Chapter 199: Mom! You Know How to Read!
Lin Sanniang’s heart was drumming fiercely inside her chest.
She had never spoken so unyieldingly in her entire life. In the past, whenever she encountered a situation like this, she would simply swallow her tears and endure it in silence. After all, she was a lone woman raising three kids; wherever she went, she could only bow her head and pray that others wouldn’t bully or humiliate them. Her only hope was that someone might look after her children after she passed away.
But things were different now.
Lin Sanniang had a “job.” She could rely on her own two hands to raise her children and forge a bright future for them. Even though she had been blessed with a miraculous opportunity to go to the manor, she still relied entirely on her own hands to get by. The young mistress owner didn’t give her a job out of mere pity or because she begged for it; it was only because she was capable and eager to learn that she was promoted to a manager.
Lin Sanniang looked down at Taoya, with Xing’er and Brother Shu tightly clutching her clothes from behind. Right now, her three children were huddling anxiously by her side, facing the cruelty and injustice of others.
She couldn’t teach her children to wag their tails and beg for mercy, placing their hopes on the whims of others.
A sudden surge of resolve welled up inside Lin Sanniang. She whipped around to face Sun Dade and Sun Zhang-shi.
“Are you two even human! Your children are precious, but mine aren’t? By what right should my daughter carry away your waste and clean up after you?”
Sun Zhang-shi crossed her arms, completely un-intimidated. She sneered in a bizarre, mocking tone, “Oh, I thought you were so sick you couldn’t get out of bed, but it turns out you actually recovered. You certainly have plenty of breath to speak now! People say you’re a family of harsh-fated jinxes, and it turns out they weren’t wrong at all.”
She then cast a sidelong glance at Taoya. “What’s wrong with having Taoya handle the filth? Let me tell you the truth: while you were sick, someone already came knocking at our door. Counting her nominal age, Taoya is already fourteen or fifteen, which is old enough to marry. Her eldest uncle has chosen an excellent match for her…”
Lin Sanniang suddenly understood what the words were that Taoya couldn’t bring herself to say. Sun Dade and Sun Zhang-shi must have told Taoya something completely unbearable, which was why she had been desperate to escape home. Otherwise, with Taoya’s disposition, she took after Lin Sanniang the most and was incredibly resilient.
At this moment, Lin Sanniang felt immense regret in her heart. The concept of being a “virtuous woman” had truly ruined far too many women.
Lin Sanniang glared at Sun Dade and Sun Zhang-shi, declaring resolutely, “Don’t even dream about it! Taoya is my daughter, and she is going nowhere! She will absolutely not marry at such a young age!”
In the Great Liang Dynasty, women usually married at seventeen or eighteen. Taoya was twelve by actual age and thirteen by nominal age; by no means was she old enough to marry! Furthermore, in the years since Sun Dayi passed away, Taoya had been the hardest-working child in the house, helping Lin Sanniang look after her younger brother and sister. Now that the family’s situation had finally improved, it was exactly the time for Taoya to enjoy some comfort. Lin Sanniang would never bear to see Taoya married off like this.
Huddled in Lin Sanniang’s embrace, Taoya felt the last trace of anxiety in her heart melt away. Her mother wasn’t going to marry her off!
Just now, her uncle and aunt had taken turns cornering her, saying a great number of humiliating things to her face. Taoya could ignore those vile words, but her uncle and aunt had also claimed that her mother was working herself to the bone raising three children all alone. They said if she married early, there would be one less mouth to feed, and her mother’s burden would be a whole abundance lighter… Taoya didn’t fear hardships; she only feared her mother being too exhausted.
But now, hearing her mother state with her own ears that she wouldn’t marry her off, Taoya’s heart finally settled completely.
She summoned her courage, standing beside Lin Sanniang to reject Sun Dade and Sun Zhang-shi. “I won’t marry! I want to stay with my mother!”
Sun Zhang-shi let out a mocking laugh. “You won’t marry? If you don’t marry, where will you get the money to buy medicine for your grandmother? Don’t tell me your grandmother belongs solely to our family? Do you not need to fulfill your filial duties?”
