Chapter 1215: The Village Girl and the Prince (6)
After the Tao family hired a teacher, several of their brothers and sisters went to school to learn to read. Tao Shichu could not go with them, but she did not want to pretend to be illiterate all her life, so she followed and "learned" from her fifth and sixth graders. After a few months, she successfully "recognized" many words and could read books by herself. She no longer had to hide the fact that she could read.
Life in the boudoir was boring, so she asked her maids to go out and buy a lot of storybooks. She read them and complained to the maids at the same time, which really added a lot of fun. After complaining, she simply wrote a few books herself. One of them was about a scholar who went to Beijing to take the imperial examination and abandoned his fiancée who fully supported him to take the exam, and married the daughter of a wealthy family in Beijing. Not only that, he also sent people back to suppress his fiancée's family, hoping that his fiancée would never come to settle accounts with him.
But the fiancée was smart and brave. After knowing that the scholar was ungrateful, she still overcame all kinds of difficulties and went to Beijing to seek revenge on him. She knew that she was weak and the scholar had a strong Yue family. She could not confront them head-on, so she simply bribed the scholar's servants and castrated him when he was out! Then she took advantage of the chaos to leave, returned to her hometown, moved with her family to live in another place under an assumed name, and finally found a simple and honest man to marry into and inherit the family's incense...
This book really upset the scholars. Instead of condemning the scholar for being ungrateful and abandoning his wife to marry someone else, the scholars only cursed the fiancée for being vicious and daring to castrate a man! It was shocking and treasonous! If all women dared to do this, what would happen? How could men feel at ease to pursue women?
They clamored to find the "Love Breaker" who wrote the story and forced him to change the ending of the book, but Tao Shichu wrote the book in secret and no one could find her, so those people could only curse her but could do nothing to the author.
However, while men hated this book, women had a special liking for it. Many unmarried girls, and even married women and old ladies who were beginning to enjoy their retirement, bought the book privately, which allowed Tao Shichu to earn a lot of royalties.
There is another book about a young master Sun, a scion of a wealthy family. He has many wives and concubines and many children. When his parents were alive, his family was wealthy and he could live a life of luxury. But after his parents passed away, he had no means to maintain the family business, so his family property began to slowly dwindle and his income was not enough to make ends meet.
Later, he even became addicted to gambling, and his family fortune was lost even faster. He lost all his properties, shops, and land deeds, and sold all the things at home, leaving him with nothing but empty walls. But he still refused to change his bad habits. Even though his wife and concubines worked as embroidery workers and laundry maids to support the family, he would force them to give him all their money to gamble.
If his wives and concubines refused to give him money, he would beat and scold them, making the whole family live in unrest. Finally, his wives and concubines could not stand it anymore, and conspired to break both of his legs in the middle of the night one day, and locked him in a small room so that he could not go out. Then he finally had peace. His wives and concubines resented him and only brought him meals every day, and ignored him at other times. When his legs finally recovered, his wives and concubines broke them again, and then broke them again... After a few times, he could no longer get up.
Without this bad man holding them back, the wives and concubines worked together to earn money to support the family, and their relationship became harmonious. Although their life was poor, they were much happier than before when the family was rich and prosperous and full of fighting.
As soon as this story came out, it was said that those men who were addicted to gambling immediately restrained themselves a lot and even learned to appease their wives and concubines at home. After all, they were also afraid that one day they would have their legs broken and be locked up in the house... This was a pleasant surprise.
There are several other storybooks of the same type, in which men curse and women love. The name "Duan Qing Dao" is well-known. People who have secretly read her storybooks privately say that this author lives up to her name, and the storybooks she wrote are indeed sharp and dark enough to cut off the love hearts of those innocent and kind girls. They are cruel and direct enough.
Tao Shichu, under a pseudonym, ruined the hearts of a number of young girls and was very proud of herself. Sometimes she would go to various study rooms to eavesdrop on those who had read her storybooks and hear them scolding her. The harsher they scolded, the brighter Tao Shichu smiled.
Even though these people scolded her, they contributed a lot of money to her book manuscripts. So what if they scolded her a few times? She didn't care at all.
"Miss, they are scolding you again!" Zhichun said angrily. She was the only one who knew that Tao Shichu wrote storybooks, because sometimes Tao Shichu would ask her to help organize the manuscripts.
"Just scold me! What else can they do to me except scolding me verbally?" Tao Shichu said with a smile.
"Duan Qingdao is truly a traitor among men. I don't know how many young ladies and women he has corrupted. If all women imitate the heroines in his novels, how can we men live in peace?" A scholar angrily scolded his classmate.
At this time, everyone assumed that only men could write storybooks, not women. Therefore, they thought that "Duan Qing Dao" was a man, but he stood from the perspective of women and taught them how to deal with men, so they scolded him for betraying men.
"That's right. This Broken Love Knife is really outrageous. It tarnishes the reputation of us men. How can we be as shameless as he describes in his storybook? If I knew who Broken Love Knife was, I would definitely throw rotten eggs at him!" another scholar echoed.
Zhichun was shocked when he heard this, and hurriedly whispered to Tao Shichu: "Miss, we must hide this identity well, and never let them find out that you are Duan Qingdao... If they knew that it was you who wrote those stories, who knows what they would do. These people are too scary, how can you take the stories seriously..."
Tao Shichu nodded: "Indeed, these scholars are petty-minded. I am a woman, but I don't put myself in the shoes of those rich girls who elope with scholars."
"That's right!" Zhichun nodded like a chick pecking at rice.
The master and servant listened to the scolding for a while, then left quietly, without noticing that while they were talking, someone less than two meters behind them had overheard what they were saying.
"The one who stabbed the Love Breaker is actually a little girl of only thirteen or fourteen? Or that little village girl from the Tao family..." The young man was stunned and surprised, then he couldn't help laughing. He laughed so hard that tears almost came out, and finally he had to cover his face to stop himself from laughing too loudly.
This man was the man in blue who saw Tao Shichu rudely confronting a rich girl who had a crush on Xie Yingjia on the street on the second floor of the restaurant that day. He had a deep impression of Tao Shichu. Of course, now, he remembered her even more deeply.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
