Shen Tang looked at the beggar with a little surprise.
She thought that the beggar's previous words and deeds showed that he was uneducated. He had been in the market for a long time and had learned the skill of "speaking sweetly" through osmosis. However, judging from the beggar's neither humble nor arrogant demeanor and those two sentences, her judgment was wrong.
"The rude collision is easy to deal with. Considering that you are young and lonely, and have been locked up for six days, I think you have learned your lesson, so let's just forget about it. But, how can I avenge your family?" Shen Tang pretended to be confused.
"My family was harmed by Zhang..." The beggar paused and said with tears in his eyes, "If it weren't for Mr. Shen, I would have died without seeing their retribution... Therefore, in my eyes, Mr. Shen is my family's benefactor."
Shen Tang softened his expression: "Don't cry, tell me slowly."
She was not a compassionate person, nor would she comfort a crying little girl, but Shen Tang could not bear to let such a pitiful child cry in front of her. So she signaled the clerk with her eyes to bring a mat so that the beggar could sit down and talk slowly.
The beggar's feet had severe frostbite.
The ankle joint is swollen and the skin is cracked.
The temperature inside was warmer than outside, and the beggar felt the itching and pain from her feet, along her legs, and all over her body when she moved a little. However, the beggar was very patient and did not frown. She endured the pain in her joints and the discomfort of stiff limbs, and tried to straighten her spine to make herself look more dignified and decent.
Shen Tang listened to the beggar's experience with a gentle expression.
It's a coincidence.
Shen Tang had seen the case of the beggar's family. It was the first case that the Gaotai tried among the seven local tyrants, so he had a particularly deep memory of it.
Zhang's steward Diao falsely accused the widow's son of stealing a fighting cock that had "made great achievements in battle", forcing the widow to cut open her son's abdomen with a knife to prove her innocence. Then he persecuted the widow with fifty lashes on the grounds that she had killed her young son, and turned her into a slave who pounded rice.
The beggar in front of him should be the only survivor.
Shen Tang looked at the beggar's hands covered with frostbite, his finger joints swollen and difficult to bend flexibly, and thought about the condition of his feet that day. He guessed that the beggar had been wandering outside for quite some time: "But I saw in the files that your grandfather and grandmother should be alive?"
Or is it that this old couple is also gone
Is it true that the beggar's family has been broken up and he has to wander around
Unexpectedly, when she heard the words "grandfather and grandmother", her eyes revealed a chilling hatred, and she was so excited that she ignored the pain in her hands and clenched them into fists. She tried hard to restrain herself from losing her composure in front of Shen Jun, but she was still too young after all.
It’s impossible to hide your emotions.
Shen Tang asked, "Do you have any other difficulties?"
The beggar suppressed the moist mist rolling in his eyes.
His lips were trembling, as if he was in a dilemma.
Shen Tang did not urge him and waited for the beggar to speak himself.
Not long after, he heard the beggar's poisonous words, which were almost squeezed out from his back teeth.
Every word was filled with astonishing hatred.
"Even if Mr. Shen would beat me out, I, I, will say something extremely treasonous. Those kind-hearted but vicious-hearted men and women on the other side are definitely not my grandparents!"
Shen Tang immediately perked up when he heard this.
Her reaction was not anger as the beggar thought. Instead, she asked curiously, "What's the truth behind this? Were you trafficked here? Don't be afraid. If this is true, I will seek justice for you."
All of a sudden, all kinds of words popped into my mind.
Now it was the beggar's turn to be confused.
She stopped talking, her eyes somewhat evasive.
The beggar placed her hands on her knees, nervously grasping the hem of her coarse cloth skirt - Shen Jun mistakenly thought that she was insulting "grandfather and grandmother" because she had no blood relationship with them, but in fact, that was not the case.
The beggars and they are indeed close relatives by blood.
After figuring this out, Shen Tang asked in confusion, "What did they do to anger the heavens and the people that made you hate them so much?"
The beggar was hanging his head in fear, waiting for the "judgment".
Who would have thought that Shen Tang's response would be so gentle.
She suddenly raised her head and looked at Shen Tang with tears in her eyes again: "Mr. Shen, Mr. Shen, please understand..."
The story here is not complicated.
It was true that someone was sold, but the person sold was not a beggar but her biological mother, the widow.
The widow's family fell into poverty before she reached the age of 15, and all the family property was sold off. The carefree girl was forced to shoulder the burden of the family and make a living by selling textiles, embroidery, and copying books for others. Her life was hard but passable.
Who knows, there will be unexpected changes in the weather.
One day, he was kidnapped and knocked unconscious on his way home.
