"Will you ever stop, woman?" Ji Lianhuai rolled over impatiently. "Let him take it. It's not your money; Mom and Dad are the ones paying. What are you getting so worked up about?"
"Ugh, Ji Lianhuai, are you completely clueless? Sure, Mom and Dad are paying for it, but don't forget that's our money too! The Ji Family hasn't divided the household yet. All these years, the money from the harvests, the odd jobs you and Eldest Brother do in the off-season, and the second son's family—who earn more than all of us combined—where does it all go? Straight into the family coffers! It's a struggle to get a single copper coin from Mom to buy Mingmao some candy, but whenever our fourth brother asks, she doesn't even blink! I wonder how much she gave him this time..."
Ji Lianhuai let out a lazy yawn. "It's no use worrying about all this. Our fourth brother is the only one with any prospects. Mom and Dad are counting on him to bring honor to our ancestors. If he wanted the moon, they'd build a ladder to go get it. If they told you to carry that ladder, would you dare refuse?"
"Fine, even if we can't stop them," Mrs. Zhu said, displeased, "they could at least let us know. It feels like we're just slaving away like oxen..."
"Third Son's Wife!" A sharp voice suddenly barked from the courtyard, making the couple jump.
"Where the hell have you been! All you do is skive off. Eldest Brother's wife is in the kitchen all by herself. When are we ever going to eat? Now get your lazy self to the backyard, catch a chicken, and slaughter it. My fourth son needs nourishment! You're all a bunch of heartless ingrates. Can't you see he's lost weight for the sake of this family?"
Mrs. Zhu clutched her chest, her heart pounding with guilt. She thought her complaints had been overheard.
Rolling her eyes, she called out, "Coming, coming!" while whispering an instruction to Ji Lianhuai.
"Thanks to your dear fourth brother, we'll get to smell meat again. Later, don't just stuff your own face. Make sure you grab a piece for our Mingmao... A chicken leg is out of the question, and we can forget about the breast meat. All the good cuts go to your fourth brother... At the very least, save the chicken's ass for our Mingmao!"
...
As night fell, the courtyard grew quiet. The only sound was the occasional stirring from the east room.
Aunt Kang tossed and turned on the kang bed like a pancake on a griddle, and her restlessness kept Ji Qingshan from sleeping as well.
"Woman, what are you fussing about?"
'What else could she be fussing about?' Aunt Kang thought of her nearly-empty coffin fund, and her heart felt like it was on fire. That was money she had painstakingly scraped together over all these years.
"Husband, do you think our fourth son... will he make it this time?"
The room was silent for a moment before Ji Qingshan spoke. "He should be close. Our fourth son isn't lacking in any area, and now he has someone giving him a leg up... You need to have faith in your son."
Despite his words, only he knew how uncertain he truly felt.
The year their fourth son passed the child student exam, he too had been full of ambition. He felt that their ancestors were finally smiling upon them, and he was determined to support his son's education, even if it meant selling everything they owned and bankrupting the family.
But five years had passed, and he had failed the county-level exams every single time. Hope had given way to disappointment again and again. The confidence that had once swelled in his chest was like a balloon with a pinprick; it looked the same on the outside, but it was slowly deflating.
The Ji Family had once been a prominent and relatively well-off household. But solely to fund their fourth son's education, their fortunes had declined year after year, and life had become increasingly difficult.
The other sons' families didn't know the full story, but he and Ms. Kang were keenly aware: after taking out this thirty taels of Silver, there was almost nothing left of the family's savings.
'If he fails again next year, are we really going to have to sell our land and our house? When that happens, how could this big family not be filled with resentment?'
But then he reconsidered. 'After all, our fourth son is still young, only twenty-two. He has plenty of opportunities ahead. Passing the Scholar exam is just the final step. When that happens, all the money we've spent will come back to us many times over.'
If Ji Huan could hear Ji Qingshan's thoughts, she would surely laugh at his self-deception.
The high cost of education is a timeless truth. In Dafeng Village, for example, out of more than a hundred households, only a scattered few could afford to send their children to study.
And this was often only possible by pooling the entire family's efforts to support a single person, with all their resources funneled into that one individual.
Inevitably, the other children and grandchildren were neglected. Over time, how could resentment not build up?
The only reason the various branches of the Ji Family could maintain a semblance of harmony was twofold: first, their own fundamental interests had not yet been threatened, and second, they were still hoping to bask in the reflected glory should the family actually produce a government official.
But was becoming a Scholar really that easy? A single county administered more than ten towns, and countless people took the exam every year. Yeyang County wasn't a major testing prefecture with a large quota, and the limited spots available were heavily biased toward candidates from the county seat. For many years, not a single Scholar had emerged from the dozen or so villages in the area around Dafeng Village.
If Ji Lianzhuang kept failing and the Ji Family was forced to sell their land, robbing the other branches of their livelihood, did he really think things wouldn't explode?
It wasn't that Ji Qingshan didn't know this; he was simply pretending he didn't.
Aunt Kang, however, was convinced, her confidence surging once more. "There's no question about our fourth son's scholarship. Every New Year, the courtyard is packed with villagers asking him to write their couplets. They wouldn't ask just anyone, would they? They can't even recognize the characters my son writes—that just shows how profound his knowledge is! He's sure to succeed this time!"
With that weight off her mind, Aunt Kang remembered her unfinished business from that day. 'I only got halfway through cursing out Widow Xie! How can I possibly vent my anger if I don't curse her out for days and nights on end!'
The thought of that jinx made her grind her teeth.
"She's got a tough life, that one! If I'd known she wasn't going to die so easily, I never would have agreed to her leaving the family. True, we can't sell her anymore, but if we'd kept her, at least we could have worked her like an animal. The wives of our first and third sons are uselessly slow. You have to nag them a dozen times and still stand over their shoulders. Say what you will about that damn girl, but she did the work of two people... Why couldn't she just die properly!"
Aunt Kang couldn't understand it. 'It was so obvious she wasn't going to make it... Otherwise, I never would have given her those three mu of wasteland.'
Even wasteland was still land. And it had always been Aunt Kang who took advantage of others; the thought of anyone taking so much as a blade of grass from her was pure fantasy.
The only reason she had agreed to let her go was so she could wait for the wretched girl to die and then take the three mu of land right back. It would save the cost of a coffin, and she wouldn't have to bury that jinx in the Ji Family cemetery.
Her calculations had been meticulous, but she hadn't accounted for fate, which could flick all her plans into disarray with a single nudge. Now, it looked like she would end up with nothing.
Aunt Kang fumed, "Now that Widow Xie has taken her in, she's practically parading it around town! Oh, soon the whole village will be praising her benevolence and cursing us behind our backs. What is that if not a slap in our face? I was against Mrs. Wei associating with her from the start... Mrs. Wei is a contemptible woman herself! But our second son had his head turned and just had to marry her. It cost a whole twenty taels of Silver! And even though he earned that money himself, it was still my money... A woman from who-knows-where. Who knows if she was even virtuous..."
Ji Qingshan felt a deep frustration as well.
'If Ji Huan had died, it would have been a clean break,' he thought. 'But alive, she's an ugly sore on the Ji Family's reputation, a stain that can never be washed away.'
He had always cared deeply about his reputation. Normally, when he walked through the village, everyone would greet him with fawning respect. Lately, however, things had quietly changed. Wherever he went, people still smiled to his face, but he knew they were pointing and whispering behind his back. He didn't need to guess why.
Because of this, Ji Qingshan no longer liked to go out much.
'In the end, selling Ji Huan had been the wrong move.'
'We should have secretly taken her far away from Dafeng Village, instead of causing such a public commotion.'
But what was done was done. There was nothing more to say about it.
Still, he didn't regret separating Ji Huan from the family. 'That girl's fate is just too malevolent,' he thought. 'What if she really brought bad luck to our fourth son...' He was superstitious about such things.
A bit of gossip now was nothing. 'Just you wait,' he thought. 'Once our fourth son passes his exams, our family will have its day of glory.'
Ms. Kang's tirade was getting more and more off-topic, and he didn't have the patience to listen anymore.
"Whether she's dead or alive, she has nothing to do with us anymore, so why even bring her up! Are you short a work animal, or are you just tired of living? Even if she came back right now, begging to slave away for you, would you dare let her in the door?"
His words hit Aunt Kang right where it hurt. She thought for a moment and fell silent.