The young couple from the farm fights back

Zhou Laosan was indeed quite clever, and Jiang Li had to look at him differently. He smiled calmly and said, "That's because during the heavy rain a while ago, my child and I unfortunately caught a cold. Our eldest wife is poor, and we often have little food to eat, but we also know that if a cold leaves a persistent illness, it will be a burden in the future."

When the villagers heard this, they had nothing to understand.

It turned out that neither Jiang nor the child ate the diseased chicken. Farmers are most concerned about their health. Otherwise, if they lose their labor force, they will not have anything to eat the next day.

Lin pursed her lips, frowned, and glared at Jiang Li fiercely.

Zhou Laoer’s head was buzzing because he seemed to have figured out the truth of the matter. It seemed that—

Thinking of this, Zhou Laoer looked at his own mother in disbelief. Even though he knew that his mother didn't like his elder brother, the plague chicken was still a harmful thing after all.

"Third brother, third brother, you are smart, but you are also very stupid." Jiang Li's sarcastic words made Zhou Lao San so angry that his face turned ashen, and he pursed his lips and said nothing.

"You keep saying that Lin sent two taels of silver to our eldest wife today, and your eldest brother and I should be grateful to your mother."

"My fellow villagers may not know that before my father-in-law passed away, he signed a document to divide the family. Each family member received 20 taels of silver and two mu of good farmland. The Zhou family always tells outsiders that life is difficult. So, I would like to ask my fellow villagers, is what you see consistent with what you have heard?"

Oh no!

Jiang Li's words made the villagers look at Lin's mother and son even more closely.

Twenty taels of silver in cash is a lot, and two acres of good farmland is even more so.

There are still many families in Shilitun who do not own any proper land. Most of them reclaim wasteland at the foot of the mountain, and the crops they grow are naturally not as productive as those produced in the fields.

"If the Zhou family is really so poor that they can't even afford to eat, where would they get the money to send my sister-in-law to town to learn a trade? I heard she has to pay 150 wen in tuition every month."

As Jiang Li revealed more and more information, everyone seemed to react.

Yes, they had always heard the Zhou family complain about their hardship, especially the Lin family. But then they thought, the Zhou family lived better than anyone else in the village.

The fourth daughter of the Zhou family was raised like a girl from a wealthy city family. She was even sent to an embroidery workshop in the town to learn the craft. The tuition of 150 coins was not something that an ordinary country farmer could afford.

Lin, who had never seen her precious child being criticized by Jiang Li, was so angry that she kicked three feet high, pointed at her and cursed: "Jiang, I know that you, the eldest wife, are all rotten-hearted bastards, jealous of your own sister. My daughter Yue'er will have great fortune in the future, but now you are not only trying to curry favor with Yue'er, but you can't bear to see your own little sister doing well. How can Yue'er's future success hinder your path?"

"I don't know if it's blocking the way or not. We, the eldest branch, just want to get back what belongs to us." Jiang Li said firmly, looking at Zhou Laosan with a sneer: "And you, don't think that just because you've been in school for a few days, everything you say is a great truth."

"After my family finished taking care of Dad's funeral, who was it that immediately chased our eldest branch out? In the end, the rumor spread throughout Shili Village that it was our eldest branch that had ulterior motives and was arguing about dividing the family."

"Heh~, you just say whatever you want." Jiang Li really wanted to slap Zhou Laosan twice more.

Whenever Jiang Li thought of Zhou Lao San instigating Zhou Lao Da to beat up Jiang, he hated him so much that his teeth itched.

The villagers finally came to their senses and it seemed to be true. The entire Shilitun only knew that the eldest branch of the family was clamoring to separate from the Zhou family.

Now, hearing what Jiang said, it is probably not that the eldest wife is making a fuss about division, but that the old Zhou family can't accommodate the eldest wife without Old Man Zhou.

After all, they are not biological children. After Old Man Zhou passed away, the entire Zhou family fell into the hands of the Lin family.

Zhou Laoer's face turned red at the villagers' boos. He felt that coming here with his mother and third brother today was a disgrace to the entire Zhou family.

Jiang Li glanced at Zhou Laoer indifferently. She couldn't say that she disliked him, but she didn't have a good impression of him either.

She continued, "As far as my master knows, my father once deposited a sum of money with my uncle when he was young. This money was left by my mother-in-law, Ruan, who died young, for my master to use in marrying and having children in the future."