With her daughter standing up for herself, Lin Sanniang grew even more resolute. She was no longer the Lin Sanniang of the past. She was now a manager at the manor, capable of overseeing four or five temporary workers and hosting dozens of guests with minimal errors. The young mistress owner had told her that making mistakes wasn’t terrifying; if you make a mistake, you just correct it. Has anyone ever gone an entire lifetime without making a single mistake?
Lin Sanniang pulled Taoya up and looked Sun Dade and Sun Zhang-shi squarely in the eye.
“When Dayi passed away back then, you stated with your own mouths that the savings and land Dayi and I accumulated would be given to Mother to provide for her old age. From that moment forward, our two families would carry zero relation to each other!”
Sun Zhang-shi’s face turned slightly awkward, as these words were indeed true. However, back then, they simply felt that Lin Sanniang would face endless troubles raising three young children all by herself. Rather than maintaining a relationship where their family had to pull those four along, they preferred to just seize Sun Dayi’s land and make a clean break, finding it far more convenient to care for the old matriarch alone.
Who would have thought that through thick and thin, Lin Sanniang would actually manage to raise her three children.
Sun Zhang-shi found it increasingly difficult to stomach—she spent every single day pouring tea, delivering water, and performing filial duties before the old matriarch, while Lin Sanniang stayed far away, comfortably looking after her children at home. After all, the old matriarch wasn’t an easy person to get along with either.
Thus, over the past two years, Sun Dade and Sun Zhang-shi had turned their attention toward Taoya. Once Taoya grew older, they used filial piety to pressure her, forcing her to come over and serve the difficult old matriarch.
And now, it was even more calculated. Lin Sanniang had actually raised Taoya to twelve or thirteen years old, and she was clearly at an age where marriage matches could be discussed. Since Taoya’s father wasn’t around, wouldn’t her marriage be decided by her eldest uncle, Sun Dade? That would fetch a substantial bride price, and it would be foolish not to take it.
The two hadn’t expected Lin Sanniang to bring up the words spoken when the family property was divided back then. Sun Dade’s face turned cold. “Sister-in-law, what is the meaning of this? You’ve remembered a casual joke from years ago for this long? We even helped you cultivate your fields and lent you money to buy seeds… have you forgotten all of that? What an ungrateful wretch!”
It would have been better if he hadn’t brought it up, but since he did, Lin Sanniang intended to settle this exact account properly.
“For Dayi’s sake, I call you Eldest Brother, but I truly need to settle this account with you line by line.”
Lin Sanniang felt immensely grateful at this moment that the young mistress owner had taught her how to calculate accounts. Clearly, the mistress could use that little pad called a “calculator” to settle an account in the blink of an eye, yet she still insisted on having her stand aside to practice mental math, verbal calculation, and written bookkeeping. If it weren’t for the high-intensity training during those few days of the trial run, Lin Sanniang still wouldn’t understand the muddled accounts of her land to this day!
“Eldest Brother stepped forward back then to borrow rice seeds from the government on our behalf for two mu of land. One mu requires one dou and five sheng of seeds, so two mu makes three dou. According to the regulations of the government’s communal granary law, after the harvest, only three sheng of rice is collected per dan, calculated based on that year’s actual yield.”
“The harvest last year was indeed poor. Land that usually produces three dan only yielded one dan and eight dou per mu, but the two mu of land still managed to produce a total of three dan and six dou of paddy rice. If calculated according to the granary law, we only needed to return one dan and eight sheng to the government, which should have left a surplus of two dan, five dou, and two sheng…”
(Note: Referencing the measurement units of the Song Dynasty, one dan is roughly ten dou, and one dou is roughly ten sheng. The communal granary law was a grain and tool lending regulation set during the Song Dynasty to encourage agriculture. This story is set in a fictional universe and is for reference only.)
Lin Sanniang had never felt her mind move so rapidly before. She rattled off the calculations in a single breath: “Even after returning the rice seeds, paying for the farm tools, and paying the poll tax, land tax, disaster relief tax, and flood prevention tax, there should still have been a surplus of one dan of rice!”
