Wealthy beyond measure, yet you call me a sister-supporting-brother demon?

What?

Ma Guifen swayed and almost fell to the ground.

"What did you say?" Zhang Wen grabbed the child's shoulders and shook him violently.

“My aunt Yuan Pan’er won’t be divorced and sent back to the Yuan family. My mother sent me to deliver the news. Uncle, please loosen your grip, you’re hurting me.”

Zhou Yuqing slapped Zhang Wen's hand, broke free from his grip, and jumped aside.

Ma Guifen felt dizzy and disoriented. Her emotions had been so volatile that day; she felt like she had fallen from heaven to earth! Heaven was blind!

Zhang Wen was seething with anger, but he calmed himself down and said, "What exactly is going on with Yu Qing? Tell me in detail."

Zhou Yuqing then relayed his mother's words in detail.

When did Yuan Sheng become so eloquent? He settled a matter of ten taels of silver with just a few words and got it settled for two taels of silver?

Is this still the Yuan Sheng he knows?

Zhang Wen felt a volcanic fire burning inside him with nowhere to vent. Suddenly, he realized that all of this was caused by Ma Xiangqin. If Ma Xiangqin hadn't come to his house early this morning to spread false information, he would have been working in the fields long ago.

Not only did it waste a day's work, but I almost vomited blood.

Zhang Wen yelled at Ma Guifen, "This is all your niece's doing! She's unreliable in everything she says and does! Her words are like farts, completely unreliable!"

Ma Guifen was also angry. She had originally planned to go to the bean field to weed this morning.

Not only did it waste half a day, but she was so angry her stomach was about to burst!

She yelled at Zhou Yuqing, "Your mother is really something! Don't spout nonsense like that!"

Zhou Yuqing looked completely innocent. He came to deliver a message and then cursed his mother to his face?

Didn't his mother say that if he ran errands for his great-aunt to deliver a message, she would cook him a good meal?

He resisted the tantalizing aroma of meat in the air!

"Grandma, you're making meat, can I have a bowl too? I'm so tired from running all the way from Dongshan Village to Shanhou Village," Zhou Yuqing said, tugging at Ma Guifen's sleeve and acting coquettishly.

Zhou Yuqing's mention of the meat only stirred up a hornet's nest for Ma Guifen.

She slapped Zhou Yuqing hard across the face, yelling, "Eat, eat, eat! What are you eating?!"

Zhou Yuqing was knocked to the ground, crying, "I told my mother, but you insulted her and you hit me."

"I'll tell my mother, I'll tell my mother!" Zhou Yuqing said as she ran.

Ma Guifen regretted it after hitting him, as she had nowhere to vent her anger and Zhou Yuqing had become her punching bag.

Her niece is no pushover; who knows what kind of trouble she'll cause later.

……

Yuansheng put the braised pig ears and braised pork into a jar, ready to go to town.

He originally wanted Chenxi to stay home and rest, but thinking about how he would earn money to buy her clothes, he decided to bring her along.

It was almost noon, and it was getting a bit hot.

After returning from working in the fields in the morning and having breakfast, people begin to rest.

People in this era didn't have the concept of lunch; they generally ate one meal in the morning and one meal in the afternoon.

The area under the big willow tree at the village entrance was already full of people. Those who weren't too busy gathered at the central intelligence station at the village entrance.

Besides the old lady, there were also several young men.

The younger men craned their necks to look at Yuan Sheng and his companion.

Wang Damao, in particular, had an ever-changing expression on his face, from surprise and disappointment to schadenfreude, like a color palette.

"Yuansheng, you've married a good wife. She's only been married for a day, and she's already cured your bad luck. You're so lucky." Wang Damao said with a wicked smile.

Li Yong curled his lip and said, "What's so good about it? Yuan Sheng is the most handsome young man in Shanhou Village. How could such an ugly girl be worthy of him!"

"How can you talk like that? This is our sister-in-law." Wang Damao winked. "As the saying goes, those destined to meet will find each other even from a thousand miles away. Yuansheng and his sister-in-law are a perfect match!"

Li Yong lightly slapped his lips, "Look at my mouth, Yuansheng and my sister-in-law are a perfect match."

Wang Damao and Li Yong were speaking in unison, their unspoken message being that a lazy good-for-nothing and an ugly woman are a perfect match!

Yuan Sheng watched the two perform a monkey show without any reaction. He wouldn't be as foolish as he was in his previous life, treating them as friends and letting them provoke him into going home and beating his wife. "Wang Damao, your golden rooster has run off to Sun Qiao's house."

"What?!" Wang Damao was shocked. If the chicken ran away from Sunqiao's house, it was gone forever. If they looked too late, even the chicken feathers would be gone!

