr. Henry… What kind of young master is he supposed to be?”

“Let’s not say any more. After all, the old master personally put him in the family register and had his household registered at the yamen. Didn’t you see that even the masters and young masters have to accept it?”

At the second gate, Chad Sullivan vaguely heard their gossip, but completely ignored those piercing stares.

The old master just liked to dress him up as the Wuxi Lucky Child, and he had long since accepted his fate. But every time he looked at his short arms and legs, he couldn’t help but sigh at how hard it was to grow up.

He remembered when he first opened his eyes and found himself in a sea of fire, he thought he was having a nightmare. He could still recall the woman who, after soaking his cotton clothes with cool water from a kettle, carried him out of the flames and said those three words—“I’m sorry.”

Whether it was being carried by Yan Er to the old master, or the old master deciding to adopt him and give him a name, he had numbed himself, treating it all as a dream. But as the dream dragged on—seven years now—he could no longer pretend it was just a nightmare.

Here, the Sui dynasty had not ended after two generations, but had lasted over a hundred years. Afterward, the Wei dynasty succeeded Sui for more than two hundred years, then the world fell into chaos. The founding emperor of the current Wu dynasty seized the opportunity, rose in rebellion, fought his whole life to win the empire, established the capital at Jinling, and now it was already the fourth emperor’s reign.

Yet, despite their apparent wealth and glory, the Yue family was not an aristocratic clan, nor even a scholarly family. The old master, who had risen to Minister of Revenue, had come from such humble beginnings that his family wasn’t even considered poor gentry—he was just a menial worker. Yet, without the benefit of the imperial exams, he had worked his way up from a lowly storehouse clerk to a high-ranking official of the second rank—a living legend.

The eldest master served as a prefect elsewhere, and his eldest son, Charles Sullivan, had made the honor roll in the imperial exams at twenty-six last year, though he ranked near the bottom of the top three. Thanks to the old master, he still landed a fine post as a professor at the Imperial Academy.

The second master had a sinecure at the Court of Imperial Sacrifices thanks to family connections. The third master, not wanting to wait for a post after graduating from the Imperial Academy, relied on his wife’s family to go into business and was thriving as well.

Only his nominal adoptive father, the old master’s youngest legitimate son, Mr. Sullivan the Fourth, was said to have left home in protest of an arranged marriage, and for years there had been no word—no one knew if he was alive or dead!

Even though the fourth branch was already insignificant in the Yue family, just a few days ago, when the old master accidentally revealed that he was an adopted son, it was like poking a hornet’s nest!

Chad Sullivan was lost in thought when a delicate voice suddenly sounded behind him: “Young master, why have you come to the second gate again?”

With this voice, the young servants peeking by the gate saw a girl of sixteen or seventeen appear behind Chad Sullivan.