After Transmigration, I Picked Up A Husband and Daughter

"I want to ask those present here," Fang Qin began, her voice strong and clear, "when Ziling was two years old, he nearly drowned in a tub at the hands of his stepmother. At four, he was heartlessly abandoned in Clear Water Town. Until he was nineteen, a leg injury was left untreated, resulting in a lifelong disability, all because the household was too miserly to part with several taels of silver. When he could no longer work, he was cruelly thrown out of the house to fend for himself. Can this be called maternal kindness?"

She paused, scanning the crowd, and continued, "As for Jiang Youfu, his character is despicable, attempting to assault me. It was fortunate that Ziling came to my rescue. Yet Youfu, infuriated and ashamed, grabbed Ziling by the neck and cursed him as a harbinger of disaster. Is this what we call respectful brotherhood?"

What about Ziling’s father, a man who appears not to directly partake in any of these outrageous deeds? What role did he truly play behind this succession of evils? Was he complicit, silently abetting those lurking in the shadows, or merely a turtle shrinking from the evils around him, too cowardly to move forward? Does his silence and inaction also nourish the soil of these wicked deeds, silently yet effectively?"

Thus, facing his mother’s ruthless criticism, his father’s passive evasion, and his brother’s lack of respect, Ziling’s life was filled with unspeakable pain and torment. And at the end of all this suffering, he was expected to bear the burden of caring for the elderly and raising a child not related to him by blood. Isn’t this a great irony and sorrow? Don’t the onlookers find it utterly absurd and disheartening?"

Among the crowd, at Fang Qin’s deafening and resonant words, there was nothing but astonishment.

Silence weighed down on everyone’s hearts like a heavy slab.

The crowd was not entirely ignorant of Lady Zhao’s ill-treatment of the Jiang brothers—after all, the role of a stepmother is a difficult one, and strictness and severity are often inevitable.

However, they had never imagined that Lady Zhao’s actions would be so vile that they defied everyone’s expectations.

Jiang Xunzhong, as the head of the family, seemed exceptionally weak and powerless, a state that evoked a sigh of pity. In such a situation, who would be willing to continue contributing money and labor to such a family?