Reborn as a Landlord-Chapter 72 - 41 Lian Manman Settles Accounts_2

"Mom, did you know all this?"

"They wanted to keep it a secret, but the town is too close, and there have been rumors. One time, your uncle passed by and saw it with his own eyes. He told me about it, and that’s when I believed it."

"Do Grandpa and Grandma know too?"

Lady Zhang didn’t respond this time.

"Dad used to be a shopkeeper outside for many years, so of course, he’d be meticulous with the accounts. It seems he must know."

"Your eldest uncle is a scholar, and your aunt, as well as your sister-in-law, are all precious people—they deserve to enjoy the finer things," Lady Zhang said.

"So we’re just born to be lowly?" Lian Manman was annoyed.

Lady Zhang said this based on the deep-rooted idea that scholars are precious, but also as a part of her helpless self-comfort. Seeing Lian Manman’s eyebrows raised and her face flushed with anger, she immediately regretted it.

After all, she was a mother, and while she might accept her fate, she was not "noble" enough to do the same when it came to her own children. It must be said that for the children like Lian Manman, this was relatively fortunate.

"No, of course not," Lady Zhang hurriedly corrected herself, then sighed.

"Mom, your way of thinking is wrong," Lian Manman said, convinced that Lady Zhang must have been brainwashed, "If we’re not going to split the family, then things should be fair. There’s no way they can indulge in leisure and pleasure while we toil away miserably."

"We’re not even asking him to share the money he earns, but even if we wanted it, he wouldn’t be willing. We could still live frugally, and surely save up some money every year to send Brother and Xiao Qi to study, right?"

"The surplus money from the crops over the years, if it hadn’t all gone to my eldest uncle’s family, my brother and Xiao Qi would already be in school," Lian Manman added.

Lady Zhang grabbed a piece of cloth and started scrubbing it in a basin, unconsciously rubbing harder and harder. She had thought about this before but had suppressed those thoughts. No one had ever explained such reasoning to her before.

"Brother says he doesn’t want to study, but I’ve seen him alone, using a stick to practice writing in the dirt," Lian Manman glanced at Wu Lang and continued.

"Never mind about me, at least let Xiao Qi have the opportunity to study." From the moment Lian Manman began talking about studying, Wu Lang had kept his head down. Now, he finally looked up.

While they were talking, Lian Shouxin came in from outside.

"What are you talking about?" Lian Shouxin asked, noticing Lian Manman’s flushed face and the sad expressions on the faces of Lady Zhang, Lian Zhizhi, Wu Lang, and Xiao Qi.

Lady Zhang finally put down the cloth in her hands and looked at Lian Shouxin with a sigh.

Lian Manman didn’t care about all that and had Lian Shouxin sit on the kang bed, then she went through the accounts she had calculated earlier once more for him.

Lian Shouxin also fell silent. Like Lady Zhang, he had an idea of the accounts, and this was the first time someone had clearly laid them out for him to hear.

"I don’t know what to say anymore. Dad, we should... consider the children’s future," Lady Zhang said.

"Dad is well aware. Ah, isn’t it all for the eldest brother to make something of himself, to win some glory for the Lian family," Lian Shouxin said.

"To make something of oneself, shouldn’t one study diligently? By frequenting restaurants every day and being picky about food and clothes, can one really rise above? Ten years of studying in the cold window seat doesn’t make anyone fat," Lian Manman retorted.

Lian Zhizhi and the others started laughing behind their hands. Lian Shouren wasn’t particularly fat, but he had a potbelly at an early age.

Lian Shouxin and Lady Zhang kept a straight face. They shared the same thoughts as Lian Manman regarding certain behaviors of Lian Shouren’s family and did not approve of them.

"If you dare to mention splitting the family, Grandpa would have my head," Lian Shouxin said.

Manman’s eyes lit up. When Shouxin spoke like that, it was clear he was leaning towards splitting up the family; it was just because of Old Master Lian.

"I’ve heard people say, ’When a tree grows big, it splits into branches.’ Our gap with Uncle’s family is growing wider by the day, we ought to have split up a long time ago," Manman said.

Shouxin sat there, thinking for a while.

"I’ve been thinking about splitting up too, it’s bound to happen sooner or later," Shouxin said.

Manman quickly sat up straight, and Lady Zhang along with the other children all fell silent to listen to Shouxin speak.

"If Big Brother gets a government position and goes to take office, Dad, Mom, and Xiuxiu would have to go with him. I think Second Brother also intends to go. When Big Brother has to support so many people, even if the family isn’t split then, it will have to be later on," he said.

Manman blinked. Shouxin wasn’t stupid, oh no. Although he didn’t explicitly say that Shouren would turn his back on them, it was obvious that he had a fairly objective assessment of the situation and the temperaments of certain individuals.

"I’m thinking, by the time it happens, we should just split off. By then, they won’t need the little money we’ve earned through our hard labor," he said.

Manman rolled her eyes and leaned on Zhizhi next to her.

"Manman, what’s wrong?" Zhizhi thought Manman was sick, and upon looking down, she saw Manman’s face was flushed but not ill.

What was wrong, of course, was anger. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

In the end, Shouxin was still a pushover, with the typical thought patterns of one.

"I doubt they even look up to us now," Manman said. Even if they toiled away, saving every penny, by the way the superior members of the family spoke and acted, they clearly had no gratitude. Instead, they carried themselves with aloofness, looking down on these rural folk.

Manman spoke bluntly, and neither Lady Zhang nor Shouxin could refute her, because they too had realized it, but being kind-hearted, they refrained from dwelling on it or vocalizing it.

"I think we should split sooner rather than later," she said. Waiting until Huahua married into the Song Family and then relying on them to pull strings to appoint Shouren as Jiansheng, and then to get an official position—who knew how long that would take. Better to get it over with early, so she could devote herself wholeheartedly to her Little Landlord project.

"By the time we split later, everyone will say Uncle’s family became prosperous and then turned their backs on us. Splitting now isn’t any different, they don’t need the money we’ve scraped from the soil. They might even disdain us for being too rural and embarrassing them," she said.

Manman looked at Lady Zhang as she spoke.

"Mom, when you walked by Uncle’s place, you didn’t say you were going to visit, and they wouldn’t even let you in the door, right?"

Lady Zhang’s face turned red.

"You child, why do you speak like that, you’ll offend people someday."

"There are no outsiders here!" Manman laughed.

Lady Zhang sat down next to Manman.

"I don’t know why, but hearing Manman say all this seems to make my heart feel a lot better," Lady Zhang said. She wasn’t foolish; she could see the tiniest expressions and always suppressed her true feelings out of consideration for being a virtuous and proper lady, thinking of the bigger picture.

"Old Fourth’s wife, time to cook," Lady Zhou called from the doorway of the Upper Room.

**********

Analyzing the pushover in depth and from all aspects, haha.

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