Legend of Concubine's Daughter Minglan 知否知否 应是绿肥红瘦

79. Seniority, Legitimacy and Kong Rong the Good Boy (1)

After Old Madam left escorted by Taisheng, Minglan was still immersed in the sorrow of separation when Rulan came to the House of Clear Dusk with a fanfare. In the moment, Minglan was lying on the soft bench, looking tired and numb holding a big cushion in her arms. Rulan walked over and patted her face, "Hey! Wake up, stop being sad! Alright, you're the only filial granddaughter and we're heartless ones!"

Minglan had no strength to argue with her, just answering wearily, "Don't say that. You're sad inside, but I'm too naïve to hold it back and put it all on my face."

Rulan's punch was met with a cloud of soft cotton. She had nothing to reply, so she headed right to the point, "Emm, I bet Pinlan sent a letter again. Tell me what happened to the scholar Sun."

Minglan rolled her eyes to the roof.

The series of Pinlan's letters had two themes, one was 'the record on the decline of the family of a heartless conscienceless scum' and the other was 'the record on the recovery of Sheng Shulan, a kind and elegant lady mistreated'. Ever since Minglan mentioned these for once, Rulan had become a loyal audience of this serial story.

Speaking of it, on that year after Sun Zhigao gained half of Pinlan's dowry with a letter of divorce, he immediately welcomed the accordingly innocent dancer-prostitute into his family as his legitimate wife while Shulan was sent to the village where Guijie'er (Sheng Yun's daughter) lived after getting married. It was a place with abundant natural resources and full of rich yet simple folks. Besides, Guijie'er's father-in-law was the head of the village, so there were no gossips about Shulan there.

Without Shulan's deterring and the prevention from Shulan's hands, Sun Zhigao started to spend all his day drinking and calling prostitutes, frequently throwing a party at fancy restaurants and inviting a bunch of men with a pose of learning to get drunk and hang out with prostitutes. Really enjoyed his life to extremity! Yet, his behavior was known to the local official who, out of rage, denounced him, during a seminar of local scholars on the theme of local examination, as 'immoral and unconscientious' and 'a scum among scholars'. Sun Zhigao went back with the humiliation and acted worse since then.

Sun's mother was easy to coax. Having no idea as to what to do with the great deal of money, she decided to follow others to do investment, for one time into cosmetics shops, for another into grain shops and sometimes even into the dear money industry. Though a wide range of industries were touched upon, the result was all the same, that was losing money. Minglan suspected that uncle Sheng Wei must have added fuel to the fire secretly.

Hence, after the dancer-prostitute gave birth to a boy, Sun family's situation became much worse than before. Yet, Sun Zhigao was a superficial man who wanted to impress others as rich and classy. Therefore, in order to continue his extravagant life, he had to sell out much of his family property. Though his mother tried to prevent him, he always refuted her with the remark that once he passed further exams, he would blahblahblah....

However, his wife apparently turned impatient. One day after Sun and his mother turned back home from a dinner party, they all passed out into dead sleep after taking drunk-cure soups. When they woke up, they found the many belongings and boxes of silver money were all gone, except for a touching long letter left by the rare girl and Madam Sun's nephew: It said that they two had known each other long ago and the son she gave birth to was also the nephew's. They had fallen in love with each other long ago. Though the love was deep enough to move everyone, fate didn't do them a favor to let them have each other. Having suffered for all these days, they finally couldn't cheat themselves into denying their true emotion and decided to be together. They begged the 'benevolent and generous' madam Sun and the 'noble and great' Sun Zhigao to understand their relationship as well as the behavior of taking away all of the property.