Chapter 3

Chapter 3

It was exactly dinnertime, and as the weather grew warmer, many families in the village liked to set their tables in the courtyards, with every family gathered in their yards.

Hearing the ruckus from over here, folks were already poking their heads over the nearby walls, watching with great interest.

Zhong Yizhu had never been cussed out so bluntly and vulgarly, and he had no idea why this woman had it out for him.

He'd been raised to be kind to people, but where had all that kindness and patience gotten them?

Recalling the hushed gossip that lurked in the shadows, Zhong Yizhu knew that if he didn't stand up for himself, everyone would think he was an easy target.

Besides, this woman was spreading lies to ruin his name. Her intentions were downright nasty.

From somewhere behind him came a whistle, followed by a few scattered, jeering laughs. Someone who enjoyed stirring trouble shouted from a distance, "Wu Cuijuan, weren't you supposed to be visiting your parents? Why are you back so soon?"

Wu Cuijuan spat back in that direction, "Mind your own business!" Then, with a spiteful glance at Zhong Yizhu, she added, "You little vixen, always seducing other women's husbands—karma's caught up with you, huh? Even the Zhong family can't stand your shame and won't take you back. If I were you, I wouldn't have the face to live. I'd find a rope and hang myself."

Hearing this, Zhong Yizhu finally understood. A wave of absurdity washed over him. "I've never even seen you before."

"When has a thief ever admitted to stealing?"

A breeze blew by, not even cold, but Zhong Yizhu couldn't help shivering.

In the dim twilight, Wu Cuijuan's smug, mean face looked like a monster about to eat him alive.

At that moment, Zhong Yizhu finally grasped what his father had told him long ago.

—In a village, people can be just as ruthless as beasts.

Seeing the disbelief on Zhong Yizhu's face and realizing he wasn't any good at arguing, Wu Cuijuan was about to pile more crap on him when he cut her off coldly.

"Our family requires even our shop assistants to be decent-looking and of good character. Your husband couldn't even meet our shop's hiring standards—what makes you think I'd fancy him?"

Zhong Yizhu didn't even glance at Li Siniu. Instead, he fixed his gaze on Wu Cuijuan's bitter, furious face and delivered his next words lightly.

"This madam here, instead of pestering people like a leech, should go see a doctor for some eye medicine."

Wu Cuijuan thought she was good at arguing, but that was only in village name-calling matches. Though simply dressed, Zhong Yizhu carried himself in a way that clearly set him apart from the villagers, which made his words carry more weight.

For some reason, Wu Cuijuan felt herself losing ground. Especially when she heard the laughter from the nearby courtyard, her anger flared, and she lunged at Zhong Yizhu, trying to scratch him.

"You little bitch! How dare you insult me!"

Zhong Yizhu wasn't about to just stand there and get hit. He sidestepped quickly, about to call for help, when Li Siniu grabbed Wu Cuijuan.

"Enough! Stop making a scene!"

As the two struggled, Zhong Yizhu steadied himself, slipped into a side alley, and hurried toward the Zhong family's old house.

"What's the hurry?"

Before he reached home, Zhong Yizhu saw Sun Yunniang waiting at the courtyard gate. He ran up to her.

"Mother, you're still recovering. Why are you outside?"

Sun Yunniang reached out to straighten his messy bangs. She knew her son better than anyone—he couldn't lie, and whenever he didn't know how to answer, he changed the subject.

She patted his back gently and didn't press further.

"It's fine to stand for a little while. Let's go inside. The food I saved for you shouldn't be cold yet."

Sun Yunniang's family had been small merchants. After her parents died in a natural disaster, she went to live with her uncle's family until she married.

When she first married into the Zhong family, Zhong Laoer was still just a small trader trying his luck in the prefectural city, nowhere near the wealth he would later amass. She had to cook, wash clothes, and handle household chores just as she had at home.

Unlike Zhong Yizhu, who had never lifted a finger around the house, Sun Yunniang handled their current situation with much more composure. However, since she hadn't fully recovered, Zhong Yizhu insisted she not cook and instead paid their neighbor, Zhao Daniang, to bring them meals.

In recent years, border wars had cost Great Yan a lot to win. Now the empire was recuperating. Although Liushan Village was in the prosperous south, life there only allowed the villagers to fill their bellies, with meat only showing up once in a blue moon.

