That evening, Shuhuai simply reheated the leftover chicken soup and zongzi from lunch.
The family sat around the dining table for their meal. After devouring two dumplings in quick succession, Yun’er reached out for another.
Lady Cui stopped her. “Be a good girl, Yun’er. Don’t be so greedy—glutinous rice is hard to digest.”
Yun’er reluctantly set down the nut-filled dumpling in her hand, her eyes lingering on it with longing. Seeing that Shuhuai was eating the plain dumpling Yuhe had wrapped, her face brightened with delight. “Uncle is truly the best! He knows I love the zongzi Auntie Yunluo made, so he saved them all for me to eat tomorrow.”
Lady Cui felt a deep sense of unease. Setting down her chopsticks, she turned her gaze toward Shuhuai, who was quietly eating his meal beside her. “Huai’er, why don’t you go down to the crossroads and check on her? She said she would be back tonight.”
“It’s getting so late… It’s not that I’m worried about her safety, but I can’t help worrying about the child in her belly.”
Sitting against the light, Shuhuai’s face remained shrouded in shadow, his expression unreadable. “Whether she returns home or not has nothing to do with me,” he said evenly. “You need not trouble yourself, Mother.”
It wasn’t that Yuhe was unwilling to return to the Xie household—she simply couldn’t get away.
With Lin Youtang and Concubine Qu making an unannounced visit, no matter how much resentment Lin Yuping harbored toward his father, he still had to prepare a meal for them. After all, today was the Dragon Boat Festival.
Pitying Yuhe’s pregnancy, Madam Wu refused to let her step foot in the kitchen to help. Thus, Yuhe stayed behind in the main hall, listening to her father and brother trade sparse, hollow remarks about how her grand-uncle’s business had expanded so grandly that the family had relocated to Guangling County. The envy in her father’s tone leaked through every word.
Yuping rarely chimed in, offering only an occasional question.
Concubine Qu had no intention of helping Madam Wu either, lounging in the main hall as she cracked watermelon seeds between her teeth. Ever since the late Madam Fang’s passing, she had been elevated to the position of proper wife. Having tamed Youtang to absolute submission, she now called all the shots in the household, no longer bothering to keep up any polite pretense.
Her eyes darted over to Yuhe from time to time. Seeing her dressed in increasingly shabby attire, Concubine Qu burned with malicious glee.
Yet at the same time, remembering how the siblings had taken it upon themselves to call off the marriage with the Min family—robbing her of any financial kickback—she seethed with anger.
Concubine Qu had originally planned to marry her own biological niece into the Min household. But after discovering Min Zheyuan’s true motive for taking a wife, she had turned right around and pushed Yuhe into that fire pit instead.
Listening to Youtang ramble endlessly, Concubine Qu cast a coquettish, reproachful glance at her husband.
Only then did Youtang pull the conversation back to the matter at hand. “Ping’er, seeing that you’ve managed to clear out your stock of old grain, my mind is put at ease.”
“However, your sister’s marriage with the Min family was already set. Why didn’t you discuss it with me before calling it off so recklessly?”
“She knows no better, but are you sensible as well?”
Being in a pleasant mood today, Yuping didn’t care to pick a fight with him. “Father, our households have long since split,” he replied indifferently. “You need not trouble yourself over Hehe’s affairs.”
Seeing his son dismiss him so casually, Youtang’s voice suddenly spiked in volume. “What kind of nonsense is that?! I am still your father!”
The corners of Yuping’s lips curved into a faint, mocking smile. “You are our father, yes—but a step-father at best.”
“You ungrateful beast! How dare you speak to me like that?!”
Seeing father and son locked in an unyielding standoff, Concubine Qu feigned a gentle demeanor as she stood up to mediate. “Dear, did you swallow firecrackers today? Speak nicely.”
Yuhe watched the spectacle with cold eyes. Unlike in the past, when her father’s outbursts would send her cowering to the side in fear, she remained completely unmoved. Back then, Concubine Qu would take advantage of such moments to coax her with soft, soothing words, which was precisely why Yuhe had fallen into her trap so easily.
Seeing that his son wasn’t buying his authority, Youtang redirected his fury straight at Yuhe.
“And you! Refusing to marry into the respectable Min family, only to run right back to Xie Shuhuai’s house, shamelessly clinging onto him!”
“You have completely dragged my reputation through the mud!”
