“Old Chen, the child vomited like that. Is she going to be all right?”
Looking at Song Menghua’s pitiful appearance, Song Xingjian couldn’t help asking.
Instead, Chen Guangbai laughed and said, “Vomiting is good, vomiting is good.”
“It’s even better that the child woke up and vomited it out on her own initiative.”
“Now, you don’t have to worry about the child’s brain being damaged. Once she catches her breath, I’ll give her a few more acupuncture needles to flush out all the sleeping powder left in her system. This disaster can be considered over.”
While Chen Guangbai was speaking, Qi Chunchun kept her eyes locked on him, terrified of getting any bad news from his lips.
Hearing that her daughter was going to be fine, Qi Chunchun felt as though all the strength in her limbs had drained away, yet her hands wrapped around her daughter only tightened.
She shifted from a sitting position to her knees, hugging Song Menghua and kowtowing toward Chen Guangbai and the people who had just lent a hand.
“Thank you, Doctor Chen. Thank you, everyone.”
People scrambled to help her up from the ground, offering words of comfort.
Seeing that Song Menghua was out of danger, Song Xingjian finally had the spare mind to deal with the masterminds behind the entire ordeal.
A look of disgust crossed his face as his gaze fell upon Song Jiangwu and Zhang Daju. “Press these two beasts into the Song family ancestral hall, invite the clan elders, open the grand doors, and purge the clan!”
Hearing the village chief’s decision, and remembering how they had still held hopes of escaping unpunished after seeing Song Menghua wake up, the mother-and-son pair shuddered.
Tied up tightly head-to-toe, they cast pleading looks toward the village chief.
The Song clan was the largest surname in Song Village.
Over half of the villagers shared the surname Song.
If the village chief handled this matter himself, the worst they would face was a few scoldings and some physical pain before it blew over.
However, once it involved the clan and purging the family line, things became a massive deal.
If a woman married into the clan committed a major offense, she would be sent back to her maiden family.
An out-wedded woman sent back in such a manner would be viewed as a family disgrace, dragging her own family down so they couldn’t hold their heads high, and even ruining the marriage prospects of others in her household.
In severe cases, even those sharing the same surname would be affected.
Unless it was a matter of grave proportions, such extreme measures were rarely taken under normal circumstances.
If the offender was a male member of the clan, the very first punishment was expulsion from the clan.
Expulsion meant losing household registration documents, leaving them without any property, farmland, or housing in their name.
The village could not harbor vagrants without household registration either.
Unless they were vouched for by three large clans, alongside joint guarantees from the village chief and the township magistrate, they could never be assigned a family name or obtain an officially recognized household registration.
Otherwise, they would remain homeless vagrants until the day they died.
Under such circumstances, there was only one other path left to walk: selling oneself into slavery.
To become a servant meant discarding one’s original surname and taking a name bestowed by the master’s household.
They had merely wanted to sell their own daughter and granddaughter to get cash and go live a better life; they hadn’t committed any earth-shattering crimes. Why on earth should the clan mete out such a harsh punishment against them?!
The two of them felt utterly unconvinced.
Panicked, terrified, and furious.
Yet, being bound hand and foot, they couldn’t utter a sound, rendering all their resistance completely futile.
“If you just go back now, at most you’ll only manage to snatch your daughter back.”
“Once you snatch her back, what are you going to do next? You’ll have offended the two people with the most say in the household—how do you and your daughter plan to keep living in that house?”
“You can block them once, but can you guard against them twice or three times?”
“There is the logic of being a thief for a thousand days, but no logic of guarding against a thief for a thousand days. If you want them to give up the idea of selling your daughter once and for all, go find the village chief first.”
As Qi Chunchun gazed at the wretched, struggling mother-son pair, her mind involuntarily recalled what happened after she spotted that strange carriage and rushed to save her daughter. Wang Zhaoming had been biting down on the flatbread given to her, looking at everything with an expression of transcendent omniscience as she spoke those very words.
She had asked, “What’s the use of finding the village chief? With a single phrase of ‘family business,’ that pair of mother and son will just dismiss the village chief.”
And Wang Zhaoming had replied: “You just go find the village chief. If you and your daughter want to live in peace, he is the only one you can turn to.”
Afterward, under Wang Zhaoming’s instructions, she had covered herself in grass and mud before stumbling tearfully to the village chief’s house.
To this day, Qi Chunchun still didn’t understand why the village chief had been willing to meddle in her affairs and impose such severe punishment on that beastly mother-and-son pair.
However, she would forever remember Wang Zhaoming’s guidance and kindness.
Along the entire route of dragging the two of them to the Song family ancestral hall, the village chief made no attempt to shield them from view, letting the young clansmen drag the pair along the ground while the crowd of onlookers grew larger and larger.
