Chapter 246 Recognition
"Bring them in." Madam Zong said in a deep voice, "I want to see who is so bold."
A middle-aged man and woman, dressed in coarse clothes, with gray hair, dusty faces, and slightly hunched bodies, were immediately brought to the banquet by servants.
After the two men stopped, they looked around nervously, as if they were looking for someone.
When he saw Feng Qingsui, his eyes suddenly widened.
"Daya! We finally found you!"
The two of them stumbled towards the front of the banquet.
Halfway through, the woman tripped over her left foot and fell to the ground. The man hurriedly stopped and helped her up.
"Are you hurt?"
The woman just shook her head and continued to rush forward.
He rushed to Feng Qingsui and opened his arms to hold her in his arms.
"Daya! Damn's Daya!"
Wuhua stepped forward and stretched out his hand to block, but the woman's arms were empty.
The woman's eyes filled with tears: "Daya, it's mother, don't you recognize her?"
As he spoke, he pulled out a shiny black rattle covered with countless layers of pulp from his bosom. He shook it a few times and said to Feng Qingsui, "This is the rattle you loved to play with when you were a child. Do you remember it?"
Feng Qingsui said calmly, "You've got the wrong person."
"How could I be mistaken!" The man walked up to the woman, his eyes also filled with tears. "You look exactly like your mother when she was young."
The guests suddenly realized that the middle-aged couple had come to recognize their relatives.
Although the woman's face looked a little weathered, if you looked closely, her facial features and face shape were indeed somewhat similar to Mrs. Feng's.
But isn’t Mrs. Feng an orphan whose parents both died?
How come a father and mother suddenly appeared?
"If they look alike, they must be mother and daughter," Feng Qingsui said calmly, "many concubines should call her Empress Dowager Mother instead of Empress Dowager."
The Queen Mother she was referring to was naturally her master.
Guests: “…”
The reasons are too strong to be refuted.
The guests who still had some impression of Zong Yingqiu agreed deeply with this.
If we talk about resemblance, Mrs. Feng and Zong Yingqiu look more alike, but the Zong family didn't say anything, so they just thought it was a coincidence.
The man pulled out a piece of faded yellow paper from his sleeve pocket, opened it with trembling hands, and said, "Look, this is your birthday card. It even has your handprint on it."
Madam Zong sneered, "What can you tell from a handprint where even the fingerprints are a mess? These days, can you claim kinship with just a random birthday card?"
"The birthday invitation is just to prove our blood relationship with Daya."
The man argued confidently.
"Daya and her mother look so much alike, who wouldn't say they are mother and daughter?"
“Woo woo—”
The woman suddenly fell to the ground.
"Daya, it's all mother's fault. When we were fleeing the famine, we were too tired to walk. I fell asleep on the side of the road while holding you, and that's why you were taken away."
"Mother and father have been running around all these years, asking around, but they haven't been able to find your whereabouts. They've been so worried that their hair has turned white overnight, and they haven't had a good night's sleep."
"Not long ago, a fellow villager ran into you in the capital and told me about it. Your father and I immediately sold our property and went to the capital to look for you."
"I was afraid I'd spend all my money before I found you, so I didn't even dare sleep on the bunk bed at night. I slept under the bridge. I searched for the better part of a month, and finally I saw you in front of the general's mansion. I mustered up the courage to ask for an audience."
"I'm sorry, I didn't come to you for anything else, I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"As long as you are doing well, your mother and father will be relieved. We will go back to the village and will never disturb you."
As the woman spoke, she took out another thing from her bosom.
"This longevity lock was given to you by your grandmother when you were one month old. Please keep it as a keepsake."
"Dad and mom have spent all their wealth looking for you over the years. There's really nothing left for you. Don't blame dad and mom, wuwu..."
The man's eyes turned red. He squatted down, hugged the woman, and said, "Mother of my child..." and cried uncontrollably.
Guests: “…”
This crying sounded so sad.
The couple didn't look like the kind of people who came here to curry favor with someone because of their greed for fame and fortune. Could Mrs. Feng really be their daughter?
“Pah pah pah!”
Madam Zong suddenly clapped her hands.
"I'm sorry to both of you for putting on such a touching family search scene for my birthday banquet. But before you came, why didn't you inquire about Madam Feng's relationship with our clan?"
The couple burst into tears.
The woman looked bewildered: "We are just here to recognize your daughter, why are you asking about her relationship with you?"
Madam Zong looked at the guests and said, "Just now I said that there is another happy event to share with everyone. This happy event is the recognition of relatives."
"Mrs. Feng is the biological daughter of my second daughter, and also my legitimate granddaughter."
All guests: (; ☉_☉)
Madam Zong’s second daughter...seems to be the former wife of Duke Ningguo?
Didn’t the former wife of the Duke of Ning die after giving birth to only Miss Ning?
How come another daughter appeared?
The guests who attended Princess Shouyang's wedding banquet and witnessed the monkey making a fuss suddenly remembered that the wife of the Duke of Ningguo at that time, also known as the Duke of Ningguo's second wife, Zhong, accidentally exposed her right little finger when her finger ring fell off.
The little finger on her right hand was shorter than that of an ordinary person, and was exactly the same as Miss Ning's little finger.
Some people speculated at the time.
But not long after, Duke Ning died suddenly, and his family was stripped of his title, confiscated, and he was exiled. Zhong and his stepdaughter died one after another on the way to exile, and the matter was forgotten and no one mentioned it again.
Madam Zong is now claiming that Madam Feng is the daughter of the Zong family. Could it be that...
For a moment, everyone pricked up their ears.
Madam Zong continued, "Back then, Ning Zeming and Zhong had an affair, secretly conceived a child, and conspired to poison my Qiu'er, causing her to die in childbirth. They then passed off Zhong's illegitimate child as my granddaughter and threw my own granddaughter into a mass grave..."
Guests: “!!!”
He poisoned his first wife, abandoned his own daughter, passed his concubine's daughter off as his first wife's, and deceived the clan... The former Duke of Ningguo was truly insane!
No wonder the Zong family stood idly by when something happened at the Ningguo Mansion, and did nothing when Miss Ning was exiled.
After expressing their feelings, they all looked at Feng Qingsui.
"Mrs. Feng is truly blessed with a long life. Any ordinary person would have died in a mass grave long ago. Not only did she survive, she even turned the tide and returned to high status."
"That's right, even the storybook wouldn't dare to write that."
"After a rough life, the bitterness will finally pay off, and there will surely be endless blessings in the future."
The middle-aged couple was dumbfounded.
"No, this is clearly our Daya. How did she become your granddaughter? Your clan saw that Daya had become successful, so they wanted to claim her as their own?"
Feng Qingsui asked back, "Didn't you just find me at the gate of the clan residence? How did you know I was successful?"
The middle-aged couple's expressions froze.
Madam Zong ordered the maidservant beside her: "Bring the bust that Master Shi painted for Qiu'er."
The maid took the order and left.
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