Gu'er was stunned by the sheer number of IOU slips.
For all these slips to still be here, it must mean no one ever paid them back. Perhaps they were told they didn't have to, but the fact remained that they hadn't. This wasn't just money—it was a debt of gratitude. This was proof that the entire village was indebted to the Sun Family.
What's the hardest thing in the world to repay?
A debt of gratitude.
A debt of gratitude is the hardest to settle. You can return material things, but you can never truly repay the kindness of someone who helped you. If these IOU slips were made public, every family would be shown to owe the Sun Family. They would feel a sense of gratitude and guilt from the bottom of their hearts. If the Sun family ever needed anything, they would be obligated to help.
No wonder the Zhou family was so adamant about marrying Zhou Mei to Sun Jiaming. A family with this kind of leverage posed a huge threat to Zhou Da Kui's position as village chief.
