“Mother, let’s divide the family property!”
“Father has passed away. The only ones left at home are you, Second Sister, and Fifth Brother, who is… the way he is—”
“It’s hard for a widow to support the family. From now on, we brothers will take turns providing for you.”
“Mother! Your third daughter-in-law is about to give you a grandson. With a new mouth to feed, our expenses will be great. Give the cloth manor in the city to our third branch!”
“Third Brother, you’ve planned this well! The cloth manor is currently the family’s most profitable shop. I’m about to get married, so that cloth manor should be mine!”
The incessant, chattering clamor buzzed in her ears.
After three years as a wandering soul, Song Jinyao opened her eyes again to find she had returned to the moment just after her husband’s death.
She was dressed in mourning clothes, kneeling before a brazier, her fingertips pinching a stack of joss paper to feed into the flames.
“Hiss—”
A stray spark shot up and burned her finger. Song Jinyao cried out in pain and abruptly pulled her hand back.
She stared, stunned, at the half-burnt spirit money in her hand.
The noisy argument continued in her ears.
“Mother, say something! Make your position clear!”
“Mother, you’ve been silent this whole time. Don’t tell me you don’t want to divide the family?”
“That’s right, Mother. When you’re old, you’ll be supported by us sons anyway. What’s the difference between dividing the family now or later!”
Kneeling on the green brick floor, Song Jinyao lifted her gaze in a daze.
The leaping flames in the brazier cast flickering light and shadow on her pale face.
Inside the mourning hall, white funeral banners hung low, candlelight swayed, and the scents of sandalwood and paper ash mingled in the stagnant air. A massive black coffin rested about a meter away.
Following the voices, Song Jinyao turned her head to see her four sons standing behind her, their faces etched with anxiety.
Her second daughter was crying, hiding in a corner.
Song Jinyao felt a sense of unreality as her gaze swept carefully over her four sons’ faces.
At this moment, her sons’ faces were young and handsome, unlike the weathered looks they had in the year she died, when they were in their fifties and had reached the age of knowing their fate.
She had heard the recent clamor; it was the voices of her second, third, and fourth sons.
The stinging pain from the burn on her finger lingered. Song Jinyao pinched the sore spot, a tremor running through her heart. It seemed she had truly been reborn!
Reborn at the time when her husband faked his death to elope with his White Moonlight, and her sons were clamoring to divide the family.
In this year, she was only forty years old!
It seemed the obsession that had not dissipated even after three years of wandering as a soul after freezing to death in the snow had finally been fulfilled!
She remembered the scene in this mourning hall until the day she died.
She suppressed the turbulent thoughts surging in her heart.
She rose and looked at her eldest son, who had remained silent. He was the son of her husband and his original wife. When she had married in as the second wife, the child had just turned two.
She had more or less raised him herself.
But because she favored her own biological sons, her eldest had long grown distant from her.
“Eldest Son? What do you say?”
A look of surprise flashed across Lu Yuan’s face, not expecting his stepmother to ask for his opinion.
He deliberated for a moment, then bowed in a proper salute. “This son will listen to Mother’s decision in all matters!”
Her eldest son’s attitude was within Song Jinyao’s expectations.
This stepson held a grudge against her and understood that it was useless to fight for anything.
She showed no reaction, turning her head to look at her second, third, and fourth sons.
These three were her biological children.
“You all—are you that eager to divide the family?”
The social customs were more open now, and the household and marriage laws had been amended. Any widow who wished to remarry after her husband’s death was free to do so.
Her neighbor, Widow Liu, was about her age and had remarried into the next county a year after her husband’s death.
But she had lived half her life. At this age, who would speak of illusory love and romance?
It was merely about finding a companion for one’s old age, with benefits being the priority.
After the family was divided, if she had no assets to her name, who would be foolish enough to willingly marry a destitute woman with a child in tow?
Without money to her name, it would be truly difficult to find another good family!
These sons of hers, in their clamor to divide the family, had a hidden motive: to prevent her, a widow, from remarrying and taking the family fortune with her!
