After My Husband Ascended to Heaven, We Got Together

Something interesting happened in Peach Village yesterday.

The scholar who was most afraid of his wife in the village actually went to a brothel and bought himself a concubine, then brazenly tried to bring her home. That certainly stirred up a hornet's nest with his legal wife. When everyone saw what was happening, they hurried off to spread the news. Before long, the scholar's house was teeming with onlookers.

The scholar's wife was a shrew with a fearsome reputation throughout the village. They said that before the concubine had even entered the house, she had already been slapped hard. The spectators watched with shining eyes, secretly wishing the concubine and the shrew would start fighting right then and there.

Unfortunately, the concubine had no backbone. After being hit, she timidly covered her swollen cheek and hid behind the scholar, looking fearfully at his fierce wife as tears streamed down her face. Her delicate, helpless appearance left the men watching slack-jawed. No wonder the scholar had been such a coward for so long. At last, he had the nerve to stand up for himself.

In the end, the concubine did enter the household.

A few warnings before you dive in:

1. Neither woman is a virgin, but neither had any romantic entanglements before becoming a widow.

2. The story is told from the pursuer's perspective, and the pursuer is the legal wife.

3. The love interest is the concubine, who is pregnant with her deceased husband's posthumous child. Important: [A boy! A boy! It's a boy!] There will be a child-rearing arc later.

4. To explain: considering how difficult it would be for two women to survive later on in a poor, remote corner of feudal society, I made the baby a boy. I did not do this deliberately to upset anyone. I deliberately gave the story a lot of advantages, such as the pursuer having many loving brothers and supportive parents, and the love interest having a brother and a father, to ensure that even after the story ends, the two of them can have a happy ending with no loose ends whatsoever!! I did consider making the baby a girl, and I could have written it that way, but in my imagination, in a harsh rural village, a family made up entirely of women would look like easy prey, even after the child grew up, whether she married or entered a relationship with another woman. In an ancient rural setting, an entire household of women would be doomed. Anyone who knows even a little about rural life would understand. You may have noticed that at the start of the story, our heroine sleeps with a knife by her side. Clearly, where she lives is no paradise. (Of course, I could have made them cultivate immortality, suddenly gain a spatial spring and superpowers, acquire ascension technology, or transmigrate to another world. Those are solutions too, but that's not the story I wanted to tell. If I did that, this story would lose all its appeal for me. It would be completely unrealistic and ungrounded. And if I did that, it would amount to declaring that such a lovely couple could never have a happy ending in real life. To me, that would be the painful part.) Of course, even with a boy, they would still be a vulnerable household of widows and orphans. So I gave the heroine a powerful family to rely on in the early part of the story, and later the love interest also gains a family she can depend on. This ensures that they can get through the first half of their lives more or less safely, without being bullied to death or driven to commit murder and face prosecution. As for the rest of their lives, once the boy grows up, he can be a filial and hardworking son, help support the family through manual labor, and take care of both heroines. With a future to look forward to, the whole family works together to make a good life. In the end, they find happiness for the rest of their lives and are buried together after death, a perfect ending.

In short, the central point I want to express is that rural life can be extremely harsh, and even today there are still many places like that. These women aren't superheroes. They're ordinary people. I understand that this aspect puts some readers off. But overall, seeing so many people enjoy this story makes me truly happy and honored. Thank you for sharing this journey with me.

Theme: After facing all kinds of hardship, finding the life that truly belongs to you