Miss and farmhand

Before Shen Yurui could even react, Huang Xingyu slapped her across the face.

Huang Yuguang was slapped and fell off the chair. Shen Yurui quickly called for someone to help him up, checked his face, and used a handkerchief soaked in tea to wipe his face.

"What nonsense are you spouting? Did you hear something from the neighbors and that's why you're talking nonsense? Your father is doing this for your own good. What do you mean by heartless and ungrateful? Where did you learn your lessons? This is a matter of upholding justice even at the cost of family ties. Didn't you hear what your father said? The neighbors next door are colluding with thieves, merchants, and pirates. The Zhou family is the ringleader of the Xiaoshidang gang, who has already been convicted. How can anyone who hangs out with them be any good? Quickly apologize to your father and tell him you were ignorant and that you were talking nonsense."

She turned her head and shoved Huang Xingyu again, saying, "If you're going to teach the child, speak properly. Why are you hitting him! If you're so tough, go out and show off. What's the point of being so powerful in front of your own family?" She didn't think hitting the child was a big deal.

Her love for her son was a very traditional kind of maternal love, mixed with dependence, expectation, control, and the unreasonable indulgence of a toddler, yet she didn't treat him as an independent person at all. The love she showed was extremely distorted and complex. Huang Yuguang didn't actually appreciate her feelings; it was all one-sided.

Huang Xingyu didn't feel there was anything wrong with hitting Huang Yuguang. He had been suppressed his whole life and didn't have the concept that children shouldn't be hit when they reached a certain age—it was impossible not to hit children—as long as Huang Yuguang couldn't fight back, it was only natural to hit him for making a mistake.

Huang Yuguang stood up, his hands hanging at his sides, in front of Huang Xingyu. Compared to his father, he was indeed much shorter than he looked. He hadn't felt it when he was a child, because he was his father, so it didn't matter; a son is always shorter than his father, it's human nature. But now he felt as if he were defective, inferior to his father, one man inferior to another, a feeling of even greater shame.

He stood there speechlessly, his mouth agape, a silent surrender. Huang Xingyu, seeing that he was unyielding and disliking him, was about to reprimand him when Shen Yurui hastily interrupted her, urging Huang Yuguang to go back to his studies.

"What's the use of teaching him these things now? Once you've succeeded in your own endeavors, the winner takes all, and he'll naturally know what's good and what's bad. You should think about your own future," she defended her son.

Huang Yuguang heard his mother's words and went back into the house. He thought to himself that he was not incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. He believed that good and bad were different from the idea that the winner takes all.

Sometimes the defeated are the better ones.

He left the light on in his room until everyone in the family was asleep, and his family got used to it, praising him for his hard work and saying that he would definitely succeed next year.

He paced around the room in large circles, going in and out without realizing it, but to others it looked very strange, like an old scholar.

Finally, he stepped out of the room and into the courtyard. Huang Xingyu's house did not have a large garden like Huang Xingtong's. The courtyard was more like an extended courtyard with five rooms, which was quite respectable and spacious. It was the layout that Huang Xingtong set when he returned from the capital. He did not want to neglect his brother just because he did not pass the imperial examination.

The courtyard leads upstairs, with a stairwell in the side room. Upstairs is the back room, under the brackets in the far corner, used to store miscellaneous goods.

Huang Yuguang groped his way over in the dark. His initial resentment and anger dissipated as he got closer, leaving only tension in the end.

"...Are you feeling better today? I had someone send you a collection of books to amuse you; have you read them?"

"Get out. I don't want a single thing from your family. Get out, all of you!"

Huang Yuguang wore a patient, persuasive smile.

"Don't worry, I know you can't stand this kind of life and want to escape. I promised to help you, and I will."

"You're your father's son, what good can you be? My affairs are none of your business, get out!"

Mentioning his father, Huang Yuguang seemed to feel that stinging pain on his face again, as if he had been slapped across the face, and instinctively covered his face.

