Her thick lips opened and closed, but she could only point at Liu Changning and stutter “You, you, you…”, gasping for air in her anger.

Liu Changning looked at her amusedly. This Liu Zheng was just a pretender, quick to anger and slow to understand. Her husband, Mr. Tian, was actually the most troublesome person.

Their daughter Liu Dong was the apple of Mr. and Mrs. Tian’s eye. Because Liu Dong had started learning early, reciting poems at six and writing beautifully at ten, even the teachers at the academy often praised her potential for the imperial examinations.

Now that Liu Changning was using Liu Dong’s reputation as leverage, Mr. Tian was furious to the point of liver pain, though he didn’t show it on his face.

He rolled his eyes, stepped forward, and instead of getting angry, smiled and said, “It’s been a few days since we last met, and our grand-niece’s temper has grown. Since you have no shame, today your uncle will have to lower himself to reason with you.”

Mr. Tian put on a fierce face, his voice thick and coarse. He didn’t seem as shy as most husbands in regular families.

He put his hands on his hips and said arrogantly, “Your mother has been gone for ten years. It was us, husband and wife, who took you in and raised you to adulthood. Although we were strict in disciplining you in the past, we still brought you up. Now, seeing that you’ve married and established yourself, we’re not asking for repayment, just hoping you still have a bit of conscience. Since you’re disrespectful to us today, you should return the food my wife-master has fed you all these years.”

“How much does Uncle think I need to repay?”

Mr. Tian’s tense expression relaxed slightly. He rolled his eyes and held up five fingers to Liu Changning: “Your uncle knows it’s not easy for you, but your husband is a man of great ability. With his bewitching looks, he must have quite a bit of private money. Your uncle isn’t asking for much, just five hundred taels of silver, and we’ll be even from now on, with no need for further contact. What does my niece think?”

The weather was hot, and at this moment, the sky was heavily overcast. Liu Changning couldn’t stop the sweat on her forehead. She raised her sleeve to wipe the sweat clean.

Only then did she lower her head and scan Mr. Tian with an ambiguous smile: “That won’t do. We must settle the accounts clearly. If five hundred taels of silver is too little, wouldn’t that be shortchanging you? Since Uncle wants to reason it out, why don’t we find the village head and calculate how much coarse grain I’ve used from your family over the years? Although I was young when my mother and father died, my memory is still fresh. The dowry of my father and the twenty mu of good land under my mother’s name were all seized by Second Aunt’s family. I may be illiterate, but the village head has the contract for the change of land ownership.”

Liu Changning suddenly made eye contact with Mr. Tian. Her tea-colored eyes were so pale that no emotion could be discerned. The smile at the corner of her lips disappeared without a trace as she said in a low voice, “Why don’t we calculate this account? I, Liu Changning, have never been one to let my aunt suffer a loss.”

Mr. Tian’s eyes narrowed to slits, his face so black it seemed as if ink could drip from it.

They certainly couldn’t go to the village head to reason it out. If it were just Liu Da’s good fields that the wife-master had occupied, they might barely have a justification. But they had absolutely no right to forcibly seize the dowry in the hands of Liu Da’s husband.

That dowry, if calculated carefully, would amount to a hundred taels of silver, which she had long since used to support her maiden family. Many of its uses were unknown even to Liu Zheng.

If they were to really reason it out clearly, his fate…

Mr. Tian’s gaze turned sharp as he spoke first to gain the upper hand: “Fine! We’ve said all the nice words we could to you, yet you still act like an ungrateful wolf. If you don’t agree, I, Tian Yong, will throw away my face and ask the human traffickers in the county to sell you to the imperial palace.”

Liu Changning rubbed her chin. Human traffickers? Mr. Tian was indeed fearless about selling her, huh?

She raised an eyebrow and looked down at the two, unmoved.

Mr. Tian glared angrily, snorted coldly, and pulled out a yellowed paper from his bosom.

His well-maintained hand unfolded the paper and stepped forward two steps. The black characters on white paper were close enough for Liu Changning to glance at casually.

Mr. Tian smiled confidently and said, “Grand-niece, don’t blame your uncle for being heartless, taking out this indenture contract to threaten you. If you weren’t disobedient and sharp-tongued, your uncle would never have been so disrespectful to you today.”

Liu Changning’s gaze fell on the yellowed rice paper. She opened her mouth, about to speak, when suddenly her mind ached.

She rubbed her buzzing, aching forehead and leaned against the wooden door. The hidden memories of the original host, perhaps stimulated by this contract, flooded into her memory sea all at once.

Browsing through the suddenly acquired additional part of the memory, Liu Changning finally understood why her inheritance of the original host’s memory fragments was incomplete when she transmigrated.

The original host was a schizophrenic with a dual personality. And the cause of all this was the contract in Mr. Tian’s hand.

The original host was weak from a young age, inheriting her personality from her father’s womb, but it wasn’t severe. When encountering unhappy things, she would vent. When encountering things she didn’t want to do, she would refuse.

After her mother and father passed away, she lived with her aunt’s family, suffering oppression, but still harbored hope for life.

Five years ago, Liu Zheng came home drunk from the village, flew into a rage, and beat the original host severely, nearly taking her life.

The original host’s fighting spirit was aroused. Once she could get out of bed, she secretly found a matron her mother used to know, planning to appeal to the village head for justice.

Who knew that this plan was accidentally discovered by Mr. Tian.

That day, in the firewood room of Liu Zheng’s house, the original host suffered almost inhumanly cruel treatment.

Liu Zheng stripped off her clothes and hung her from a beam to whip her.

If it had just been a severe beating, the original host would still have had hope that one day in the future she could report this family of vicious relatives to the county. But she never imagined that while she was unconscious, Mr. Tian made her put her mark on an indenture contract.

In her unclear state of mind, she had turned herself into a slave who could be sold at her master’s will.

When she woke up from the pool of blood, the original host must have been in despair and split into two personalities.

The main personality was weak and compliant, while the secondary personality was stubborn, vicious, and would stop at nothing.