The stepmother initially refused to admit it.

It was not until my father took out the purchase record and threatened to report to the police that my stepmother panicked and shamelessly said that it was because she admired my father too much that she made the big mistake in a moment of confusion.

Only then did the father realize that even the drunkenness that made him lose face that night was a deliberate plot by the woman in front of him!

My mother was gentle and kind. After marriage, she had a very good relationship with my father and they never had a quarrel.

Even when distant relatives came to live with him, although my father felt it was inconvenient, he didn't say much. He just spent more time in the academy to avoid suspicion.

But they didn't expect that their kindness would create a poisonous snake.

Her father was so angry that he wanted to send her to see the official.

The vicious woman rushed into the house, carried out Zou Jiabao, who was only three and a half years old, and cried to his father to forgive her this time because she had given birth to his son and that his son was innocent and still young and could not live without a mother.

Zou Jiabao is smart and clever, and is very much loved by his father.

The father is a scholar, so of course he hopes that his son can be successful in the future.

But since Zou Jiabao wanted to take part in the imperial examination, he could not have a mother who had killed someone.

The father sat in the yard facing the moon for a long time, and finally made a painful decision. He punished her to go to the farm to reflect on her mistakes for the rest of her life. He told others that Zou Jiabao was weak and had been enlightened by a high monk, and that someone needed to worship Buddha devoutly to keep her safe.

Zou Shujuan hated that vicious woman, but at the beginning she also truly loved Zou Jiabao.

It was only later when I discovered my stepmother's true face that I gradually became estranged from her.

I secretly listened to my father's arrangements. Although I was still aggrieved in my heart, I had no choice but to disobey his orders.

A kind-hearted person can never imagine what a vicious person will do next.

It was agreed that the poisonous woman would be sent to the farm the next day, but that night, Zou Jiabao developed a high fever and cried for his mother.

This fever kept coming back and lasted for several days.

Little Zou Jiabao's fever went down, then back up again. In just a few days, his once chubby face became thinner at a speed visible to the naked eye.

But anyway, the fever finally subsided.

The matter of the vicious woman going to Zhuangzi was put on the agenda again.

The vicious woman begged hard, but her father still refused to give in.

But Zou Shujuan could see that her father's heart relaxed when he looked at Zou Jiabao's thin little face.

Maybe if the vicious woman begged him a little more kindly and showed a little more care for Zou Jiabao, she would be able to stay at home successfully.

Maybe it's just maybe.

I don’t know if the usually shrewd stepmother wanted to stay too much, or if her past successes had made her lose patience.

In her words, she was actually using Zou Jiabao as a bargaining chip to threaten her father.

That was the first time Zou Shujuan saw her father get angry.

She didn't realize at that time that it would be the last time.

My father was completely enraged and completely disappointed with my stepmother.

Keeping such a person with evil intentions around children will do more harm than good, and may even corrupt them.

At this moment, my father made the final decision.

Sending the vicious woman to Zhuangzi to worship Buddha is my father’s bottom line!

After getting the result, Zou Shujuan watched her father rest in the study with peace of mind and then returned to her own room.

But what Zou Shujuan didn't expect was that something happened to his father that night!

Early in the morning, just after dawn, a sharp cry broke the tranquility of the courtyard.

When Zou Shujuan arrived, her father's body was already cold!

From the outside, apart from the purple complexion, everything else about my father was normal.

There were no signs of struggle or fighting at the scene.

The doctor we consulted said it was a sudden death.

The stepmother cried until she was hoarse and was heartbroken.

They keep saying that now that their father is gone, who will they, his mother and his children, rely on?

The stepmother wiped her red and swollen eyes with a handkerchief, but the faint smell of ginger juice on the handkerchief, the cruelty that flashed in her stepmother's eyes, and everything that had happened in the past few years, made Zou Shujuan unable to believe that all this was an accident.

It must be my stepmother’s conspiracy!

While helping her stepmother to deal with her father's funeral, Zou Shujuan secretly observed whether there was anything unusual in the main house, and sent the little maid beside her to inquire among the maids serving in the main house.

Finally, Kung Fu pays off.

Zou Shujuan discovered that something was wrong with Liunian, the servant who served her father.

My father was quite popular in the academy, and many people came to our house to pay their respects.

Logically speaking, at this time, as a servant who usually follows his father to take care of chores, he should be more alert and attentive in greeting the guests.

But Liunian had a pale face and kept dozing off in the mourning hall. Several times he was so sleepy that he could hardly open his eyes.

Sometimes when I glanced at my stepmother, there was a hint of fear in my eyes...

Zou Shujuan found an opportunity to secretly meet Liunian alone.

Liu Nian pointed out the doubts of that night.

He said that his father was very angry and shouldn't have fallen asleep so quickly after returning to the study.

However, the fact is that after my father returned to his room, he fell asleep soon.

Not only his father, but he, who usually sleeps very lightly, slept very soundly that night.

In a daze, I seemed to see my wife go to my father's bedside, and she seemed to be holding something in her hand.

He tried hard to open his eyes, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't wake up.

Instead, my eyelids drooped even heavier.

Until that piercing scream woke him up...

That feeling of distress has not completely disappeared yet.

Zou Shujuan asked him to secretly see a doctor.

The conclusion is that this is a sequelae of inhaling excessive amounts of incense.

Zou Shujuan was shocked!

Lost in fragrance?

When his father was resting in the study, Liunian usually stood guard outside the study.

Liunian inhaled too much incense, which caused him to feel exhausted. So what was the cause of his father's death?

Combined with the blurry figure she saw in the passing time, Zou Shujuan felt a chill in her heart.

My father’s death is definitely not as simple as sudden death!

It must be that the vicious stepmother saw that there was no hope for her to stay at home, so she decided to go all out and killed her father.

In this way, since there are no other elders in the family, doesn't she have the final say on everything in the family?

The more Zou Shujuan thought about it, the more she felt this was the case.

She secretly made up her mind that after her father's funeral, she would go to the capital to find her uncle and ask him to find out the cause of her father's death.

But Zou Shujuan never expected that before one crisis was resolved, another crisis would arise.

When she was mourning in front of her father's coffin, she was noticed by Mr. Yang who came to pay his respects.

More than a year ago, Mr. Yang and his family of three were murdered in Changshou County.

His proud son had his right hand injured in the explosion, and his path to the imperial examination ended at the level of a scholar.

I heard that his wife was the worst hit in the explosion because she was trying to protect their son. Her entire body below the waist was blown off. She has been paralyzed in bed for more than a year and needs someone to take care of her eating, drinking, defecating and urinating.

On the contrary, it was Mr. Yang who immediately crawled under the table when the incident happened and only suffered minor skin injuries.

After his injury healed, he went completely crazy and wanted to take a concubine and have a promising son.

Look, in less than two years, he had taken three concubines, and all of them gave birth to girls.

Now, he extended his evil hand to Zou Shujuan and wanted to take her as his fourth concubine.

According to the law, the stepmother has full rights to decide her marriage.

What's more, she and her stepmother are now at odds with each other.

The stepmother had been thinking about how to get rid of this big worry in her heart. When she heard that Mr. Yang promised to give 1,200 taels of silver as a betrothal gift, it was like a pillow that had fallen asleep. She was overjoyed and agreed.

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