Sun Yannan sat down, and Peng Jing said, “I made a series of mistakes at the beginning, but all of this was caused by one person.
Our Peng family is also a big family in Pingchang County, but the Shi family has always been in the county where the county chief of Pingchang County is located, and the county where our Peng family is located is about three counties away from here.
The Peng family is famous in the local area because the family has persisted for more than a hundred years without splitting up. The Peng family's courtyard and house have been continuously expanded, and later they bought houses in the surrounding areas. Every New Year's Day when they worship their ancestors, there is also a huge team.
Before I married Shi Chongwen, I had been engaged to someone from our big Peng family. His great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were cousins. I first met him at a family wedding banquet when I was thirteen. He was seventeen years old at that time. He was from the Peng family. He said that he was stunned by my beauty when he first saw me and vowed to marry me.
When the two families were engaged, everyone in my family said he was a good person, with good character, talent, and a well-off family background. The situations of the various families within a family are actually very different, so my family and his family are considered to be a good match. Both families are well-off and have good reputations within the family.
When I was sixteen years old, I followed my family to the county where Shi's family lived. Two carriages collided with each other, and that's how I met Shi Chongwen.
Although I thought Peng Jiamu was a very good person, it was not until I met Shi Chongwen that I understood what it meant to be in love at first sight. I also understood what Peng Jiamu meant when he told me that he was struck by my beauty at first sight.
Because the first time I saw Shi Chongwen, I felt that he was different from everyone else to me.
What made me happy was that Shi Chongwen also liked me. After the car accident, Shi Chongwen always came to the inn where our family lived, and found various reasons to invite our family to dinner. Later, he formally asked someone to act as a matchmaker and wanted to marry me.
I like him and naturally hope to be with him, but I am already engaged to Peng Jiamu. Speaking of this, my family and I are indeed sorry to Peng Jiamu.
My family was initially hesitant. Although I liked Shi Chongwen, breaking off the engagement was unpleasant. Then, they heard about the Shi family's financial situation from somewhere, and their minds suddenly changed. With the help of my extended family, Peng Jiamu had no choice but to break off the engagement.
Because of the pressure from the elders in the family, the boys in their family still had to go to the clan school, and the girls still had to get married, so they still had to have the protection of the big clan. So there were probably many people in the family who wanted to marry into the master's family, so they gave up Peng Jiamu together.
Peng Jiamu, then twenty, was ready to marry me, but family pressure forced him to break off the engagement. He had already passed the imperial examinations, but in the next round of the imperial examinations, he became extremely depressed, rambling and using disrespectful language in his policy essays, forcing him to be suspended from taking the exams for six years.
Many people believed that even if he was allowed to take the imperial examination again after six years, he would not be able to pass because of his reputation for disrespect. The examiners would not choose someone who had used disrespectful words.
From then on, he never recovered. He used to be a handsome, elegant and graceful young man, but later his fiancée broke off the engagement, and he had no hope of passing the imperial examinations in his life. He drank every day.
I felt deeply guilty after hearing this, but on the other hand, I was immersed in the sweetness of love that I experienced for the first time, the anxiety of longing, and the uneasiness of uncertainty in my heart.
A year later, I married Shi Chongwen as I wished. We were very sweet during our honeymoon. Even now, when I think back to those years, I still feel that they were very happy and fulfilling. They are a rare and beautiful moment in my life.
When I was nineteen, I became pregnant with Shi Yue. Shi Zhongwen was overjoyed and took great care of me. But all this was a scene that made Peng Jiamu angry.
He later said that he was miserable over there and his whole life was ruined by us two, while we were in love and had a child.
My mother-in-law trusted me very much at that time, but I eventually betrayed her trust.
After I gave birth to Shi Yue, the Shi family had an eldest son and grandson. The family was filled with joy, and this happiness seemed to reach a new level.
Because of me, my mother-in-law took care of my family and clansmen in her business, giving them the best deal. She also often consoled me by saying that my family was wealthy but small, and that supporting my family was a way to have people available when things got tough. In reality, they were several counties away, so who could they possibly use? She was simply giving my family money and saving my reputation.
My mother-in-law taught me step by step, hoping that I could take over the Shi family business. Your father-in-law and I were also very close friends at the time, so we had Shi Wei.
Then came my nightmare.
After wasting several years, neither making it to the top nor to the bottom, Peng Jiamu finally got a business deal with a contract value of 50,000 taels. He came to me and thought that if this deal went through, he could turn his life around. He just needed a guarantor.
Because my mother-in-law trusted me, she usually took me with her to handle business. I easily got a full set of seals from my master's family, as well as the counterparts kept by the business contract agency and the brokerage firm.
I believed this boy whom I had known since I was thirteen years old. Although he was in his twenties at that time, his decadence and lack of achievements were all caused by me. I felt deeply guilty towards him and hoped that I could really help him become famous and make a complete comeback.
I signed all the documents and used my family's name to guarantee his business.
But in fact, this was a trap he set for me in order to take revenge. The business deal failed, and the other party asked the Shi family, who acted as the guarantor, to pay five times the compensation according to the contract, which was 250,000 taels of silver.
This is not all his revenge.”
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
