After accepting the vegetables, the group left, and Li Xiaoxiao quickly practiced walking on the road. Chen Xueqing pulled her along and walked around the yard.
They stopped to rest. The house expansion on the back mountain was still underway, and the other three sisters went to other places because they needed to go back to visit their parents.
Li Xiaoxiao was somewhat surprised. It was already past 9 AM, and Green Snake still hadn't returned, but she needed to start operating the workshop now.
The newly expanded pool was filled with enough bark for soaking, and a dozen large pots were built nearby. The materials that had been prepared were poured into the pool to complete the preparations.
With the documents in hand, even if these people knew how to make paper, they couldn't easily steal them.
"Master, once this papermaking is launched, it will inevitably attract the attention of some evil people, so we will need to recruit some guards and so on."
Another carriage arrived outside. Chen Xueqing had just finished speaking when she saw the approaching carriage and inexplicably lower its head, feeling extremely displeased.
A short while later, people got off the carriage; there were about a dozen of them.
They approached Li Xiaoxiao and greeted her respectfully, saying, "Thank you for saving my daughter, heroine. We have come here to present you with ten bolts of fine cloth."
Ten horses—that's a huge sum! Chen Xueqing turned her head away, not wanting to face it.
"Ha, what's with the pretense?"
"Please take it back, Master Chen. We truly cannot afford these ten bolts of cloth." Since Chen Xueqing does not like it, then we should simply not accept the cloth.
Li Xiaoxiao was also curious. People who sell clothes and jewelry must have plenty of money at home, so why would they let their daughter become some kind of bandit's wife?
"Xueqing, are you still blaming your father? Madam Li, I have my own troubles." The man was bloated and fat, weighing about 180 pounds. He smiled and looked like a kind person. His eyes squinted when he smiled, like a benevolent Buddha statue.
Chen Xueqing was even more furious, "What hardship is there? It's nothing more than using your daughter as a tool for the family's glory. That's the hardship."
"You old bastard, you're disgusting. You let me be bullied in this mountain stronghold, isn't it all so that I can have some protection on the trade route and be less robbed and stolen from? Everyone knows that you're a den of bandits. Sending women isn't enough, you also send fifty taels of silver every year to serve me. That's the hardship."
Chen Guang lowered his head and sighed, "Xueqing, I had no choice. You couldn't just watch your people starve to death. At that time, bandits were rampant, and there was war. We had a lot of cloth at home that we dared not sell. I even promised to give the refugees in the village a hundred taels of silver for food so that they would not suffer. We had no spare money. The bandits had already taken your virginity and extorted two hundred taels of silver from you. We really had no spare money at that time. You know very well that when you were kidnapped, we had to pull strings and do this out of necessity."
"The family had finally settled down, but that bandit really liked you. As your father, I had no choice but to send you money every year to ensure you could live a worry-free life."
Chen Guang spoke with a helpless expression, while Chen Xueqing was in tears, wiping them away with her long sleeves.
"Since the Chen family is still prosperous, I have already repaid my debt to the Chen family. From now on, we shall have nothing to do with each other. At noon, I will find the village head to sever this relationship. From now on, I, Chen Xueqing, will no longer be surnamed Chen, but will change my surname to Li."
Chen Guang panicked. "Daughter, you...you are really going to commit a grave offense by severing your father-daughter relationship. I, Chen Guang, have been a great philanthropist all my life. I came here to take you home and make up for the suffering you have endured. Why are you doing this?"
"Isn't he just after his master's new supply? Why bother with all this emotional drama? It's disgusting." Chen Xueqing wiped away her tears and laughed sarcastically.
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