Boom~!

This news once again reminded some of the older villagers, uncles, aunts and mothers-in-law.

"Speaking of this, old man, it's not necessary. Ruan was once a daughter of a wealthy family. Later, her family fell into poverty and she fled to our Shilitun with her sick mother. It is possible that Ruan left some money for her own son." The speaker was a grandfather in his sixties.

A fifty-year-old woman also said, "Yes, I remember now. Although Ruan and her mother were from a poor family, after all, a rotten boat has three nails. It was only after the Zhou family married the eldest son's mother that their lives began to improve. Later, they bought land and built a new house."

A young villager asked, "Why haven't we heard of this before?"

"Back then, you were still wearing open-crotch pants and hunting for bird eggs. What do you know about that?"

As the onlookers talked, Lin's face turned red and white, and her eyes were evasive.

Even if she wanted to refute it now, she couldn't think of any words to refute it. She married into the Old Zhou family six months after Ruan's death. Back then, seeing that the Old Zhou family was the better family in Shili Village, Lin reluctantly accepted the marriage and married Old Zhou, a second-married man, as a concubine at the age of fifteen.

After marrying into Lao Zhou's family, I could eat white flour steamed buns twice a day, which was much better than when I was a girl in my parents' extremely poor family, where I could only get half a steamed bun a day.

Not only could she have enough to eat, but her mother-in-law, who was still alive at the time, didn't have to work in the fields. She only had to look after her stepson who was less than two years old.

It's hard to describe how comfortable and carefree their life was. The only flaw was that Old Man Zhou was still thinking about Ruan who had passed away. He had almost avoided her since the day she married into the Zhou family.

For this reason, Lin had a plan in mind. She knew that if she wanted to gain a foothold in the Zhou family, she must give birth to a son or daughter. She couldn't rely on a stepson who had no blood relationship with her.

Lin was a smart woman. The better she treated her stepson and the more attentively she took care of him, not only was her mother-in-law satisfied with her, but even Old Man Zhou was willing to look at her with respect.

Gradually, Lin and Old Man Zhou consummated their marriage because of Zhou Chunfeng. Not long after, Lin became pregnant. It can be said that Lin was a good fertile woman. She gave birth to two big fat boys for the Zhou family, and her relationship with Old Man Zhou became more and more harmonious.

The year that Old Lady Zhou passed away, the power of the Zhou family naturally fell into the hands of Mrs. Lin. Gradually, even Old Man Zhou got used to obeying Mrs. Lin's orders, to the point where the wife simply followed the husband's lead.

Moreover, because of Lin's occasional pillow talk, Old Man Zhou paid less and less attention to his eldest son Zhou Chunfeng, and only cared about Lin's children.

Before his death, he even gave most of the money that Ruan had entrusted to his uncle to Lin's children. However, Lin was greedy and used only five taels of silver to drive Ruan's eldest daughter out of the Zhou family.

Jiang Li learned the above plot from fragments of the novel. Of course, the author used extremely beautiful writing to describe the injustice done to the first wife and her unworthiness, which led to a group of readers complaining about the cowardly first wife in the comment section every day.

Jiang Li glanced at Lin, whose expression was complicated, and smiled faintly, "The money in the hands of my uncle should have belonged to our eldest branch. My father-in-law favored the younger uncles and aunts from the first branches and divided the money into four parts. That's understandable, and we, the younger generation, have nothing to say."

"It's clearly written in the division document that each branch will receive 20 taels of silver. May I ask if our eldest branch should take this 20 taels of silver?"

After Jiang Li said this, the arrogant Zhou Laosan was choked and speechless.

Although Zhou Laosan is young and energetic, he is also the most respected boy in the Zhou family.

"There's still twenty taels left after dividing it into four parts, so there should be at least eighty taels. Oh my god, eighty taels, twenty taels given to the eldest wife, and you're still keeping some?"

"That's right. He gave her five taels of silver, but she kept crying poor all day. How come I didn't realize that Lin was this kind of person before~"

"Hey, hey, hey, haven't you heard of it? The document was signed by Old Man Zhou before he died."

"No wonder people often say that if you have a stepmother, you will also have a stepfather. Old Zhou used the money left by his first wife to distribute to the children born to his second wife, and this stepmother is still not satisfied. She even gave five taels of silver to a beggar~"