Chapter 036: Make up your mind
June 26th is the day of Jiashen in the Chinese zodiac. The five elements of gold and water are mutually beneficial, making it a good day for opening a business and receiving money. It symbolizes the influx of wealth after marriage. It was the date chosen by Qin Laicai and Fang for Liu Zhiyan and Qin Xue to get engaged.
When Qin Laicai said he would not get married, he was not just saying it, he really did it.
Specifically, when they were matchmaking, he and Fang each found a matchmaker to visit the other's home to discuss the marriage. On the day of the engagement, the Liu family sent betrothal gifts to the Qin family, and the Qin family also sent betrothal gifts to the Liu family.
Apart from the fact that the date is set on the same day, the main point is that everyone does their own thing, without distinguishing who is more important or who is the host or the guest.
Anyway, it's just two young people setting up a new family.
The Qin family was a merchant family and they were not short of money, so all the things they sent to the Liu family were valuable things, such as gold and silver ingots, various rare cloths, and Huizhou's famous pens, ink, paper and inkstones.
Of course, all the gifts were packed in vermilion gift boxes and placed in red silk gift boxes, so outsiders could not see what specific gifts were included.
But the long gift box, weighing a total of 120 dan, was extremely eye-catching.
Everyone knows that the master of the Qin family loves his only daughter. Marrying this daughter of the Qin family is equivalent to getting everything of the Qin family.
Knowing this very well, Qin Xue has been in contact with many people who are very attentive to her since she was six years old.
Therefore, he was afraid that his young and ignorant daughter would be deceived by a bad-intentioned person when he was not paying attention.
Qin Laicai was released early on. The Qin family wanted to recruit a son-in-law and had very high requirements for the son-in-law, in order to make most people give up.
Qin Laicai's move did scare away a lot of people, but there were also families who had both sons and money. Unfortunately, such families generally could not meet Qin Laicai's requirements for a son-in-law.
Therefore, Qin Laicai didn't take these people seriously.
Of course, after saying this, he also educated his daughter a lot, telling her about many men who wanted to take over the family and bully women, so that his daughter would not be easily deceived by some people with bad intentions.
His two-pronged approach seemed to have quite good results.
My daughter grew up safely until she was fifteen years old and was never deceived by anyone with ulterior motives.
But he first discovered that his daughter seemed to have been overcorrected by him. Every time she talked about getting married, she did not have the expectations and shyness that a young girl should have about marriage.
After realizing this, Qin Laicai actually felt a little regretful.
He was afraid that he would harm his daughter and not know how worthwhile it is to get married and have children.
Later, Liu Zhiyan appeared. His appearance made Qin Laicai see from his daughter the shyness of girls of this age when talking about marriage and men.
At that moment, he was sincerely grateful to Liu Zhiyan.
What moved him even more was that the young man agreed to be the Qin family's son-in-law without any bargaining. In order to better protect his daughter, he was willing to take part in the imperial examination, which he had not been interested in before.
Qin Laicai was willing to think more about such a good young man, so when he insisted on becoming a son-in-law, he proposed this way of marriage that everyone thought was inappropriate.
Even if people want to say that he is a son-in-law, it is not very tenable.
I have put a lot of thought into today's betrothal ceremony.
It was all for the sake of repaying Liu Zhiyan's kindness.
There are two important officials in the court in the family, and their family has received many rewards from the court. Logically, Fang Shi has long been accustomed to accepting gifts.
Even so, she was really surprised when she opened the boxes of betrothal gifts sent by the Qin family.
The rewards bestowed by the imperial court included not only items with good meanings, such as the jade ruyi, but also some everyday items, such as cloth, Laba porridge, and fresh fruits offered as tribute from somewhere.
The betrothal gift sent by the Qin family was indeed glittering gold ingots, glittering silver ingots, lines of ink with a bluish-purple glow, inkstones of various colors and high-quality materials, and stacks of rice paper that shook as crisply as leaves in the breeze.
Fang was an old lady from the countryside. In her early years, she didn't know anything about things like pens, ink, paper and inkstone.
But as more and more people in the family used these, over the decades, she also learned a little about how to read them.
Naturally, it was obvious at a glance that everything the Qin family delivered to their door was good stuff.
Thinking of the betrothal gift she had placed with the Qin family, she looked at her little grandson holding the gift list beside her and said, "Compared to this, the betrothal gift I prepared seems a little inadequate."
"It's different." Liu Zhiyan had a different opinion. "The Qin family has no shortage of gold, silver, and treasures. If you prepare all these things like Uncle Qin did, it would be like exchanging gifts between the two families. What's the point?!"
