The heavy, suffocating silence that followed Chen Ying's words was absolute, settling over the reception hall of the Yang Ancestral Estate like a physical weight.
Seated at the center of the elevated dais, Grandmother Yang's wrinkled hand tightened around the carved handle of her wooden cane with such visceral force that her knuckles turned a stark, bloodless white.
Her lips parted slightly as if she wanted to speak, to dismiss the younger woman's words as insolent nonsense. But no sound came out. The sheer shock of having her innermost, closely guarded physical agonies vocalized so flawlessly by an outsider left her completely paralyzed. For the past three nights, she had suffered those exact, terrifying midnight chest pressures in secret, refusing to tell the family doctors out of a stubborn pride.
