Chapter 108 Chapter 108 Divorce and Remarry
The Zhao Mansion covers a large area, and its architectural style is brighter and more magnificent than other buildings in Shu.
The water flows into the hall, the eaves, the screen walls, the gauze windows and the glass cups are all decorated with red and colorful decorations, exuding a festive atmosphere. The servants walked back and forth silently, and all had smiles on their faces. Suddenly, when they saw her and Duan Wenpei, the smiles on their faces froze, and they scattered like birds and beasts as if they had seen a ghost.
Duan Wenpei was not surprised. He pulled Nan Xu steadily towards the innermost house.
The houses here are deep and low, not as spacious and open as those in Kyoto. The gaps between the walls become narrower as you go in, and in the end only one person can pass through. Nan Xu looked at the alley in front of her that stretched to nowhere and held Duan Wenpei's hand tightly.
At the end of the alley stands a square ancestral hall made of black bricks.
The old servant guarding the gate slowly raised his eyes and glanced at the two of them, then tremblingly reached out to take out the key and opened the door of the ancestral hall.
Inside the ancestral hall, the eternally burning lamps illuminated the tablets of different heights throughout the room. Duan Wenpei pulled Nan Xu all the way to the far right of the tablet rack. In the inconspicuous corner at the bottom, there stood a tablet for "My late wife, Wang, whose maiden name was Yuxiu."
Duan Wenpei's face was filled with nostalgia. He carefully rolled up his sleeves and wiped the dust off the tablet. Then he took the incense table and incense from the table, lit them, and handed them to Nan Xu. "Ah Xu, on our wedding day, I didn't bring you to kowtow before those two tablets because they were made for outsiders to see. Now, in front of A Niang, Ah Xu, let's complete the unfinished wedding ceremony."
He shouted towards the tablet, "Two bows to the parents."
Following these words, Nan Xu followed him and knelt down in front of the tablet, kowtowed respectfully.
The woman named Wang Yuxiu, who had long been buried in the ground, finally met her son and daughter-in-law on New Year's Eve this year.
However, the cold tablet replaced everything about being a mother. Nan Xu placed the incense in the incense table and, just like Duan Wenpei had done just now, gently brushed the name on the tablet with a handkerchief.
A breeze blew in from the window above, blowing up the few strands of black hair that hung by Nan Xu's ears, and the ends of her hair rose up and swept across the cheek of the person next to her.
Misty eyes rose in Duan Wenpei's eyes, and he stretched out his hand and gently touched the direction of the wind. At this moment, he shed the majesty of Wei Yangbo and the composure of a nobleman in the court. He returned to his original heart and slowly grasped the nothingness like a child longing to see his mother.
"Look, my mother is here to see me."
"Mother said that she would turn into wind, rain, and clouds all over the sky. As long as I stop, she will come back to meet me."
"Ah Xu, I miss my mother."
His voice was choked with sobs, and every word he said was heartbreaking.
Nan Xu's patience completely crumbled at this moment. She reached out to grab the hand that had been suspended in the air for a long time and refused to let go. When her small hand finally climbed onto the back of his hand, Nan Xu said hoarsely to the nothingness in front of her, "Hello, mother. I am Nan Xu, Huaizhou's wife, and also your daughter-in-law."
The wind stopped and then started to blow, as if it understood Nan Xu's words. The breeze wrapped around her shoulders and neck, and blew into her arms, stirring the hair on her forehead. Nan Xu, who never believed in ghosts and gods, had a little doubt for the first time.
"Mother, did she hug me just now?"
Duan Wenpei held her hand in his, turned sideways to tidy up the strands of hair in front of her eyes, and smiled infinitely wider on his face, "A Xu, mother likes you very much."
As he spoke, he took out a red envelope that he had prepared long ago and handed it to Nan Xu. "A daughter-in-law has to pay a fee for changing her name when she meets her mother-in-law for the first time. I'll give it to you on my mother's behalf."
The last time Qin came uninvited, it was just an excuse to meet her mother-in-law. Nan Xu looked at the thick red envelope and couldn't help laughing. She reached out to take it and shouted sweetly to the void, "Thank you, mother."
The breeze swirled in front of the two of them for a moment, then happily rushed out of the window.
Feng couldn't tell if he was happy or not, but Nan Xu felt like everything seemed to have been arranged long ago...
