Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Zheng Huaishu had plenty of places to go.

When the county magistrate heard how he had been driven out of his home by a shrewish wife, he waved a generous hand, assigned Zheng Huaishu a room, and gifted him a considerable sum of silver so he could focus on his studies.

The moment Zheng Huaishu arrived at the academy, he was surrounded like a star among admirers.

The teacher, who had just been ordering people around with an imperious air, spotted him and instantly softened into a genial smile.

The man behind the teacher kept following stubbornly, having held his tongue for a long while.

Someone said to Zheng Huaishu, “Brother Zheng, don’t mind that Song Baoyu. He may look learned and knowledgeable, but in truth he’s just a dullard who can’t even speak properly.”

“I heard he’s about to take a wife and is asking the teacher for his wages.”

Zheng Huaishu knew of Song Baoyu.

Once, an essay had astonished the teacher so much that he slapped the table and praised it to the skies.

Only after pressing for answers did he learn that a student had paid Song Baoyu to ghostwrite it.

Unfortunately, the teacher was a petty man.

He used Song Baoyu’s writing, paid him a pittance, and basked in glory among the local scholars and literati.

Song Baoyu was reserved and slow with words, so he could only swallow the loss in silence.

The last person to swallow such a loss had been Zheng Huaishu himself.

Scholars were proud and thin-skinned.

When Zheng Huaishu had been at his poorest, the teacher refused to pay him for the essays he had written, leaving him without even enough money to bury his father after he died of illness.

In the end, it was Huang Liu who had gripped a knife and gone to the teacher’s house to raise hell.

Only then had Zheng Huaishu gotten the silver.

Thinking of Huang Liu, Zheng Huaishu felt a trace of gloom rise within him.

But now he was already a juren.

He would never suffer such embarrassment again.

Calmly, he walked inside under everyone’s fawning attention, not bothering to give the teacher so much as a pleasant look.

As he brushed past Song Baoyu,

he heard the dullard argue with the teacher, “It wasn’t my wife who told me to come fight for this money. She’s a very good person. But since I’m moving into her home, I can’t go empty-handed.”

Everyone burst into laughter.

“No wonder you’re poor as a church mouse and still managed to afford a wife.”

“So you’re marrying into her family!”

After laughing, they suddenly remembered something.

This Zheng Juren they were currying favor with had once been a live-in son-in-law too.

Zheng Huaishu gave a faint smile and strode forward.

Inside his sleeve, however, his fist clenched tight.

Even if they had both married into their wives’ families, their fates were not the same.

Song Baoyu would never meet a good wife like Huang Liu, one who gave him her whole heart.

But he, Zheng Huaishu, would rise higher with every step.

Once he went to the capital and saw his name on the golden list, he would return in glory and marry Huang Liu properly.

By then, no one would ever again mention the humiliation of him once being a live-in son-in-law.

No matter how many times they had quarreled, Huang Liu loved him most. She was still his wife.

From far behind him, he heard another sentence.

“My wife just took a fancy to me.”