When she woke up, she was far away from her hometown. She was sold to a father and his three brothers in a small village in the mountains for a high price to be the wife of the man in the family. The widow naturally refused to submit, and she took the opportunity to abort the child whose biological father was unknown.
This family would beat and scold her at any time.
After three years of stalemate, it was sold.
The next buyers are the beggar’s grandparents.
The widow still refused to accept her fate.
However, her mind was not very clear, and although the beggar's father was stupid, he did not beat or scold her like the previous family. Her parents-in-law also kept an eye on her all the time, and the days went by one by one.
When the widow gradually regained her sanity, she gave birth to two children.
The widow couldn't let go of her parents, so she asked a businessman who went to her hometown to do business to help her find out the news, but she learned that her parents had died many years ago. She was now a rootless duckweed, with no choice but to stay in Ha Yin, so the widow had to accept her fate.
Within a few years, the man died of a serious illness while serving in the military.
The widow could only work hard to make a living with two children at a young age, and endure the constant attacks and curses from her parents-in-law. Neighbors knew her past from somewhere and insulted and ridiculed her whenever they got the chance, and her relatives also considered her a disgrace.
If the widow had not been able to recognize a few words and teach the children in the village, the widow and her two children would have had no place to live.
Shen Tang also knew what happened afterwards.
The widow's son was falsely accused of stealing a chicken by the Zhang family's manager Diao. The widow's calm, or rather, her suppressed emotions for many years, completely exploded. She was mentally ill and cut open her son's belly with her own hands. She was then flogged and sentenced to be a female slave who pounded rice. Within two months, she chose to commit suicide.
Shen Tang listened quietly to the beggar's tearful story, her heart was shaken, but there was one thing she couldn't understand - the beggar's hatred for her grandfather and grandmother seemed to be even greater than that for his enemy's family.
After the widow was sentenced to pound rice, the beggar, as her only bloodline, shouldn't be treated very well, but not too badly, right
But judging from her beggarly appearance, she was not living well.
"The human trafficker couple who sold my mother... are my two uncles... and grandma..." The beggar called out the two names with some difficulty, hatred still surging in his eyes.
It turned out that the widow had been childless for three years in the first family, and she refused to give in no matter how much she was beaten and scolded, which completely angered the father and three brothers of that family. They went to the prisoner who sold them the "goods" and shouted that they wanted to return the goods. If they didn't return the goods, they would report them to the police and have them arrested.
After some persuasion, I had to agree.
It just so happened that the mentally retarded son in the family didn't have a wife yet. The widow had been tortured for three years but still retained 60% of her beauty, which showed how good her natural foundation was. So she reluctantly "exchanged" him. The father and his two brothers happily took the new wife who could give birth to a child back home.
The widow had a very vague impression of the traffickers who had captured her. It was only when Diao caused trouble that the widow was forced into a desperate situation and suddenly remembered the true identity and faces of her "parents-in-law". All these factors combined led the widow to perform a caesarean section.
What she wanted to prove to the world was not only her son's innocence of not stealing fighting cocks, but also her own innocence.
The beggar lowered his head, his voice vague and unclear: "Aniang actually wanted to kill me..."
She just hid.
A'niang also found that she was hiding.
The beggar will never forget the look in her mother's eyes when she found her. Her face was hideous and distorted. She would wake up in a cold sweat every time she saw it in her dreams. She didn't know much, so she just tried to cover her mouth to prevent herself from crying out loud and getting killed.
Perhaps her request really touched A Niang, or perhaps A Niang saw her own shadow in her. A Niang turned around indifferently with a knife in her hand, with endless complexity in her eyes.
Afterwards, A Niang was flogged and sent to a pounding mill to serve her sentence. The beggar once secretly went to see her. It had only been a few days since the last time they met, and the A Niang, who always took good care of her black hair and smiling eyes, had become a haggard old woman.
His hair was gray, his body was hunched, and his hands were swollen.
In the past, A-niang lived a refined and decent life, and people could not tell her actual age. If she dressed as a spinster, people would probably believe her. But now A-niang was so old that people could not recognize her. The mother and daughter looked at each other with the same wooden expression for a long time.
The widow told her daughter all about her experience.
This daughter is young but smart and sensible.
When I saw her eyes, I thought of myself.
I wanted to kill you...
The beggar trembled when he heard this.
The horror of that day came flooding back to my mind.
Ah Niang said in a hoarse and old voice: "… But after thinking about it, I let it go. It's not that I can't bear it, I just want to see how you struggle in this world. Someone should pay back the suffering I have endured in this half of my life, right?"
