Qin Zhenghu did not want to recall, but because of this sentence, his mind uncontrollably recalled a scene from four years ago.
Back then, he was just a fourteen-year-old boy.
His family was impoverished, and he was frail and often ill. His father was a teacher at an academy, but he died of an epidemic just as Qin had learned to read. His mother supported him and his sister by earning some silver taels from embroidering at a cloth shop, sending both of them to private school.
Though his mother was an illiterate woman, she taught him that reading could be a means to stand tall in society, that even though his sister was a girl, she too should be sent to school to learn.
However, to earn more silver taels, his mother tirelessly embroidered day and night, ruining her young eyes.
His sister ate poorly to save some silver to buy him a new wolf-hair brush.
That day, when the flood came, the river overflowed, the houses collapsed, and they didn't even have time to struggle!
