Chapter 21 Blessings
"What nonsense are you talking about!" Wu Yuanqing interrupted his wife. "The child died a long time ago. What could he possibly be doing?"
After that, he said to Feng Qingsui, "People look alike, you might have recognized the wrong person."
Feng Qingsui saw his concerns and said with a smile, "We are not from the Charity House, but we have some conflicts with Cuique. We came to you to inquire because we want to know each other better. You probably don't know that she is now the concubine of the Marquis."
Sun asked anxiously, "Which marquisate's heir is this? Is it the Rongchang Marquisate?"
Feng Qingsui nodded.
"I said she was the one who did it!"
Sun slapped the armrest of the bamboo couch heavily.
"That deal that bankrupted us was the work of the chief steward of the Rongchang Marquisate. That little bastard is taking revenge on us!"
"When I said I was going to kill her, you insisted on sparing her life. Now look, she's climbed up the ladder and can kill the three of us with just a flick of her finger!"
Wu Yuanqing's face became increasingly gloomy.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again and looked at Feng Qingsui intently.
"Do you really have a grudge against her?"
Feng Qingsui asked back, "With her personality, how many people can she not have a quarrel with?"
Wu Yuanqing smiled bitterly: "That's true."
He stared into space and said slowly, "Besides my wife, I also had four concubines, but none of them had children. A friend advised me to adopt a child from an orphanage, saying it would bring good fortune and the possibility of having a child."
"I adopted the Delphinium you mentioned, named her Zhenzhen, and treated her as my own daughter. Not long after, one of my concubines really got pregnant."
"I was so happy that I even held a banquet to thank my friends."
"The next day, the pregnant concubine stepped on some spilled oil and water, fell, and lost the baby."
"I was feeling down for a while, but then I got another piece of good news: my other concubine was pregnant. This time, I didn't dare to publicize it, so I told her to take good care of the baby. Unexpectedly, she got greedy and bought some sour plum sauce from outside. She got sick and had a miscarriage."
"After about half a year, my wife also became pregnant. She was very careful and paid close attention to her food, clothing, and daily expenses. The pregnancy was very stable."
"But when she was nearly seven months old, she was taking a nap under the pergola in the back garden when a black cat came in and swiped its claws at her belly. She woke up in shock, rolled over and fell to the ground, her water broke and she gave birth prematurely."
"She gave birth to a boy, but he only lived for a few hours."
"My wife had been looking forward to having a child for a long time, and after this blow, she was very depressed. Until one day, she heard the gatekeeper mention that the eldest daughter had not been going out to feed the cats recently."
"She then learned that Zhenzhen had been feeding stray cats on the streets, including the big black cat. She became suspicious, suspecting that her premature birth and the miscarriages of her two concubines were all caused by Zhenzhen."
"I think she's overthinking it. Zhenzhen is just a few years old, there's no way she could do such a thing, but she's determined to find evidence."
"She asked one of my concubines to pretend to be pregnant, and then ordered someone to secretly keep a close eye on Zhenzhen. They discovered that Zhenzhen was getting closer and closer to the concubine who had a miscarriage after eating sour plum sauce. The concubine soon found an opportunity to deliberately trip the concubine who was pretending to be pregnant."
"My wife interrogated the concubine, and she admitted that Zhenzhen instigated her to do it. Zhenzhen denied it and accused her of slander."
"My wife starved her for a few days, but she threatened me, saying she had sent a letter to someone outside. If she died in the mansion under unclear circumstances, that person would tell the Salesian the truth, and the Salesian would definitely report her to the authorities."
"There was chaos in the mansion. I wanted to send her back to the orphanage, but she didn't want to."
"She was nine years old at the time. According to the law, if an adopted child is over eight years old, returning him or her to the Salesian home requires not only the Salesian home's consent but also the child's consent."
"My wife couldn't stand this, so she sold the maid who served Zhenzhen and only gave her leftovers every day. She locked her up in the house and didn't allow her to go anywhere, trying to force Zhenzhen to leave on her own."
"I didn't expect that when the Salesian returned to visit, Zhenzhen said my wife was jealous of her beauty, distorted our father-daughter relationship, and deliberately abused her."
"The Salesian Home believed it and warned my wife not to do it again, otherwise they would file a lawsuit with the authorities."
"My wife was furious and wanted to find a kidnapper to take her away. Not long after, smallpox suddenly broke out in the capital. To avoid smallpox, many families fled to less populated areas outside the city."
"I have a farm on the outskirts of the city, and I moved my whole family there..."
After living there for a few days, I found a poisonous snake under the bed.
It was midsummer, and they all slept with the windows open at night. There were many snakes and insects in the countryside, so it was not surprising that a snake would come in.
But he had already considered this and had sprinkled snake repellent in front of and behind the house. He bought the snake repellent from an old doctor and had used it dozens of times. It had always been effective. How could it suddenly fail to work?
He inexplicably thought of Zhenzhen.
If the couple were bitten to death by a poisonous snake, Zhenzhen would be the sole heir to their property.
She knew that she had annoyed them and would gain nothing by staying, but she still refused to leave. Could it be that she was planning to kill them and their husband and wife and then inherit their wealth?
The thought terrified him.
He was afraid of alerting the snake, so he dealt with it calmly and had someone install fine screens on the windows to prevent snakes and insects from entering the house again.
During the Ghost Festival, after offering sacrifices to the ancestors, they held a family banquet and poured several jars of wine. The whole family was drunk, and he pretended to be drunk and let the servants help him back to his room. It seemed that he had completely forgotten about the fireworks, firecrackers, incense and candles piled in a corner of the hall.
No one knew that as soon as the door was closed, he got up from the bed, opened the screen window, jumped out of the window, walked around and climbed up the big tree outside the wall to watch what was happening in the yard.
After everyone had rested, a slender figure carefully opened the door, came out of his room, and looked around.
Seeing that there was no one around, he walked into the hall, took out a rope from his arms, tied one end of the rope to the fireworks, and pulled the other end to the door of the hall.
Then he took out a tinder and lit the rope.
Then he ran to the gate and opened the latch.
Then he stood outside the door, quietly watching the rope in the hall getting shorter and shorter, with a smug smile on his lips.
"You want to blow us up?"
He came down from the tree, walked towards the other party, and asked calmly.
Zhenzhen turned around suddenly, her face full of disbelief.
"It's a pity you can't have your wish. There's no gunpowder in those fireworks."
Zhenzhen's expression froze for a moment, then she turned and ran. After running only a dozen meters, she was caught by Zhuangtou and others who surrounded her.
She burst into tears.
"If my mother hadn't been jealous of me, slandered me for killing my father's offspring, and imprisoned and abused me, how could I have become possessed?"
"When you brought me back, you clearly told me to treat me like your own daughter. How could you only trust my mother and not me?"
"I am your blessing. Mother and auntie, aren't they pregnant because you adopted me?"
Because of the word "blessing", he did not kill her in the end, but sold her to a southern bandit who was trafficking young girls. He also bought the body of a girl who died of smallpox to impersonate her in order to deal with the government and the Charity Bureau.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
