Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

  In the future, he would lead his peaceful life and Ding Jiayi would be together with her precious. Both of them would mind their own business. At the very least, he could lead a happy life for a few years.

  With a bang, Ding Jiayi knocked over the cup on the table. “Old Qiao, what…… what did you say?” Her ears were buzzing and she didn’t hear Old Qiao’s words clearly.

  Qiao Zijin was also shocked. She had heard a lot about young couples getting a divorce. It wasn’t rare for middle-aged people like her to get a divorce as well. However, for elderlies at her parents’ age to mention a divorce was extremely rare. Aside from her parents, Qiao Zijin had never heard of such a ridiculous thing from others before. “Dad, are you joking? How old are the both of you now? Only young couples get a divorce. There’s just a little misunderstanding between you and Mom. Don’t create trouble.”

  They were almost in their seventies. Why were they following the trend of divorce? Divorce wasn’t something good.

  “I’m not joking. I’m serious. You and your mom are too noisy. I’m having a headache. Since I can’t lead such a life anymore, instead of arguing every day with your mom like rivals, it would be better for us to split ways before we reach that stage. To be honest, at our age, we would be able to live longer if we get angry less. After we are separated, both of us might be able to live a few years more.”

  The more serious Qiao Dongliang was, the more panicked Ding Jiayi was. “No, I’m not getting a divorce. I’ve already reached the age of a grandma. Why should I get a divorce? How can I continue to live after our divorce? Wouldn’t I be laughed at to death? We have already gotten through so many years together. Why is it that we can’t continue our lives together in the future? Haven’t we always been doing well together?”

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  “Doing well?” Qiao Dongliang laughed. “We get into a minor argument every three days and a major one every five days. You call that doing well? Are you complaining that I haven’t been angry enough and that I have a long life? I’ve already said that I don’t ask for much. I just want to lead a good life for a few more years. By insisting on not getting a divorce, you just want to anger me to death so that we don’t even have to go through the divorce process, right?”

  It could be said that Qiao Dongliang finally understood everything. Really, he couldn’t continue leading such a life with Qiao Zijin and Ding Jiayi. Using words from the TV, he had different worldviews from this mother-daughter pair. In ancient times, there was the saying ‘there is little common ground for understanding between persons of differing principles’. If they couldn’t lead a life together, it was better to split ways.

  From the time Qiao Nan left until she got married, in this short one year, without Qiao Nan blindly sacrificing herself for this family, this family was already no longer like a family. Every day was full of arguments and scoldings. Qiao Dongliang had had enough. He was really worried that if he continued to live in such an environment, his life span was going to be shortened.

  Ding Jiayi was angry but she didn’t know what to do with Qiao Dongliang. “I’ll stop arguing with you in the future. Will that do?”

  “No.” Qiao Dongliang insisted. “You can’t do it, and neither can I. You know why we have been arguing. I wish you were more of a mom to Nan Nan. You can’t wait for me to only treat Zijin as a birth daughter and Nan Nan as an adopted child so that I would do whatever I can to force Nan Nan to push Zijin up. Even if Nan Nan is leading a bad life, Zijin has to lead a good life. I can’t do this, let alone agree with it. Both of us would still argue and get into fierce quarrels.”

  Qiao Dongliang kept saying that he couldn’t do this, which completely blocked Ding Jiayi’s words of ‘you can just try to do what I say’.

  Ding Jiayi couldn’t do anything now that her words were blocked. She could only insist. “Since the day I married into the Qiao family, I’m a member of the Qiao family. I’m not going to divorce you. Until the day I die, I’ll be your wife and the Qiao family’s daughter-in-law.”

  Ding Jiayi was worried that once she agreed to a divorce with Qiao Dongliang, she wouldn’t be able to lie in the same grave as Qiao Dongliang when she died and would end up as a lonely ghost. No matter what other people said, Ding Jiayi strongly believed in this.

  When she ran out of her family to marry Qiao Dongliang back then, the Ding family had said that from the moment she left the Ding family’s house, Ding Jiayi wouldn’t be part of the Ding family anymore. When Ding Jiayi died in the future, she would have nothing to do with the Ding family.

  When the Ding family became ruthless, they were really ruthless and hard-hearted. When the Ding family didn’t recognize Ding Jiayi, Qiao Dongliang was still a platoon leader in the army. Although they knew that Qiao Dongliang was a platoon leader, Ding Jiayi was the wife of a platoon leader, and their family could be considered to be a military family, the Ding family didn’t even recognize Ding Jiayi. How would they have admitted that Qiao Dongliang was their son-in-law?

  Especially when Qiao Dongliang retired from the army after Qiao Nan’s birth, the Ding family mocked Ding Jiayi for losing the family line and she deserved not to have a son.

  It had been so many years. Since then, the Ding family had never appeared again. However, Ding Jiayi’s memories of these incidents didn’t diminish over time. Ding Jiayi wholeheartedly nurtured Qiao Zijin into a university student and let her marry Chen Jun. That was because she hoped to prove to the Ding family that it was the Ding family’s biggest mistake to not have recognized her as a daughter.

  See? Her daughter was a university student and her son-in-law was an official. If the Ding family wanted to lead a good life, they had to rely on Ding Jiayi, their daughter. So what if she couldn’t give birth to a son and gave birth to two daughters instead? The daughter she gave birth to was more successful than a son.

  She depended on Qiao Zijin, her daughter, to become the mother-in-law of a police commissioner. If the Ding family were capable, they could depend on their son and be in the limelight and show her. Did they do that?

  Nobody knew that when Qiao Zijin married Chen Jun and he was in his heyday, although Ding Jiayi didn’t say it, she had always been waiting for the Ding family to take the initiative and talk to her.

  It was only then did Ding Jiayi realize how many people were left in her family. Her father was long gone. However, her mother was still alive at this age. Ding Jiayi’s biggest misgiving was with her mother. Her mother was the one who decided to ‘sell’ her so that her two younger brothers could have a change of relatives.

  It was all her mother’s idea to not recognize her as a daughter and for her to no longer be a part of the Ding family. Ding Jiayi could still remember how ruthless her mother was and how harsh her words were.

  The Ding family were farmers all their lives. Didn’t her mom have two sons and now grandsons? Did she want to find a good job for her sons? Did she want her grandsons to have a chance to succeed? Sure, come and find her. Beg her and tell her that she was blinded to have done everything that she had back then…… In the Ding family, only she, Ding Jiayi, was the most promising.