"On the contrary, those imperial gifts you prepared for them, bearing the inscription of official system, are truly priceless treasures to the Qin family." Although those items cannot be traded, they are something that ordinary merchants may not be able to obtain even after several lifetimes of hard work. "Although I will definitely need these things when I enter the court as an official in the future, for now, they are absolutely treasured and kept with great care."
That’s right, many of the things his grandmother prepared for the Qin family were bestowed by the emperor.
The house in Yangzhou Prefecture was purchased not long ago, so these things were naturally sent by his grandmother to the capital, asking his father to send someone to deliver them.
This is also the reason why the deposit could have been made in mid-month but was delayed until late June.
Having lived to Fang's age, she already understood the principle of 'avoiding perfection', so even though she felt that her grandson's marriage was not perfect, she made preparations with full sincerity, and did her best to do everything she could think of and do.
Take the matter of asking the eldest son to choose the gifts that had been promised and having them sent from the capital, for example. "As long as you think it's okay."
"You have eaten more salt than we have eaten rice, but you are much more reliable than a young man like me. You can't be wrong." If he prepared it himself, he would probably just do it for the sake of showing it, and would not specially trouble his father.
What Liu Zhiyan said was right. The Qin family's father and daughter were both stunned when they looked at the list of gifts sent by the Liu family.
The last time I chatted with Liu Yulan, I learned that he is now an official stationed in another city, and that his brother-in-law is also an official.
But given their age, no matter how outstanding their performance in officialdom was, it was impossible for them to accumulate such a long list of imperial gifts in just over ten years.
Qin Laicai said with a complicated expression, "It seems that Minxing's background is far beyond our imagination."
Even though Qin Xue was ignorant of the world, she knew that a family that could afford so many imperial gifts was definitely not an ordinary family. She looked at her father dazed, "Dad, I feel dizzy now, as if I've been hit by good luck. Do you feel the same?"
Qin Laicai nodded, "Your father, I feel the same way."
Then he said in a distorted voice, "How could we, father and daughter, have such good fortune to meet someone as good as Minxing?"
As their acquaintance deepened, Qin Laicai now believed that Liu Zhiyan was an excellent and good person in every aspect.
"He said he liked the pure and innocent feeling in me!" Qin Xue thought of what Liu Zhiyan had said. "To put it bluntly, this should be called 'fools have good fortune', right?"
Isn't so-called innocence just a euphemism for not understanding many things?!
Qin Laicai seemed to understand the meaning of this, "Maybe it's because you give him a natural and unpretentious feeling?!"
Because he couldn't bear to let her go, he didn't make the same demands on the girl as other people.
It can be said that she grew up freely and without any modification.
So she has a completely different feeling from those girls who grew up bound by rules.
"Don't tell me, he actually said something similar."
Qin Laicai once worried that the child he raised like this would never meet someone who understood and appreciated her.
Unexpectedly, the little girl was so lucky to meet someone who truly understood her. "Then just trust him as much as you trust me. I believe that anyone who likes you will be happy to have your 100% trust, just like me."
"To be honest, he told me something similar."
Looking at his daughter's shy face, Qin Laicai's father suddenly felt a sense of melancholy as if his daughter had grown up, "..."
But when he thought about the pig that had taken away his cabbage, which was a good pig, his melancholy was slightly alleviated. "Just do what he said. Anyway, Dad will always be there to back you up. We can afford to lose."
"I wrote down everything he promised me, and he signed it." Qin Xue shared her little secret with her father with a little pride, and then lowered her voice and said, "I told him that if he dares to go back on his word, I will make his mistake public and let everyone know that he is an unreliable hypocrite."
Qin Laicai didn't expect that Liu Zhiyan would play such a childish game with his daughter.
As a man, he knows better than anyone that when a man cares about you, he will tell you what you like. But when they don't care about you, it's useless to use the words you said to criticize them, except to make them hate you more.
Seeing the smug look on his daughter's face, Qin Laicai felt that some things should be experienced by her personally.
So, he didn't remind his daughter that a man's promises were the most untrustworthy. "This is your little secret, don't tell Dad about it. Of course, if he breaks his promise one day, just tell Dad and he'll teach him a lesson for you."
Qin Xue shook her head. "I think it's better to find Sister Ye than you. So, if he really breaks his promise to me, I'll go to Sister Ye to complain." Then she added, "If I can't find Sister Ye, I'll find Grandma Liu."
"..." After hearing what Qin Xue said, Qin Laicai suddenly felt a sense of loss as if he had fallen out of favor.
However, my daughter can be as close to her future mother-in-law and future great-grandmother as a family.
Let him be lost.
He knew that no matter how much love he gave this girl, it could not make up for her regret of having no mother since childhood.
He should be happy that this regret can be compensated by his future mother-in-law.
The engagement between the Qin and Liu families quickly overshadowed the previous rumors that Wang Xingsheng was not a member of the Wang family.
