Chapter 18: Five Tripod Mushrooms_1
Yingbao stayed there for four or five years, enduring daily whippings and being forced to learn acrobatics and song-and-dance routines, learning how to charm and please people.
It was in that place that she learned to read and understand scripts from an elder sister.
It wasn't until she was fourteen that her biological father, Chen Changping, passed the scholar examination. The Han family feared that her shameful past as a slave would be discovered, so they redeemed her.
After all, Chen Changping was now a man of distinction. The imperial court valued family ties and filial piety. If someone were to report that he had sold his daughter into slavery, he would be barred from taking the official examination, and even if he had passed, his results might be revoked. In severe cases, his scholar status could even be stripped away.
That was the truth, not what was written in the book, that she was sent to the countryside.