Burglary.

A huge amount involved.

Those two key points made Xia Xiaolan breathe a sigh of relief.

How reckless of Zhang Erlai to commit a crime in the middle of a crackdown. It was practically asking for death. Xia Xiaolan no longer worried he might drag her down with him by telling lies. Would Zhang Erlai really want to add to his already serious charges?

The news filled the whole family with joy.

Especially Liu Fen.

Normally a meek and long-suffering woman, she now hoped Zhang Erlai would be sentenced to death. Even if he weren’t executed, if he were locked away for ten or twenty years, people would gradually stop using Xia Xiaolan’s reputation as gossip fodder.

“The police did the right thing! All these bad people should be arrested!” As Liu Fen spoke, she wiped away tears.

How could Xia Xiaolan ever have been interested in someone like Zhang Erlai?

A hooligan nearly thirty who still hadn’t managed to find a wife?

The former Xia Xiaolan might have been spoiled and competitive, but she had always had high standards.

Unfortunately, Liu Fen was the only one in the Xia family who believed her daughter. No one else had defended “Xia Xiaolan.” Instead, they accused her of being flirtatious and disgracing the family name.

Privately, Li Fengmei also comforted her sister-in-law.

“One day the Xia family will regret this. I think Xiaolan has real potential. Just because she didn’t go to college doesn’t mean she’ll always be inferior to her cousin.”

“The Xia family only fawns over Xia Ziyu, and that’s why they’ve pushed Xiaolan to the brink.”

Liu Fen was honest and simple, but Li Fengmei had a bit of cunning about her. Otherwise, how could Liu Yong, who used to drift through life without direction, have gradually become more responsible after marrying her?

People said Xia Xiaolan had tried to seduce her future brother-in-law...

But if you asked Li Fengmei? If Xia Xiaolan and Xia Ziyu were standing side by side, any man would prefer Xia Xiaolan. It takes two hands to clap. If something happened between a man and a woman, the man also bears responsibility.

If Xia Xiaolan hadn’t felt that her cousin had snatched away the man she liked, she wouldn’t have made such a huge scene with such righteous anger. Two women in the same family competing for the same man wasn’t unheard of in the countryside. When there was a good match, who wouldn’t want to marry him?

The strange thing was that the Xia family hadn’t treated both sides equally. Instead, they completely sided with Xia Ziyu. That was the power of being a “golden phoenix”— a female university student.

Li Fengmei was certain the Xia family would eventually send someone to bring Liu Fen back. Day after day, she spent her days “educating” Liu Fen, telling her not to be afraid if Xia Dajun showed up.

“If you don’t stand up for Xiaolan, the Xia family will bully her even more!”

In the past, Li Fengmei hadn’t liked this sister-in-law very much. Although Liu Fen was technically her husband’s younger sister, the two women were nearly the same age. Liu Yong hadn’t married until his thirties, and Li Fengmei herself had been previously married before marrying him.

By the time she entered the Liu family, Liu Fen had already been married into the Xia family for years. The two sisters-in-law had barely interacted and had no real affection for each other.

Liu Yong had even secretly helped Liu Fen from time to time. Everyone’s life was difficult back then. Though Li Fengmei never complained openly, she had been unhappy about it.

Liu Fen was dull and straightforward, never knowing how to please her sister-in-law. Her daughter had also been proud and arrogant growing up. It would have been strange if Li Fengmei had liked the pair.

She had only maintained the bare minimum of courtesy, seeing them once or twice a year to keep up family relations.

So when Liu Yong suddenly brought his sister and niece back from the Xia family, Li Fengmei certainly had opinions. She simply held back because she didn’t want to cause tension between husband and wife.

Of course, it helped that Liu Yong had been earning quite well recently. Over the past six months he had frequently traveled for work and brought home a fair amount of money. Their finances were a little easier now, so feeding two more people was manageable.

If they had still been desperately poor, Li Fengmei might not have turned the house upside down... but she certainly would have made things unpleasant enough to drive Xia Xiaolan and her mother away.