Because this marriage is too special.
First of all, the groom-to-be, surnamed Liu, was merely the owner of Fang's dessert shop, having only been in Yangzhou for a few months. Although his house was located on Ximen Street, he was rarely seen interacting with anyone nearby.
Those who were interested in investigating did not find anything special about the Liu family.
He even knew that the servants in his house were very simple, obviously not the kind of servants that come from an official family that values family background.
But judging from the fact that they could afford such a large house, the Liu family should be a family with some wealth, as evidenced by the 120 dan of betrothal gifts they gave to the Qin family.
That's one point.
The second is the so-called marriage form of these two families, which is unheard of, unseen, and can be called out of place.
Everyone knew that the Qin family had always been committed to recruiting a son-in-law, but over the years, those who had their eyes on the Qin family's fortune and wanted to eat up the Qin family's wealth had tried hard. Unfortunately, in the end, they all returned empty-handed, and no one had ever successfully recommended themselves to become a son-in-law.
Now it suddenly broke out that the Qin family wanted to marry the Liu family, who had just settled in Yangzhou and had no roots. The way of marriage was not the Qin family's insistence on recruiting a son-in-law, but the Lao He son did not marry. This made many people want to know what ability this young man from the Liu family had to make the father and daughter of the Qin family agree to the marriage.
They knew they couldn't get any information from the Qin family father and daughter, otherwise they would have found out when rumors about the marriage between the two families first started circulating. So, this time, these people went straight for Liu Zhiyan.
So, the next morning, when Liu Zhiyan was about to go out, he was surrounded by people who had been waiting outside the Liu residence.
Liu Zhiyan, who was suddenly surrounded and hadn't had time to mount his horse yet, quickly reined in his horse and looked at the people surrounding him with a questioning look on his face, "What are you doing?"
"Let's see, how are you, the one chosen by the Qin family father and daughter, better than the rest of us? How come you not only caught their eye, but they also insisted on having you become their son-in-law?"
That’s right, the people who surrounded Liu Zhiyan were all those who had recommended themselves to the Qin family but ultimately failed to become a son-in-law.
Liu Zhiyan raised his eyebrows and looked at the dozen or so young men surrounding him one by one.
There are all kinds of people, tall, short, fat and thin.
Judging from their clothes, they should all be from wealthy families. Although none of them have particularly outstanding looks, there are some with regular features and handsome looks.
Thinking that these people had all coveted his little girl, although he knew that most of them were probably after the Qin family's property, Liu Zhiyan still couldn't help feeling sour in his heart.
He raised his eyebrows, pretending to listen attentively, and asked everyone, "Did you figure it out?"
Today, Liu Zhiyan was wearing a rain-soaked sky-blue brocade blouse with wide sleeves, a moon-white jade belt with dragon-shaped patterns tied around her waist, and a mutton-fat jade crown pinned on her hair, holding down her dark blue hair. A few strands of hair drifted across her slightly raised lips in the wind, and her jade-like face made one's breath catch. "This is too beautiful!!!"
The most outstanding man among them stared at his jade-like features and muttered absentmindedly, "So they were attracted by your extraordinary looks?"
These people surrounded him, each one standing not far away from him. The man's words naturally reached Liu Zhiyan's ears. He looked at him coldly and said, "Maybe."
He thought it was nothing strange that anyone would prefer a good-looking face to an ordinary one.
The handsome man spoke again, "Beauty can win people over, but love fades as beauty fades. As far as we know, Young Master Liu is twenty-five years old this year, a full ten years older than her. Aren't you afraid that in four or five years, she will dislike your age and stop loving you?"
"Then at least I can use this honor to gain her love for a few years, but you..." Liu Zhiyan said calmly as his eyes swept over everyone's faces one by one, "but you don't even have such an opportunity. What a pity."
When faced with unpleasant people, Liu Zhiyan instantly unleashes his sharp tongue.
His unhurried words and indifferent gaze made those who were caught by him feel ashamed of themselves instantly.
However, this is not the end.
Just listen to him continue.
"If I were you and were going home to greet your parents right now, why didn't I give birth to you the way Uncle Qin likes you? If they gave birth to you the way Uncle Qin likes you, and if you were recognized by Uncle Qin like me now, he would not only take the initiative to propose that I not be his son-in-law, but also say that once I entered the Qin family, everything in the Qin family would be left to me to manage."
He wanted to take the imperial examination and become an official, so naturally he couldn't take over everything in the Qin family. However, that didn't stop him from provoking those who were looking for trouble. Seeing their eyes red with anger, Liu Zhiyan continued with a regretful tone, "Ordinarily, you should have known them earlier, so the opportunity should have fallen on you. It's a pity that your parents gave birth to you ugly."
