The Farm Girl and the Executioner (Rebirth) 3

Chapter 3: The Qin Family Breaks the Engagement

After giving the bracelet to Jiang Huaizhen, the great weight on Lin Shuang’s heart finally lifted, and she climbed back into bed.

Last night, having returned to her youth, she was filled with a mixture of fear and excitement, and had barely slept a wink. Her aunt, thinking she could sell her for a good price in two days, hadn’t pushed her to do any work.

She had originally planned to go up the mountain this morning to gather some herbs, thinking they might be useful later. But as long as the matter of the marriage wasn’t resolved, she couldn’t rest easy, nor could she muster the energy for anything else. She hadn’t left the house all day.

She had learned to identify medicinal herbs in her previous life, at the Qin residence.

The Qin family’s ancestors had made their fortune by opening an apothecary. Logically, a family with a background in medicine shouldn’t have believed in things like chongxi marriages. Perhaps they were desperate, or perhaps there were other reasons Lin Shuang didn’t know. In any case, Old Madam Qin had made the decision and arranged the matter.

When Lin Shuang arrived at the Qin residence, Young Master Qin Chong was already on his deathbed. She had been served good food and drink for over a month, living in constant fear. After Young Master Qin passed away, Old Madam Qin discovered the falsification of her birth characters. She sent people to the Lin family to confront them, but Lin Mancang and his wife refused to admit it, and the two families became enemies.

The Qin family then blamed Qin Chong’s death on her, telling everyone she was a jinx who had brought misfortune upon her husband.

She couldn’t return to the Lin family and was treated like a servant. She would follow the herb gatherers up the mountain to pick herbs, process them, and even act as a test subject for new medicines. After ten years, she had learned to identify all the herbs but had also accumulated a host of ailments.

They were certain that her weak nature meant she wouldn’t resist, and they even entrusted Qin Chong’s two children to her care.

Old Madam Qin had even said to a servant in her presence, “She’s a spineless wretch. Even if I opened the gates of the Qin residence, she wouldn’t dare to run. Where could she run to? Could she possibly kill herself?”

She indeed hadn’t dared to run. She had worked tirelessly like an ox, but she never expected that the two children she had raised with her own hands would turn out to be ungrateful wretches. The older one had personally broken her legs, and the younger one, afraid she would make a sound, had clamped a hand tightly over her mouth.

Remembering the hour she had spent buried underground, the piercing pain in her knees, and the stench of the corpse beside her, it felt as if she had been in hell.

In her final moments, she had struggled, pushing against the coffin lid with all her might.

But it was all in vain.

Yet, for a fleeting moment, as her hands pushed with all their strength against the confines, she felt as if she could perceive everything in the surrounding soil—the few bones and insects buried nearby, the number of stones hidden in the earth, the shape and direction of the tree roots, and even what kinds of trees and grasses were planted above…

However, as the air in the coffin grew thinner, she gradually lost consciousness.

It wasn’t until she heard the thump, thump of a metal tool digging through the soil and striking the coffin lid that she was found by Jiang Huaizhen, whom she hadn’t seen in ten years.

At this thought, Lin Shuang suddenly threw off the quilt and got out of bed again.

She squatted on the ground, her hands spread flat, her fingers and palms touching the earth.

When she closed her eyes, it was as if countless invisible tendrils grew from her palms, probing into the packed earth, seeping into the soil.

Two feet underground, an earthworm was wriggling. The roots of the old scholar tree behind the house extended beneath this room. Fifty paces to the right, there was water.

Lin Shuang’s eyes snapped open. That was the location of the Lin family’s well.

Suppressing the wild joy in her heart, she stood up and walked to the window. She pushed open the bamboo shutter and held her hands out, letting the fine, dense rain wash away the dirt.

The rain was cold, and the wind was chilly, but her heart was warm.

Heavens, my past life was so miserable. In this life, have you finally opened your eyes?

**

The next afternoon, the rain was still falling steadily when people from the Qin family arrived.

Matchmaker Wang walked in front, her old face fallen like a frost-bitten eggplant.

The visitor was an old servant from the Qin family, in his fifties. He started cursing the moment he entered the village, calling Lin Mancang and his wife shameless for changing the birth characters of their jinx of a niece, who had caused the death of her own parents, and sending her to the Qin family. He accused them of trying to bring misfortune upon their young master.

He cursed the Lin family for eighteen generations and cursed Lin Shuang, that little slut, for having the audacity to try and climb the social ladder.

Hearing the string of curses, people from every household poked their heads out to see what was happening.

Inside her room, Lin Shuang heard the curses drawing nearer and a faint smile touched her lips.

Jiang Huaizhen may look cold and distant, but she is reliable. It’s only been half a day, and they’re already here.

The old crone who had come was Matron Lou, the wife of the Qin family’s steward. In her past life, if Old Madam Qin’s cruelty toward her was a ten, then this woman’s was a nine. Every one of the old madam’s orders was carried out by this matron, whether it was beating, scolding, or punishing. She had the final say.

Now that this matron was here, her uncle and aunt would not have an easy time.

A dog-eat-dog fight should be quite a show.

If the matter had been exposed after Lin Shuang had already entered the Qin household, there was no way the Lins would have spit out the silver they had swallowed.

That’s what they had done in her past life; they never returned the money.

But now that the fake birth characters had been discovered before she even married into the family, the situation was different. The Qin family, while not a major household, were at least minor landowners. Lin Mancang and his wife were in the wrong and couldn’t afford to offend them.

