Hong Yu, standing quietly outside the reception hall, immediately felt a pang of anxiety for her mistress.
Su Xueqing’s eyes widened in shock as she exclaimed, “You’re saying… you were harmed by the Old Madam of the Marquis Manor, which is why you couldn’t bear children?”
In an instant, Su Xueqing pieced some things together. “Could it be that the old lady fed you the Sterility Potion to make you willingly adopt the children from the eldest branch?”
Tears overflowed and streamed down even more fiercely. Song Yao sobbed, “You’ve only guessed half of it.”
“Back then, I saw that those three children had lost their father, and Chunlan Xiu was struggling to raise them alone. So, I listened to Han Qingfeng and Madam Jin and adopted all three children.”
“Because I couldn’t bear children, I always felt I had failed my husband’s family. Therefore, I treated those three children as my own, giving them the best of everything.”
“I thought that if I treated them well, they would surely be grateful to me as their mother when they grew up. I exhausted myself, worrying and caring for them, only to realize in the end that I had raised three utterly ungrateful wretches.”
“If I had only known they were wolves that could never be tamed, I wouldn’t have been so heartbroken.”
“What truly breaks my heart is that I finally discovered those three wretched children were actually the offspring of Chunlan Xiu and Han Qingfeng.”
“The three of them are illegitimate children born from the union of Han Qingfeng and Chunlan Xiu.”
Su Xueqing suddenly felt as if the stool beneath her had grown thorns, making her restless and uneasy.
She sprang to her feet. “How could such a thing happen in this world?”
Amid her anger, Su Xueqing’s mind was also in disarray. After sitting back down and pondering for a while, she finally untangled the twists and turns of the situation.
“So, it seems your marriage to Han Qingfeng was a meticulously planned deception from start to finish. The Han family’s goal in tricking you into marriage was to have you use your silver to support their entire family!”
Song Yao sighed. “Back then, Han Qingfeng personally came to propose marriage, but my father refused to form an alliance with the Marquis Manor. My Song family was merely a small tea merchant, dealing only in tea.”
“Even though merchant families had money, they were considered the lowest class.”
“And no matter how downcast the Yunzhou Marquis Manor was, it was still a noble household recognized by the court.”
“My father said the Marquis Manor’s status was too high for the Song family to aspire to, and he firmly rejected Han Qingfeng’s proposal back then.”
“However, to win over my father, Han Qingfeng knelt outside our tea shop for three days and three nights, finally persuading my father to relent.”
“Seeing his sincerity in proposing, my father no longer feared that his only daughter would suffer in the future.”
“But it wasn’t until today that I suddenly realized Han Qingfeng’s marriage to me was nothing but a scheme from the very beginning…”
When Song Yao married into the Marquis Manor with a generous dowry, Han Qingfeng’s elder brother was still alive.
Two months after she entered the Marquis Manor, one day,
she heard intense quarreling coming from the eldest branch’s quarters.
During the day, the couple from the eldest branch had argued.
That very night, the elder brother from the eldest branch, who had long been in poor health, passed away.
At that time, the Marquis Manor was very poor. To ensure the elder brother’s funeral was conducted with dignity,
it was Song Yao who used her dowry to subsidize the expenses, allowing her brother-in-law to have a grand funeral.
After her brother-in-law’s death, three years passed, and Song Yao still failed to bear any children for the Han family.
Her mother-in-law approached her, hinting that since the eldest son had passed away, leaving behind three children, Chunlan Xiu, as a woman, truly had no means to raise them. Her mother-in-law urged her to adopt the three children and raise them as her own.
At first, Song Yao refused.
She had always wanted to bear her own children and had no desire to raise someone else’s.
But no matter how hard she tried, her belly never swelled.
Countless doctors were consulted, and she drank countless bowls of bitter medicinal soups, yet she simply could not conceive.
In the end, she yielded to fate and agreed to her mother-in-law and husband’s request to adopt her sister-in-law’s children.
Chunlan Xiu also assured her that once the children were adopted under her care,
Chunlan Xiu would only be their aunt, not their mother.
Because Song Yao remembered her own inability to bear children, she poured all her love for children into those three siblings.
Yet the three children, to whom she had devoted all her heart and soul, each dealt her a harsh slap in the face!
When Song Yao first married into the Marquis Manor, she did not yet fully understand the Han family.
As time went on, she discovered that both her husband and her mother-in-law had a tendency toward hypocrisy.
To Song Yao, hypocrisy was not a big deal—after all, she had been hypocritical at times too.
Although she noticed her husband and mother-in-law’s hypocrisy, she never confronted them about it openly.
She believed that trivial matters did not need to be brought to the table and discussed.
Causing discord in the family over minor issues simply wasn’t worth it.
Song Yao devoted herself wholeheartedly to raising the three children.
The three children she personally raised grew up with personalities increasingly resembling their grandmother and their father.
They too inherited their father’s and grandmother’s hypocrisy.
As for the adults, Song Yao truly had no control over them.
But with the children, she felt she must correct their character.
However, the more she spoke and acted, the more the three children opposed her.
Song Yao always kept in mind that the children were young and ignorant, so she never held it against them.
Whenever trouble arose, she would step forward to fight and strive for them.
She gave her all, sparing no effort for that family, yet it was only today that she finally saw the truth. Her marriage into the Marquis Manor had been a calculated scheme from the very beginning…
At this point, Song Yao couldn’t help but sob again.
Song Yao’s weeping stirred the heart of Dingyuan Jiangjun Su Chuang, who had already arrived outside the door.
While Song Yao sat in the reception hall recounting her ordeal to Su Xueqing, Su Chuang had already returned.
Hong Yu, standing at the entrance, was about to bow and greet him.
With a wave of his hand, Su Chuang signaled her to stand down, and Hong Yu understood, refraining from further action and standing quietly.
Su Chuang did not enter immediately. Instead, he stood to one side outside the door, listening quietly.
The more he listened, the more unsettled he felt.
After hearing Song Yao’s story, Su Xueqing could no longer contain her anger.
Slapping the tea table beside her, she exclaimed furiously, “Sister, I understand now. The Yunzhou Marquis Manor has taken advantage of you—it seems they intend to exploit you to the fullest.”
Even without Su Xueqing’s reminder, Song Yao had already realized that the Han family had exploited her completely.
Su Xueqing scratched her head and added, “You said the three children you raised are actually Han Qingfeng’s offspring.”
“Is it possible that back then, when you overheard the eldest son and his wife arguing during the day, and that very night, the eldest brother passed away…”
“Could it be that the eldest son of the Han family died of rage after discovering the children were not his own?”