The two of them sat and talked under the camphor tree. Dudi told Wen Nuan about everything to do with the Long family—the history, the curse, their relationship with the Du and Miao families, the feuds, and the stories he knew about the Long family's successors.
She listened quietly, as if she were listening to a good story. Still recovering from her illness, her face was not well. She looked haggard and pale, with little to no expression. Dudi tried to tell her some of the more pleasant stories about the Long family, but he said very little about her biological parents. All Wen Nuan knew was that her father had died a violent death at the age of twenty-seven.
It seemed that all the Long family's sons-in-law were destined for the same fate.
The girls of the Long family seemed to be cursed by fate, never to find happiness. They all wilted at the prime of their lives. In Dudi's stories, the Long family daughters never lived very long. The one who lived the longest was only thirty.
