"Mom, is everything settled? Liu the Leper has a bunch of kids, and I heard he even beats women. His last wife was beaten to death. I can't bear the thought of Pear marrying him, as her aunt."
"Enough already. Who are you trying to fool? I let Liu the Leper pay me fifty yuan to marry Pear, all for the sake of getting our eldest son a wife from the city, Zhao Zhiqing.”
"What if the little sister wakes up?"
"I fed that fool an entire bowl of powerful medicine, even a cow would collapse if it drank that. So how could she wake up in just a few days?"
These days, busy with spring planting, everyone in the peace brigade was occupied in their fields. There was not even a shadow at the door. The old lady Lu and her eldest daughter-in-law didn’t care to lower their voices.
Assuming their words were not overheard.
Little did they know, there was a person standing behind the door to the side room, it was the younger daughter-in-law who the old lady Lu had drugged.
When a bowl of that potent medicine was consumed, even cows would collapse.
Won't humans collapse too?
A while ago, there was a cold snap in Spring, and her mother-in-law insisted she wash nephew Lu's cotton quilt.
To wash the quilt requires stomping with feet, and the river water was so cold it seeped from her feet to the rest of her body. Just so happens, those were her healthiest days, and with that, she fell sick.
Her oldest daughter, Pear, begged to get her some medicine, but the money Lu’s old lady saved was for her grandson’s future wife.
How could she spare it?
In order to deceive Pear, she fed her a bowl of that strong medicine.
Afterward, her personality underwent a change!
After lounging at home all day with a growling stomach and eavesdropping on a conversation behind the side room door, Bai Su realized that she had somehow found herself trapped in a period novel.
Her nephew, Lu Dajun, had taken a liking to a young woman who had come to the capital from the city, Zhao Qingrou.
Meanwhile, Granny Lu was eagerly waiting for the day Zhao Qingrou would return to the city so that she could send her grandson off to enjoy a life of comfort and prosperity.
Therefore, they planned to sell off Li Hua, the daughter of the second daughter-in-law, to a widower in the village. The money they got from the sale would then be used to finance the marriage of their beloved grandson, Lu Dajun.
In the story, Bai Su played the role of the Lu family’s second daughter-in-law.
After marrying the second son of the Lu family, she had given birth to five daughters.
Constantly belittled by a mother-in-law who preferred sons to daughters, ridiculed by her sisters-in-law for her inability to bear sons, and continually gossiped about by the village, Bai Su was fast developing an inferiority complex.
In her confusion, she even harbored the intention of adopting Dajun as her son.
Granny Lu and the eldest daughter-in-law, aware of Bai Su’s inner workings, were able to manipulate her mercilessly.
Take, for example, when Granny Lu decided to sell Li Hua off to Liu Lai Zi. Bai Su only gave a feeble resistance because her nephew, Lu Dajun had promised to respect her like his biological mother after he got married. Receiving this promise, she backed off, telling Li Hua tearfully that every woman needed to get married eventually.
This only made Bai Su more susceptible to Granny Lu's manipulation!
They then went ahead to marry her second daughter, Lan Hua, to a limping neighbor, and the third one, He Hua, to an imbecile son from a city worker's family.
Can anyone argue that this plot isn’t full of twists and turns?
After her mother-in-law sold her three daughters, she fulfilled the wish of adopting her nephew, Lu Dajun, because her meritorious brother in the army had come back from the military and became a local official.
Their uncle, Li Hua, was someone who doted on his younger sister. At the time, even though he was saving money in the army, he still took care of his own sister.
Naturally, when he learned about his nieces' miserable end, he felt compelled to support them.
However, his sister was stubborn and careless, adopting his nephew Lu Dajun as her son and insisting on her brother arranging a good job for him.
At that moment, their uncle, Li Hua, completely gave up on her.
In order to allow Lu Dajun and his wife, Zhao Qingrou, to live a comfortable life, the mother set her sights on her fourth daughter, Guihua.
Unable to withstand her mother's pressure, Guihua jumped into the river and committed suicide.
The youngest daughter, Meihua, became completely disheartened and simply dropped out of school to run away with a gang of thugs from the city.
Eventually, when college entrance exams resumed, Lu Dajun got into college and left her alone in the countryside as a lonely widow, returning to the capital with his wife, Zhao Qingrou.
Upon recalling the entire plot, Bai Su was infuriated!
Not only was she upset by the shameless mother-daughter-in-law duo and the thankless Lu DaJun, but she was also aggrieved by the original body.
In her previous life, she had once as a doctor, assisted the police in remote mountainous areas to rescue trafficked women. No matter how long it had been, she couldn't forget the tragic condition of the rescued woman.
At that time, she was kept in a cage in a dark room, skin and bones, ragged, smelly, with vacant eyes.
Long-term humiliation and beatings had numbed her, reducing her to a walking corpse.
When the police rushed in to rescue her, she was lying on the ground like a dog, stuffing her mouth with sour rice from a bowl with her hand.
Her existence was nothing more than a tool for venting and a breeding machine.
Regardless of her willingness, under the torment that resulted in a loss of consciousness, she had already given birth to a string of children for this household.
And her daughters' fate was the same as that woman who was trafficked, especially the eldest daughter Lihua, who was likewise locked up by Liu Laizi, constantly harassed and beaten, being used as a tool and breeding machine.
The major instigators of her miserable fate, shockingly, were her own grandmother and mother.
How could Bai Su not be angry?
She loathed most those beasts who traffic women and children!
Hearing the whispers of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in the hall picking vegetables, capitalizing on the fact that everyone was busy planting crops in spring and invisible to them, planning on letting Liu Laizi and his mother come to pick up someone, Bai Su was so furious her veins were popping.
She couldn't care less about the shock of becoming a mother to five daughters as a single old maid.
Without a second thought, she picked up the sickle behind the door and rushed out, slashing at Madam Lu and her daughter-in-law.
The original body was too weak, her accuracy poor. The sickle grazed past Madam Lu's face, leaving a bloody streak.
"Murder, murder!"
Madam Lu let out a wailing cry and fell to the ground: "Eldest daughter-in-law, quickly, quickly block her for me."
Lihua’s aunt tried to block her, but the sickle in Bai Su's hand had already flown over. Seeing her sister-in-law’s red and swollen eyes and her desperate stance, her mother-in-law scrambled up from the ground and fled from the house.
Anybody who'd block her would be a fool!
"She's gone mad, she's gone mad, my sister-in-law has gone mad!"
As her arm was slashed open, the boss's daughter-in-law let out a ghastly shriek, tumbling and scrambling towards the outside of the house.
Meanwhile, White Su chased after her with a sickle, shouting as she pursued, "How dare you sell pear blossoms? How dare you sold the pear blossoms to Liu the Leper?"
"Despicable creatures, damned to have no offspring, even daring to sell their own granddaughter."
"Poisoning people to death, trafficking humans, very admirable indeed, why don't you ascend to the heavens?"
"You pushed my daughter into a pit of fire, none of you should live! I'll kill anyone who comes, if two come I'll kill them both, I'll slaughter you despicable animals, all of you raised by the likes of bitches..."