Yuan Sheng shook his head helplessly, "Didn't you see? You were just busy rambling on to me."

Seeing that Yuan Sheng was speaking seriously, Wang Damao quickly ran to Sun Qiao's wooden gate and frantically pounded on it, even losing one of his straw sandals in the process.

Yuan Sheng glanced at his wife beside him. She didn't care at all about Wang Damao and Li Yong's veiled accusations. Her gaze was calm and did not affect her mood in the slightest.

He knew that many people were laughing at his young wife and at him.

But he didn't care; his wife's face would be flawless in three months anyway.

After the two men left, the women under the big willow tree began to chat.

"Oh dear, Yuansheng's wife's half face is really hideous."

"To be honest, the other half of her face is truly beautiful, like a fairy. It's a pity about the other half..."

"The other half of her face is too ugly; overall, she's not even as good-looking as an average person."

"Sheng Guihua is a strong-willed man. He spent a fortune to marry such an ugly wife. Who knows how he'll torment his new wife in the future?"

"This new bride deserves it! She demanded twenty taels of silver as a bride price—that's a whopping twenty taels!"

"I heard that her stepmother sold her. Stepmothers only care about collecting the bride price; who cares about whether she lives or dies in her husband's family?"

"He's a person with a tragic fate."

"Can you smell something delicious?"

"I smell it! The aroma of meat is so strong! It must be coming from Yuansheng's basket."

"Hmm... probably so. I wonder what they're going to do with all that meat."

……

Yuan Sheng and Zhu Chenxi waited at the village entrance for a while, but Uncle Niu Gen's oxcart did not arrive.

The two of them could only walk to town, and the basket they carried weighed thirty or forty pounds. Yuansheng said, "We still need to buy a car."

Zhu Chenxi calculated that an oxcart cost more than ten taels of silver.

"My lord, I'll carry you. Don't let my slender frame fool you, I'm very strong." Zhu Chenxi blinked her big eyes and patted her shoulder forcefully.

Yuan Sheng laughed and said, "It's already a little bean sprout, if you press it down with the basket, it might not grow taller."

Zhu Chenxi smiled playfully and playfully slapped Yuan Sheng's arm.

Zhu Chenxi thought about Yuan Sheng's goals: to pay back his sister's eight taels of silver, pay off the family's debts, buy an oxcart, and buy thousands of acres of land within six months. She felt that her husband must be under a lot of pressure, and she wanted to work hard to help him achieve them.

She didn't want people to think her husband was a liar.

“My lord, I am actually good at embroidery. I can do double-sided embroidery, but my mother said that I should not be allowed to do double-sided embroidery unless we are starving. Otherwise, we can pool some money to get some embroidery work from the embroidery shop for me to do. We should be able to pay off Sister Pan’er’s debt soon.”

Double-sided embroidery? Yuan Sheng had heard of this embroidery technique in later generations; it was a secret skill of embroidery masters. In later generations, a piece of double-sided embroidery the size of a fan would cost tens of thousands of yuan, and a large double-sided embroidery screen of several square meters could cost millions.

His deceased mother-in-law was no ordinary woman!

"Chenxi, besides teaching you embroidery, arithmetic, and money counting, what else did your mother teach you?"

"My mother also taught me to read and write."

Being able to read and write? That's not something just anyone can do.

“My lord, my mother forbids me from showing off my double-sided embroidery skills, but I can do some ordinary embroidery first. I have hidden two taels and three qian in my mother’s pigsty, and with another two taels and seven qian, I will have enough for the five taels deposit. But I need to rest my hands first, in case I scratch the silk.”

Yuan Sheng looked at her small hands and fell into memories.

In his previous life, his wife suffered countless hardships after marrying him, doing all sorts of farm work. Her hands were already covered in calluses, and she never had a chance to recover.

It seems she once said she was good at embroidery and could help improve her family's life, but as soon as Yuan Sheng heard her ask for money, he immediately beat her up.

Yuan Shenghui thought about the terrible things he had done, clenched his fists so tightly that his fingernails drew blood from his palms.

What was he like in his past life? He deserved to die such a miserable death!

“Chenxi, I don’t want you to make money through embroidery. Doing too much embroidery will hurt your eyes. If you like embroidery, you can do it as a pastime.” Yuansheng’s words of love were earnest. “Your eyes are far more precious than that money.”

Bright sunlight shone on Zhu Chenxi's face, revealing a pair of bright, captivating eyes beneath thick eyelashes, like autumn water.

Upon hearing Yuan Sheng's words, Zhu Chenxi's face flushed red.

She lowered her head shyly.

"Trust your man. I can keep all the promises I've made to you, to my sister, and to our parents!"