Yu Caihe hadn’t expected to meet such a shrewd little girl that would suddenly ask about the key point. Originally, she wanted to hide her past and hope for the best, but Mrs. Li had given a brief introduction about Su Tang when she had been bringing the girls over, so Yu Caihe didn’t want to let this chance slip no matter what.
According to Mrs. Li, there was only Su Tang and her brother in the family and there was nothing messy to worry about. If she were to be bought by Su Tang, she would only need to work hard and that would be all. Yu Caihe was a smart woman, and she knew that her appearance could stir evil thoughts in men, so she felt that going to Su Tang’s side would probably be the safest option for her. Who knew what she would end up facing if she had to go somewhere else.
All that flashed through her mind in an instant, and then she directly knelt down and said, “You’re right, I didn’t divorce him only because he beat me. Back then, he said a lot of sweet words to me before we got married, but then after we got married he completely changed and he would often get drunk and beat me.”
“But even then I was still willing to be his wife and try to live a good life with him. However, after that, he actually got addicted to gambling and going to brothels.”
Yu Caihe spilled everything out. “He ended up falling for one of those brothel girls and, after a while, that girl actually got pregnant and her belly started getting bigger. My husband was eager to put a green hat on himself and told me that he wanted to marry that girl who was carrying who-know-whose child, so I told him I would fulfill his wish. Using that excuse, I managed to coax him into signing the divorce papers.”
“But after I managed to divorce him, my situation wasn’t very good. My maternal family are all far away in a distant village, and besides, my parents are both gone. Even if I went back, the people back home would only despise me and try to quickly marry me off again. I didn’t want to have to go through that, so I decided to sell myself instead. I decided that I would work hard and bear whatever hardships I have to because at least as a maidservant I can still live an upright life.”
“Young miss, please buy me. I don’t want anything else, I just want to live an upright life.”
Looking at Su Tang’s apparent young age, Yu Caihe had slightly sugarcoated the matter and didn’t say things too straightforwardly. But she was well aware that another large source of her troubles was this face of hers. Back when she had still been married to that man, there had often been wild men from the village trying to flirt with her, and her husband would often beat her for ‘failing to abide by womanly virtues’.
Of course, she had never done anything wrong. Obviously, it was those unknown men who were chasing her, but she had always dodged away and did everything she could to make them stop. Despite that though, her husband would always accuse her of being a flirtatious woman.
In hindsight, Yu Caihe almost felt it was funny that she had decided to endure beatings to stay with a man like that. In the end, he even turned around and told her that he wanted to marry exactly the kind of woman he had always accused her of being! He even wanted to raise another man’s child with that woman, it was ridiculous.
That was why her only wish these days was to live an upright life and avoid any troubles that might appear because of this face of hers. Since she knew that Su Tang’s household was very simple, with only the brother and sister pair and no disgusting men at all, she wanted nothing more than for Su Tang to buy her.
She had no problem with working hard if it meant escaping the kind of life she had before.
When Su Tang heard all this, she suddenly had an epiphany and asked, “Was your husband surnamed Hu?”
Yu Caihe flinched unconsciously, but eventually, she nodded and replied, “Yes!”
When Mrs. Li heard the turn the conversation had taken, she wanted to say something, but before she could Su Tang stopped her and said, “Huh, I didn’t know it was the infamous Mrs. Hu.”
Needless to say, Su Tang’s sudden epiphany was because she had really heard of this Mrs. Hu before. Mrs. Hu was said to be the most famous slut in Wangjia Village and all of the surrounding areas, she was basically the ultimate negative example that mothers in this area held up for their daughters as a warning of how not to behave.
Of course, no one had mentioned anything to her, an eight-year-old girl, but she had heard the rumors nevertheless thanks to the orange cat’s investigations. It was said that this Madam Hu would always go out trying to fascinate and hook up with men by relying on her good looks.
In short, she was rumored to be a scourge against public decency. Back when Su Tang had first heard about it, she had just taken it as one more interesting rumor and didn’t think any further, but who would have thought she would stumble across this ‘celebrity’ at Mrs. Li’s shop.
Of course, Yu Caihe knew that she had a bad reputation, but the truth was that all of those rumors were just the product of her scum husband making things up to smear her. Also, those random men who would try to take advantage of her would often get angry and spread rumors when they failed, and then wives behind those men would get angry because their husbands were looking at another woman, so they would spread rumors as well. These people all talked about her everywhere for their own various reasons until, in the end, her reputation was in the gutters.
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