It was human nature to pursue profit. Although her sons’ petty schemes made Song Jinyao uncomfortable, it wasn’t entirely unacceptable.
But the reborn her knew that these ungrateful wolves were clamoring to divide the family because they were also thinking of raising money to support their scumbag father’s new family on the outside.
In her past life, she had truly believed the old man was dead, had no intention of remarrying, and couldn’t overcome her sons’ persistence, so she had relented and divided the family!
The family assets were split into four portions. The second, third, and fourth sons each took a share, while she and her youngest son took one. Her two daughters and her stepson, the eldest, received nothing.
She even threw in her own dowry later, dividing it among the three of them.
For the first decade or so, her sons treated her decently. Back then, she could still work, and she had her own private savings to subsidize their three families.
But as she grew older and the money for her and her youngest son ran out, leaving her penniless, her sons and daughters-in-law’s attitudes toward her grew increasingly sour.
At sixty, she learned that her husband had faked his death and had a new family on the outside. She caused a huge scene.
The shock triggered the Disease of Imbecility (what is now known as Alzheimer’s). Her sons’ attitudes changed completely. Unwilling to support her, they drove her back to the old residence to fend for herself.
She struggled on for a few more years. During a harsh winter, while searching for food, her mind addled by the disease, she got lost and froze to death in the snow.
Her body was only discovered three days later by a kind passerby, who arranged for her burial.
Otherwise, her corpse would likely have been devoured by wild dogs until not a scrap remained, and these biological sons of hers, who didn’t visit more than once or twice a year, would never have known their old mother was dead.
A breath of resentment gathered in her chest. Without waiting for her biological sons to speak, Song Jinyao raised her arm and slapped each of them across the face!
Slap! Slap! Slap!
The loud smacks echoed in the mourning hall.
“Mother?”
The second, third, and fourth sons clutched their slapped cheeks, calling out to their mother in disbelief.
“Mother, have you gone mad? Why did you hit us?”
“Hit you?” Song Jinyao shook her wrist, looking ready to raise her hand and strike again at any moment.
It startled her three biological sons into taking a step back.
The eldest son’s mouth fell open in shock. He muttered to himself, Song Jinyao is actually willing to hit her own sons?
“Don’t you deserve to be hit?”
Song Jinyao turned sideways and pointed at the coffin in the center of the hall, letting out a derisive laugh.
“Your own father is lying right here. His body isn’t even cold, he hasn’t been buried yet, and you unfilial sons are already impatient to divide the family?!”
“Do you think your old mother is dead too?”
“Is this how sons should behave? This is utterly outrageous!”
The second, third, and fourth sons were rendered speechless by her questions.
But they couldn’t let go of their little schemes, hemming and hawing for a long while.
The second son was pushed forward to speak first. “Mother, Second Sister is about to be married off soon. After that, it will just be you and that fool at home.”
“After we divide the family, we brothers will live well, and we’ll take turns honoring you. Isn’t that good?”
“Good? What’s so good about it?” Song Jinyao sneered. “From now on, I’ll have to hold my hand out and ask you for money for every meal. You call that good?”
“Mother, you can’t put it that way. After the family is divided, it’s only natural for us as sons to honor you! How can you call that holding your hand out?” the second son said with sincerity, but he couldn’t hide the calculation in his eyes.
A piece of joss paper in the brazier suddenly burst into a spark. Song Jinyao stared at that fleeting point of light, her fingertips digging into her palm inside her sleeve.
In her past life, it was at this very moment that she had panicked, allowing these wolves to scent her weakness and scheme against her step by step until she was devoured.
“Only natural? Heh—that requires a conscience!” Song Jinyao scoffed. Yet, in her past life, she had favored her sons over her daughters, showering her three biological sons with endless affection, only to raise three ungrateful wolves!
Not only did they hide the fact that their father had faked his death, but they were also single-mindedly focused on prying money from her to support that heartless man’s new family.