Besides, the two women weren’t freeloaders.
Liu Fen took over much of the housework, and Xia Xiaolan was generous with money. She had the ability to earn and was willing to spend on the household.

Less than half a month after the mother and daughter moved into the Liu home, Li Fengmei had finally begun to treat them as family.

And when someone was family, you spoke honestly with them.

Li Fengmei knew Xia Xiaolan had ambition. She wouldn’t live at her uncle’s house forever. With the speed she was making money, settling down in Shangdu might be difficult, but buying a small house in the county was entirely possible.

The only thing holding her back was Liu Fen.

Everyone worried Liu Fen’s soft heart would betray them. If Xia Dajun came and Liu Fen returned to the Xia family to endure humiliation again, then no matter how capable Xia Xiaolan was, the Xia family would still have leverage over her.

Li Fengmei had seen with her own eyes how filial Xia Xiaolan was to her mother. If a daughter couldn’t even treat her own mother well, how could anyone expect her to treat her maternal uncle’s family well in the future?

Under Li Fengmei’s constant persuasion, Liu Fen nodded as she washed the dishes.

Thinking about the life she and her daughter had lived in the Xia family made her heart ache.

The Xia family had many members and plenty of land. In theory, they should never have gone hungry. But the old matriarch, Grandma Xia, had always used filial piety to prevent her three sons from dividing the household.

All the harvest from the fields went into her hands. After the required grain was handed over to the state, she alone decided how the remaining food was distributed.

There were twelve people in the Xia family, but only four real laborers.

Grandma Xia had raised three sons alone as a widow, so she didn’t have to work in the fields. The eldest son, Xia Changzheng, had a son and a daughter. The daughter being Xia Ziyu. She spent most of the year in the county town.

After entering high school, everyone said she was a promising student, so Grandma Xia refused to let her precious eldest granddaughter do any labor. Working might interfere with her studies.

With Grandma Xia’s approval, Xia Changzheng’s wife Zhang Cui had also gone to the county to take care of Xia Ziyu. Their younger son was only ten years old, hardly a laborer.

The third son, Xia Hongbing, had three children. His eldest daughter Xia Hongxia was seventeen. After finishing middle school, she stayed home helping her mother Wang Jingui cook and feed chickens, but she didn’t do heavy work. Her two younger brothers were still children, one hadn’t even finished elementary school, and the youngest was the same age as Tao Tao. What kind of labor could they provide?

Only Liu Fen and her husband Xia Dajun were the true backbone of the household. Liu Fen worked as hard as any man, taking on the most exhausting tasks. Their family alone provided two laborers. Yet whenever Grandma Xia distributed goods, they received the least.

When Xia Ziyu was admitted to university, Grandma Xia called all three households together to demand money for her living expenses. She openly argued that Liu Fen’s family had fewer people and fewer burdens. Since they didn’t even have a son who would one day need to marry, Xia Dajun should contribute more money.

And honest Xia Dajun had truly emptied out his savings! Paying three hundred yuan by himself. The crops from the fields had already gone toward state quotas. That money was what Xia Dajun had scraped together from odd jobs.

As Liu Fen thought about it, her eyes reddened.
Just because Xia Ziyu was going to university, did that mean her own daughter didn’t deserve to get married one day? Their savings had been completely drained.

They couldn’t even afford new quilts, washbasins, or kettles for a dowry. What kind of marriage could they arrange for their daughter under those circumstances?

Liu Fen had never dared to think about these things before. Years of silent endurance had made such thoughts feel forbidden.
But under Li Fengmei’s constant reminders, she began to feel it was deeply unfair.

Xia Ziyu wasn’t an orphan. She had both parents. Yet when she went to Beijing for university, Xia Changzheng had only contributed a little over a hundred yuan, and Xia Hongbing had merely given a token hundred.

If Liu Fen returned with Xia Dajun, she would continue to work like a beast of burden for the Xia family. Earning money to support someone else’s daughter! While her own daughter lay injured in bed, nearly dying, without money for treatment.

Liu Fen wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

“Sister-in-law… I’m not going back to the Xia family.”