Chapter 1641 — Wei Zhao's Analysis
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
If it had been anyone else—when Zou Ruoming came to harass her, why had her mother not traded her away then? In time Tang Zhi had worked these things out for herself, and she no longer misunderstood her mother as much as before. What remained now was only a touch of helplessness.
"Auntie, I do know a thing or two about the hidden clans." Another main purpose of Wei Zhao's visit was to talk her out of the notion of going to the Hidden Tang family to return home in glory and put on airs. So he gave her a brief account of what the hidden clans were like, then said, "With the little strength we have, they wouldn't even look at us..."
Tang Zhi had in fact explained all this before, but her mother put far more faith in Wei Zhao's words. Their happy life today, and the healing of Tang Jucheng's leg—all of it was thanks to Wei Zhao, and she knew that this son-in-law of hers could do whatever he set out to do, and would surely set her mind at ease.
Take the lucky draw when they bought the apartment, for instance—small things like that Wei Zhao did not mind doing to satisfy her vanity. But the Hidden Tang family, from what he said, was truly a monstrous thing, and her idea of going back to show off had largely dissolved.
"Is that so... then never mind, we may as well not go! Hidden Tang family or not, what has it to do with us?" Tang Zhi's mother said. "It's only that I wonder how my little sister is doing... All these years, not a word. And after I doted on her so when she was small!"
Other things she did not much care about; she expected no benefit from the Hidden Tang family. What she wanted was to see her little sister. Tang Zhi's mother had one younger sister and one younger brother. The brother's family had also benefited lately—his boy Xiaowei had run up a debt and was about to sell a kidney, and it was Wei Zhao who had helped settle the matter.
And toward this sister, deep down, she still felt a great guilt. True, the letter she had written begging for help had gone unanswered, but she knew her sister must hate her. If she had not wanted to take her out for a bit of fun that day, if they had not gone to the Hidden Tang family, her sister would never have been noticed by the head of that house and kept there by force as a concubine.
So whatever the rights and wrongs of it, she missed this sister dearly. For all her talk, there was worry in her heart.
Faced with the tangled affairs of Tang Zhi's family, Wei Zhao could only smile bitterly. "Auntie, your sister... may not have had an easy life in the Tang family either..."
He could tell as much from the way Zhao Guangyin, head of the Zhao family, treated Zhao Qibing. These hidden clans had little use for concubines or the children born of them. He did not know how Zhao Qibing had lately risen again, but before this he had certainly been given short shrift.
"Yes... Xiaoming must have her own difficulties. Otherwise, with the two of you so close, how could she not help us?" Tang Jucheng took it philosophically. "Wei Zhao is right, the Hidden Tang family is a complicated place, and Xiaoming may not hold any high position there. Otherwise, when we took Yun'er to the Tang family to be entered in the genealogy, why did the servants still treat us so coldly? Why were we refused even a single meeting with Xiaoming? That alone shows her word counts for nothing there."