After finishing a bowl of bland coarse grain porridge and stir-fried wild greens, Zhong Yizhu felt a pang of regret. He hadn't thought things through. It was fine for him to eat this, but his mother needed to regain her strength—this wouldn't cut it.

In the east main room, Sun Yunniang looked down at the small box Zhong Yizhu placed before her. Inside were some loose silver and jewelry, adding up to about thirty taels.

"Mom, you keep this."

Sun Yunniang sighed. "Silly child, if I take it all, what will you use?"

Zhong Yizhu stared at the dim candle on the chair. "I'll find a way to earn money."

When he left the Zhong family, Old Madam Zhong declared that since he refused to contribute to the family, he had no right to take any family money.

He had almost no savings. The monthly allowance his parents gave him had mostly been spent on buying various rare incense. The Zhong family ran a fragrance shop, selling incense balms, powders, and pellets. He'd had a keen sense of smell since he was a kid and had always followed his father when he made incense. As he grew up, instead of gold and jewelry, he was into collecting incense pellets. His parents indulged him, and he never thought to save money.

Now, all he could take was that box of random incense and the few meager possessions even Old Madam Zhong didn't care about.

His situation was bad, and his mother's wasn't much better.

At first, Zhong Yizhu couldn't understand why his father and third uncle were brothers, and why his grandparents, Zhong Laotai and Zhong Laohan, could be so biased. Later, he realized that people tend to favor the kids who are most like them—just as shifty and self-serving.

Thirty taels was just a year's allowance for him in the past, but now it was all he had to survive on.

Remembering something, he said, "Mom, about that land deed..."

"Let's not rush that."

Sun Yunniang reached under her pillow and pulled out a small bundle. Inside were two silver ingots and a few silver ornaments—her dowry from when she married into the Zhong family. Even Zhong Laotai, as stingy as she was, couldn't take that away.

"Mom has money to use. You keep yours."

She pushed the box back to Zhong Yizhu. Just as he was about to protest, she picked up a silver bracelet from the bundle and opened its clasp.

Zhong Yizhu's eyes widened in surprise as he watched his mother pull a three-hundred-tael banknote from the hollow silver bracelet.

Sun Yunniang gently smoothed out the creases on the banknote. Meeting her son's astonished gaze, she smiled faintly, her eyes filled with nostalgia as she began to tell him a story he had never heard.

"In the fifteenth year of Emperor Yuanjing's reign, for the Empress Dowager's birthday, it was said that a foreign kingdom sent a rare incense that won the favor of both the Empress Dowager and the Emperor. A lot of commoners started copying the court's use of incense. That year was prosperous, and your father made a lot of silver. The Zhong Family Fragrance Shop opened right after that."

"At the time, I had been married into the Zhong family for three years with no sign of a child. Your grandmother was very displeased with me. One day, your father suddenly handed me this banknote and said that when he married me, he didn't have much money, so this was to make up for the betrothal gift. He told me to keep it for myself."

Tears shimmered in Sun Yunniang's eyes. "Don't you think your father must have foreseen this day? Even in death, he's looking after us."

From the moment she found out that Third Uncle's side had sent Zhu Ge'er away, Sun Yunniang knew this family no longer had room for them.

She had kept this banknote in her dowry box all along. After the falling-out with the third branch, she managed to hide it inside her dowry bracelet. Her uncle's wife had never liked her and, wanting to put on a show of not mistreating her, had given her a hollow silver bracelet that looked nice and chunky. That came in handy.

She'd done it just to be safe, never expecting the Zhong family could be so heartless and ruthless.

Her dowry, converted to silver, amounted to a little over twenty taels. Together with the three-hundred-tael banknote, if she bought a shop in the county seat and rented it out, it would be enough for her and her son to live on.

Sun Yunniang reassured Zhong Yizhu, letting him go back to rest with his money box.

In the eastern room, Sun Yunniang carefully stowed away the banknote, but her brow was furrowed with lingering worry and concern.

Her Zhu Ge'er was naive, only thinking about staying by his mother's side, but he would turn eighteen in the second half of the year and was already of age to marry.

If she could find a good husband for Zhu Ge'er, she would be willing to use all three hundred taels as a dowry for him or even to take in a son-in-law. But they—

As a widow with no one to rely on, she absolutely couldn't let anyone know about this money.

They had only just arrived in the village, and they were strangers here, so there was no need to rush. Sun Yunniang coughed twice, pushed down the thousand thoughts in her heart, blew out the candle, and went to bed.

...

The next day dawned clear and sunny, the best weather in days.

