Jiang Qinghe had been engaged before the war broke out.
Her prospective in-laws, surnamed Shan, ran an embroidery workshop in town and were a well-to-do family known throughout the region.
Back then, it was the Shan family who had taken a fancy to Jiang Qinghe’s excellent embroidery skills and sent matchmakers to propose marriage multiple times.
Eldest Uncle Jiang felt that the Shan family had a solid financial foundation and good family values.
Plus, they only had one son, so he agreed to the marriage.
When the war began, the Jiang Family hid in the mountains while the Shan family went out of town for refuge.
Amidst the chaos, the two families lost touch.
Now that the world was beginning to settle, the Shan family returned to their hometown.
During the two days Jiang Baozhen was unconscious, the young master of the Shan family came to visit.
It seemed the wedding date between the Shan and Jiang families should be put on the agenda.
However, what the Jiang Family did not know was that people’s hearts easily change.
The young master of the Shan family had already married a wife half a year ago.
Yet, reluctant to let go of Jiang Qinghe’s craftsmanship, the Shan family wanted to deceive the Jiang Family and take her in as a concubine.
This way, another family wouldn’t reap the benefits of Jiang Qinghe’s excellent skills.
In the book, the Shan family’s shrewd calculations were accidentally discovered by Chen Tianhao, who had gone to town to buy books.
Of course, Chen Tianhao didn’t inform the Jiang Family right away.
Instead, he waited until Jiang Qinghe was wearing her wedding dress to step forward, block the bridal sedan chair, and publicly expose the Shan family’s conspiracy.
Naturally, the marriage fell through.
In a fit of anger, Jiang Qinghe jumped into the river, only to be rescued by Chen Tianhao.
The subsequent plot direction was absurdly melodramatic.
From then on, Jiang Qinghe gave her whole heart to Chen Tianhao.
She embroidered day and night, pouring every bit of silver she earned into Chen Tianhao’s future.
After Chen Tianhao became an Advanced Scholar, she spent two years of blood, sweat, and tears embroidering a Guanyin Statue for the sake of his official career.
Chen Tianhao then presented this Guanyin Statue to the Empress Dowager as a birthday gift, winning her favor and enjoying a prosperous official career ever since.
Meanwhile, Jiang Qinghe, who embroidered day and night, went blind.
Touched by his cousin’s sacrifices, Chen Tianhao promised to take care of her for the rest of her life and took her as a concubine.
Even more absurdly, Jiang Qinghe and Lin Yingxue were originally as close as sisters, but the male lead’s intervention caused their relationship to deteriorate.
The two viciously competed against each other, even going so far as to physically fight and frame each other to vie for Chen Tianhao’s attention.
The level of melodrama was simply beyond words.
“Yingxue, Yingxue, I’m talking to you…” Jiang Qinghe spoke for a long time, but seeing Lin Yingxue staring blankly, she couldn’t help but gently nudge her.
Lin Yingxue snapped out of her daze from the book’s melodramatic plot.
Regarding Jiang Qinghe’s marriage, the reincarnated Jiang Baozhen must know the details even better than she did.
Jiang Baozhen hated Chen Tianhao to the core; she would absolutely never let Jiang Qinghe have any involvement with him.
She would inevitably expose the Shan family’s conspiracy before Chen Tianhao could.
“How dare that bastard Chen Ergou do such a thing?”
While Lin Yingxue was talking in Jiang Qinghe’s room, Jiang Baozhen had already told Mrs.
Yao everything about Chen Huaiyuan’s actions, along with the true origins of Lin Yingxue and Chen Tianhao.
Mrs.
Yao felt waves of dizziness wash over her.
If Jiang Baozhen hadn’t held her back, the usually gentle old lady would have already stormed over to the Chen Family to seek justice for her daughter.
“My daughter, you’ve been kept so miserably in the dark!” Mrs.
Yao grasped Jiang Baozhen’s hands, tears falling endlessly.
Jiang Baozhen wanted to bury her face in Mrs.
Yao’s embrace and cry her heart out, but she was afraid that the sheer anger might be too much for her elderly mother.
Forcing herself to stay strong, she said, “It’s not too late.
Thankfully, Xue’er is right here by my side.”
Mrs.
Yao cried, “I knew it!
I wondered why Yingxue looked so familiar when I first saw her.
It turns out she’s my granddaughter.”
She wanted to call Yingxue over to formally acknowledge each other, but Jiang Baozhen stopped her.
She explained that Yingxue still didn’t know her true identity and might find it hard to accept if told abruptly.
They would wait for the right time to acknowledge her.
“Then we’ll wait a little longer,” Mrs.
Yao said with a long sigh.
She then shifted the topic, “It’s a blessing that Ruixue has been found.
