In an old rural village, scholar Hiram was desperate for a son and dismissed his daughter Joyce as a jinx. His wife Wren had not given birth to a son for six years, so Wren and her mother-in-law were beaten and mistreated every day. To curry favor with the Dudley Family in town and marry into the bride's family, Hiram and his mother cruelly sold Wren and Joyce to Zheng Biao, a butcher at the village entrance, for ten taels of silver. Villagers all rumored that Zheng Biao, who slaughtered pigs, had a fierce aura and violent temper, so the mother and daughter were full of fear. Though Zheng Biao looked tall and fierce, he was kind and soft-hearted inside. He never beat or scolded the two, gave them warm meals and a heated kang, took on all heavy labor, and saved money to buy new clothes and meat for the mother and daughter. Joyce slowly let her guard down and took the initiative to call Zheng Biao father, and the three lived together as a family. Zheng Biao supported Joyce to attend classes at the private village school to learn to read, and introduced her to Zhao Wanshun, the shop accountant of Drunken Fragrance Restaurant, who taught her abacus and bookkeeping. Joyce was exceptionally intelligent, mastered accounting in just a few years, was appreciated by the Dudley Family, and promoted to shop manager of the Dudley Cloth Shop in the south of the city. After earning a stable income, she immediately bought a gold hairpin for Wren and forged a fine knife for Zheng Biao, fulfilling her childhood p
