"The deceased is the real daughter of the Wu family, Wu Lanle. As for the bride who married into the Minister of Rites' household, she is Wu Lanle's older cousin, Tang Guan."
The truth behind it all was quite a sordid melodrama: Tang Guan had fallen for a local thug.
Whenever the two were together, they often quarreled over all sorts of things.
Wu Lanle frequently rushed off to stand up for her, simply because Tang Guan was the posthumous child of Mother Wu's beloved younger sister.
After Mother Wu's sister lost her husband to illness, she too fell bedridden. She clung to her last breath long enough to give birth to Tang Guan, then followed her husband into death.
Mother Wu worried that Tang Guan would not be properly cared for in the Tang family, so upon learning of her sister's death, she hurried to the Tang residence and brought Tang Guan back to the Wu residence.
She never concealed Tang Guan's true identity, but treated her no differently from her own daughter.
Yet there was a saying in this world: give a cup of rice and earn gratitude; give a bushel and earn resentment.
Tang Guan felt that, if not for Wu Lanle, everything belonging to the Wu family should have been hers.
So she pretended to be hopelessly in love with a local thug. Every time they quarreled, she ran to Wu Lanle in tears and urged her to stand up for her.
A year ago, Tang Guan had run crying to Wu Lanle and said she had overheard a conversation between her lover and his mother.
They planned to lure her into their home and lock her up, then take her to the Wu residence once she was pregnant.
With a child to back him up,