“Have you heard? Sister Diao is planning to marry the eldest son of her family, and she is still fancying that little fool from the Jiang family.”
At this time, it is the end of the year, and there is little farm work in the field. Farmers, who have been busy for a year, rarely have free time to gather together in this cold winter to gossip.
“What? Isn’t that little fool from the Jiang family already engaged? The one she was betrothed to was the little boy from the Lin family. Although the conditions of the Diao family are good, they are just a family of butchers. The eldest is not the biological son of Sister Diao. How desperate is she to tell the eldest about this little fool of the Jiang family?”
As soon as this topic came up, an old woman quickly took over the conversation, and the scene suddenly became extremely lively.
The Jiang family, Lin family, and Diao family which they mentioned were considered to be the most prestigious families in Ping Village, especially the Jiang family and the Diao family. The topics surrounding these two families could not be finished for several days and nights. It is just nonsense from people who usually love talking to people behind their backs. But, today’s incident suddenly implicated all three families, and it was a big deal.
It is now the seventeenth year of Jiancheng. The reigning Emperor Jiancheng is a wise king. In addition, the weather has been good these years, and there have been no natural disasters in the Jin Dynasty. Even if ordinary people are not rich, they have no worries about food and clothing.
The vast majority of peasant households in Ping Village do not have their own land and need to rent land from landlords. Emperor Jiancheng had strict regulations on land lease taxes. No matter whether they were squire landlords or official marquises, they were not allowed to receive more than four-tenths of the year’s harvest of rent.
Ping Village is located in a major grain-producing province with fertile land, and the annual yield per mu1Mu (Chinese: 亩; pinyin: mǔ or 畝, mǔ) is a unit of area measurement used in the Far East, and particularly in China, where it is officially standardized. It corresponds to 1/15 of a hectare or about 666.67 m2. is much higher than that of other prefectures. Even if they rent the land from the landlord’s family, those tenants can live very well by relying on the six-tenths of the income.
In Ping Village, there are almost no houses made of mud and thatch, unless they are extremely lazy families. Otherwise, they have built small brick houses with small tiles based on the savings of several generations.
Perhaps because of their abundant material life, the people of Ping Village also attach great importance to the education of their children and grandchildren. There is a school in the village, and many boys in the village receive enlightenment education in the school.
The little fool from the Jiang family who was mentioned just now is the only daughter of the teacher in the school.
The Jiang family is also a big household in the area of Ping Village. When the family was at its peak, it had nearly owned two hundred acres of land. Many farmers in Ping Village relied on renting the Jiang family’s fields to survive.
However, the Jiang family did not have many heirs and almost only passed down the family inheritance from generation to generation. In this generation, there is only one daughter named Jiang Wu, who is still a little fool with an IQ equal to that of a five-year-old child.
The current head of the Jiang family is Jiang Wu’s father, Jiang Baozong. He married his maternal cousin when he was young. The couple had a deep love for each other, and their red sleeves were fragrant, very loving. The year Jiang Baozong passed the exam to become a scholar, his cousin was diagnosed with pregnancy, which made Jiang Baozong full of high spirits and satisfaction.
Perhaps because of his young age and ignorant restraint, Jiang Baozong’s pride stabbed some narrow-minded classmates. Jiang Baozong, who was unguarded against his friends, woke up from a party and found that he had slept in the bed of a distant cousin of his friend.
Jiang Baozong indeed had some talents in the imperial examination, but his nature was somewhat naive and simple. His cousin at home was pregnant and could not withstand the stimulation. But, he should also take responsibility for ruining the innocence of his friend’s cousin.
So at the instigation of that person, Jiang Baozong chose to be a quail. He secretly raised the woman outside and gave some money every month to cover the other party’s living expenses, but he never saw the woman again.
The conspirator deliberately wanted to frame him, so how could he let him whitewash the situation? When Jiang Baozong’s wife was less than eight months pregnant, the woman came to the door with a full belly.
Her beloved cousin secretly kept a woman behind her back, and the other party still came to protest with a belly that was almost the same as hers. The sensitive woman could not bear it and immediately died of hemorrhage after giving birth to her daughter with difficulty.
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Lucien On ABRWF Chapter 34.1