Chapter 68: Three Women I Feel Sorry For (Two Chapters in One)
"Going to Wu? You are not planning to go back to Fujian?" Xiao Zhen was puzzled.
Zhen Wuduo sighed: "Even if I tell you now, you won't understand. You are too young. I won't say it anymore."
Xiao Zhen: "Then you can go to Wudi by yourself. I'm very busy."
Zhen Wuduo: "Okay, okay, I mean, I want to go see my daughter. I'm old now, and I don't know when I'll fall asleep and never wake up. I can't die without knowing what my daughter looks like."
Xiao Zhen became interested: "You have a daughter? You actually have a daughter?"
As everyone knows, Zhen Wuduo has more than a hundred sons, real or fake, but no one has ever heard of him having a daughter.
Zhen Wuduo sighed again: "Everyone thinks I like sons, so I have so many of them. In fact, they are all wrong. Having too many sons is useless. One or two capable and filial sons are enough. The extra ones are just money-losing goods."
Xiao Zhen sat down next to Zhen Wuduo, pulled out a short knife and started wiping it. The cold light reflected his stern brows.
Zhen Wuduo glanced at his expression and felt in his heart that how great it would be if this kid was his own son.
The first time he saw Xiao Zhen, he fell in love with him and wished he could stuff that arrogant little brat into his woman's belly and then give birth to another child.
Of course, even if he had more money, he couldn't do it.
So he chose to cheat and make the young Xiao Zhen his godson.
He gave Xiao Zhen a badge, with which he could collect money from Wanjinhao every year.
But for a full ten years, Xiao Zhen never used that badge once. It was not until he came to the capital and saw the resurrected Xiao Zhen that the boy asked to borrow his money for the first time.
The boy was talking about borrowing, the kind of borrowing that requires repayment.
Zhen Wuduo sighed again. He found that he always sighed whenever he was with this boy.
"My father had eighteen sons, but in the end all his wealth ended up in my hands. Can you guess why?"
Xiao Zhen knew some past events of the Zhen family. From their ancestors, the Zhen family had more sons than daughters, and most of the sons did not live long.
This is a very common thing for any family that made their fortune by being a pirate. They live on the tip of a knife and their lives are as light as morning dew.
"That's because you are the luckiest and most ruthless one among them." Xiao Zhen said.
Zhen Wuduo shook his head: "No, no."
At this point, he lowered his voice seriously and said, "I'm only telling you this, and you have to keep it a secret. This is our family secret."
Xiao Zhen laughed: "Okay, I'll keep it a secret."
Zhen Wuduo sighed again: "When I was little, I was very good-looking, white and fat, and my father liked me very much.
So when I was five years old, my brother tied me up with stones and threw me into the sea.
Fortunately, not only did I not die, I was also rescued by a fisherman, and I became his son.
Later, my brothers and sisters fought and quarreled. They got powerful weapons and poisons, and used them all on their own brothers. When I was eighteen years old, guess what, only two of my father's eighteen sons were left, one was me, and the other was my third brother. As for the brother who threw me into the sea, he had already died.
My third brother somehow found out that I was still alive, so he broke into the fishing village, captured my adoptive parents, and forced them to hand me over. In order to force me out, he killed Xiao Cui, who was engaged to me.
I went out to sea to fish that day. When I came back, I saw Xiao Cui's dead body and her parents who were beaten to death.
That was my first time killing someone. I rushed over like a madman with a harpoon in my hand. He probably didn't expect me to go crazy, so he was caught off guard and was stabbed by me...
I killed him and was also seriously injured. Just when I thought I was going to be chopped into pieces by his men, guess what, my biological father showed up!
Isn't it ridiculous? He knew that his son was going to kill his other son, but he didn't stop him. Instead, he watched us kill each other.
He spared my life and hugged me and cried my heart out, bah!
Later on, as you all know, I took over everything of the Zhen family, and brought them to the land to build a new world.
My father was mad at me. He wanted me to get married, but I refused. One day, I brought back seven women with big bellies. Those women were flirting and you could tell at a glance that they were prostitutes. I told my father that these women were sold cheaply by the brothel owner because they accidentally got pregnant with their patrons' children. Now I brought them back to let them have children. The children in their bellies will be your grandchildren. From now on, they will all have the surname Zhen, and I will write them in the family tree.
