“Tang Dayong! Put my daughter down!” Li Qiushuang’s eyes nearly burst from their sockets as she clung to Tang Dayong’s leg and sank her teeth deep into his flesh.
Tang Dayong, wearing thin clothing, gasped in pain and loosened his grip. Seizing the opportunity, Tang Tian kicked his head sideways, sending them both tumbling to the ground!
What was once a family of three now resembled mortal enemies, tangled in a chaotic brawl!
Unnoticed, the courtyard gate had swung open, allowing a crowd to pour in. They froze at the shocking scene.
“What’s going on here? Fighting and shouting in the middle of the night!”
Leading the group were two elderly figures. One was a white-haired man in his sixties, dressed in blue-gray clothes. The other was a hunchbacked woman, thin as paper, with tightly knit brows and a stern expression.
Behind them trailed over a dozen villagers—men, women, and children—all craning their necks with intense curiosity.
The Tang family, caught off guard by the intrusion, instinctively ceased fighting.
Tang Chuan dragged Tang Hai, stumbling out from behind the villagers, and they rushed toward their mother and sister.
“Mom!”
Seeing both his mother and sister injured, Tang Chuan’s eyes reddened with heartache. But when he tried to speak, he coughed up a mouthful of blood.
“Chuan!” Tang Dayong jolted in alarm, instinctively stepping forward.
When he had left for war years ago, his eldest son Tang Chuan was already seven, and he had always held some affection for the boy.
Unexpectedly, Tang Hai charged from the side, butting into him and sending him staggering back.
The simple-minded boy had no concept of who this “father” was.
Only his mother, brother, and sister mattered—anyone who harmed them was a villain!
Humiliated by his son’s defiance, especially in front of the villagers, Tang Dayong burned with shame and rage, turning his fury on Li Qiushuang.
“You useless woman! Mother said you ruined the children, and I didn’t believe it, but you truly are foolish! It’s one thing for Chuan to be sickly since childhood, but how did Hai become an idiot? And this girl is like a wolf cub, disowning her own family! I should have divorced you long ago—making you a concubine would be too lenient!”
Li Qiushuang, clutching her three children, finally unleashed the resentment and fury boiling inside her.
“Tang Dayong, you’re the useless one! Everyone else may blame me, but you have no right! Why is Chuan sickly? When I was pregnant with him, you spent all your time drinking and socializing outside, leaving me alone to slave away—washing clothes, cooking, and serving a family of seven or eight until I was worn down and ill!
“During labor, I begged you to fetch a midwife, but you ran into a friend and vanished drinking! Chuan was trapped for two days before he was born—how could he possibly be healthy!
“And Hai—a robust child everyone praised! Why did he become simple-minded? It was your precious sister who craved fish and forced Hai to chisel ice and fish in the dead of winter! He fell into the frozen river and burned with fever for three days and nights! He was burned simple-minded!
“You, his father, never sought justice for them. Instead, you scorn them. You don’t deserve to be a father!”
The Tang family’s youngest daughter, Tang Jiaojiao, who had been hiding in her room due to recent discomfort, overheard her new sister-in-law taking the blame. She thought to step out and defend her a little to earn some goodwill.
But to her shock, she was directly accused!
Feigning injury, she tearfully protested with reddened eyes, “Elder brother, Sister-in-law is wronging me! As his aunt, how could I ever make Hai fish in winter? He was just being playful on his own!”
“Exactly,” Liu Meihua chimed in, backing her up. “Eldest Sister-in-law shouldn’t take out her anger on us just because Eldest Brother wants to remarry! Our family has always treated you well!”
Li Qiushuang bit her lip so hard it bled. Pointing at the Tang family members, she cursed, “Treated us well? Even ghosts wouldn’t believe that! I defied my father’s opposition to marry into this family back then, bringing a substantial dowry with me. Whenever you needed money to build houses, buy clothes, eat, or maintain social connections, you all came to me for silver until every coin was spent!
“And what happened? The moment Tang Dayong went off to war, you immediately drove us mother and children into that dark side room. You claimed there was no food for years due to continuous natural disasters, and that the whole family had to survive on Bran Cakes together. But in reality, while we mother and children nearly starved to death, you were all secretly eating steamed buns and drinking rice porridge behind our backs!
“Now that Tang Dayong has returned alive and wants to marry a princess, you’re eager to enjoy wealth and prestige, forcing me to be demoted from wife to concubine! You’re nothing but a pack of ungrateful wolves! Heartless, thankless wolves!
“I, Li Qiushuang, have supported you all with my flesh and blood—it was my blindness, my stupidity and worthlessness! I only pity my children, who’ve suffered along with me! How I regret it! May you all be struck by lightning!”
The Tang family, their faces stripped bare by her words, almost jumped up in unison to refute her.
“You’re lying! We never ate secretly!”
“Exactly! Everyone clearly ate the same Bran Cakes!”
“There wasn’t a single grain of food left in the house—go check the kitchen if you don’t believe us!”
The villagers listened from start to finish, too shocked to speak for a long while.
They didn’t doubt Li Qiushuang was telling the truth, because the village was small, with just over a hundred people young and old combined. Seeing each other constantly in their daily lives, almost no household could keep secrets hidden.
Everyone knew to some extent that the Tang family had mistreated Li Qiushuang and her three children.
But that the Tang family had gone this far was still unimaginable. They’re all your own flesh and blood—why treat them so differently!
Moreover, Li Qiushuang and her children were sallow and emaciated, looking as if they’d topple in a strong wind, while Tang Laotai and the others were rosy-cheeked and full of vigor. Even a blind person could tell who was right and wrong.
Tang Dayong was clearly worse than blind—or perhaps he knew his family was lying but refused to believe it, and even more unwilling to stand up for his wife and children!
He loudly cut off his family’s quarreling, then, suppressing his impatience, pretended to be enthusiastic as he invited the villagers inside.
The hunchbacked old woman, surnamed Tang, was the highest-ranking elder of the local Tang clan, addressed as Third Grandma Tang. Back when Tang Dayong’s family was exiled here to labor and joined the clan as relatives, they received much care from her to gain a foothold.
Now, Third Grandma Tang indeed didn’t disappoint everyone. Her first question hit the nail on the head.
“Dayong, your return from the dead safe and sound is a good thing. But what do you mean by ‘demoting the wife to concubine’? Are you making Qiushuang a concubine?
“Wouldn’t that make Brother Chuan and the others children raised by a concubine? That’s barely better than being servants! This is utterly absurd!”
The white-bearded old man wasn’t surnamed Tang, but he was a retired veteran who knew hunting and farming. Having settled in the village for years, married and fathered four sons, and frequently interacted with nearby military camps, he held great authority in the village, and everyone respectfully called him Second Grandpa Li.
He also coughed twice and sighed in agreement.
“That’s right, Dayong. You’ve been away serving in the army all these years, and Qiushuang has practically shouldered the entire household. She’s a filial and hardworking woman—handling all the tasks assigned by the military camp to support the whole family. You mustn’t lose your conscience and let her down.”
The other villagers remained silent but nodded in agreement.
After years of famine, everyone was weakened from starving three times a day, but that didn’t stop the fire of gossip from blazing fiercely in their eyes.
As the center of attention, even with his thick skin, Tang Dayong felt the heat burning his face.
He responded evasively with bureaucratic jargon, “Second Granduncle, Third Grandma… this matter hasn’t been settled yet. There are too many factors involved.”