Jiang Li looked at the entire family through her own eyes for the first time.
Her mother-in-law, Cheng Hongyue, was a thirty-nine-year-old woman with high cheekbones and a naturally sharp, mean-looking face. Even years of famine and constant hunger had done nothing to soften her booming voice.
Xu Dali was not Cheng Hongyue’s biological son.
She was his stepmother.
Simply put, both Cheng Hongyue and the original Jiang Li had married into the Xu family as second wives.
In fact, it had been Cheng Hongyue’s idea to marry Jiang Li into the family.
After Xu Dali’s first wife ran away, someone had to take care of a crippled man and his two children.
Cheng Hongyue had borne Xu Genshen two sons and one daughter.
The second son, Xu Yong, was twenty-two years old. His wife was Tang Min, and they had a son and a daughter.
The third son, Xu Cong, was nineteen and still unmarried. He was the only scholar in the family, though he had yet to earn even the lowest degree.
The youngest, Xu Qing, was fifteen and waiting to be married. She resembled Cheng Hongyue not only in appearance but also in temperament—sharp-tongued, overbearing, and unreasonable.
Xu Qing refused to let the matter drop.
“I don’t care. She ruined my clothes, so she has to compensate me!”
Xu Dali frowned.
“Forget the fact that we don’t have any money. Even if we did, we’re crossing barren wasteland. We haven’t seen a single village for miles, much less a town. How is she supposed to compensate you?”
While smoothing out her torn clothing, Xu Qing shouted toward Cheng Hongyue,
“Mother! Look what that shameless woman did to my clothes! How am I supposed to wear them now?”
Cheng Hongyue had spent the entire afternoon searching for Jiang Li and was already simmering with anger. Seeing her daughter’s clothes torn only added fuel to the fire.
Grabbing a dry tree branch from the ground, she raised it high.
“You shameless little slut! I’ll beat you to death!”
Jiang Li swiftly tied the strip of cloth around the back of her head, securing the bandage. Then she lifted her gaze, her eyes as sharp as drawn blades.
After resting for a while, she had recovered some of her strength.
If that branch came down, she would grab Cheng Hongyue’s wrist and throw her cleanly over her shoulder.
Before the branch could fall, however, Xu Dali shouted,
“Mother! What are you doing?”
Cheng Hongyue froze, the branch suspended in midair.
She turned toward him.
“This little tramp keeps dishonoring the family, running off every few days. We’re refugees now! Who can watch her all the time like we did back in the village? And now she’s torn your sister’s only set of clothes. Shouldn’t she be beaten?”
Xu Dali replied, “Can’t you see how badly her forehead is injured? If she hadn’t torn Fourth Sister’s clothes, she’d have had to tear someone else’s. How else was she supposed to bandage the wound?”
Xu Qing snorted.
“She deserves that injury. It’s already merciful enough that we didn’t drown her in a pig cage.”
Xu Dali asked calmly,
“If you beat her into a worse condition, who’s going to take care of me?”
Jiang Li could tell he was actually defending her.
According to the original owner’s memories, whenever his family tried to lay hands on her, Xu Dali would always speak up if he was present.
No matter how viciously she cursed him, no matter how deeply she wounded his pride by calling him a useless cripple, he had never argued back. At worst, they would simply stop speaking to each other for a few days.
Jiang Li thought she understood why.
There had never been any love between them. They had been forced together.
This man simply felt guilty.
Guilty that he was crippled, guilty that he couldn’t do anything, guilty that he had ruined the original Jiang Li’s life.
That was why, even after she openly cuckolded him, he had chosen to endure it in silence.
Xu Yong walked over and leaned casually against the handcart beside Xu Dali.
After spending the entire afternoon searching for Jiang Li, his feet were aching, and he had no interest in joining the argument.
His wife, Tang Min, set down the bundle of grass roots she had been carrying before stepping forward to persuade Cheng Hongyue.
“Mother, Eldest Sister-in-law’s face is as white as paper. She’s obviously hurt badly this time. Why don’t we just let it go?”
Tang Min wasn’t concerned about Jiang Li in the slightest.
As Xu Dali had pointed out, if Jiang Li were beaten into serious injury, who would take care of the cripple?