Zhong Yizhu, following the example of their neighbor Zhao Daniang, carried the newly bought bedding out to the courtyard to air. They lacked everything at home, and he wanted to go to town for supplies, but Sun Yunniang was uneasy about letting him go alone and insisted he wait until she recovered to go together.

Zhong Yizhu understood his mother's concerns and didn't argue. Instead, he took some copper coins and exchanged them with Zhao Daniang for some daily necessities.

After Zhong Yizhu left with the pile of odds and ends he had traded for, Zhao Daniang's daughter-in-law couldn't help but ask, "Mother, is it fair to charge him so much?"

Even soapberries that could be picked from the mountains were being sold for five coppers a handful—to the daughter-in-law, this was utterly outrageous.

Zhao Daniang weighed the coppers in her hand and smiled shrewdly. "What do you know? These city boys who can't tell one grain from another are most free with their money. Didn't you see how he paid without even blinking?"

The daughter-in-law hesitated, then nodded, but another thought struck her. "What if he finds out the prices when he goes to town and comes back to cause trouble for us?"

Zhao Daniang was unconcerned. "He needed things urgently, and we helped him out. Naturally, the price differs from what he'd pay in town. Besides, we had to carry these things back from the city ourselves. And what could a single young man and his widowed mother do to us? Even if it went before the village head, there's no rule that says we have to give things away for free..."

Zhao Daniang went on for a while, but seeing her daughter-in-law still seemed hesitant, she grew impatient. She waved a hand dismissively. "Never mind, I'm wasting my breath on you. Since the weather is nice, go wash the family's clothes."

The daughter-in-law quickly nodded, finished the work at hand swiftly, then gathered the laundry to be washed and hurried out with a wooden basin.

To the west of Liushan Village was a shallow bank where most villagers came to wash clothes.

Zhong Yizhu arrived early, and the bank was still empty.

He set down his basin and first stared curiously at the glistening river surface for a while before crouching down to figure out how to do the laundry.

Sun Yunniang had initially not wanted him to go, but since they were now living in the village, he had to learn how to live like a villager. He could learn to do chores and cook; he was grown now and couldn't rely on his mother for everything.

He tried to remember how the household servants did the laundry: first, fill the basin with water, soak the clothes, and then he had no idea what to do next.

Zhong Yizhu regretted rushing out without asking his mother how to wash properly. There was no one around he could learn from.

After a moment's thought, he took out the soapberries he had just bought and dumped them all in.

He swirled the water with his hand and, following Zhao Daniang's instructions, squeezed the soapberries. True enough, some tiny white bubbles appeared. He squeezed hard for a long time until his hands ached and no more bubbles came from the soapberries.

Zhong Yizhu let out a breath and looked at the clothes in the basin, unsure if this counted as washing.

He picked up a garment to inspect it, tried wringing it, and finally just dumped the water out of the basin before picking it up to leave.

Silently watching from the opposite bank, Pei Mu lifted his basket of shrimp and crabs out of the river.

Though the water from that side didn't flow over, it was better not to let anything that had been handled by such a clumsy person near his catch.

Pei Mu had been in the mountains for several days and had a good haul. Not wanting to pass through the village, he took a detour across the river, planning to take the path to the county seat to sell his game.

The shrimp and crabs in the basket were a bonus from his trip. Deep in the mountains, where people rarely tread, the crustaceans were less wary, easy to catch, and plump. He had gathered a basketful on his way down. Halfway, much of the water had splashed out, so he found a spot to refill it, letting the fish and shrimp soak in fresh water to revive them a bit before heading to the county for a better price.

On the far side of the river from Liushan Village, the bank was thick with lush weeds. People on the shallow bank couldn't see him, but he had a clear view through the gaps.

Pei Mu couldn't recall seeing this person in the village before and assumed they were some city relative visiting a household. He paid it no mind. He looked down and poked at the shrimp and crabs in the basket; seeing they were all lively, he stood up, shouldered the game he had caught, took the basket in one hand and the fish trap in the other, and headed toward the county.

His clothes were a bit dusty with grass seeds at the hem but were otherwise clean. The morning sun lit up his face, and a lean, tall figure was reflected in the puddles by the roadside.

Pei Mu was calculating which shop to sell today's catch to and how much money he could get, when suddenly a series of screams rang out in the distance.

Pei Mu had no interest in a commotion. He frowned and kept walking, until a few moments later he caught faint cries for help, growing closer.

----------------------