The Marquise: I Earn My Own Worship

Parents who love their children will plan for them in the long run. As the head of the family, Duan Jingzong has to consider the entire family.

After asking Lu Fangyuan to leave, he bypassed the Lu family and dealt with the servants in the house. Except for the master, all the slaves who knew about this matter were bribed.

Duan Jingzong broke up with Lu and personally arranged a grand funeral for his mother.

However, after this incident, Duan Jingzong's health became worse and worse. Feeling that he would not live long, he took Duan Chengkang to his side to educate him personally, hoping to change his temper a little.

Due to health reasons, the old lady and Mrs. Lu rarely let him participate in the children's education.

In this way, the good legitimate son grew up under the doting of the old lady and Lu, and developed the character of a naive child who was ignorant of the world.

At the age of thirteen or fourteen, they don't like to study and just hang out with maids and servants every day. In two years, they will all be engaged, and some will even be parents, and their personalities have been determined long ago.

As the saying goes, it is easy to learn bad things but hard to learn good things. Even though Duan Jingzong personally taught him, Chengkang was too playful and had never suffered any hardship. He was detained by his father all day long to read books that he could not understand at all, and he just wanted to escape every day.

Seeing his master like this, Chen Gao, the servant who used to study with him, came up with some bad ideas and took Duan Chengkang to skip school every day. This made Duan Jingzong so angry that he was bedridden.

Duan Jingzong's body was already at the end of its strength, and now looking at his son who was in a hopeless situation, he felt ashamed and guilty towards his ancestors.

His mind was in ups and downs, his body was gradually deteriorating, and he was just hanging on by his last breath.

There was no one under supervision from above, so Lu's mind was focused on Duan Jingzong. The servant named Chen Gao actually led Duan Chengkang into a gambling house and got him addicted to gambling.

Duan Chengkang lost all his private savings and could not pay back the money, so he was taken to the Earl's Mansion by the gambling house's steward. When Lu found out, she was so angry that she beat the servant to death.

At this time, the Earl's Mansion actually still had some wealth. The old lady was of noble birth, her dowry was generous, and she knew how to manage it.

The family has been passed down from generation to generation from the founding duke, and the property accumulated by generations of mistresses is more than enough to support the whole family.

Not to mention Lu's dowry, as long as Duan Chengkang doesn't make trouble and does nothing else, he can live a life of wealth and glory.

But God did not give him a chance. Duan Chengkang had become addicted to gambling by then. He would secretly run out to gamble. Once or twice, he was imprisoned and scolded by the Lu family.

Whenever Lu locked him up, Duan Chengkang would either pretend to be sick or hurt himself. He knew that Lu was most afraid of these things. When he was a child, he often pretended to be sick and skipped school. Now he was already familiar with doing these things.

When Song Shengfu saw this, she spat bitterly. This was retribution. Whatever action was taken in the past was now the result.

The cycle of cause and effect, retribution is unhappy.

What good will happen to someone addicted to gambling? Since Lu refused to give him money, Duan Chengkang extorted money from the maids and servants.

He even borrowed from his fourth uncle Duan Jing'an, or secretly took the ornaments and antiques from home and sold them.

Gradually, their plan reached his father Duan Jingzong's courtyard. Duan Chengkang naturally did not dare to ask his father for money, and Lu also issued an order not to let the servants tell the uncle.

Duan Chengkang stole his father's personal belongings under the pretext of visiting his father, and no one discovered it.

But the truth could not be hidden. One day, Duan Jingzong's good friend Zhen Zhiyang discovered that his friend's personal jade pendant was actually in a pawnshop. Out of curiosity, he redeemed the jade pendant and took it to Earl Duan's Mansion to ask his friend about it.

Only then did Duan Jingzong know about this matter. He was so angry that he wanted to beat this rebellious son to death. At this time, people from the gambling house came to say that Duan Chengkang had lost 50,000 taels of silver in a gambling.

When Duan Jingzong heard the news, he was so angry that he vomited blood and died. The daughter-in-law angered her parents-in-law to death, and the son angered his father to death. Duan Jingzong felt that this was retribution.

This incident happened suddenly, and everyone present witnessed it all. The next day, someone impeached Duan Bo's mansion, saying: Duan Chengkang, the eldest son of the Duan family, disregarded moral principles and was addicted to gambling, which angered Duan Bo to death.

The emperor was furious upon hearing this and ordered the plaque of the Earl's Mansion to be taken away. Duan Chengkang, who was supposed to inherit the title of Viscount, not only lost his title, but was also ordered by the emperor to be beaten with fifty sticks.

Now the whole capital knew that the emperor had disgraced the Duan family, and no one wanted to have anything to do with them.

As a result, it was difficult for Duan Chengkang to find a wife later, as no one was willing to marry their daughter to a poor man who was unfilial, unfraternal, and addicted to gambling.

Lu and Duan Jingzong were very much in love, but after something happened, Duan Jingzong refused to forgive her.

