Upon hearing his mother utter the words “divide the family,” Ji Yingliang couldn’t conceal the delight in his eyes. Ji Yingcai also showed a flicker of joy upon hearing it, but it was quickly followed by confusion and wariness.
Ji Jinyu observed the shifting expressions on her two sons’ faces, and a mocking smile involuntarily curled at the corner of her lips.
“Mother, are you serious?” Ji Yingcai probed cautiously.
Who in Cuiyang City didn’t know that Ji Jinyu, the head of the Ji Family Butcher Shop, was born with extraordinary strength, domineering and autocratic, a notorious shrew known far and wide.
Ji Yingcai had grown up under the shadow of his mother’s fearsome reputation, never imagining that one day he could escape her iron grip. Moreover, given her overbearing nature, she would never allow her children to slip from her control.
So today, his mother was acting very strangely—extremely strangely!
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Ji Jinyu replied coldly, staring at her second son.
Her second son, Ji Yingcai, had been eloquent and quick-witted since childhood, adept at saying the right thing to the right person and the wrong thing to the wrong one.
In the past, Ji Jinyu had been easily swayed by his sweet talk. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have spent two hundred taels of silver to bribe connections for him, first securing him a position as an accountant at Yixing Restaurant, then helping him become its manager. He had even married Fang Yourong, a maid serving the wife of the restaurant’s owner, and they now had a daughter.
Given his fondness for climbing the social ladder, he must be itching to rush off and seek favor with his biological father now that he had become a government official.
No matter. In this lifetime, she would grant them their wish.
“Now that your biological father has risen to prominence by relying on a woman and become a Ministry of War official, if you wish to go and seek refuge with him, I’ll gladly send you off with open arms.”
Hearing this, Ji Yingcai frowned and asked, “Mother, won’t you come with us?”
“Me?” Ji Jinyu sneered. “Go so that woman can serve me tea as a concubine?”
Ji Yingliang, clutching the wound on his forehead, corrected his mother, “Second Mother is the daughter of an official family and Father’s lawfully wedded wife. You are merely a commoner woman—how could you expect Second Mother to serve you tea?”
“Why not!” Ji Yingjun, upon hearing her eldest brother’s words, was so furious she nearly jumped up on the spot. “Dou Shichang was originally a live-in son-in-law of our Ji family. Without Mother’s permission, how dare he marry on his own? Even if this were brought before the authorities, he would be in the wrong!”
“Outrageous!” Ji Yingliang, seeing his younger sister’s lack of propriety, straightened his back and rebuked her sternly. “How dare you, a mere daughter, address our father by his full name! Have you no sense of decorum?”
Ji Yingming, watching Ji Yingliang scold Ji Yingjun, placed a hand on his twin sister’s arm and said with a smile to his eldest brother, “Elder Brother, it is you who are outrageous, and it is you who lack decorum.”
“You’ve studied the classics for over a decade. You should know that according to the laws of our Great Zhou Dynasty, a man who enters a matrilocal marriage has no right to remarry without a letter of separation from his wife’s family. Otherwise, he faces five years of imprisonment.”
Unable to contain himself, Ji Yingliang retorted loudly to his younger brother, who had always been smarter than him since childhood, “The Three Bonds state that the husband is the guiding principle for the wife. Mother should—”
Ji Yingming interrupted him with a smile, “Elder Brother, no principle outweighs the laws of Great Zhou.”
“The elder brother is like a father! How dare you speak to me like this!” Ji Yingliang, unable to win the argument, pointed at Ji Yingming’s name in a fit of shame and anger, shouting, “Where are your manners!”
“You have no manners yourself! How dare you criticize A-Ming!”
Ji Jinyu spoke up in defense, and Ji Yingming and Ji Yingjun, standing behind her, made faces at their eldest brother in perfect unison, infuriating Ji Yingliang so much that he nearly scrambled up from the floor.
“Mother, my father is your husband! As the saying goes, husband and wife are one. If Father loses his official position because of you, then you have committed a grave sin. How will you face the ancestors of the Dou family?”
