Life was already hard enough, but there was someone beside her crying and telling her not to struggle anymore, to just lie down and wait to die! How could Yue Jiuyue possibly remain calm?
Even if Liu didn't know she was digging for medicinal herbs, Yue Jiuyue just wanted to keep her distance from someone who was always crying and whining.
"Are you going to stay here and dig with me, or go home to take care of the kids and cook?"
Yue Jiuyue finally softened her heart and decided to give Liu another chance.
"Mom, come home with me. I know you're starving. When Xiaoman's dad comes back, we'll have something to eat, okay..."
Liu continued to plead with Yue Jiuyue while crying, which made Yue Jiuyue completely lose patience with her.
"Liu Shi! What am I, as a mother, supposed to do? I don't need a daughter-in-law like you to meddle in everything. Go home!"
Yue Jiuyue spoke in a deep voice, which frightened Liu Shi so much that she cowered there like a quail and dared not say another word. Seeing that she was really angry, Liu Shi hesitated for a moment, then ran home with her head down and tears in her eyes. Along the way, she was pointed at and gossiped about, which added a few more strokes to Yue Jiuyue's "wicked mother-in-law" persona.
Yue Jiuyue didn't care about Liu Shi's opinion. After digging up more than a dozen kinds of medicinal herbs, she finally decided to dig up several common and easy-to-dig wild grasses, such as goosegrass, plantain, pigweed, and windmill grass, which were not in the category of wild vegetables. Although wet medicinal herbs were very cheap, they were everywhere on the mountain!
Yue Jiuyue has escaped poverty!
A few blades of grass weigh one kilogram, and even a single pig stalk can weigh one or two kilograms. Six or eight coins may not seem like much, but Yue Jiuyue can gather two or three hundred kilograms of grass in an hour, which is more than one tael of silver. This is even when she is weak and powerless.
While Yue Jiuyue was still struggling to earn a little money, her three sons, who were fetching water from the mountain spring, heard rumors that Yue Jiuyue was so hungry that she was digging up wild grass on the mountain that even pigs wouldn't eat.
Men gossip too, and the presence of the rumored protagonist's three sons only made the gossip scene even more lively.
"Hey! Facing east, facing south, facing north, you three brothers are no good! You can't even support your mother anymore, forcing your aunt to run up the mountain to dig up those weeds that even pigs won't eat. Tsk tsk, you three brothers are so unfilial!"
"That's right! You didn't see how pitiful my aunt looked! She was digging grass on the mountain all by herself. I even went up to her and tried to persuade her, but I saw that her basket was full of pigweed and plantain. Unfortunately, I couldn't persuade her!"
"You three brothers, stop being so lazy! This water-carrying work doesn't require three people. You should think about how to dig up more edible wild vegetables, so your aunt doesn't have to dig up those weeds to eat anymore; that's really not fit for human consumption!"
...
A group of people, some mocking and sarcastic towards the three brothers, others speaking earnestly to them, made the three brothers' faces turn pale and then red, wishing they could disappear into the ground. If it weren't for the fact that they needed water at home, they would have really wanted to quit and leave.
The youngest of the three brothers was sixteen years old, a rebellious age when they were also concerned about their image. Naturally, they were unhappy about their mother's shameful behavior.
However, filial piety is of paramount importance. If such a thing were to spread, they would be nailed to the pillar of shame for being "unfilial," and how could they ever face others again?
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