Chapter 53: Retribution, Wang Yushan Defeated
Translator: Antonia
The atmosphere instantly plummeting to freezing point. All people were clammed up by the title deed.
Seeing the deed floating in the wind, Mo Qianxue got so pissed off that she wanted to tear up the viciously smiling face before her.
At this moment, she felt defeated, to an old yellow paper. No matter how hard she fought, she couldn’t win over the title deed. In ancient times, a title deed had the same legal force as a property ownership certificate! No wonder that the guy showed up so confident, so sure that he would win this battle.
The tofu recipe was no big deal in her eyes, but she was a person who would never bend over a strong arm. When he wanted that, she just wouldn’t give him. In the worst scenario, she could find another land and build a new house again.
Looking back at the newly-built big house, she determined that even if to demolish it and to crash the workshop, she wouldn’t let the guy get his way. She wouldn’t let him get everything so easily. He would get his retribution, sooner or later!
Feeling the despair of the person next to him, Ning Shaoqing suddenly opened his squinting eyes and clinched his hand that held Mo Qianxue’s.
Mo Qianxue looked to him. Ning Shaoqing had released her and made a small step forward to protect her behind him, like an eagle protecting its eaglet.
This small movement gave Mo Qianxue unparalleled warmth. A house was nothing. She could build another one at any time, as long as he was around her.
Ning Shaoqing didn’t look at her. The pitch-dark cold eyes were fixed at the village head. The delicate lips were stretched into a line on his cold stern face which didn’t show a bit the usual courtesy and gentleness that it used to have.
Faced with that pair of eyes, the village head felt a freezing blast of wind coming over, so penetrating that he even trembled at it and suddenly felt himself infinitely diminishing. He unconsciously lowered his head.
“Head. May I ask what kind of people should be expelled out of the clan?” Ning Shaoqing asked in a chilly impassive tone, as if this had nothing to do with his own business.
The village head trembled bodily! In the moment, he got speechless.
As far as he knew, in the village log of Wang village, there was no record of people being expelled out of the clan.
Being expelled out of the clan and the village were two completely different matters.
The punishment of the former one was even more serious than being deprived of political right for life in modern times, because it would also deprive all the descendants of the right to running for an official career.
Therefore, either be the person a murder or arsonist, he usually would not be expelled from the clan though he might be expelled to an isolated remote area.
A person not on the family tree, however knowledgeable he was, couldn’t get the opportunity of recommendation. For such a person, no matter how capable he or she was, they couldn’t find someone to marry.
The meant to break the person’s incense of descendants and be despised by the public.
The expelled one would lose all his face. Everyone could come over and spit on him. Such a person could hardly survive.
If he wanted to live with dignity, then he must go to another place and change his name, giving up his ancestral surname forever.
The village head thought again and again, his forehead oozing cold sweats. He just couldn’t find a proper rule to expel Wang Yushan out of the Wang clan. He found it hard to make the decision!
The crowd was still in shock and quickly overturned by another rolling wave, becoming dumbfounded at once again.
Expel someone out of the family! The Wang village hadn’t witnessed such a big event in the last one century.
“A person with outrageous disrespect should be expel!”
“A person with outrageous without filial piety should be expel!”
Ning Shaoqing spelled word by word.
His voice wasn’t loud, but each word from his mouth thumped, like a hammer, in the mind of the village head, on the hearts of the audience and into the soul of Wang Yushan.
“He disrespected the head and his parents. It was the same as the disrespect toward heaven and earth, which was the outrageous disrespect! For his parents, he didn’t take care of them when they were alive nor bury them when they passed away nor offer incense to the memorial tablets. This was outrageous unfiliality!” Ning Shaoqing’s tone was light and indifferent and his face solemn, as if he was bathed in a cloud of glory.
“For such a disrespectful and unfilial person, what are you hesitating, clan head? Are the clan rules a decoration?”
Every sentence of his speech made sense! No one could refute.
His eyes intently regarded the head, calling him clan head instead of village head.
The village head was entitled by the official.
The clan head was selected by the Wangs to be the person serve the ancestral hall and to represent the Wang clan, and to set a role model of the clan rules.
“Since he has committed such a big mistake, I don’t think I have to say more about how to deal with him?” Ning Shaoqing looked impassive.
An expelled person should be cut off in every aspect from the clan!
Even if they were biological father and son, they must cut all connections, let alone an adopted son. In this way, if the father-son relationship became empty, the title deed was also invalid.
What a good move to solve the problem fundamentally!
The village head felt complicated mixed emotions, cold sweat oozing out again!
The head really didn’t want to do such a thing and bring shame to all his descendants. The head himself would also be hated for a lifetime.
However, now the arrow was on the string. It must be shot out!
This Mr. Ning mustn’t be as simple as he looked. When he stopped remaining silent, every word from his mouth hit at the right point, sharp as a knife.
Last time, by one mere sentence, he managed to expel the Zhao couple out of the village, who had to carefully apologize to him as well.
Afterwards, by a simple “reflection”, which was a flattering on the surface but disdain in fact, the head was left with no choice but to punish elder Wanger, a three-general village elder. Elder Wanger lost all his face in public and, after reflecting in the ancestral hall, wasn’t willing to go out any more.
This time, with some equally simple sentences, all the ways out were eradicated.
If he didn’t expel Wang Yushan out of the clan, then it meant he disregarded the dignity of village elders as well as the Wang clan.
However, if he expel Wang Yushan, then it would incur hatred to himself and panic to all villagers.
To the Wang village, it would do harm but no good.
Ning Shaoqing’s speech was concise and powerful. Although it was over already, the crowd remained in extreme silence and nervousness.
Wang Yushan now sweated like a pig from scare. Each and every of his word bombarded him like thunders. Momentarily, he kneeled down to earth, with no energy to think about the house, trembling and keeping kowtowing to the village head.