"My third brother didn't come home early to play, and not only did he come here uninvited on New Year's Eve, but he didn't even greet our father and mother first, but instead brought a woman here to burn incense for the dead. How unlucky!"
Burning incense on New Year's Eve does not count as breaking the rules, but the Zhao family has rules for honoring their ancestors. Young people generally do not and cannot set foot in the ancestral hall without reason. Moreover, women are not allowed to enter the ancestral hall. When Zhao Huaian heard the report from the servant, he was immediately furious and came to stop them.
I just didn't expect Duan Wenpei to move so quickly.
Zhao Huaian glanced at the inconspicuous old servant standing in the corner as the gatekeeper, raised his hand and asked someone to drag him down to be punished according to the family rules.
"stop!"
Before Zhao Huaian's men could take action, the second son, Zhao Huaiyou, appeared at the entrance of the alley in a wheelchair and stopped the servants.
Following closely behind him were Zhao Mingcheng and his wife and some wealthyly dressed women.
Looking at their respective positions, Nan Xu secretly took note of the relationship between them.
Zhao Huaiyou called out to Duan Wenpei with surprise, "Third brother."
Nan Xu looked at him for a moment, and finally her eyes fell on his legs that were difficult to walk.
This man was as handsome and energetic as Duan Wenpei, and he was also the first member of the Zhao family to see Duan Wenpei happy.
Nan Xu's palm was gently pinched, and she looked away. Duan Wenpei's faint response came to her ears.
"Second brother."
Hey, Nan Xu looked up at him in surprise. It seemed that these two people had some friendship.
Zhao Huaiyou was extremely happy with Duan Wenpei's response. He even pushed his wheelchair forward for a distance, turned around and called Nan Xu "Third Brother's Sister-in-law" cheerfully.
Nan Xu was confused by the shout.
It feels like there is a little bastard among a pack of wolves.
She responded vaguely and imitated Duan Wenpei to call him "Second Brother".
Seeing that the tense atmosphere caused by Zhao Huaian had eased a little, Qin walked past Zhao Mingcheng and smiled as she invited Duan Wenpei and Nan Xu to sit in the flower pavilion for a while.
"Mother is delighted that Zhou'er has agreed to come back. This New Year's Eve, the whole family is reunited. Zhou'er and Xu'er can have a reunion dinner together at home."
As soon as she finished speaking, there was a deathly silence all around.
Zhao Mingcheng stood with his hands behind his back, looking down at Duan Wenpei and the other man, unable to express his emotions; Zhao Huaian, who was standing next to him, was displeased because of Zhao Huaiyou's protection of the old servant; as for the others, their faces showed either shock, fear or disgust, and no one agreed with Qin's words.
Only Zhao Huaiyou said, "Yes, third brother, listen to mother and have a reunion dinner with your sister-in-law before leaving. It has been many years since we two brothers sat down to eat and drink together."
Duan Wenpei glanced at his legs covered by the fox fur blanket and teased, "You can still drink? I'm afraid you don't want these legs anymore."
Seeing that he still wanted to joke with Zhao Huaiyou, Qin Shi hurried forward to pull him back, "Alright, alright, it's cold in the ancestral hall. Zhou'er and You'er, if you two have anything to say, go to the pavilion in front..."
"Qin, stop calling me Zhou'er all the time. This name isn't yours, and you shouldn't call yourself my mother!"
Duan Wenpei suddenly shook off Qin's hand, leaned over and picked up his mother's tablet, "I didn't come here today to reminisce about the past. This Zhao family's land is dirty every time I see it. Since I'm here, first, I want to bring Ah Xu to burn incense for Ah Niang, and second, I want to take Ah Niang home."
He looked straight at Zhao Mingcheng opposite him, and it was obvious that these words were specifically directed at him.
Zhao Mingcheng, who had been keeping out of the matter since arriving, finally showed a hint of a crack in his expression after hearing this.
He pushed everyone aside and slowly walked towards Duan Wenpei. When he was only five steps away from him, he shouted coldly, "Go home? Go back to where? Yu Xiu is my wife, Zhao Mingcheng, in life and my ghost, Zhao Mingcheng, in death! You, a beast who betrayed the family, actually dared to take her away. Come, bring me my sword. Today I will teach you what human ethics and filial piety are!"
