201: Chapter 201 No Morals, No Worries 201: Chapter 201 No Morals, No Worries Once people lose the shackles of morality, they are capable of acts that those with a conscience could never even conjure up in their minds.
Some people hold others to an exceptionally high moral standard; they see someone else eat an extra garlic vermicelli steamed scallop at a meal and think that person has a character flaw, unworthy of deeper association.
These are bad habits spoiled into being.
Flowers in a greenhouse have never seen hailstones the size of a bowl.
This time, Wang Yunxiao truly saw the world.
Jiang Yinyin was not at home; only her parents and a bunch of shady men were there.
She was not at home because she had been sold, her father didn’t even hesitate for a second.
Understanding this matter requires starting from the beginning—her father not only sold her, but also sold her mother along with her.
After the new government was established, two rounds of crackdown on crime and evil resulted in the closure of brothels, opium dens, and casinos.
The man who bought her mother was arrested and ended up eating peanuts in prison, and her mother was rescued and had nowhere to go.
In the end, she returned to her husband.
However, her father didn’t settle down for long and sold her mother again within half a year.
This time was different from the last; that time he had lost a bet and needed to settle a debt with his wife and daughter.
Now, the new government strictly prohibited gambling and human trafficking, and openly, no one dared to engage in such business.
This frustrated her father terribly.
The world’s masters are so vile, they govern heaven and earth, but how dare they dictate whether I can sell my own wife?
Life was hard enough for me alone, and now with my wife returned, there’s one more mouth to feed.
Are you expecting me to survive on northwest winds?
With deep resentment, her father turned and joined a sect.
As long as you listen to the senior brother’s sermons and missions, you can scrounge for food and drink, and every brother and sister in the sect is as close as limbs, united and cordial.
Your wife is my wife, and my wife is your wife, without distinction.
Since Jiang Yinyin’s mother was once a beautiful woman who bore a pretty daughter, she naturally had good looks, making the brothers in the sect especially like coming over for sermons.
Though they said they were as close as limbs without distinction, in a society run on interpersonal relations, it’s only right for a junior not to charge money out of filial piety, and improper for a senior to come empty-handed, risking ridicule.
So, the household’s financial problems were temporarily solved.
Of course, if it were just this, Jiang Yinyin would have had nothing to do with it.
Her mother was the one who sought her way back, and she herself did not return.
According to the sale document written by her father in black and white, as per the rules of the former dynasty, she had absolutely nothing to do with that man anymore.
If a daughter remembers her father after getting married and provides him with food and drink, that’s called filial piety.
Ignoring this biological father is also reasonable, and no one can fault her for it.
You can’t expect everyone to refrain from nitpicking, but there is no need to live under the moral abduction of those sticklers.
Jiang Yinyin had never thought of finding her biological parents, but after her father had his fill, he remembered he had such a daughter.
Of course, it wasn’t that he remembered on his own; it was after hearing from fellow sect brothers that someone was secretly searching for suitable young men and women, willing to pay a high price.
This was normal.
Even though the new government had banned the slave trade, the grand households of the former dynasty still needed maidservants, wet nurses, gatekeepers, and servants to take care of household matters.
Wet nurses were easy to find, but little maidservants were not so anymore.
You send all these money-losing assets off to school to study, what’s left for the lords and ladies?
What’s there for the young masters and misses?
Where there is demand, there will be a market.
Nowadays it’s difficult to sign a servitude contract, but the harder it is to sign, naturally the higher the price it fetches.
Others had mentioned this Mr.
Tong, who specialized in handling unsavory affairs for high-ranking officials in secret.
Word in the Jianghu World was that he paid top dollar for literate young girls, offering more for those with good looks and temperament, and even more if they had clear origins and untarnished family backgrounds.
As for what purpose they were used, well, everyone who needed to know understood.
Her father slapped his thigh in excitement, exclaiming that it was such a coincidence because he had just the daughter for them!
……
This information wasn’t volunteered by her father, of course.
Rather, it came after Wang Yunxiao had him and several fellow apprentices suspended and stripped down to be thrashed with willow branches for an entire Chinese Hour.
It was only after consolidating everyone’s testimonies that he was able to piece together the full extent of the incident.
Two hundred bucks—that was the price Jiang Yinyin’s father quoted for selling his daughter the second time.
What a hefty sum.
The first time he sold her, the girl was younger, fetching merely ten foreign dollars.
Now, in the new era, life had improved.
Plus, the girl had grown up, was presentable, and could read and write—a surely different price was to be expected.
Naturally, the document found in the house wouldn’t show the two hundred dollars, nor the word “sale.” It was written as a “voluntary gift of Yinyin to Madam Chen as a servant.”
Quite the legal savviness, learning to exploit loopholes.
Wang Yunxiao laughed heartily as he examined the document retrieved from their home.
Jiang Yinyin’s classmates couldn’t find such humor.
The class representative turned pale with anger, while Zhou Qing’s pout and tearful face resembled that of pear blossoms drenched by the rain.
They were all delicate flowers from a greenhouse, unaccustomed to the heavy taste of rural manure.
“What are you all standing around for?
Let everyone down.
It’s just a small matter.
Just tell me the truth, and you can spare yourself the pain,” Wang Yunxiao said.
The ones who were let down could only whimper without being able to speak.
Good grief!
You could have asked us when you were whipping us!
“Big brother, let’s call the police!”
The class representative was full of righteous indignation and naivety, actually suggesting to call the police at such a time.
Wang Yunxiao waved his hand dismissively, pulled out the rag from the mouth of a hefty man who started the beating, patted his cheek affectionately, and asked with a smile, “Brother, I’m not familiar with your Sect Hierarch…
or maybe it’s your Big Brother.
In any case, someone who can deal with the situation.
What’s his esteemed full name?”
The burly man, most resistant but also most severely beaten, had lost all his bravado at this point, his snot and tears mingling as he cried as though his own father had died.
“Mercy, good sir!
Mercy!
Our Big Brother’s surname is Xiao, others call him Fifth Master Xiao…”
“I don’t care about your Fifth Master or Sixth Master.
Go back and tell your Big Brother to cough up ten thousand bucks for my brother’s medical expenses.
Otherwise, tonight I’m going to kill his entire family!”
Facing Wang Yunxiao’s brutal threats, the big man dared not utter a word and fled in a flurry with the rest, tumbling and scrambling away in embarrassment.
The group ran for their lives down two streets, and only when they saw no one in pursuit did they collapse on the ground, gasping for air.
As the burly man glanced back and seemed to want to say something to save face, a fellow apprentice quickly advised, “Big Brother, as long as the green hills are there, there will always be wood to burn.
We shouldn’t mess with such ruthless people; how about we call the police instead?”