Chapter 231 - 226: The Second Daughter Born Out of Wedlock
Uncle Zhong Shan and Aunt Zhao Mei were an ordinary elderly couple from the countryside, living a life as simple, hardworking, and content as most of the local people.
Zhong Shan was a taciturn farmer who, despite selling his labor for a lifetime, could only maintain his family’s basic needs. The marriages of his two sons not only drained the savings he and his wife had scrimped and saved, but also left him with a heavy debt. Even so, the joy and laughter of his grandchildren made all the hardship worth it in his heart.
Zhao Mei was a penny-pinching rural woman. No woman is born sharp-tongued or mean—it’s all life’s forcing hand. She was stingy not just toward her husband and mother-in-law but even more so with herself. Yet, when Grandma Zhong brought over Ye Qiu to raise, Zhao Mei did nothing more than gossip, never truly casting Ye Qiu out. And when Grandma Zhong became old and immobile, Zhao Mei took diligent care of her mother-in-law.
Given the Zhong family’s income and under circumstances where the Ye family didn’t provide any support for Ye Qiu, Uncle Zhong Shan and Aunt Zhao Mei ensured that Ye Qiu, their niece’s daughter, could grow up safely and healthily, and even manage to get an education for so many years—it was truly an act of enormous kindness and righteousness.
Therefore, even though her aunt had never shown her much kindness over the years, Ye Qiu was genuinely grateful to them. Now that she had money, she wanted to repay them.
"Ye Qiu? Is that you, Ye Qiu?" Zhao Mei was sitting in the hall sorting vegetables with her little grandson in her arms. Ye Qiu stood at the doorway backlit, making it hard for her to see clearly, so she tentatively asked.
"It’s me, Auntie," Ye Qiu said softly as she walked in with some gifts, "Is this Kangkang from Second Cousin’s family? He’s so cute."
Zhao Mei looked incredulously at the refined and fashionable niece who had just walked in. Although she’d watched Ye Qiu grow up and knew she was a pretty girl, their family’s poor conditions meant they never had the money to spend on "an outsider’s" appearance, so Ye Qiu was often clad in old or plain clothes, hiding her beauty.