In the end, the burden would fall on her.
Xu Cong, the third brother, also stayed completely out of it.
He sat down beside the luggage, carefully laying someone else’s clothing beneath him so he wouldn’t dirty the faded blue scholar’s robe he wore.
He hadn’t attended the academy in four years.
Yet whenever he went out or the family had visitors, he always wore that scholar’s robe to remind everyone that he was an educated man.
The reality was that he hadn’t even passed the county qualifying examination.
He simply wasn’t cut out for studying.
Even so, Cheng Hongyue constantly told anyone who would listen that if the family hadn’t been poor, Xu Cong would already be a xiucai by now, and might even become a top scholar in the future.
Xu Qing demanded,
“So my clothes were ruined for nothing?”
Xu Dali answered,
“She only tore a strip from the hem. It’s still wearable.”
Everyone fleeing the famine was covered in dust and dirt.
No one was dressed respectably.
Who would care whether someone’s clothes were missing a corner?
Xu Qing folded her arms.
“I don’t care. If she doesn’t compensate me today, this isn’t over.”
Xu Dali rubbed his temples.
His rugged face showed obvious impatience.
“What exactly do you want?”
Xu Qing answered immediately,
“Big Brother, don’t you still have that silver hairpin? Give it to me as compensation.”
Xu Dali fell silent.
He could give Xu Qing almost anything.
But not the silver hairpin.
When his legs had been crushed years ago, he had desperately needed money for treatment.
The money he earned from hunting had always been kept by Cheng Hongyue.
Yet when disaster struck, she claimed the money had all been spent on household expenses and could scrape together only one tael of silver.
The entire family had urged him to pawn the silver hairpin.
Even then, he had never once considered selling it.
Jiang Li knew exactly what the hairpin meant to him.
The original owner had stolen countless things from the family to give to her lover.
The one thing she had never touched was that silver hairpin.
It was the only keepsake his late mother had left behind.
Unable to listen any longer, Jiang Li finally spoke in her usual indifferent tone.
“It’s only a worn-out piece of clothing. I’ll pay you back.”
Xu Qing immediately thrust out her hand.
“Then pay me now.”
“I said I’d repay you, and I will. Once I have money, I’ll buy you a brand-new outfit.”
Xu Qing’s face filled with contempt.
“As if! Even if you had a few coins to your name, you’d save them for your adulterous lover.”
Xu Dali barked sharply,
“Watch how you speak to your sister-in-law!”
Seeing her daughter being scolded, Cheng Hongyue immediately jumped in.
“Did Fourth Girl say anything wrong? We spent the whole afternoon searching for that little slut because of you, and instead of appreciating us, you’re defending her? Hurry up and hand over your silver hairpin to compensate Fourth Girl, and we’ll consider this matter settled.”
Every time Cheng Hongyue called Jiang Li a little slut, Xu Dali found it unbearably grating.
With his crippled legs, marrying anyone would only drag them down.
He had never agreed to marry Jiang Li in the first place.
But aside from him, everyone else in the family had approved the marriage.
They had even had Xu Yong stand in for him during the wedding ceremony.
No one had cared about his opinion.
All they wanted was a woman to look after him.
That was why, no matter how Jiang Li treated him or how much humiliation she brought upon him, he had never truly blamed her.
Whenever they argued or stopped speaking to each other, it was usually because Jiang Li had mistreated his son and daughter.
In the end, Jiang Li was just another pitiful victim.
She couldn’t marry the man she loved and instead had to spend every day caring for a cripple.
Even his first wife, whom he had married properly, had eventually run away with another man.
How could he expect a woman who had been forced into marriage by her parents to willingly stay by his side?
Jiang Li laughed at the words of the mother and daughter.
“I’ve already promised that once I have money, I’ll buy her a brand-new outfit. Yet the two of you keep fixating on Xu Dali’s silver hairpin.”
She smiled coldly.
“So this is what a stepmother looks like. And a half-sister really isn’t the same as a real sister. I tear one old piece of clothing, and suddenly you’ve found the perfect excuse to seize the only keepsake Xu Dali’s birth mother left behind.”