Traveling through time and encountering war, I took the whole village to escape famine

Zhang Sigui paused for a moment and wiped his tears with his sleeve. He continued, "I started helping with housework when I was five years old. I was too young to do heavy work, so I dug wild vegetables and cut grass for pigs every day. I had to work in the fields when I was ten years old. My three brothers could go out to play but I couldn't. If it weren't for my third brother secretly helping me with work and occasionally stealing vegetable buns for me to eat, I might have starved to death.

When I was fifteen, I met my master. He took pity on me and asked me to learn carpentry from him. From then on, I never ate a grain of rice from the Zhang family.

After I became an apprentice at the age of 18, I could earn money for my family. Every year, I could earn at least to taels of silver for my family. In that year, I even earned more than taels. I thought my parents would be very happy to see that I could make money after becoming an apprentice, and they would be nicer to me because I could make money for the family.

At that time, many matchmakers came to propose marriage to me because of my cooking skills, but my parents rejected them all, saying that I was too young. However, my eldest and second brothers had children when they were 18 years old. At that time, I wondered if I was their biological son. "

When Zhang Sigui said this, Yun Duo saw that Mrs. Zhang's pupils shrank. It was obvious that she looked a little uncomfortable.

Zhang Sigui looked at Mrs. Zhang and continued, "When we were nineteen, we fell in love. I went home and told my mother. She agreed only after she heard that you were the sister of a scholar. I was so happy that I could marry you that I didn't sleep for several nights. I didn't want you to suffer, so I took a job repairing a cemetery that no carpenter was willing to do. For a whole month, I worked day and night with a dead body that had just been buried to earn twenty taels of silver as a betrothal gift, and asked my mother to take it to the Yun family as a betrothal gift, but how did she do it?

People in Yunjia Village and Kaoshan Village should all know about this, right? She and her two daughters-in-law spread bad words about you and ruined your reputation just to avoid giving you a betrothal gift.

Qingqing, do you know how much my heart ached at that time? Do you know that I earned those twenty taels of silver by enduring the fear and smelling the smell of rotting corpses every day? She actually treated my wife with such contempt.

In the first few years after marriage, because my eldest uncle was a scholar, they hoped that he would become an official one day so that they could benefit from it. Also, because I paid money to the family every year, they did not abuse us and treated us the same as my brothers and sisters-in-law. They did not deduct our food, clothing and daily expenses. We were able to eat well for a few years. Because of this, you are grateful to them.

Later, your uncle did not take the imperial examinations for many years. When you gave birth to two more daughters, they thought that your uncle was at most a scholar and there was no hope for him. So they treated the three girls harshly and beat and scolded them. But what did you, as a mother, do?

You always feel that you are inferior to others in the family because you don't have a son, and you always try to please them. I have told you many times to be nice to my daughters and protect them when I am not at home. I also told you that I don't care whether I have a son or not, daughters are also good, and if we don't have a son in the future, we can let our daughters find a son-in-law.

If my parents dislike the fact that we don't have a son, we can separate and live separately.

But, Qingqing, what about you? You have never heard of it. It's as if we can't live without the Zhang family.

Not only did you give them all the things I brought from my parents' home, you also handed over all the reward money I had saved with great difficulty from my employer. You even advised me that we are all family and I should not be separated from my family. How could you not use your thoughts on our little family?

What made me most miserable was that I, the daughter of a carpenter, had to sleep on broken wooden boards and didn’t even have a decent bed.

Every time I saved up the dry wooden boards to make a bed for my daughter, they would sell them.

Later I did it secretly, installed it secretly at night, and put it behind the door, thinking that they would not come to our room and would not be able to find it from outside. I also told my daughters not to tell anyone, but later my mother and sisters-in-law took it away and sold it cheaply to the villagers. When I came back to question them, I found out that you had handed it over on your own initiative.

You also advised me that the girl just needed to sleep on a wooden board and not to make my mother and sisters-in-law angry. Since then, I knew what kind of life my three poor daughters were living at home. I worked so hard to support the whole Zhang family, but my daughters could not even have enough food at home and had to pick grass for pigs, dig wild vegetables and collect firewood at a very young age just like me.

You actually let the children hide it from me. Do you know how I felt at that time? The two Zhang family boys are so big. They don't do any work at home every day. I don't understand, Yun Qingqing, are you still a mother? Just because they are girls, they are not your daughters.

Not only did you not protect them, but you even teamed up with outsiders to bully your own daughter.

After that day, except for the wages that my mother took away from the employer where I worked, I no longer took money home. If I got the tips from the employer, I would secretly buy some food for my daughters and take it back. Later, Ling'er secretly told me that if I didn't eat the food I bought in front of me, you would use it to please others when I went to work the next day. If you please others, not only will my daughters not be able to eat it, they will also be scolded. I really don't know what's wrong with your brain.

You keep saying that this is for my own good, but you won't listen no matter how I try to persuade you. Your stubbornness makes me feel so tired. I feel like you're always nagging me, holding me back, and making it hard for me to breathe.

At that time, I even thought that only if I divorced you could I separate from the Zhang family and live independently with my daughters. Even if I had to leave the Zhang family with nothing, I could still provide my three daughters with food and shelter.

But when I think about how I promised my uncle that I would treat you well for the rest of my life, and how you ignored your family's objections and refused to pay any betrothal gifts for my sake, I can't do that.

At that time, no matter how much I advised you that you would protect our daughter, as soon as I was not at home, you took the initiative to push our daughter away, as if the reason we didn't have a son was because of these three girls.

During that period, I was often distracted while working, which led to me falling from high places and breaking my leg.

I broke my leg and you saw how the Zhang family treated us. If you hadn't gone to Yunjia Village to pick up your father-in-law overnight, I would have died of fever, not to mention my leg. Not only did the Zhang family not invite a doctor, no one even came with you to Yunjia Village.

After that, the Zhang family treated our family without any scruples. If it weren't for the help from my father-in-law, we would probably have starved to death.

It has come to this, and you still don't agree when I propose to divide the family. I really don't know whether men and children are more important to you, or the status of the Zhang surname and having a son are more important. Even a few gossips from outsiders are more important than the flesh that falls from your body.

In the past two years, the food that my father-in-law gave us was enough for our family of five to eat until we were full, but look at my three daughters, they were just skin and bones when they first came to the Yun family. They were all starved.

It's the same this time. If my father-in-law hadn't brought people here, we wouldn't know how our family of five died. Qingqing, you still want me to go back to the Zhang family. Can't you live a good life and have to be abused to feel comfortable?"