One dan of rice wasn’t a vast amount, but it was nearly a hundred catties. While it couldn’t sustain a family of four for long, it was at least a proper harvest.
But how had Sun Dade calculated it?
Lin Sanniang was illiterate back then; Sun Dade had signed the grain loan on her behalf, and he was naturally the one who went to return it. However, precisely because she was illiterate, every single phrase and number Sun Dade spoke had been firmly etched into her heart, for fear of remembering a single one incorrectly.
“But how did you put it, Eldest Brother? When we clearly only needed to return ten dou and eight sheng based on that year’s harvest, you told me that based on the previous year’s harvest, the yield for two mu was six dan, and we had to return eighteen dou!”
“And the poll tax! There are four people total in my household, one dou per person, which only makes four dou. But on the slip you gave me, why was it twelve dou? Did you actually calculate your own family’s accounts onto my two mu of land?”
Lin Sanniang had just learned characters at the manor today. Although she only recognized some twenty-odd characters, it just so happened that “one, two, three, four, five” were exactly the ones she knew. She immediately recalled the government tax contract; that item was still kept at her house!
Lin Sanniang calculated with absolute clarity: “For two mu of land, I should have a surplus of one dan, one dou, and two sheng. Yet you informed me that after returning the grain seeds and paying the taxes, I still owed one dan and eight dou! You used that to trick me into handing over those two mu of land entirely!”
The more Lin Sanniang spoke, the angrier she became, and the more she felt filled with regret. It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed the issues back then; it was just that she was illiterate, couldn’t calculate accounts, and possessed a soft disposition. Even though she knew Sun Dade’s calculations held problems, she had no choice but to compromise and accept his proposal—letting Sun Dade cultivate the land while he handled the grain loans and taxes. To her at the time, only this could lessen her burden slightly; otherwise, she would have been forced to sign a promissory note for one dan and eight dou.
But things were different now—she could read! Although she only recognized a few characters, it was entirely enough to allow her to refute Sun Dade’s black-hearted accounts!
Lin Sanniang’s time spent managing and hosting at the manor hadn’t been in vain. As she spoke now, her gaze was resolute and her speech was perfectly clear.
It just so happened that when Taoya had attempted to escape earlier, she had kicked open the Sun family’s front gate. In this deep night, every single phrase and word she spoke traveled straight into the ears of the neighbors on both sides. The neighboring households, who had already gone to sleep, had quietly pried open a crack in their doors and windows at some unknown point, exposing several pairs of eyes and ears.
Right after Lin Sanniang finished her calculations, a neighbor suddenly pushed open a window, his eyes wide with fury.
“Is what you said true? The communal granary law calculates based on that year’s actual harvest? Then for my six mu of land, which produced twelve dan of paddy rice, how much grain should I have originally returned?”
Lin Sanniang knew exactly how to calculate this: “If all the grain seeds were borrowed from the government, it is calculated as returning three dou per dan. For twelve dan, you should return thirty-six dou, which is three dan and six dou!”
“Truly?”
“Truly!”
That neighbor suddenly let out a fierce roar, leaping straight out from his window.
“Sun Dade! I curse your ancestors! You helped me borrow grain seeds and demanded five dan of grain from me! You even claimed you subsidized me by four dou!”
As it turned out, he had been swindled out of one dan and four dou!
The moment this man shouted, the residents of half the alley poured out. Every single face was filled with suspicion, shock, and disbelief, mixed with an enlightened expression of “so that’s how it was.”
The common folk of the Great Liang Dynasty found studying immensely difficult, and the vast majority were illiterate. The people of the same neighborhood would hire literate masters nearby to act on their behalf when borrowing grain seeds from the government or paying taxes. Sun Dade happened to enjoy the prestigious status of being literate, helping many people borrow grain seeds and farm tools.
With Lin Sanniang’s shout, the neighbors of half the alley swarmed inside, demanding an explanation from Sun Dade.
Lin Sanniang shielded Taoya, Xing’er, and Brother Shu, preventing them from being jostled by the crowd. Looking down, she saw that the eyes and faces of her three little ones were entirely filled with pure adoration.
“Mother! You can calculate accounts! You can read! How did you become so incredible!”
