"Why has it come to this? Her sons are the Eldest Son and the Second Son of the Duke's Mansion, and her daughter is the Second Miss of the Duke's Mansion. She had cultivated them in the arts of zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting, each without compare, and even married them into the family of the Imperial Academy Libationer Ji, a family of scholarly farmers."
"As their birth mother, she had not an ounce of dignity, and for such a trifling matter, she was confined to such a place. Duke An, that brute who knows neither kinship nor humanity and who kills without batting an eye, that old man not yet dead, declared that she would be locked up here for life."
"Maternal Aunt Liu felt, for the first time, that her two sons were so utterly hopeless, so useless. If only they were like that wretched Ye Xinyan, they would certainly come to visit her in the Buddhist temple hall, heedless of all else. Even if the guards did not allow it, they would fight their way through."