"...Auntie is right, our whole family is rotten to the core."

The smile on his face vanished, as if in sorrow, because he almost never called her "Auntie," instinctively resisting the title.

Luo Shutao paused in the room.

She had no sympathy for Huang Yuguang. She utterly loathed the Huang family's main branch, but she was powerless to do anything about it. A concubine is not a free person. She felt nothing when she was favored, but when she fell out of favor, she felt even more ashamed than when she was sent to his family as a cousin. She was at Shen Yurui's mercy.

At first, she couldn't believe it. Huang Xingyu couldn't treat her like this. Even if she had seduced him into joining him, how could they have no feelings for each other at all? It wasn't a big deal. She hadn't wronged him. She only had a private relationship with Huang Chu. How could things have come to this?

She was unaware that Huang Xingyu's resentment towards the neighbors had reached an unpredictable level.

When Shen Yurui locked her up here, she didn't feel the exhilarating sense of revenge she had imagined. It was as if she had known this day would come all along, so she was just waiting and enduring it until it arrived, and then everything would be over.

Luo Shutao was truly afraid. She wasn't afraid of losing, she was afraid of it all ending.

"My wife won't punish me? I've offended her terribly, and all she does is lock me up? She won't send me to a nunnery? She won't send me to the countryside? She'll make sure I can never set foot in the Huang family again?"

Shen Yurui even laughed, "You went to great lengths to get in, but didn't you find out beforehand how many people get in but never get out, how many women die in the inner quarters? You didn't know anything about it."

This hit Luo Shutao right where it hurts the most.

"Why can't I get out? If my wife doesn't get rid of me now and then, I'll be back sooner or later—"

"No way," Shen Yurui said. "Don't even think about it. Why do you think I'm unwilling to open that door? Taking a concubine isn't uncommon. I have so many maids under my command, what's wrong with sending one over? It's like gambling. Once a man's appetite is whetted, there's always something new. That's what disgusts me the most, except for that idiot second son, there are no exceptions. You're so capable, I've tried everything to stop you but failed, I admit defeat. But you opened the door yourself, don't you know the consequences? Do you think he can't be with me for life, but he can stay with you until old age? Why? Just because you're young, beautiful, and your body is fresh? What a joke."

Luo Shutao felt a chill run through her body from what she said.

"You broke a taboo by getting too close to the neighbor next door and embarrassing him in public. From now on, he'll only remember that embarrassing moment and no good thing about you. Do you think he'll ever want to see you again? Fine, this is your fate, so there's no need for me to punish you. I won't mistreat you, but you can never show your face in front of him again. You'll have to stay in the back for the rest of your life."

Luo Shutao, of course, refused to accept her fate. She absolutely refused to be trapped like this for the rest of her life.

But she soon discovered that the freedom she had as a young woman was gone forever after she got married and became a concubine. Just as Shen Yurui had said, she didn't need Shen Yurui to mistreat her; every day from now on, she was doomed.

Huang Yuguang discovered her when she was at her most angry and desperate.

I don't know how those two scoundrels raised a stubborn child like Huang Yuguang, with an overly naive desire to save the world. Luo Shutao realistically thought that if his coming to talk to her and trying to save her wasn't a form of resistance against his father's oppression, then he naively believed that if he treated her better than his father, then he was a better person than his father.

Only children value this kind of comparison.

Therefore, Luo Shutao was always too lazy to deal with Huang Yuguang. She had been ruined by his family and had no intention of using him to amuse the young master or pass the time. She never gave him a kind look. She scolded his parents and even he himself was scolded every day.

She just didn't expect that Huang Yuguang would actually do something practical for her today, instead of just spouting grand slogans like a child.

He brought the key to the storeroom where Luo Shutao lived.

As Luo Shutao was cursing through gritted teeth in her room, she heard the door creak open.

She looked over in shock. It was pitch black inside and out, but that didn't affect her view. She saw a thin, pale boy with half his face swollen and looking miserable standing in front of her door.