Zhao Mingcheng hadn't touched that "sword" for many years. Seeing him suddenly asking for something, the servants didn't know what to do for a moment.
Although Qin's face turned ugly because of the sentence "Yu Xiusheng is his wife", she had been pretending for many years and reacted quickly. She hurriedly called out to the servant who was about to take the sword.
"The master is always happy and angry. The children have finally returned and haven't seen Wang for many years. It is understandable that they would say such nonsense. So many people are watching. The master, please take the children to the flower pavilion to sit and talk."
It would have been better if she hadn't said this, but once she did, Zhao Mingcheng became furious.
He couldn't wait for the servants to bring the sword, so he drew the whip from his waist and lashed at Duan Wenpei. "If it weren't for this beast's stubbornness, why wouldn't he have come to pay his respects to his mother's tablet in so many years? I don't know what sins I committed in my past life to give birth to such an unruly beast!"
The whip danced fiercely in his hand, and he called his son a beast. There was no love for his son on his face.
Duan Wenpei did not dodge or evade, but just protected Nan Xu tightly behind him, and when Zhao Mingcheng swung the whip for the second time, he caught the whip steadily.
Zhao Mingcheng was furious, "You beast! How dare you!"
Nan Xu looked at the straightened spine in front of him and finally couldn't help but stand up and questioned: "Master Zhao calls you a beast on the left and a beast on the right. Huaizhou is a beast, what are you? An old beast?"
"Puchi haha"
It seemed that one of the female members laughed briefly twice, but before Zhao Mingcheng could take a closer look, the laughter stopped abruptly.
He is the head of the family and the head of the clan. Zhao Mingcheng narrowed his eyes, shook his hand, shook off Duan Wenpei's hand, and put away the whip.
He twisted his lips into a forced smile, stroked his short beard shrewdly, and looked at Nan Xu with amusement, "The Nan family has gone through so many years, and I thought they had raised such a good child, but it turns out they have raised a young man like you who has no sense of etiquette and disobeys the elders."
"But I can't blame you. The late emperor was not very useful to begin with, so how good could the one he chose be?"
When Nan Xu heard him comment on the late emperor in this way, she was about to refute him with some displeasure, but Zhao Mingcheng did not give her a chance.
He pointed at Duan Wenpei beside her and said, "According to the tradition of my Zhao clan, this bastard must marry the daughter of the Qin clan and take the daughter of my 'Slaughtering Liao' Zhou clan as a concubine. If not, there wouldn't have been so many ignorant people in the Zhou clan who helped him escape back then."
"My dear daughter of the Nan family, if he is not a beast, then he is the son of the Zhao family. If he is the son of the Zhao family, then your marriage is invalid. So, if he is not a beast, then who is it?"
These remarks were truly ridiculous. Nan Xu sneered, "Blood ties are unchangeable facts, and so is marriage. Master Zhao, don't you know that my marriage to Duan Wenpei was personally granted by His Majesty? Whether it counts or not is up to you, and neither is the Zhao family."
"Really? Let's make a bet." Zhao Mingcheng raised an eyebrow and pointed at the tablet in Duan Wenpei's arms. "If you want to take your mother's tablet away, that's fine, but you have to agree to a few conditions from this family head."
"What?"
Zhao Mingcheng stared deeply at Nan Xu, turned his back to look outside the ancestral hall, and gestured to Qin to speak.
Qin pretended to be embarrassed, and after a long while, she reluctantly said, "Hey, what's going on? Your father wants you to kneel down and kowtow in front of the whole family and admit your mistake. Secondly,... divorce Miss Nan and marry me, Qin's daughter, according to tradition."
......
Duan Wenpei found this ridiculous. He grabbed Nan Xu's hand and tried to force his way out. He had anticipated all possible outcomes. Liu Hui and Yu Rong would be waiting outside...
Just as they were about to step out of the ancestral hall, Qin's voice rang out in a sinister voice, "Zhou'er, don't you want to know where Wang Yuxiu's body is buried?"
Nan Xu was a little dazed after hearing the word "divorce". She didn't pay much attention to it until Duan Wenpei pulled her out. Until this moment, as Qin's words fell, she clearly felt the heavy footsteps of the person beside her.
As a result, the leg that had stepped out of the threshold of the ancestral hall was abruptly retracted.
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