After Duan Jingzong left, Mrs. Lu spent her days complaining to herself and crying, and she had no energy to discipline her son.

Duan Chengkang is not a bad person by nature, but he was spoiled when he was young, and was led astray when he became an adult, and he is unaware of the dangers of the world.

After angering his father to death, Duan Chengkang vowed never to gamble again.

But when it comes to gambling, if you don’t look for him, he will come looking for you.

Everyone in the gambling house knows this guy. With such a huge lump of gold, they naturally feel itchy every day.

What's more, he had lost his official status, so the people in the gambling house set a trap, knocked Duan Chengkang unconscious, carried him to the gambling house, made him sign and seal the gambling while he was unconscious, and took the gambling slip to the Duan family to collect the debt.

In the past, people in the gambling house would not dare to do this, but now, it is as easy to crush an ordinary citizen who is despised by the current people as it is to crush a grasshopper.

No matter how Duan Chengkang swore to Lu that he would not gamble again, Lu no longer believed him. This time, the gambling house actually took a note of 100,000 taels of gold, obviously asking for money.

This incident also alarmed Duan Jing'an. After the original old lady passed away, the family was divided. Duan Jing'an had already lived in a separate mansion and rushed over after hearing the news.

Duan Jing'an saw at a glance that their family was being set up, but they couldn't report the matter to the authorities. Because of the previous incident, the Duan family was best off keeping a low profile. They were powerless now, so they could only suffer in silence.

One hundred thousand taels of silver can still be gathered together, but it is gold.

The people in the gambling house have detained the man, and Duan Chengkang will have no chance of returning safely unless he pays the money.

Even after selling her real estate and shops and all her dowry, Lu was still not able to make up for the shortfall.

Duan Jing'an took out some of the private money that the old lady had given him before and barely managed to make up the 100,000 gold, which was arguably the entire fortune of the Duan family.

Song Shengfu felt that there must be a conspiracy behind this matter, as it happened to be all the family property.

After Duan Chengkang came back, Lu dismissed the servants in the house. The Duan mansion had been mortgaged long ago, so Lu took Duan Chengkang to live in a small house with two entrances that she had left as her dowry.

Lu's family also helped a little, giving her a few hundred taels of silver and a pastry shop, which was enough to make ends meet.

Duan Jing'an is the most capable one in the family. His family is weak and did not provide any help, but he relied on his own strength to rise to the position of Deputy Director of the Ministry of Justice and then slowly climbed up to the position of Director of the Ministry of Justice.

When the original body was still alive, a marriage was arranged for him. Although his family was not high, his father-in-law held real power, and the couple lived a harmonious life.

After the old lady passed away, Shen Shiwei and Shen Shixuan were taken to Xiyang Shaanxi by Shen Xianli, who happened to transfer them to Shaanxi Prefecture as Tongzhi.

When the original body was ill in bed, he found a woman from the Duan clan for Shen Xianli. In that era, when a man lost his wife, his wife's family had to find a successor for him, or the man had to find a good candidate and then have his wife's family approve it.

The original owner thought at the time that a woman born in a poor family would not dare to bully the original wife's children.

But it was precisely because the second wife came from a poor family and was narrow-minded that he was fine at first. But later, when the second wife gave birth to a son, and the Duan family fell into decline, the two children had no one to support them, so he found them annoying. When Shen Shiwei came of age, he sent her away casually.

Shen Shiwei married the son of the dean of a college in Shaanxi Prefecture. He was a scholar and barely passed the exams, but he failed repeatedly. He just buried himself in studying at home every day, and all the big and small affairs of the family were handled by Shen Shiwei.

When Shen Shiwei was in the Earl's Mansion, no one taught her about the affairs of the inner house. Later, when she returned home, her stepmother herself was of humble origin and had nothing to pass on to her.

As a result, Shen Shiwei was completely clueless about household affairs, which greatly displeased her mother-in-law. Due to Shen Xianli's authority, she dared not criticize him openly. However, she secretly set rules for her every few days and even gave the scholar two concubines.

Shen Shixuan had not read many books due to the influence of Duan Chengkang. When Shen Xianli examined Shen Shixuan's homework, he found that Shen Shixuan could not even memorize a complete article.

So he brought Shen Shixuan to his side and educated him personally, but after living under the Earl's roof for several years, Shen Shixuan's temperament was inevitably a little timid. Shen Xianli taught him carefully for a few years and things got better, but he was still a little dull.

Shen Xianli regretted that he had handed the child directly to his mother-in-law's family and raised the good child into this state.

Shen Xianli already resented the Yue family, so he became even more alienated from the Earl's Mansion. After learning that Duan Jingzong had been angered to death and the Duan family had been stripped of their titles, he immediately cut off all ties between the two families. From then on, the relationship between the two families was completely severed.

In short, this family has many injuries and disabilities, big and small. Although the second aunt Duan Jingyi is married into the prime minister's mansion, she has only two daughters.