Quickly wear salted fish, she won by lying down

Chapter 1737 The Country Girl Looked Down Upon 58
Although Aunt Cao supported her family, she came from a humble background and had limited favor with the emperor. She had a natural fear of Zhao, the daughter of a scholar and a noble lady, and dared not cause trouble. So she was always quite well-behaved.

If she were favored, she might have some ambition, but since she is not favored, she wouldn't dare to cause trouble. If she angers the wife, her husband won't protect her and might even kick her out.

Aunt Cao felt that she was living like a god. Her husband was a decent person, and his wife was kind and didn't cause her any trouble. The master of the Prince's mansion also had a good life. So she had no desire to be driven away and naturally behaved herself.

But the Cao family was different.

Cao was Li Erlang's wife. The change in her status made her unafraid of Zhao. Moreover, after her birth, thanks to her aunt, the family's conditions improved more and more. In the countryside, they even hired maids to serve them. It's true that although her parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law went to Aunt Cao to cry about their hardships, in reality, with Aunt Cao's constant subsidies, their family was already doing better and better. They were only pretending to be poor and crying because they wanted to get more money from Aunt Cao. Therefore, unlike Aunt Cao, she didn't have the fear of her master that servants had when they were servants. Naturally, she wasn't as obedient as her aunt. Seeing that Linlang and the others were doing well and that her family had no money, she was unhappy and started to cause trouble.

She never considered that their lack of money was due to Aunt Cao giving all her money to her family. She only saw that there was no money left in the family, and she wanted to live a good life, buy beautiful clothes and jewelry, buy delicious snacks, etc., but she couldn't afford any of them. Meanwhile, Linlang's family was buying this and that, and she couldn't accept it. She felt that her family was being taken advantage of, so she wanted to cause trouble.

Indeed, Cao was just as greedy as her parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Her parents, brother, and sister-in-law, in order to live a better life, leeched off her aunt like vampires, and then lived a better life at home than Cao Yiniang. If it weren't for the fact that the Prince's Mansion took care of Cao Yiniang's food, clothing, and housing, Cao Yiniang would not have lived as well as Cao and the others. When Cao was at her maiden home, she had money given to her by Cao Yiniang, and she could buy all sorts of nice things. But when she entered the mansion, she had no money at all, which Cao naturally could not accept.

She thought that once she entered the Prince's mansion, she would enjoy wealth and luxury, but little did she know that she was even more uncomfortable than at home, and couldn't buy anything she wanted.

When she was at home, her elder brother and sister-in-law treated her very politely because she was going to marry into the Prince's family. They thought that after Aunt Cao passed away, they would still need her to maintain relations with the Prince's family, so they naturally dared not offend her. Whatever she wanted to eat or use, as long as she told her parents, they would give her money to buy it. She lived a pretty comfortable life at her parents' home.

Now that she's entered the Prince's mansion, she has no dowry, and her monthly allowance doesn't even reach her hands. She's living worse than she did at her parents' home, which is naturally unacceptable to her. The Prince's mansion distributes each household's monthly allowance to the male head of the household, who then gives it to the female head of the household, who then distributes it to the next household.

Li Yu's father was a good man and would not embezzle the money from these months; he would hand it over to Zhao, who would then distribute it to everyone in the household.

Previously, the money was distributed directly to each person. Later, after Li Yu and Li Erlang got married, just like in the mansion, the money from both families was distributed to Li Yu and Li Erlang, who then, like Li Yu's father, gave it to the women in the back courtyard.

Would Li Erlang give the monthly allowance to Cao Shi? How could that be! Li Erlang was furious when he thought about how the Cao family had returned the worthless items of the betrothal gifts he had given, but withheld the betrothal money and valuables he had given, and there was no dowry at all, only a few quilts to make up the difference. It was clearly selling their daughter.

Not only did his elder brother Li Yu's betrothal gifts and dowry for his wife get all of them back from his sister-in-law, but his sister-in-law's family also gave her a dowry of five thousand taels of silver. Meanwhile, the wife he married not only didn't give him a dowry, but even the things he gave her were kept. And he still gives Cao a monthly allowance?! Forget it! We'll wait until we've made up for the betrothal gifts and valuables he gave her before bringing up the monthly allowance again. No, wait, we'll also return everything his birth mother gave to the Cao family before bringing up the monthly allowance again. Anyway, the Prince's mansion provides food, clothing, and lodging; she doesn't need any money.

—If this calculation is followed, then Cao Shi will never receive her monthly allowance or annual stipend, because the Cao family has taken too much from Li Erlang and Aunt Cao. As a result, Cao Shi has no dowry, and Li Erlang withholds her monthly allowance from the manor. She doesn't dare to ask Li Erlang for it, so naturally she can't buy anything in the manor, and her life is even worse than it was at her maiden home.

She was a greedy person just like her parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Seeing that there was no money, she naturally wanted to make money.

Unable to get money from Li Erlang, she decided to try and get money from Zhao Shi.

In her view, the money her father-in-law gave to Zhao was the money of the second branch of the family, and as Li Erlang's wife, she was naturally entitled to receive it.

So she kept a close eye on Linlang and Li Yu to see if they had taken any money from Zhao Shi. If they had, she would go up and ask for it back.

Linlang naturally saw what Cao had done.

Actually, she wasn't keeping an eye on Cao Shi. She just had Xiaofeng act as a monitor for the second wife's family, making routine patrols to see if anyone wanted to harm the second wife's family. That's when she discovered Cao Shi's movements.

Hearing Cao's dissatisfaction, Linlang was speechless.

She was incompetent, and not only did the Cao family not give her a dowry, but she also couldn't keep the betrothal gifts and dowry her husband gave her, which her family took and spent.

Now that she's married, she finds herself penniless and life is meaningless. She doesn't dare ask her family for the dowry and money that are rightfully hers, nor does she dare ask Li Erlang for the monthly allowance that is rightfully hers. Instead, she's setting her sights on Li Yu and her husband, who are completely unrelated to her. Has this girl gone mad? Does she think her family and Li Erlang are easy to bully, while they are easy to bully, so she plans to bully the weak and fear the strong? Who gave her the audacity? It's not that she doesn't want to, but she could crush her like an ant. After all, Cao Shi lives in the front courtyard. If she's unhappy, she could break into their house at night and kill her, and no one would know how she died; they would just assume it was a sudden death.

However, Linlang didn't go all out right away. After all, she wasn't the kind of person who would take someone's life just because they didn't get along with her. She continued to live as usual, buying what she needed and using what she needed, without caring whether Cao would be jealous.

Cao had been watching Linlang for several days when she noticed Linlang returning from Consort Zhang's place with a box in her hands. She secretly inquired and learned that it was a gift from Consort Zhang to Linlang—a box of gold and silver beans, worth at least a hundred taels of silver. This gave her an opportunity, so she went to find Linlang and asked her about it.

She asked Linlang with a smile, "I heard that Lady Zhang gave you a box of gold and silver beans the other day, is that true?"