Chapter 3: Refusing to Acknowledge Father

“Mother, what are you doing?!” Erya stomped her foot furiously. “Where’s the money from selling the pig? Didn’t you promise to make me a new set of clothes for the New Year?”

Daya, usually the most steady and sensible of the three, looked stunned. She quickly pulled Erya back and said, “Let’s talk about this at home. Don’t make a scene in front of others.”

Sanya stood dumbly in place, glancing between her quarreling second sister and Xiao Yan in Lu Qiniang’s Large Bamboo Basket, her face full of confusion.

The crowd pointed and whispered among themselves, firing off questions from every direction.

Lu Qiniang, beaming with delight, turned to the onlookers and declared, “I’ll be hosting a feast in a few days. Don’t forget to stop by for a drink!”

She carried the man into the house, and Daya quickly shut the door behind them, blocking the prying eyes from outside.

Lu Qiniang’s home consisted of three main rooms with an adjoining eastern wing.

The three main rooms—Lu Qiniang occupied the central one. The eastern room belonged to Daya; she was a grown girl now and needed her own space.

The western room was shared by Erya and Sanya.

The eastern wing served as both kitchen and storage. On the west side, a makeshift shed stood over an empty chicken coop.

In fact, aside from these three rooms, Lu Qiniang owned a row of over ten pigpens in the back—they were part of her assets.

Only now, they all stood empty, not a pig in sight.

Lu Qiniang placed Xiao Yan onto the rickety locust wood chair in her room.

Erya, still fixated on her new clothes and clearly resistant to the idea of a stepfather, was the first to protest. “Mother, you said you’d never remarry! I’m not calling him Father!”

Even Daya showed visible signs of reluctance.

Daya asked softly, “Mother, what’s going on? How did this suddenly happen…”

Lu Qiniang grabbed the cup on the table, not caring whether the water was cold, and downed it in one gulp. With a sigh, she finally said, “He’s Xiao Yan, the General who routed the Barbarians. Now he’s fallen on hard times, worth five taels of silver. I happened to have exactly five taels on me. Tell me—should I have saved him or not? And does he not deserve to be called your Father?”

She still wanted to slap her own thigh.

Why did it have to be exactly five taels!

Even half a tael more, and she could’ve consoled herself that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to save him—it was that she couldn’t.

But in the end, it was a perfect match. Every last bit of silver she had was scraped together, just enough to buy him back.

Now how was she supposed to get through the New Year!

The three girls were all stunned.

Daya was the first to kneel, respectfully giving Xiao Yan a kowtow. Though it was hard for her to say, she still forced herself to speak: “Thank you for saving our lives, but… but…”

She couldn’t bring herself to say “Father.”

Erya, who was the sharpest in temperament, stomped her foot. Though unwilling, she still bowed her head, saying, “That silver was supposed to be ours anyway. Mother, I won’t call him Father.”

Only Sanya was in an emotional uproar. “Father, father, father! Mother said father went to a very far place. I thought father had died, but it turns out he’s still alive!”

Erya tugged at her: “Are you deaf or something? This isn’t our father, this is someone Mother bought!”

Lu Qiniang put her hands on her hips and scolded, “Bought? Once he steps into our door, whether you call him or not, he’s your father!”

Xiao Yan never expected this. He had originally made up his mind to fight to the death, but instead of dying, he ended up becoming a widow’s husband.

And not only that, he became the father of three grown daughters.

He was only twenty-four this year.

A cursed lone star, suddenly with a wife and daughters?

Heaven really wasn’t being “harsh” on him.

“Daya, go make some food, sweet potato porridge. Put less rice in it, we need to save some rice for the New Year.” Lu Qiniang instructed, “Erya, go boil some water. I’m going to give him a bath, he stinks. Sanya, go check if Sister Zhao is home making the wedding noodles. If she is, tell her I’m looking for her.”

The three daughters, each with their own thoughts, went out.

Lu Qiniang casually removed her dirty outer clothes and tossed them into the bamboo basket, then walked over to the wooden basin to wash her hands.

“My name is Lu Qiniang. My short-lived husband’s surname was Zhang. He died in battle in the northwest.” She said calmly. “It’s been nine years now.”

She had been a child bride of the Zhang family. When she was thirteen, her husband, Zhang Heyao, was forcibly conscripted into the army. He died a year later in the Battle of Anxi.

That battle was a devastating defeat for the Central Plains, with over thirty thousand casualties.

There were no remains, and not even a single copper coin in compensation.

But looking at her, she clearly seemed like a hard-working servant, with a body full of fat, and people would have guessed she was thirty.

“Poor people have cheap lives; death is just death. The Zhang family’s relatives wanted to sell me. I fought against them for two years, but when I couldn’t hold on anymore, you took office and led the troops to the northwest.”

Xiao Yan had someone go through the list and verify the number of casualties, ensuring that the fallen soldiers, including those whose bodies were never recovered, received their compensation.

“I received fifteen taels of silver,” Lu Qiniang continued, speaking of the past with a calm expression, as if recounting someone else’s story. “No one wanted to give their son to me, so I took the silver and bought myself a son. In the end…”

She suddenly smiled, her dim eyes shining with a sudden brightness, full of pride. She stretched out three fingers. “In the end, a boy cost fifteen taels, and a girl three. I spent six taels to buy two—Daya and Erya.”

She was beaming with delight, as if she had made a great profit.

“Then I used five taels to bribe the head of the Zhang family, and in the end, it was decided that Daya would marry in the future and bring a husband.”

“Sanya was just born and abandoned. She was left at my doorstep.”

She felt a pang of pity in her heart, but still, she kept her.

“…If we trace it back, without you standing up for justice and retrieving the fifteen taels of silver, there would have been no fate for the three of them and me. I probably wouldn’t have been able to endure being sold either.”

Therefore, Lu Qiniang was truly grateful to Xiao Yan.

For her and the three girls, Xiao Yan had given them a second chance at life.

So, even though she gritted her teeth, Lu Qiniang still took out all her savings and bought Xiao Yan.

Xiao Yan’s heart trembled.

What credit did he have?

He had merely done what was expected of him.

How could he have imagined that, among thousands of soldiers, there would be one man whose wife, years later, would save him?

“So you don’t need to be afraid,” Lu Qiniang said, “The reason I said I would bring you back to have children is because…”