The women surrounded him, calling him "father-in-law" and even pulled his hands to touch their bellies. He couldn't catch his breath and died.
Xiao Zhen was stunned. Aren’t the children born by these women Zhen Lao Da to Zhen Lao Qi?
Legend has it that these seven are Zhen Wuduo's biological children.
Zhen Wuduo guessed what he was thinking and said smugly, "That's right, none of the things born by these cousins are my biological children. Later, the children born by those women, in fact, some of them I don't even know if they are mine, but these seven are definitely not mine. At that time, I was still a virgin.
If you don't believe me, I stayed chaste for Xiao Cui for over ten years. It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I met Yu Zhu and we got married.
Xiao Zhen frowned: "Have you ever been married?"
One of the five "mores" in Zhen Wuduo's name is the large number of women.
However, Zhen Wuduo had neither a wife nor concubines, and none of these women came from good families; most of them were prostitutes.
A rare look of desolation flashed across Zhen Wuduo's face: "It's been almost forty years now. Back then, I already had the idea of developing onshore business, but in our line of work, it's impossible to change careers all of a sudden. So I still wanted to make money on the water, so I went to Wudi and wanted to take over several docks on the Qingjiang River.
At that time, most of the people in Qingjiang were known as the White Shark in the Waves. They were also very ruthless characters. Although I brought a lot of people with me, we were outsiders after all. We were beaten badly and I was separated from my brothers.
I was seriously injured, and it was Yuzhu who saved me. You don’t know, the first time I opened my eyes and saw her, I thought I had met a fairy...
Later, Yuzhu and I got married, and we lived a happy life in that small village.
Until one day, my men found me, and I learned that when I came to Wu, something happened in the base camp in Min, and those bastards wanted to set up a new faction while I was away.
I asked my men to wait for me at the village entrance and I will leave tomorrow.
But when I turned around, I saw Yuzhu looking at me in disbelief.
Then I remembered that I didn't tell her my real identity, even my name was fake.
I tried to persuade her for a long time, swore to heaven, and told Yuzhu that I had decided to turn over a new leaf and do good deeds, and would never do anything violent again.
Yuzhu told me that she was pregnant and asked me to keep my word for the sake of our child.
The next day, I left. I told Yuzhu that I would be back in three months at most, but I was gone for a whole year.
I was tricked by those bastards and had a narrow escape. I had to hide on a remote island. It was a year later when I finally regrouped and took everything back.
I couldn't leave for the time being, so I sent someone back to Wu to pick up Yuzhu. After calculating the date, we found that our child was already born.
The people I sent out returned soon after. They didn't find Yuzhu because a few months ago, there was a flood in Wudi and the village was gone...
In the following years, I searched for Yuzhu, but what I finally found was the news that Yuzhu was dead.
An aunt whom I had met in the village before told me that when the flood happened, Yuzhu was still in confinement after giving birth. She took our daughter and fled with the villagers. Yuzhu's parents were no longer with us. As an orphan with a child, she was often bullied among the refugees. One day, those starving people wanted to snatch our daughter away and roast her to eat. In order to protect her daughter, Yuzhu fought with them.
When the aunt and her family rushed over, Yuzhu was already covered in bruises.
Before she died, she asked the aunt to take care of her daughter, but the situation at that time was such that the adults could not even get enough to eat, let alone a baby who was only a few months old?
At that time, a family happened to pass by. They were a young couple and their child. Perhaps because they were both mothers and could empathize with each other, the wife of the couple immediately told Yuzhu that she wanted to adopt the child.
Yuzhu's body was collected by that couple. Later, I followed the guidance of that aunt and found Yuzhu's grave. I discovered that there was a tombstone on the grave. The person who erected the tombstone was named Fu Xiaoying.
When I married Yuzhu, I used the pseudonym Fu Long. Everyone in the village thought my last name was Fu. Before I left the village, I told Yuzhu my real name, but she probably didn't tell the villagers.
After Yuzhu died, the couple once asked the aunt, and the aunt told them that my surname was Fu, so Fu Xiaoying was probably the name of my daughter.
The couple must have come back after settling down and erected a monument for Yuzhu in my daughter's name."
