When this new mother and daughter pair saw Su Tang standing there, they both lowered their heads while silently trembling and not daring to make a sound. Meanwhile, this new window seemed more to Su Tang’s tastes, at least compared to the last one that had walked with such an exaggerated sway in her hips that Su Tang had felt that it must hurt her legs to walk like that. However, unfortunately, this new widow seemed to be have been injured somehow because her face was all black and blue with bruises.
“Miss Su, Ms. Zhou and her daughter here were originally part of Tong Sheng’s family, but Tong Sheng fell sick so they were sold to pay for his treatment. In the end, the two of them cost eighteen taels of silver together.”
“On the other hand, this is Ms. Yu and she was the one who took the initiative to sell herself here. Originally she came from a faraway village and got married to a man from the nearby Wangjia Village, but unexpectedly the man she married was a cruel wife-beater. Eventually, she divorced the man, and then, with no other place to go, she came here and sold herself.”
Mrs. Li introduced the people she brought over and explained their various backgrounds. As she spoke, her voice was flat and unwavering. After all, Mrs. Li had been in this line of work for a long time and she had already seen every kind of pitiful person you could imagine. If they weren’t pitiful people, would they have to sell themselves as slaves?
Su Tang carefully looked at the mother and daughter pair, but after a moment she shook her head. These two didn’t look like the types that could work hard, so she wasn’t interested at all. As for the widow, she seemed a bit more promising. When Su Tang looked at her she met Su Tang’s eyes with a clear and bright gaze.
For a woman who ended up married to a scummy domestic abuser to be able to divorce and get away from him meant that, if nothing else, she definitely had some toughness in her bones. However, Su Tang felt that there was probably some unspoken hidden reason as to why she had decided to sell herself beyond what Mrs. Li had explained.
Eventually, Su Tang said, “Well, let’s keep this Ms. Yu aside for now.”
Mrs. Li could immediately tell that Su Tang wasn’t interested in the mother and daughter pair this time, so she wasn’t surprised. After all, even though Su Tang had bought Zhang Cuilan and Baohe together last time, it had been because it had been obvious that both mother and daughter could work hard. Compare them with today’s mother and daughter, who just stood there trembling like two leaves that might blow away in the wind, looking as weak as can be, and there was no comparison at all. These two really didn’t give the impression of people who could do work at all.
And Su Tang was here to buy workers, not to run a charity service, so she certainly wouldn’t buy two people that acted like that. However, she also didn’t dare to easily nod her head and buy the widow just yet either because first she needed to confirm some things.
“When you left your husband did you properly divorce?” Su Tang asked Ms. Yu.
Hearing the question, Ms. Yu nodded and said, “Yes!”
“You left just because he hit you?” Su Tang asked faintly. At the same time, she picked up the bowl of warm water Mrs. Li had poured for her and warmed her palms against it.
Yu Caihe looked up uncertainly when she heard this question. After a moment of hesitation, she murmured, “That’s not the only reason.”
Probably contrary to Ms. Yu’s expectations, this answer actually caused Su Tang to secretly breathe a sigh of relief. After all, from the moment she had seen this woman she had felt that things weren’t so simple. It wasn’t that she suspected that Ms. Yu had some sort of special identity, it was just that the circumstances that caused her to sell herself were a bit too strange.
Of course, an average little girl her age would have never sensed anything off, but Su Tang had been studying under Song Yi for quite a while now and she knew a lot more than an average girl.
There was a law in the Qihuang Kingdom that stipulated that it was possible for a woman to initiate a divorce, but this kind of divorce was not the same thing as a modern divorce. While it was easy for a man to divorce his wife, if a woman wanted to divorce a man and completely separate from him, it was not such a simple thing, even with the so-called “three protections” that women received under Qihuang law.
Basically, the scum men of this era had no desire for women to be able to divorce from them, and they would much rather be the ones to divorce their wives. After all, the way the brains of scum men functioned was strange and you couldn’t expect them to act like a normal person with a conscience.
Thus, as soon as Su Tang heard that Yu Caihe had managed to divorce her husband, she felt that things couldn’t be so simple. And another point that made her more confident in her deduction was that Yu Caihe was very beautiful.
Of course, she wasn’t some sort of great beauty that would cause the ruin of a nation, or even at the level of Luo Xingchen, who made an overwhelming impression of ‘this is a beautiful person’ the first time Su Tang had seen her, but Yu Caihe could definitely be the flower of a small village.
They said that it was a ‘face-seeking’ society in modern times, but the truth was that it was the same even in the ancient era. No matter what era, being good-looking was always an advantage.
But now she had in front of her a beautiful woman who had the means to get away from her scum husband, but who didn’t have the ability to survive on her own? Someone so cornered that she had no choice but to sell herself? Su Tang felt there was no way things were so simple.
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tl begging corner:
