"Her?" Old Lady shouted angrily, "Didn't I say, no one from the Lin family is allowed to step foot in this house?!"

"But she brought mooncakes, roast pork, and ginseng from Liaodong." Grace said as she pulled out a stack of banknotes from her sleeve, "And ten strings of cash." Turns out Miss Lin did bring money, just in case of David Walker.

"Uh..." Old Lady took the money, smacked her lips, and said, "Actually, if you think about it, the family shouldn't be punished for one person's crime. It was her brother who did wrong, she doesn't really have any deep grudge with us, right?"

"Exactly, exactly." Grace nodded repeatedly, "Miss Lin even promised another twenty strings, said she's short on cash right now, but will make it up later."

"Oh?" Thirty strings is a big sum. Even though the banknotes are badly devalued these days, for poor folks like them, it would take two whole years of hard work to earn that much. Old Lady, though dazzled by the money, still had some sense and asked, "Why is she covering your brother's medical expenses?"

"I know, I know." Grace immediately got excited, looking like a little gossip, leaning on Old Lady's shoulder, vividly recounting what she had seen and heard—plus a bit of her own imagination...

'Oh?' 'Ah?!' 'Eh?!' 'Ha!' Old Lady listened in amazement, and after hearing it all, was stunned for a long time before stroking her chin and saying, "Even though she's been rejected from her engagement and her family seems poor now, how could she possibly fancy your brother?"

"Maybe my brother has some strengths we haven't noticed." Grace's impression of her brother had unknowingly improved a lot, and she could even think of Henry Walker in a positive light.

"Could it be that they did that?" Old Lady made a gesture with her fists and hooked her thumbs together, then suddenly remembered the other party was her own daughter, and immediately changed her expression, "Go do what you should be doing!"

"What does that mean?" Grace imitated her gesture and asked innocently. Old Lady instantly blushed and roared, "Three days without a beating and you’re tearing the roof off! Get in there and cook, do you want Old Lady to starve?!"

"Got it..." Grace was so frightened she ran off at once.

……

Two days later was the Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the three major traditional festivals in China. Eating mooncakes at Mid-Autumn was actually invented by the founding emperor. Now this custom is deeply rooted—if a family doesn't eat mooncakes at Mid-Autumn, it's like they're not celebrating at all.

This year, with Miss Lin's gifts, Old Lady didn't have to rack her brains about where to get mooncakes. But Old Lady only kept one, just enough for the whole family to share, and sent the rest with Grace to the neighbors. It wasn't that she suddenly became generous, but over the past half year, the neighbors had really helped a lot. Now that they had Hangzhou mooncakes, it wouldn't be right to eat them all themselves behind closed doors—not even Old Lady could do that.

Besides, when has Old Lady ever suffered a loss? Not long after Grace returned, the neighbors came by one after another to return the favor—one brought a watermelon, another two sections of lotus root, and a particularly generous family even gave a live fish!

The three siblings watched as Old Lady traded a small basket of mooncakes for enough ingredients to host a Mid-Autumn feast, and even earned a good reputation in the process! They were in absolute awe—this is the wisdom of living!

Old Lady smirked with satisfaction, looking at the slab of cured meat hanging under the eaves, pondering whether to cook a little meat with every meal until the winter solstice, or save it until the twelfth lunar month and trade it with the neighbors for a New Year's Eve dinner. Sigh, what a dilemma...

The next morning, Old Lady and Edward Walker put on clean clothes and headed to the countryside to celebrate the birthday of the Wang family clan's third grand-uncle.

As soon as Old Lady left, Grace waited eagerly, even neglecting her shoe-making work.

Henry Walker was sweating buckets in the courtyard, doing his rehabilitation exercises, with a thick copy of "The Ming Code" in front of him. Although the Wang family wasn't a scholarly family, because of his father, they not only had "The Ming Code" but also "The Great Edict" at home—though the latter was said to be basically obsolete. To get familiar with Ming law, you only needed to read the former.

He read "The Ming Code" not just for the Lin family's case, but because the Ming Code covered all aspects of ritual, household, criminal, administrative, and labor regulations. By studying this book, he could generally understand the rules of this society—what he could and couldn't do, and what he should do in the future!

Even though he'd only read part of it, it was enough for him to understand his own situation. No wonder David Walker dreamed of going back to the old days! It turned out the Ming dynasty was a strictly hierarchical society—the higher your status, the more rights you enjoyed; the lower, the more restrictions you faced.

Now, as the son of a criminal official, he was only a notch above the lowest class. He couldn't take the imperial exams, couldn't become an official, and couldn't even do business, because to leave Fuyang County he needed a travel permit from the authorities, and they simply wouldn't give him one!

In this era where blood ties trumped everything, because his father was a criminal, he was doomed to be trapped for life, unable to break free!

One after another, laws that seemed utterly unreasonable to later generations were heavy shackles, binding him so tightly he couldn't move.

These days, he kept thinking about which path to take in the future, only to realize in the end that he had no path at all...

If he didn't want to go back to being a good-for-nothing like before, his only option was to work like his eldest brother—laboring day and night for others, exhausted every day, earning only a few dozen coins. If he got sick or injured, he'd lose his income and have to pay for treatment himself!