“Bang!”
This time, Ji Jinyu’s cup smashed directly into Ji Yingliang’s mouth with such force that it knocked out four or five of his teeth.
Ji Yingcai, who had been kneeling on the floor, silently shifted his position to avoid being implicated by his foolish elder brother.
If Ji Yingliang had any sense at all, he would have realized that their mother was on the verge of a furious outburst. If he wanted to court death, he shouldn’t drag others down with him.
Fang Yourong, who had initially intended to voice her opinion during this family meeting, relying on her status as a servant from a wealthy household, silently hugged her child tightly upon seeing her mother-in-law show no mercy toward her elder brother-in-law. She quietly curled up in her chair, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.
“The Dou family?” Ji Jinyu glared venomously at Ji Yingliang, who was sprawled on the floor. “Have you forgotten your own surname?”
“Since you’re so eager to bear the Dou surname, I’ll grant your wish. From now on, you will change your name to Dou Yingliang and return to your Dou family. You will have no further connection to the Ji family, and I am no longer your mother.”
“Do you agree?” Ji Jinyu sat in her chair, looking down at Dou Yingliang, who lay on the floor.
After being humiliated repeatedly by his mother in front of everyone, Dou Yingliang, now furious and ashamed, raised his head and shouted through his bloodied, toothless mouth, “Change it, then!”
“Do you think I want to bear the Ji surname? Since childhood, I’ve been ashamed to have a mother like you—a shrew who knows no manners!”
Dou Yingliang struggled to his feet, enduring the pain, and shouted indistinctly at the cold and angry faces of the Ji family members before him, “Today, I reclaim my father’s surname. From now on, I am Dou Yingliang.”
“I am the son of an imperial official, not the son of a butchering shrew!”
After venting his anger, Dou Yingliang shouted at Yu Huilan, who was sitting nearby with her hands covering her daughter’s eyes, “You foolish woman, what are you waiting for? Take the child and come with me!”
Yu Huilan looked at her bloodied husband but did not rise. Instead, she shrank back and said to her mother-in-law, “Mother, could you separate him from us?”
When Dou Yingliang heard his foolish wife dare to betray him so openly, he stared at her in disbelief.
The husband is the master of the wife, and the father is the master of the children. How dare she betray him with their daughter!
Even the other members of the Ji family were taken aback by Yu Huilan’s words.
Yu Huilan had been married into the Ji family for four years and had always obeyed whatever Ji Jinyu and Dou Yingliang said, embodying the image of a diligent and hardworking woman. No one had expected her to say such a thing.
Under the gaze of everyone around her, Yu Huilan shifted uncomfortably, hugging her daughter and leaning back in her chair. She continued to address her mother-in-law, “I married into the Ji family, not the Dou family. I don’t want to leave.”
She hugged her daughter tighter and emphasized, “My daughter bears the Ji surname. She won’t leave either.”
“You wretched woman!”
When Dou Yingliang, driven by rage, tried to charge toward Yu Huilan, a gleaming cleaver, cold and sharp, blocked his path.
Upon seeing Ji Jinyu brandish the cleaver, the entire Ji family instantly straightened their backs, their scalps tingling with fear—especially Dou Yingliang.
The fury that had surged through Dou Yingliang vanished the moment the blade pointed at him.
Ji Jinyu, observing Dou Yingliang’s suddenly clear-eyed expression under the cleaver’s intimidation, turned to Yu Huilan beside her without surprise and said, “Very well, Mother will listen to you.”
“We’ll separate Dou Yingliang from the family. From now on, the eldest branch will belong to you and Nian’an.”
As she spoke, Ji Jinyu withdrew the cleaver in her hand and added with a smile, “If you ever wish to remarry, Mother will prepare betrothal gifts and find a far more promising young talent to marry into our family—ten thousand times better than this beast.”
As Ji Jinyu finished speaking, Dou Yingliang, enraged, spat out a mouthful of blood.