No one would have thought that such a seemingly bright and handsome man could speak so harshly. The man who had always thought he was good-looking was so angry that his eyes were redder than a rabbit's. He said angrily, "Uncle Qin has long said that even if you become the Qin family's son-in-law, you should not covet the Qin family's family property. This is something we all know. I don't believe he will make an exception for you."
"Yes, Uncle Qin has long said that he will train his future grandson to be the heir, so he will never hand over the family business to you."
"Are you afraid that you have been deceived by Uncle Qin?!"
Seeing their eyes changing from anger to sympathy as they talked, Liu Zhiyan pretended to be nervous and asked, "Is that really the case?"
"You just arrived in Yangzhou and don't know the situation. No wonder you believed Uncle Qin's words." Seeing him like this, the outstanding-looking man's eyes became even more sympathetic. "When my sister was six or seven years old, Uncle Qin said, 'The Qin family only accepts sons-in-law who live with us. After my daughter gives birth, I will start teaching the child. The son-in-law can enjoy unlimited wealth of the Qin family, but he cannot touch the Qin family's property.'"
"That's right. If you just ask around, you'll find out that what we say is true."
"We were originally quite jealous of you, but now it seems that you have been deceived."
"Listen to us, if you want to marry Sister Qin just for the Qin family's property, then it's better to call it quits."
Liu Zhiyan was so shocked by what he said that his body swayed. The people around him quickly gave him a helping hand and said, "Brother, hold on."
Seeing that a group of people were not only fooled by him and forgot their original intention of looking for him, but also sympathized with him, Liu Zhiyan tried hard not to laugh. It was so difficult to hold back that his body trembled.
He was afraid that if he continued to talk with these people, he would lose his composure, so he quickly said, "Thank you for reminding me. I will go ask Uncle Qin what is going on."
After saying that, he stepped on the saddle with his left foot and leaped onto the horse's back.
Seeing his action, the people who were originally surrounding him subconsciously made way for him.
Liu Zhiyan whipped his horsewhip, and the man and the horse galloped out.
Looking at the figure that was moving away from them like the wind, the dozen or so people standing there looked at each other. Finally, the man with outstanding appearance spoke, "Since we have no chance against the Qin family, let's start looking at other families."
Originally they said that as long as the Qin family did not find a son-in-law, they would not get married.
Now that he had seen Liu Zhiyan's appearance with his own eyes, even the man who had always prided himself on his good looks had given up waiting any longer.
Others felt there was no need to persist, so they all responded to his words, "Yeah, go home and ask your family to help you find it."
"Yes, yes, go home, go home..."
Liu Zhiyan had no idea that these people had changed their minds. After rushing out, he looked up to the sky and let out a long laugh, completely letting out the laughter that he had been suppressing for a long time.
In the past, he always avoided people when he went to the Qin family. Today, since he told those people that he wanted to go to the Qin family to find out the truth, he walked into the Qin family's door openly.
Qin Xue, who had been waiting for him in his yard, saw the smile on his face and was very curious, "Why are you so happy so early in the morning?"
“When I was leaving the house, I was stopped by a group of people.”
"Huh? You're so happy to be stopped?" Don't people usually stop others when they're looking for trouble?!
"Because not only did they fail to find any fault with me, they were also fooled by me." He guessed that those people now felt sympathy for him, which was funny to think about.
"It sounds interesting. Tell me about it. I want to know too."
"They are all people who once rushed to become the son-in-law of the Qin family. Are you sure you want to listen?" Liu Zhiyan narrowed his eyes and stared at Qin Xue, as if to say, if you dare to agree, I will never let you go.
Qin Xue couldn't help but flinch at Liu Zhiyan's words. "You said they were the ones who came after me, and I didn't provoke them. It's better to say they're after the Qin family's money than to say they're after me."
Qin Xue was very clear about this, so she never had any thoughts about those people.
Liu Zhiyan had no doubt about this. "I was just trying to get involved. Are you secretly thinking about me like this in your heart?"
"How are you the same as them?!" Qin Xue said without thinking, "They haven't even seen what I look like yet they come to my dad. In their minds, what I look like or whether I like them or not doesn't make much difference to them. As long as they get my dad's approval, that's all that matters."
"Unlike you, you contacted me first, got to know me to a certain extent, and asked for my consent before going to my father to talk about this."
"So I should be thankful that the smooth process of our acquaintance was the right thing to do, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now."
Not only Qin Xue thought so, he also thought so.
If he hadn't met Qin Xue first, gotten to know her better, and slowly been attracted to her, but had proposed marriage right away, not only would Qin Xue not agree, he wouldn't agree either.
Therefore, the wonder of fate is that only when you meet the right person at the right time can you form a suitable marriage. This statement is very suitable for him and Qin Xue.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