Worse, they let her die without anyone to arrange her burial!
What was the use of such wicked offspring?
In her life, she had five sons and two daughters. The eldest, Lu Yuan, was her stepson; the rest were her biological children.
The second son, Lu Xiao, the third, Lu Yue, and the fourth, Lu Chuan, were born first.
Then came her two daughters, the elder Lu Wenying and the younger Lu Wenhui.
Finally, there was her youngest son, Lu Chen.
Usually, the youngest son was the most doted upon in a family, but after an accident a few years ago, her youngest son had become a simpleton. Over time, she grew to resent him, and her affection for him dwindled to a pitiful amount.
She had given all her love to her first three sons.
The year her second son, Lu Xiao, was caught cheating in the imperial examinations, the family was going through a difficult time. To clean up his mess, she hastily married off her eldest daughter in exchange for betrothal gifts and connections to smooth things over.
It was no different from selling her daughter, and it filled her with guilt.
But in the end, not only did her second son fail to learn his lesson, but he was also goaded by his degenerate friends into drinking, brawling, and injuring the examiner who had exposed him. He was banned from the examinations for life, and a large sum of money was paid in compensation.
Not only that, but this second son had lofty ambitions. He always felt that with a bit of ink in his belly, he was a scholar and should marry a government official’s daughter.
He looked down on the wife she had arranged for him, giving Shen-shi the cold shoulder for many years.
The irony was that this second son, with his high aspirations but low abilities, ended up being bewitched by a woman from a brothel.
He even claimed they were kindred spirits, their love pure and born of mutual sympathy—one fighting against fate, the other against his mother!
Just a Xiucai who had been banned from the exams!
What kind of damn scholar did he think he was?!
The reborn Song Jinyao desperately wanted to curse. A hint of mockery colored her eyes.
In her past life, she had gone to great lengths to pull her second son out of that mire. In this life, she could only chuckle grimly.
Of her two daughters, the only one still by her side was her second daughter, who was of marriageable age and waiting to be wed.
Not long ago, she had also promised her second daughter to a family.
That family was wealthy and well-connected, but their son was a notorious philanderer.
But in order to continue paving the way for her sons’ futures, she had stubbornly agreed to the marriage.
She was just waiting for her second daughter to have her hair-pinning ceremony in two months and get married!
She recalled how, as a wandering soul, she had seen her second, third, and fourth sons refuse to pay for her funeral, causing her body to lie in state for ten days without a service.
In the end, it was her daughters who contacted the long-estranged eldest son, and they split the funeral costs to bury her. Only then was she interred before her body began to rot.
A bellyful of anger churned inside Song Jinyao.
“I will not divide the family. If you want to leave, then leave. No one is stopping you!”
Hearing this, her three biological sons immediately grew anxious.
Lu Xiao, the second son, looked the most distressed.
He had just received an urgent letter from his father, asking him to raise a thousand taels of silver and send it over.
His father had promised that if he helped him this time, he would have Auntie Tao’s cousin help him secure an official post in the future.
He wasn’t young anymore. If he lost this opportunity, he would never have another chance to become an official.
Instantly, the second son clenched his fists.
His eyes turned red.
“Mother! How can you be so unreasonable? No wonder Father—”
“Second Brother, shut up!”
Lu Xiao had almost let the cat out of the bag. The third son, Lu Yue’s, face changed drastically. He jumped up and sharply cut him off, then gave him a subtle shake of his head.
Lu Xiao abruptly realized he had almost ruined everything and clamped his mouth shut.
Song Jinyao simply watched her two sons act, a corner of her mouth curled into a meaningful smile, her heart a wasteland of sorrow.
Seeing Song Jinyao’s gaze on him, Lu Yue coughed guiltily and gave a sheepish smile.
“Mother, I didn’t mean to shout at Second Brother. I just saw him talking back to you and couldn’t control my temper for a moment.”
“Is that so? You are quite the filial son.” Song Jinyao smiled coolly, her eyes inscrutable, not exposing their lie.