Wen Caimei, who had been out looking for Wang Zhaoming, caught sight of her youngest daughter and youngest grandson trailing behind the crowd to join in the excitement.
Watching the two of them whispering with their heads pressed close together, Wen Caimei chuckled with anger.
Brandishing a bamboo switch plucked from the back mountain, she marched right up and cracked it across Wang Zhaoming’s back.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Who told you to run off and wander around!”
Wang Zhaoming hadn’t experienced this kind of “loving physical touch” in many years.
The villagers, busy watching the spectacle, only just noticed Wang Zhaoming’s presence.
“Well, well, well. How rare! Even your family’s daughter has started joining us to watch the excitement.”
“Caimei, stop hitting her. It’s normal for children to want to play—just scold her a little and let it go.”
“Tell your Zhao’ming to stop howling, it sounds dreadful. I can’t even hear what those Song family members up front are saying.”
Wen Caimei—who had only struck Wang Zhaoming a single time—was left speechless: …
Wang Zhaoming, whose crying was all thunder and no rain, wiped away her tearless expression in a single second. “Mom, this is an earth-shattering spectacle! If you miss this time, you’ll probably have to wait another decade to see it again. Whatever complaints you have against me as mother and daughter, let’s talk about them when we get home. Watch the show first.”
“Hahahaha! Caimei, how come I feel like your Mingniang is getting better than before? She can even talk back to you now. Back then, she couldn’t even string a word together. What kind of miracle medicine did you feed her? Give me two pills for my older brother’s son, too.”
Wen Caimei’s attention was completely seized by the colossal drama mentioned by Wang Zhaoming, leaving her with zero mind to answer anyone’s questions.
She gave a perfunctory reply, “Probably because my old man and I aren’t first cousins.”
The corners of the mouth of the person who had just spoken dropped instantly from their gleeful expression.
Wen Caimei couldn’t care less about them. She pulled Wang Yanli close and asked, “Tell Grandma, what on earth happened at that big-mouthed family’s place?”
Because Zhang Daju loved gossiping, spread rumors behind people’s backs, and couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, the villagers had given her the nickname “Big Mouth.”
“Grandma, it looks like Menghua’s grandmother and her dad wanted to sell her off. Menghua wouldn’t agree, so they shoved poison down her throat.”
“Chun-shanshen and the Village Chief found out about their illicit affair, so the village chief is dragging them off to the ancestral hall right now to purge the clan.”
Listening to Wang Yanli’s chopped-up, missing-limbs version of the story, Wang Zhaoming finally understood how rumors came to be.
Seeing her biological mother’s expression of utter shock, as though she had just heard some earth-shattering secret, Wang Zhaoming silently swallowed back the words she had been about to say.
“So that’s how it was! I always felt like there was something abnormal between that mother and son. Turns out they really did have a secret affair!”
“Could it be that Menghua found out about their illicit affair, which is why that mother-and-son pair wanted to sell her off?”
“They’re worse than beasts of burden! Menghua is so well-behaved, always greeting people and smiling all the time. I was even planning to arrange a match with Chunniang and make us in-laws once Menghua got a bit older, but running into a rotten father like that means I’d better plan carefully.”
“Planning my foot! Even if Menghua ended up with a rotten father, her marriage prospects still wouldn’t fall on someone like you. There are plenty of families in the village waiting in line for Menghua; you’re not the only option.”
The people arriving further back swallowed Wang Yanli’s words hook, line, and sinker, plunging into a fiery discussion about the rumor.
Although Wen Caimei remained silent, she listened with rapt interest on the side, her eyes shining bright with curiosity for the grand spectacle about to unfold.
After a noisy journey, they finally arrived at the Song Family Ancestral Hall.
Seeing the wide-open doors of the ancestral hall and the clan elders standing at the entrance, the clansmen with the surname Song in the crowd quietly stepped forward.
The rest of the villagers didn’t dare make a peep, intimidated by the solemn atmosphere.
A few young men of the Song clan dumped the mother-and-son pair onto the stone paving right outside the ancestral hall’s doors.
The head of the Song clan wore a stern and icy expression. “Everything is prepared. Let’s begin.”
“Ask Grand-uncle to announce the clan’s verdict.”
The oldest man in the clan stepped forward, holding a yellowed piece of paper in his hands.
“Article 7 of the Song Family Genealogy and House Rules: All clansmen who serve as fathers and husbands shall take benevolence and care as their heart, and make supporting their family their bounden duty.”
“If one abandons their flesh and blood to the marketplace, selling their children for profit, it is a self-inflicted severance from the clan—conduct no different from that of beasts.”
“Upon the exposure of such deeds, the clan head shall lead the populace to announce it before the ancestral hall, burn their names from the genealogy, expel them from this branch, and bar them forever from returning to the ancestral root!”
“Their wives and sons shall establish separate households, entirely unconnected to the sinners.”