She gave birth to a good daughter.
But he is also the offspring of this dirty family.
She couldn't love completely.
I can't hate it completely.
She had killed several children with her own hands, and the daughter in front of her was the only survivor, and she had poured countless efforts into her. The beggar saw hatred in her eyes, but also love and reluctance. For a moment, he felt embarrassed and ashamed.
I don’t know how to face this biological mother.
She could not hate her biological mother whom she wanted to kill. She wanted to apologize, but it was useless. The thieves who should apologize the most - one relied on Zhang's arrogance and the other was still called "grandfather and grandmother" - the beggar became the most embarrassed.
The mother and daughter sat facing each other for a long time.
Until the meeting time came, A Niang slowly stood up, tried to straighten her body, raised her chin slightly, and looked indifferent.
Forget about what happened today, and just treat me as a guilty woman who never said anything. Even if I did say anything, it was nonsense.
After this meeting, the next time they met was the widow's body that was sent back - covered with corpse spots and with a strong stench.
He looked older than the last time we met.
The beggar saw with his own eyes that she was simply wrapped up and buried casually in the wilderness. No one came to the funeral to express condolences - including the children that A Niang had taught and enlightened over the years. They believed the gossip of the adults and thought that this woman was dirty, vulgar and vicious. Even their parents gritted their teeth and said dirty words.
The so-called "grandfather and grandmother" reluctantly took out a small sum of money from their coffin fund, bought a boy who looked smart, changed his surname, wrote him in the family tree, made him their precious grandson, and then raised him with all their heart.
He always kept saying, "My Zhu family has descendants."
As for the beggar who was truly related to them by blood, she was abandoned. At first, they were patient enough to give her a meal, but within two months, they were planning to sell her to an old widower in a village as a wife, and use the money from the sale for their eldest grandson's future schooling.
The beggar was luckier than her mother.
She was alert and escaped halfway.
In order to make a living, she wandered all the way to Fugu City.
Although Fugu City was very poor, it was a "city" after all, and the public security was much better than outside. The beggar begged for a living while keeping an eye on Zhang's movements from time to time. As the situation outside worsened, life in Fugu City became increasingly difficult.
The beggars thought they would not survive the winter.
Until, she waited for Shen Tang.
When she heard the news of the downfall of the Zhang family and the execution of Diao, she was too sick to get up from the dilapidated temple. When she was a little better and could go out, the platform had been dismantled. She was a little angry that she didn't see the family's heads fall to the ground with her own eyes.
He developed a great interest in Mr. Shen as mentioned by the common people.
But she knew that she was a beggar and he was the county governor, so the possibility of seeing him was very small. The biggest crisis in front of her was not to see Shen Jun, but to survive.
She'll have to try to get through this winter.
Although Mr. Shen sent people to beat drums and gongs to recruit laborers, she was too young and would definitely not be selected.
Just when I was worried about what to do, I saw Shen Tang.
To be precise, it was the familiar jade ornament worn on Shen Tang's waist!
One of them she had seen before.
On the head of the Zhang family!
Good, Zhang’s escaped capture!
The beggar weighed the situation and decided to take action after much hesitation. He first stole the jade ornaments to exchange for food for the winter, then scratched the man's face, and howled a few words to attract the common people around, so that he could take the opportunity to escape. But he never expected that -
As an ordinary person, she couldn't tell the difference between the Wenxin monograms on the accessories on Shen Tang's waist, and as for Kang Shi
This guy is so gentle and kind, and you can tell at first glance that he cannot be beaten!
As a result, all efforts were in vain.
When the beggar was caught, he had already thought of various ways to "die together", until the clerk called Shen Tang "Mr. Shen".
She was completely dumbfounded
(ˉ▽ˉ；)…
The beggar had spent the past few days in anxiety and worry. Not only was she not scolded or beaten, she was also provided with coarse grains every day, and even had warm water to wash and change into new clothes... These days were the most peaceful days for her since her mother passed away.
If I could live like this for the rest of my life, it wouldn't matter if I was locked up in the woodshed.
Afterwards, she was brought to Shen Jun by a clerk.
Shen Jun listened to her past gently. After hearing about her mother's experiences, he did not show contempt or disdain like others did. Instead, there was a kind of pity in his frank eyes that moved her.
The beggar subconsciously straightened his body.
Finally, Shen Jun spoke.
"so-"
Shen Jun paused.
The beggar was nervous.
Shen Jun gestured for her to relax: "You hope your grandfather... no, how did that old couple die? If the situation is true, I can also avenge you..."
Beggar: “!!!”
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