I became the Counterpart of the Winner in a Period Novel-Chapter 308 - 285: How About Making a Deal?
When they reached the station, Jiang Mingyue didn’t need to say anything, Wang Xiu confessed everything herself.
It turned out Li Hongmei was not the Li Family’s biological daughter. Years ago, disasters kept happening in the North, and Li Hongmei’s biological parents fled to the Southwest with the whole village. However, due to the arduous journey and significant climate differences, many people fell ill on the way, including Li Hongmei’s biological parents.
To prevent their two-year-old daughter from getting infected, the couple entrusted her to an aunt who was fleeing with them. That aunt was genuinely kind, but later, Li Hongmei’s biological parents couldn’t make it and died of illness one after another a month after arriving in this land. The aunt, without any financial backing and just having arrived in the South,
faced with too many children at home and unable to afford raising another child, was looking for a better path for Li Hongmei when her younger sister-in-law secretly took the two-year-old girl and abandoned her.
Wang Xiu happened to return to her parents’ home and saw people gathered around the trash heap. She squeezed in, and as if guided by something, when she saw a new year’s picture baby sitting in the smelly garbage pile, a thought struck her. Since no one wanted the child, she would take her home, just perfect for raising as a child bride for the second son.
The second son looked like her and had always been her favorite.
The family was struggling, and suddenly bringing home a girl caused the in-laws to complain, so Wang Xiu volunteered to do more work. The in-laws still complained, but the complaints became less frequent.
The little girl was truly endearing. No matter how nice she was to her two sons, whenever she fell ill and couldn’t get up, the two sons would never come in to ask if she needed water or felt like eating anything... just cold and indifferent like the in-laws.
Only the little girl she brought home would bring her warm water and gruel, and would use a cloth to bring down her fever. When she woke up in the middle of the night after the fever subsided, she’d see the little girl sleeping tiredly beside her bed, and at that moment, she swore she’d always treat her little cotton-padded jacket as if she were her own flesh and blood.
Heart for heart, not everyone can exchange. For example, her two sons.
From then on, she treated her daughter even better.
Only she never expected, as her daughter gradually grew up into a tall and elegant young woman, attractive like a lotus rising from the water, sought after by many families. It should have been a joyous thing, but Li Hongmei was originally raised for the second son, and over the years the second son had long assumed his little sister would grow up to be his wife.
She always thought so, until one day her world collapsed.
She would never forget that day, endless humiliation, endless regret drowned her, she actually forgot he was someone who quietly made a fortune, casting aside all sense of propriety, integrity, and honor.
That day, she dug a piece of bloody flesh out of her palm just to resist the urge to rush in.
Because she felt it would be too easy on them if she went in without it, she would definitely go in with a vegetable knife, slicing one like watermelon.
But she didn’t have the skills yet, she needed to make sure it was foolproof.
Afterward, this matter left a scar in her heart, and from then on, she kept a close eye on the two of them.
Of course, she also separated Li Hongmei’s household registration, making her no longer part of the family.
Only later did she realize that something had happened a year earlier.
Blame herself for not noticing anything unusual, making that child suffer.
The girl didn’t understand anything and was timid, getting scared easily and not daring to speak out.
What Wang Xiu didn’t expect was that the older one also learned his behavior.
By the time this all came to light, it could no longer be hidden.
When the second son found out, he went mad and chased Li Youcai and the Eldest Li, both father and son were seriously injured that time, Wang Xiu regretted they didn’t die.
The second son was driven mad.
The second son was the most pitiful, Wang Xiu felt she should do something for him.
She first got a wife for the eldest, and then for the second son.
Hoping that with a wife’s constraint, the eldest would return to the right path, and the second could forget some people and things. Once their financial situation eased, she would let the second move out and never return.
With a wife’s constraint, the eldest really became like a person.
Li Youcai, afraid of driving the second mad again, dared not do anything excessive.
Days went by peacefully for years, and it was time for Li Hongmei to have her marriage arranged.
There were plenty of matchmakers, but Wang Xiu wanted to find someone who would sincerely be good to her, preferably a man who could make his path and decisions. This was the moment when Chen Dong caught Wang Xiu’s attention.
Wang Xiu observed for a long time, increasingly certain that this child was tailor-made for Li Hongmei.