Zhen Wuduo was talking until his mouth was dry and he stopped cracking melon seeds. He looked at Xiao Zhen with eager eyes. He was thirsty.
But his eldest son didn't have the self-consciousness to serve tea to his godfather. Instead, he asked angrily, "You even know your daughter's name. You haven't looked for her in all these years?"
Zhen Wuduo lowered his head like a child who had made a mistake: "I have looked for her, but I couldn't find her. In the process of looking for her, I was careless and was plotted against and lost my virginity... Then I returned to Fujian and sent people to continue looking for her in Wu. This search lasted for ten years, but there was no news of her. During this period, I was deceived several times and found several fake daughters.
As a result, this matter was discovered by my enemies. I was looking for someone, and they were looking for someone too. I was looking for someone to find my daughter, and they were looking for someone to blackmail me.
So later I stopped looking for him and even spread the word that I didn't want a daughter, I only wanted a son. When a woman came to me with a bulging belly, I also told her that if it was a son, I would recognize him, but if it wasn't, I wouldn't.
After a while, the matter of me looking for my daughter was put behind me, and even my enemies thought it was a misunderstanding.
As for me, I dared not look for her anymore. I consoled myself by thinking that she was very happy in her adoptive parents' home."
This time, Xiao Zhen finally brought him a cup of tea as a favor.
"Do you dare to look for her now?" Xiao Zhen asked.
Zhen Wuduo drank the tea in his cup in one gulp: "I am old...Alas, I have lived a ridiculous life. I killed my brother, angered my father to death, and turned the Zhen family's genealogy into a stinking pile of shit. It feels good, right? I feel great. But if I have any regrets in this life, it is that I have let down three people.
One is Xiao Cui who died for me, one is Yuzhu who I was married to, and the other is my daughter whom I have never met.
Ah Zhen, please accompany me to Wu. I'm worried that if I die in Wu, I won't have any relatives around me. After all, she's your sister. Even though she's about the same age as your mother, she's still your sister.
It was the first time Xiao Zhen saw Zhen Wuduo begging for help. He couldn't help but ask, "Besides knowing her name is Fu Xiaoying, do you have any other clues?"
Zhen Wuduo nodded. "That lady said she heard the wife tell Yuzhu that her last name was Chen and her husband's last name was Shi, and that they both spoke with a Wu accent."
Xiao Zhen finally agreed: "Okay, wait for the news. I'll take care of the things I have on hand and then go to Wu with you. However, I can only give you half a year at most. After half a year, I must return to the capital."
In fact, even without Zhen Wuduo's request, Xiao Zhen was ready to leave the capital temporarily. Moreover, the fish had already taken the bait, and it was time for him, the fisherman, to hide.
Zhen Wuduo was overjoyed and grabbed Xiao Zhen's hand: "Good son, godfather knows that you are the most filial."
Xiao Zhen pulled his hand back from Zhen Wuduo's clutches with a look of disgust: "Pulling and tugging, how disgraceful! Can't you be more steady?"
Zhen Wuduo: I'm already old, and now a little brat is looking down on me for not being mature enough? Who can I turn to for justice?
Zhen Wuduo suddenly felt some sympathy for Princess Jiayi and Prince Consort Xiao. No wonder when he introduced himself and said that he was Xiao Zhen's godfather, the two of them looked so gloating.
Zhen Wuduo now deeply suspects that the eldest princess and her husband have long been trained like dogs by Xiao Zhen.
......
Two flowers bloom, each showing its own beauty.
This was Zhao Shiqing's second time leaving Liang. The last time he went to the capital, and this time he went to Wu.
A few days later, they arrived at a small town called Zhaoting.
This place is no longer under the jurisdiction of Liangdi and does not belong to other vassal states. Compared with the places Zhao Shiqing has been to, Zhaoting looks very poor at first glance. It is a poor place.
There was only one inn in the town, which was shabby. It was raining when they arrived. It was raining outside and inside the inn. There were large and small clay pots and jars in the hall, and even a pot. These were all used to collect rainwater. There was no way around it, the house was leaking.
Ling Bo quickly opened the umbrella that he had put away when he entered the door to protect Zhao Shiqing's head.
Fortunately, the room they lived in did not leak, but when they opened the door, the dampness hit them in the face.
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