Over on Li Dai's side, a night passed, and the three children woke up from hunger. Once fully awake and remembering the events of the previous night, any lingering sleepiness vanished completely. The youngest child, Lu Liang, said, "Big brother, that sister last night really was a good person. She didn't do anything to us at all." In Lu Liang's mind, anyone good-looking who didn't bully them was a good person. Unlike his two older brothers, who had once lived a relatively good life in the estate and enjoyed a period of being respected, Lu Liang had still been in swaddling clothes when his father remarried. After that, they had to scrape by under a stepmother. Although they weren't left to starve, their father was always busy with matters outside—in this world, men handled outer affairs while women managed the inner household. Thus, while their father was still alive, they hadn't suffered any overt mistreatment, but the mental torment they endured was by no means small. From that time on, Lu Shen and Lu Yan had learned early on how to read people's expressions.
Yet even days of such psychological torment did not last long. In the second year of the marriage with the stepmother, their father's health took a sharp turn for the worse. By the third year, when the youngest brother was just over two years old, their once-robust father passed away from illness. It was from the only surviving elderly servant left behind by their mother that they learned the stepmother intended to sel…
Chapter 1201