Lin Shuang’s birth characters were no secret. Matchmaker Wang had already confessed, and there was no room for negotiation.

Several families from the village had gathered to watch the commotion. Ma Guihua, trying to save some face, suddenly changed her tune and shouted toward Lin Shuang’s room, “In the end, this was all for Shuang’s sake! When she heard she could become a young mistress, she cried and fussed, insisting on marrying. We couldn’t persuade her otherwise. If she were my own daughter, I’d rather beat her to death than agree. But as her aunt and uncle, if we didn’t agree, we’d be accused of mistreating an orphan, and people would gossip. Now we’ve agreed, and it’s turned into a joke.”

The words were a mix of truth and lies. Those who knew Ma Guihua’s character couldn’t help but snicker.

But some people believed her.

For years, the only one left from the second branch of the Lin family was this girl, and she was often ordered around by the main branch. Perhaps she really did harbor dreams of becoming a young mistress.

Hearing this, Matron Lou became even more incensed. “As expected of a lowly creature from the backwoods! Luckily, we found out early. If we had really carried her over in the sedan, and something had happened to our young master, how would you have compensated us?”

At this, Lin Shuang finally got up, opened the door, and walked out.

The sixteen-year-old girl was pitifully thin, and her skin was somewhat dark from years of labor. Fortunately, she had good features, and it was clear she would be quite pretty with a little care.

But her face held a composure that didn’t match her age. Her eyes, when they glanced over, carried a hint of coldness, making her seem like a completely different person from the shy, timid girl of yesterday.

Matron Lou’s sharp eyes scanned her up and down. “You look like a scrawny, poor monkey. You think you’re worthy of our young master?” she shrieked.

Lin Shuang looked at the old crone’s blatant disdain, then suddenly leaned forward and sneered in a low voice, “How do you think you found out my birth characters were fake?”

Matron Lou was slightly taken aback.

But Lin Shuang didn’t spare her another glance. She would settle her score with this old crone later. For now, in front of everyone, she had to deal with Ma Guihua’s lies first.

She turned and raised her voice, “If I have ever said a single word about wanting to marry into the Qin family, may I be struck by lightning and die a horrible death, and may my descendants, for generations to come, be slaves if they are men and prostitutes if they are women!”

The usually timid and quiet girl had uttered such a vicious oath, shocking everyone present.

“Aunt, do you dare to make such an oath?” Lin Shuang looked at Ma Guihua.

Of course, Ma Guihua didn’t dare.

Lin Mancang clenched his fists and shouted, “When adults are talking, what business does a child have interrupting? Get back in the house!”

Lin Shuang chuckled softly. True to his word, she stopped being aggressive, lowered her eyes meekly, and turned back to her room.

Matron Lou watched this scene and clicked her tongue. “What a fine show! An aunt and uncle scheming against their own niece, and trying to pull our Qin family into it! This little girl has a sharp tongue; she doesn’t look like an easy one. It’s a good thing I found out early. Who knows what kind of trouble she would have caused if we had brought someone like her into our home.”

“Pah! A whole family of monsters! Now give back the silver!”

“And you, you old crone,” she said, turning to the matchmaker. “Conspiring with this family to cheat people. Once word of this gets out, we’ll see who dares to hire you as a matchmaker again!”

Matchmaker Wang’s face turned beet red with shame. She could only shift the blame to Lin Mancang and his wife. “It wasn’t just the second branch couple who died in the plague back then. Which family in the nearby villages didn’t lose someone? You can’t count that… How would an outsider like me know that girl’s birth characters…”

Ma Guihua was not about to take the fall alone. “Wasn’t it you who helped find the fortune-telling Daoist?” she retorted.

As more and more was revealed, the village chief quickly interrupted, “Alright, alright, that’s enough! Have you no shame? Mancang, hurry up and make a decision.”

If word got out that their village married off girls with falsified birth characters, who would be willing to seek a marriage here?

Lin Mancang’s face was ashen as he snapped at Ma Guihua, “Go and get the silver!”

Hearing this, Ma Guihua gritted her teeth, stomped her foot, and went back into the house.

When she came out, she was holding a silver ingot.

Seeing the silver, Matron Lou snatched it away, cursing, “Shameless paupers, making me run this errand for nothing.”

With a look of disgust at Ma Guihua, she left the village with two family servants, muttering curses all the way.

After seeing the village chief off, Lin Mancang closed the door and began smashing the pots and pans in the house with a loud clatter.

Ma Guihua yelled at Lin Shuang through the door, “I was thinking of letting you marry into a rich family to live a good life, but who knew you were so useless! It was bad enough you jinxed your parents to death, but now you’ve brought trouble to our family too. Such bad luck!”

She didn’t know how the little girl in the room had seemed to change into a different person. Usually, she was so submissive when spoken to, but today she had dared to stand up to her. It was truly strange.

The thought of the shiny silver flying away made her heart ache.

Lin Shuang couldn’t be bothered to argue with her. She stayed in her room, stitching the sole of a shoe.

She had originally intended to make a pair of shoes for herself. Thinking that at sixteen, her feet might still grow, she had made the soles quite long. Unfortunately, in her past life, her life had been so hard that her feet had stopped growing, and she hadn’t grown much taller either. She had never worn those shoes.

But now, there was someone else who could wear them.

The Jiang family was dirt poor right now. Jiang Huaizhen had to walk back and forth to the city for her job, and a pair of shoes wouldn’t last long before they were worn out. Although she knew how to sew shoes herself, who would mind an extra pair?