Later, go light a stick of incense for your father so he can be happy in the afterlife.”
Thinking of how her father had never stopped thinking about his granddaughter even on his deathbed, Jiang Baozhen was overcome with sorrow and choked out an agreement.
“Chen Ergou and Qin Sangruo have gone too far!
We cannot let them and that bastard off easily.” Mrs.
Yao was furious.
She called over her great-grandsons, Jiang Xiaohu and Jiang Xiaolong, who were playing in the courtyard.
She instructed one of the brothers to go to the village entrance to intercept their grandfather, Jiang Shouren, and drag him home immediately if seen.
The other was told to go to the fields to call back her second son, Jiang Shouxin.
She needed to have a good discussion with her two sons about how to vent this foul anger for her daughter.
Jiang Shouren had been back from town for quite a while and was currently inspecting the frozen soil in the fields.
Upon hearing his grandson say his elderly mother was summoning him, he dropped his hoe, called for his younger brother Jiang Shouxin, and hurried home.
When Jiang Baozhen’s eldest sister-in-law, Zhang Guixiang, heard her grandson say that his great-aunt had come, she figured her sister-in-law’s visit at this time was most likely to borrow silver for Chen Tianhao’s schooling.
A surge of anger flared in her heart.
Years of war had already emptied their family’s savings, and there were over a dozen mouths waiting to be fed.
Did they really have to let their own family go hungry for the seed of the Chen Family?
Her mother-in-law usually seemed like a reasonable person, but when it came to her sister-in-law, there was no bottom line to her giving.
She had to go back and stop them from lending the money.
With these thoughts in mind, she also put down her hoe and caught up with Jiang Shouren and his brother.
The three of them entered the main room and saw Mrs.
Yao with red-rimmed eyes.
Zhang Guixiang’s face darkened even more, increasingly convinced that Jiang Baozhen was there to force the old lady to lend money.
Just as she was about to open her mouth to reprimand Jiang Baozhen, she heard Mrs.
Yao say tearfully, “…I called you here because…
Ruixue has been found…”
Hearing that Ruixue had been found, Jiang Shouren and Jiang Shouxin immediately and excitedly asked where she was.
Even Zhang Guixiang forgot her dissatisfaction with her sister-in-law.
With tears in her eyes, she pressed her palms together and invoked the name of Amitabha Buddha.
Seeing her older brothers and sister-in-law genuinely happy for her finding her daughter, Jiang Baozhen’s heart swelled with a sour ache.
Because of Chen Huaiyuan, she didn’t know how much anger she had caused her maiden family over the years.
In her past life, when her maiden family refused to lend money for Chen Tianhao’s studies, she had said many harsh words in anger, blamed her sister-in-law for stirring up trouble in the middle, and completely cut ties with her eldest brother’s family in a fit of rage.
“Ruixue came back two years ago…” Jiang Baozhen steadied her emotions and recounted the whole story to her brothers and sister-in-law.
Unlike the emotional turbulence she experienced when confiding in Mrs.
Yao, she was now able to state Chen Huaiyuan’s actions in a calm tone when facing them.
To prove she was telling the truth, Jiang Baozhen specifically brought out the letter Qin Sangruo wrote to Chen Huaiyuan and the Jade Pendant.
Jiang Shouxin immediately wanted to storm over to the Chen Family, but Jiang Shouren held him down.
Even though Jiang Shouren also hated Chen Huaiyuan enough to want to tear him into pieces, he said deeply, “Second Brother, we have to listen to what Baozhen wants to do.”
Eldest sister-in-law Zhang Guixiang was equally infuriated and advised from the side, “Your eldest brother is right.
She has to make this decision herself.”
No one knew Jiang Baozhen’s attitude towards Chen Huaiyuan over the years better than her maiden family.
Right now, no matter how furious they were at Chen Huaiyuan, they couldn’t make the decision for her; Jiang Baozhen had to figure out what to do on her own.
If her maiden family forcibly intervened and Jiang Baozhen ended up resenting them later, what would happen if the old lady died of anger?
This brother-in-law looked decent on the surface, but no one expected him to be so sinister and vicious.
Zhang Guixiang thought that with such a man beside her pillow, if Jiang Baozhen still chose to forgive him, there would be no need to keep in touch with this sister-in-law anymore.
Jiang Baozhen took a deep breath and declared resolutely, “I want a divorce!”
As soon as the words left her mouth, a trace of guilt surfaced in her heart.
Having followed Chen Huaiyuan for half her life and even having a grandson, where would her maiden family’s face be if she proposed a divorce now?
Her niece Qinghe was not yet married; would this delay her marriage prospects?
As for her already-married nieces Qingmiao and Qingling, how would their in-laws view them?
Not to mention there were other unmarried girls in the Jiang family…