Chapter 405: Taking on Another’s Tribulation
When discussing something important, the last thing you want is a sudden twist right in the middle of the conversation.
Third Miss and her husband had been listening to the reading of their daughter’s smooth and fortunate destiny, unable to suppress their smiles. But the moment they heard the word "however," their expressions froze.
"However... what?"
"Now, don’t get nervous. It’s nothing major."
Third Miss and her husband were speechless. ’That tone of voice doesn’t sound like it’s "nothing major" at all!’
"Let me explain," Arabella Donovan said, feeling the need to defend the master who had originally read Miss Rhodes’s chart. "According to this young lady’s birth chart, she was to be doted on by her elders in her youth. And though she might encounter some hardships, she was highly likely to receive aid from a benefactor, turning misfortune into good luck and calamity into blessings."
’So, the reading that master gave your daughter based on her birth chart really wasn’t wrong.’
Third Miss and her husband weren’t fools; they immediately understood Arabella Donovan’s subtext.
"Then what about Josephine’s illness that time? She..."
"You may be operating under a misconception. The quality of a person’s birth chart, good or bad, doesn’t mean their destiny is entirely fixed by it, incapable of change."
Caspian Rhodes’s brow furrowed slightly as he instantly grasped the key point. "You’re saying the birth chart is just the foundation for a person’s future, and that other factors can influence their path. To put it simply, destiny can be changed?"
"Exactly. A person’s environment, the people they meet, even a decision made on a whim—any of these can influence the final outcome." Arabella Donovan’s eyes lit up, and she gave Caspian Rhodes an appreciative look, clearly pleased.
"That’s true," she continued, "but under normal circumstances, as long as a person’s own fortune doesn’t plummet dramatically or skyrocket, the resulting changes to their path are usually minor enough to be negligible."
Third Miss frowned. "By that logic, was Josephine’s hospitalization that year because her own fortune changed drastically? But why? What could have caused such a massive shift in her fortune, one that even affected her physical health?"
Arabella Donovan’s expression turned grave as she focused, performing a quick calculation with her fingers. "If my calculations are correct, the young lady’s tribulation was the result of inadvertently taking on a calamity meant for someone else."
"Taking on a calamity meant for someone else?" Third Miss and her husband exchanged a look of confusion.
Josephine, the subject of the discussion, also went pale, clearly frightened by Arabella Donovan’s words.
"Looking at her complete astrological chart, at the age of eight, the Taiyin Star was supposed to enter her Palace of Friends, indicating a smooth year filled with peace and new friendships. However, due to some unforeseen event, your Life Palace’s primary star was knocked off course and failed to settle in its proper place. Instead, a malevolent star from the opposing palace rushed in to attack, while the Tianji and Jumen stars entered her Palace of Sickness—a constellation extremely detrimental to her health."
Third Miss and the others were completely baffled, their faces blank with confusion.
Seeing their confusion, Arabella Donovan explained the key points. "To put it simply, that year she was supposed to go to a new place and make new friends. It should have been a joyful time filled with smooth social encounters. But because of a certain person and a certain event, the trajectory of her fortune was altered. She experienced health problems, and as a result, she missed the chance to make the friends she was destined to meet."
Third Miss and her husband were stunned. If they recalled correctly, the year of the incident was when their daughter was supposed to start elementary school. But because of her illness, she was hospitalized for several months. Even after being discharged, she needed more time to recuperate, delaying things by several more months. In the end, they simply postponed her enrollment until the following year.
What Arabella Donovan said matched the timeline perfectly.
"Most importantly, based on the alignment of that malevolent star and the way it entered her chart, the culprit who caused this deviation in her fortune should be a blood relative. If I’m not mistaken, her illness and hospitalization were likely a case of her taking on this person’s tribulation. And looking at the chain of cause and effect, your daughter’s hospitalization was probably directly caused by them as well."
As soon as Arabella Donovan said this, the faces of Third Miss and her husband turned livid.
Their daughter had been too young to remember, but she and her husband recalled it all too clearly. Toward the end of the year the accident happened, her sister-in-law—her husband’s younger sister—had suddenly shown up with her son, asking to stay with them. The excuse was that her husband had to go abroad for business and she had to work. Their son was too young, she’d said, and she didn’t feel right leaving him home alone.
Since they also had a child, the sister-in-law argued that looking after two wasn’t much different from looking after one. She begged them to take care of her son alongside their own, promising his father would pick him up as soon as he returned.
At the time, Third Miss had been very reluctant. Taking care of her own child was exhausting enough; she had no energy to spare for someone else’s. Besides, it wasn’t as if her sister-in-law’s family couldn’t afford a nanny. If she was too busy to look after her son, why not hire someone? Why did she absolutely have to impose on them?
But her sister-in-law, as if sensing her hesitation, went straight to their mother-in-law. To avoid putting her husband in a difficult position, Third Miss had finally, reluctantly, given in to the unreasonable request and let her nephew stay.
She never imagined that not long after, her daughter would wander to the artificial lake behind their house and accidentally fall through a hole in the ice.
It was around the Lunar New Year, with a lingering chill in the early spring air. The house was full of visiting relatives and their children, a chaotic swarm of them all playing together. No one knew who had started it or who was to blame for the mess, but in the end, only her daughter—the child of the house—was hurt. The guests’ children were all completely unscathed.
Afterward, perhaps afraid of being blamed, all the other children told the exact same story: it was her daughter who had first suggested playing by the lake, and it was she who had insisted on walking on the ice, leading to the tragedy.
They claimed that, fearing the danger, they hadn’t joined in. They even insisted they had tried to talk her out of it, but she just wouldn’t listen. In a few short sentences, they washed their hands of the matter, pushing all the blame onto her daughter.
Of course, Third Miss hadn’t believed a word of it. As her mother, she knew her daughter’s personality better than anyone. She would never have stubbornly insisted on doing something so mindless and dangerous.
But the artificial lake was in a relatively remote area. It had snowed just days before, and the nearby security cameras were still covered in ice that hadn’t fully melted, so they hadn’t recorded anything. With the supposed eyewitnesses all telling the same story so vehemently, she had no way to pursue the matter further.
Now, hearing Arabella Donovan’s words, Third Miss couldn’t help but be thrown back to that day. She remembered receiving the news and rushing to the scene with her husband, seeing their daughter just as she was pulled from the water—soaking wet, her face a deathly pale, utterly lifeless. She remembered the terror and despair as they stood vigil outside the emergency room, receiving one critical condition notice after another from the doctors.
It felt as if her heart was being plunged into a wok of scalding oil. Indignation and bitter resentment surged within her, and she felt she was on the verge of exploding with rage.
Her husband, sensing his wife’s distress, gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. His voice was choked and hoarse. "Are you saying... that when my daughter fell into the lake and had to be rushed to the hospital... it’s very likely it wasn’t an accident?"