Chapter 2

Chapter 2

My parents wanted me to remarry.

A wealthy man in town had lost his first wife and was looking for a young, beautiful second wife.

My parents had already taken twenty taels of betrothal money from him.

I refused.

My mother said, “They don’t even mind that you’re a woman who’s been married before. What is there for you to mind? He’s just a little older. Older men know how to dote on people, and you won’t even have to bear children. Marry in and you can enjoy a life of comfort.”

My father said, “Girl, just accept your fate. Your life is what it is-you’ll never become a government official’s wife. Your mother and I are only doing this for your own good.”

I still refused.

So they threatened to cut ties with me.

I turned around and kowtowed to my mother-in-law at once. “Mother, if you don’t mind, I’ll be your daughter from now on.”

My mother-in-law was delighted.

She had already been subtly encouraging me to borrow a man’s seed and give her a grandson. Now, even better, she could openly take in a live-in son-in-law.

I painted her a grand future. “From now on, your daughter will bring you a live-in son-in-law and give you several grandsons and granddaughters, all of them surnamed Shen.”

The moment I said it, my heart gave a lurch.

If we were taking in a live-in son-in-law, why should the children still be surnamed Shen?

I looked at my mother-in-law, and she looked thoughtful too.

I tried tentatively, “How about they take your surname instead, Mother?”

The corners of my mother-in-law’s mouth tugged upward, impossible to suppress. “Wouldn’t that be improper?”

“I think it’s perfect. Besides, I want to take your surname too, Mother.”

My mother-in-law’s surname was Wang. I went and changed my name to Wang Cuiniang.

When my parents found out, they came to our door and cursed me for being unfilial.

My mother-in-law cursed right back. She had been widowed young, sharp-tongued and domineering, and her fighting power was terrifying.

My parents were scolded until they were drenched in humiliation. In the end, they took the initiative to sign the severance papers and even had the village head witness it.

Of course, the main reason was that my mother-in-law slapped twenty taels of silver down in front of them.

That bought out every last shred of kinship between me and them.

See? Anything money can solve doesn’t count as a problem at all.

But I was still pretty sad.

It was no different from selling me off.

The village head quietly asked me, “Has your mother-in-law’s illness gotten better?”

I said, “Not better. It’s worse now. She’s forgotten she has a son and thinks I’m her daughter who got lost years ago.”

My mother-in-law and I started living together.

People say there’s always trouble around a widow’s door, but in our Wang family, there were two widows, and no one dared come stirring up trouble.

That was all thanks to my mother-in-law’s legendary reputation from her younger days.

Rumor had it that she once brandished a sickle and turned a man sneaking over the wall in the middle of the night into a eunuch.

I asked her about it.

My mother-in-law said with disgust, “He was too ugly. Ugly enough to still dare climb into bed with me-that was an insult!”

Actually, my mother-in-law did have someone on the side: Uncle Ah Niu, the blacksmith in town.

Uncle Ah Niu was seven or eight years younger than her and strong as an ox.

Back when we got up early to sell wontons in town, once we had almost sold out, my mother-in-law would find an excuse to sneak off and meet Uncle Ah Niu.

The money from selling wontons all went toward Shen Jingzhi. It wasn’t just money-anything halfway decent in the house was always set aside for Shen Jingzhi first.

He got two eggs at every meal, while my mother-in-law and I got nothing. As for meat and fish, he ate the meat, and we drank the soup.

He also needed new clothes every season, and even his brush, ink, paper, and inkstone had to be the best.

When he went to the capital for the imperial exams, the government subsidy was not enough, but he didn’t hold back on the money the family had saved either. He took it all.

Even while he was away, my mother-in-law and I still couldn’t bear to spend money, always thinking that if he passed the exams, there would be plenty of places to spend money in the future.

Who would have thought he’d abandon us instead.

The moment I thought of that, my anger surged, and I hurried to feel for my one-hundred-tael silver ingot. Only then did my temper ease.

My mother-in-law and I were rich now, but we still went to town every day to sell wontons without fail.

Without Shen Jingzhi, in less than a month, we had saved up five strings of cash.

My mother-in-law’s wonton stall had been running for more than twenty years. The taste was good, and the customers were steady.

Before, we only sold in the morning and hurried back by noon to cook for Shen Jingzhi, do the laundry, chop firewood, and carry water. The yard was planted with all kinds of vegetables, and there were chickens, ducks, and geese too. Someone had to be around all the time.

During the busy farming season, we couldn’t even sell in the morning. We had to be in the fields before the sun was up.

None of those household chores ever touched Shen Jingzhi’s hands.

Once I asked him to cook and bring food to the fields, and he nearly set the kitchen on fire.

It seemed like aside from studying, he couldn’t do anything at all.

That useless bum.

I got angry again and hurriedly reached out to feel my silver ingot once more.