The Legend of the Concubine in the Harem

In the Great Sheng Dynasty, not every man could take a concubine. The "Shengli" clearly stipulated who could take a concubine and how many concubines a man of different social status could have. Moreover, the current trend was that for men, especially those who were going to take imperial examinations and become officials, having many concubines and being obsessed with beauty were not considered a good thing.

The most important purpose for officials who entered the government through the imperial examination to take concubines - at least on the surface - was actually to have offspring.

In the common people, men of commoner status, such as craftsmen and merchants, could take concubines only if they were 40 years old and had no children. Or they could rent a concubine from another family, pay her a sum of money, and send her back after she gave birth to a child. If a man took a concubine in violation of the rules, he would be fined and flogged, and the concubine would have to be released.

Therefore, most common people lived their entire lives as a couple. If they could not have children, they would either divorce their wives and remarry, or wait until they were old enough and pay to take in a concubine, or sell the concubine to have children, or adopt a child from a clan member to inherit the family business and take care of them in their old age.

But for merchants who have money but relatively low status, taking a concubine becomes a troublesome thing. If they have children at home or are under the age of majority and want to take a concubine, they have to pay a large amount of redemption silver to the government. Therefore, merchants love to take advantage of loopholes, build extra houses, keep concubines, and even worse, they even make up the title of a co-wife to circumvent the rules of taking a concubine.

At the same time, some landlords, wealthy families, and merchants with a little wealth were impatient to buy extra houses, and did not want to pay the fines to the government for taking concubines in violation of the regulations, so they came up with another idea.

That's adoption.

They adopted good-looking children from poor families, or orphans, or bought them directly from the market. They told others that these children were their own adopted children, but in fact their status was almost the same as that of the maids or servants kept in wealthy families.

Not only did they have to serve their "parents" at home on weekdays, but when they grew up, they also had to serve them in bed.

Among them, there is a kind of beasts who love boys and girls who have not grown up. They take advantage of their status as traveling merchants to find good-looking children and take them home to play with them. When the adopted children are old, they will find a home for them and release them. If the heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys are all black, they will either kill them directly and tell others that they died young and bury them on the grave. Or they will sell the children when they grow up.

Children who are brought up in this way since childhood will most likely end up in prostitution and will never be able to escape from it for the rest of their lives.

Xue Zhuo is seventeen this year.

Much younger than Xie Jingrong.

Aunt Guan originally wanted to marry her later-born daughter to Xie Jingrong. Although Xie Jingrong was a little older, he had the title of a scholar. Xie's mother ran a good small business, and the family was considered wealthy even in the common people's alley. Aunt Guan, who was attracted by Xie's wealth and Xie Jingrong's status as a scholar, automatically ignored his age.

At that time, several years had passed since Xie Jingrong's first fiancée eloped with her lover. She was able to bring her children and lover back to her parents' home to visit her parents, while Xie Jingrong buried his head in books. Although he didn't read much, he was still very calm when he met his ex-fiancée holding her child on the road, and he didn't intend to blame her.

In addition to the two important reasons of Xie family's background and Xie Jingrong's identity, Aunt Guan also liked Xie Jingrong's temper the most. Her biological daughter was a spoiled child with a bad temper, so Aunt Guan wanted to find a caring and good-tempered man to match her daughter.

However, she was optimistic about Xie Jingrong, but her daughter did not like him.

When the two families were discussing the horoscopes for marriage, the daughter of the Guan family, like Xie Jingrong's ex-fiancee, resolutely ran away from home.

Before she left, she deliberately swapped her birth date with her "sister's" and wanted Xue Zhuo to marry the "old man". By the time Aunt Guan realized something was wrong, the birth date had already been handed over and her daughter was nowhere to be found.

Apart from Xue Zhuo who was deliberately swapped, Aunt Guan only gave birth to a son and a daughter. Her daughter ran away before marriage, and she did not dare to marry off Xue Zhuo, who was raised as a girl since childhood. So the truth was slowly exposed as Guan's daughter ran away, and Xie Jingrong happily got 2 "ex-fiancées".

What happened next was what Xie's mother had just said.

The person who maliciously swapped the children received a somewhat unfair punishment, and the two children who were swapped did not have a good ending either.

Xue Zhuo, who was used to wearing skirts and doing needlework, was not tall, but had a pretty face, a slender figure, and spoke in a soft voice. She could not read a single word, but was good at housework. Xue Xiucai already hated his wife's family very much, and now he saw that his only son had grown up to be neither male nor female, which made him even more angry.

Xue Xiucai didn't feel sorry for his child because he didn't raise him. Instead, he thought of selling his concubine to have a child because he really hated his old wife. Xue's mother felt sorry for her own child, but it was a pity that she had spent all her dowry on her younger brother. Uncle Guan never returned the money he saved to her sister. She had no status in the Xue family, and her family was in decline. She had to depend on Xue Xiucai's family to survive in the future.

So even though she felt a little sorry for Xue Zhuo, Xue's mother did nothing for this child who she owed the most. Instead, she watched her husband "give" him to a businessman as an "adopted son", and then took the initiative to prepare accommodation for the concubine who was about to come to the house - after all, she was just a concubine, and if she gave birth to a child in the future, she would raise the child under her knees, and when she was old, it would be that child who would support her.

As for the daughter who had been raised for many years and left with her mother, and Xue Zhuo who was given to the merchant, they all agreed that they were stains and burdens that should be discarded.

"Since he followed the merchant, how could he get in touch with my eldest brother again?" From what Xie's mother said, Xie Yi was probably conferred the title of Marquis of Yongjia. During the time Xie Jingrong returned home, he met Xue Zhuo again. This made Xie Yu really think too much, wondering if someone was using this person to plot against his family.

Xie's mother continued to sigh and said, "Although he was adopted by the merchant, he could not leave the capital. The merchant had a mistress in the suburbs of the capital, who was jealous and vicious."

"I don't know what he was thinking. He actually placed Xue Zhuo in the concubine's house and went to do business first. The businessman had a son who happened to be studying in the same academy as your elder brother. When he saw Xue Zhuo's beauty, he..." Xie's mother looked at Xie Yi with some embarrassment. She also knew that the situation of her daughter and grandson did not allow them to be too naive.

So he gritted his teeth and continued, "When the merchant was away, he took Xue Zhuo and dressed him up as a servant and brought him to the academy. Later, when the merchant came back, the mistress told him that the merchant was angry that Xue Zhuo seduced his son, so he took his family and took Xue Zhuo away from the academy and gave him to... to that person."

She made a click gesture.

Xie Yuzhen, who always had a forward-thinking mentality, was speechless for a long time because of this melon: "...What a lousy academy, they can even let outsiders in to arrest people, no wonder my brother is still a scholar after studying for so many years."