Life was already hard enough, but having someone standing beside you, crying nonstop, begging you to stop struggling and just lie down and wait for death—how could Yue Jiuyue possibly stay calm?
Even if Liu had no idea she was digging for medicinal herbs, a person who could only weep and wail all day long was someone Yue Jiuyue just wanted to keep at a distance.
“Are you going to dig with me, or are you going home to watch the child and cook?”
Yue Jiuyue’s heart softened for just a moment, and she decided to give Liu one more chance.
“Mother, please just come home with me. I know you’re hungry. When Xiao Man’s father gets back, we’ll have something to eat. You…”
Liu continued crying and pleading, and that was when Yue Jiuyue completely lost patience with her.
“Liu! What I, your mother-in-law, choose to do is none of your business. You go home!”
Yue Jiuyue’s voice was low and stern, and Liu shrank back like a frightened quail, not daring to say another word. Seeing that she was truly angry, Liu hesitated for a moment, then, terrified, kept her head down and hurried home in tears. Along the way, people pointed and whispered, adding a few more strokes to Yue Jiuyue’s “wicked mother-in-law” reputation.
Yue Jiuyue couldn’t care less about what Liu did. After digging up over a dozen kinds of herbs, she finally settled on digging several common and easy-to-harvest weeds that weren’t considered wild vegetables—goosegrass, plantain, bedstraw, and windmill grass. Even though the price for fresh herbs was low, the mountain was absolutely covered with them!
Yue Jiuyue had basically lifted herself out of poverty overnight!
A few plants made a kilogram. For bedstraw, one single plant could weigh a catty or two. Six or eight wen didn’t seem like much, but in one hour, Yue Jiuyue could pull two to three hundred catties of weeds—which meant she could earn over one tael of silver. And that was with her current weak, malnourished body.
While Yue Jiuyue was still hard at work chasing after every last coin, her three sons—who were at the mountain spring fetching water—also heard the rumor that Yue Jiuyue was so hungry she was eating weeds that even pigs wouldn’t touch on the mountain.
Men loved gossip too. And with the three sons of the rumor’s main character right there, the gossip scene only got livelier.
“Hey, Chaodong, Chaonan, Chaobei—you three brothers are worthless! Can’t even support your own mother. You’ve driven the old lady to go up the mountain and dig up weeds that even pigs won’t eat. Tsk tsk—you three are unfilial!”
“No kidding! You should have seen how pitiful she looked! All alone on the mountain digging up weeds. I kindly went up and tried to talk some sense into her. Saw she had bedstraw and plantain in her basket. Too bad she wouldn’t listen!
You three brothers, you can’t be lazy anymore. The water-fetching job doesn’t need three people. You’d better figure out how to dig up more wild vegetables that people can actually eat. Don’t let the old lady keep digging up those weeds—they’re not fit for human consumption!”
…
A whole crowd of people—some sneering and mocking the three brothers, others speaking to them with earnest concern—left the brothers’ faces turning pale and flushed by turns. They wished the ground would open up and swallow them. If their family hadn’t been so desperately short of water, they would have dropped everything and walked out right then and there.
The youngest of the three brothers was already sixteen—all at an age where they were rebellious and cared deeply about saving face. Naturally, their mother’s behavior, which they found humiliating, made them deeply uncomfortable.
But filial piety was paramount. If word of this got out, they would be nailed to the pillar of shame as “unfilial sons.” How could they ever hold their heads up again?