“Hurry up and abort that bastard child in your belly, then marry into the Min family like you’re supposed to!”
“I was against you marrying Xie Shuhuai in the first place—it was your mother who insisted…”
Yuhe simply couldn’t listen to his tirade any longer, firing back without hesitation, “And what about my mother?! Without my mother, could you have ever become the village head? Without my mother, could you have lived a life free from worry over food and clothes?”
“Without my mother, you would still be nothing more than an old errand boy serving others!”
Yuhe’s late mother, Madam Fang, had hailed from a merchant family, whereas Youtang was once merely a shop assistant in the Fang household. When Yuhe’s maternal grandfather passed away, the family business gradually fell into decline. With no one left to arrange a favorable match for Madam Fang, she had wed beneath her standing, bringing along a handsome dowry to marry Youtang.
Having the flimsy veil of his pride so mercilessly torn away by his own daughter, Youtang flew into a rage. “Silence, you ungrateful girl—”
He raised a hand to slap Yuhe, but before the blow could land, Yuping caught his arm in a iron grip.
Yuping’s eyes turned glacial as he barked, “I will never let you lay a finger on Hehe again!”
“Everything she said is the absolute truth.”
The shouting in the main hall terrified young Xing and Yun, sending them scurrying into the kitchen to hide behind Madam Wu. Hearing the commotion, Madam Wu stepped out into the hall.
Seeing that neither of his children held any respect for him, Youtang redirected his burning frustration straight at Madam Wu standing by the doorway.
“And you, as a daughter-in-law, are equally useless! How many years have you been married to Ping’er, yet you haven’t managed to bear a single boy?”
“Your aunt was kind enough to find Ping’er a concubine, yet you had the nerve to stand in the way!”
“What right do you have to stop him?”
Having her deepest pain brought to light, Madam Wu’s eyes instantly welled with tears of heartache. She turned to leave, but Yuping gently caught her hand and pulled her back to his side.
“She is my wife, so of course she has every right to stop it,” Yuping declared, his gaze unwavering. “It was I who refused to take a concubine.”
“From this day forward, none of you have the right to meddle in the affairs of my household or Hehe’s.”
“My shop was left to me by my mother. If Father still wishes to salvage what little grace remains between us, keep your nose out of my family’s business.”
“You… you unfilial beast! You…” Youtang collapsed back into his armchair in a fit of rage, rendered utterly speechless for a long moment.
Concubine Qu burned with resentment inside. She hadn’t anticipated the siblings suddenly turning so unyielding, leaving her schemes completely ruined once again.
Yet on the surface, she still had to maintain a polite facade. “Ping’er, your father simply has a fiery temper—he only has your best interests at heart.”
“We shall take our leave for today.”
After the two departed, a heavy quiet settled over the brother and sister.
In their hearts, both felt immensely grateful that their late mother had made two of the wisest choices of her life: first, securing the two grain and oil shops under Yuping’s name, and second, ensuring that Yuping officially split the household from his father.
After Youtang took Concubine Qu as his official concubine, his heart had strayed completely, handing over every piece of silver he earned outside directly into her hands. To support the entire household, Madam Fang’s dowry had been nearly drained through daily expenses.
By the time Yuhe married Shuhuai, Madam Fang had less than eighty taels of silver left in her personal savings. Suffering from illness at the time, she first bought a plot of land for Yuhe in Hongye Village—the very vegetable patch sitting behind Shuhuai’s house—and then set aside fifty taels of silver as a dowry for her daughter, practically emptying her remaining reserves. Later on, Yuping took full charge of covering the medical expenses for their mother’s illness.
The next day, when Yuhe returned to the Xie household, only Yun’er and Lady Cui were at home.
Lady Cui had spent the entire night tossed in worry. Seeing Yuhe return, the lingering resentment in her heart hadn’t completely dissipated, and she couldn’t help but voice a few complaints.
“In the future, even if you choose not to come back for the night, send someone to pass along a message,” Lady Cui chided gently. “You are carrying a child now, so you must think of the little one in your belly.”
A faint warmth bloomed in Yuhe’s chest. “I understand, Mother.”
Noticing the leftover glutinous rice from yesterday’s zongzi wrapping laid out to dry in the courtyard, a sudden idea struck Yuhe.
“Mother, once this glutinous rice dries, cooking it into regular rice won’t taste very good anyway,” Yuhe suggested brightly. “How about I use it to make some sweet rice cakes instead?”