Chapter 47: Catching A Thief Red-handed
Shi Tou glanced at the kitchen knife in Xiao Huan’s hand, secretly annoyed that he hadn’t thought to bring the axe.
Village Chief Lin secretly resented Liu Shi for ruining things, coughed twice to draw the crowd’s attention back, and looked toward Lu Chengjing.
“Lu Xiucai Scholar, since you said the jade pendant was lost, why did it appear at the Lin Family? You’re still young. If you really made a mistake by accident, just admit it and return the silver, and that’ll be the end of it.”
This directly pinned the blame for stealing the silver on Lu Chengjing’s head.
Gao Qi stirred up trouble from the crowd, “What kind of Xiucai Scholar are you, stealing silver? All those sage books went straight to the dog’s belly! Hand over the silver right now!”
“Right, hand it over!” Someone echoed, looking at Lu Chengjing with considerable disdain.
“Bullshit!” Li Dashan cursed roughly, “Gao Qi, pour out the piss in your brain and take a good look. Even if the jade pendant belongs to the Xiucai Scholar, the silver definitely wasn’t stolen by him. The Xiucai Scholar has a leg injury and can barely walk—how could he go to the Lin Family to steal silver?”
“His leg is injured, but aren’t the people in his family fine?” Gao Qi curled his lip, his eyes glancing toward Shang Wan.
Immediately, many people’s gazes fell on Shang Wan as well.
Everyone in the village had seen how formidable Shang Wan’s skills were; flipping over a wall to steal something would be a piece of cake for her.
Besides, Shang Wan had once caused a huge scene at the Lin Family to get her child back, so the two families had a grudge. It wasn’t impossible for her to sneak over and do something while the Lin Family wasn’t around.
In an instant, the villagers’ looks toward Shang Wan quietly changed, a trace of doubt emerging.
“What are you looking at? How could my younger brother’s wife, a person as upright as she is, be a thief?”
Rong Niangzi quickly stepped over to block in front of Shang Wan, hands on hips, glaring back at each one,
“Have some conscience! If it weren’t for my younger brother’s wife, you’d all still be trapped under the houses, with broken arms and legs—you’d have died long ago!”
The Lin Family had returned to the village and didn’t yet know about Shang Wan saving people. Seeing that Elm Tree Village was still in decent shape, they only thought the earthquake wasn’t as severe as in Willow Tree Village.
Village Chief Lin gave Shang Wan a deep look; he had underestimated this woman’s abilities.
Liu Shi pinched Chen Guifang’s arm and kept signaling her with her eyes.
Chen Guifang was reluctant to step forward, but with her mother gone, her brother gone, her father ill, and no one at her maternal family home to back her up, she definitely wouldn’t get any good from defying her mother-in-law.
“That’s not how reason works.” Chen Guifang braced herself and stepped out to confront Rong Niangzi, “Saving people is saving people, stealing things is stealing things. Does that mean because she, Shang Wan, saved people, she can just steal the villagers’ things at will? What would that make it?”
“Besides, no one in the village begged her to save them. How much strength could one woman have? She just lent a hand—that hardly counts as saving lives.” Chen Guifang truly felt Rong Niangzi was exaggerating, looking at her with some disdain, “Yuan Family sister-in-law, I know your family is close with the Lu Xiucai Scholar’s family, but you can’t ignore your conscience and tell lies.”
After she said this, she thought she’d get agreement from the villagers, but everyone just looked at her—no one spoke up in support.
Yesterday during the earthquake, how dire the situation was and how much effort Shang Wan put into saving people—everyone in the village knew it clearly in their hearts. Even those on good terms with the Lin Family couldn’t say anything bad about Shang Wan regarding the saving, and they didn’t have faces thick enough for that.
Chen Guifang felt panicked under everyone’s stares—was she wrong? Could Shang Wan really be more capable than a man?
Gao Qi wanted to stir things up with a few words, but looking around, he felt the atmosphere wasn’t right. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them back.
Rong Niangzi said coolly: “Some people have no ability, so they think everyone else is as useless as they are. Not only did my younger brother’s wife save people, she specially went into the mountains to hunt a lot of meat to bring back and nourish everyone, giving us all a good meal. Last night with such heavy rain, who was it rushing to the front for every task if not my younger brother’s wife? Everyone’s eyes aren’t blind—they can tell good from bad.”
These words made many people feel their faces burn with shame, too embarrassed to look at Shang Wan.
Shang Niangzi was such a good person, and yet they suspected her of being a thief—they must have been blinded by lard!
Someone mumbled, “I believe Shang Niangzi isn’t a thief.”
“I believe it too.”
“Me too.”
More and more people echoed agreement, and the direction things were developing was completely opposite to what the Lin Family had imagined, catching them off guard.
Village Chief Lin and Lin Jianshan exchanged a glance. Lin Jianshan couldn’t afford to care about much else and raised his voice: “Whether or not, just search and we’ll know.”
He looked at Lu Chengjing, “Lu Xiucai Scholar, to prove your innocence, you wouldn’t mind letting everyone search your home, right?”
Lu Chengjing looked at him like he was an idiot and was about to speak when Shang Wan stepped forward, “We’re upright, so we’re not afraid of slanted shadows. Search as you like.”
Lu Chengjing instinctively felt Shang Wan must have discovered something, so he nodded in agreement too.
Lin Jianshan immediately called to the villagers to head to the Lu Family, as if afraid the two would go back on their word.
Watching the crowd run off into the distance, Rong Niangzi said with some worry, “Younger brother’s wife, it’s not that sister-in-law is gossiping behind backs, but I think the Lin Family must have made some preparations. Let me hold Yuan Yuan for you—you hurry and go take a look.”
They say when catching a thief, you catch them with the goods. If they really found something, she’d have no way to explain even if she had mouths all over her body.
“No rush.” Shang Wan looked toward their home with quite a meaningful expression, “We’ll go slowly.”
Lin Jianshan ran energetically at the front, followed by more than ten able-bodied young men from the village. Shi Tou and Village Chief Lin followed too.
Liu Shi’s injuries hadn’t healed yet, she barely slept last night, and after all the fuss just now, she was utterly exhausted.
Zhou Shi and Chen Guifang both urged her to go home and rest, but Liu Shi refused, making the two support her as they went to find the silver—she couldn’t sleep without seeing it.
The other villagers either went back to continue working or followed Shang Wan and the others slowly, wanting to see how things would turn out.
Lu Chengjing was held by Shang Wan, smelling the faint fragrance wafting from her. His eyelids drooped, drowsy.
“You took medicine. If you want to sleep, just sleep.” Shang Wan looked down at the person in her arms and said softly, “I’ve got you. You won’t suffer any loss.”
Lu Chengjing lifted his eyelids to look at her for a moment, his dark eyes misty with sleepiness, and gently shook his head, “Not sleepy.”
Shang Wan: His eyelids are about to close and he says he’s not sleepy?
She didn’t understand what the person in her arms was trying to prove, but Shang Wan didn’t press further. When he was truly too sleepy, he’d sleep eventually.
On the other side, Lin Jianshan failed to find what he wanted.
Village Chief Lin had been standing calmly waiting for the result, but seeing Lin Jianshan scurrying around like a headless fly, he couldn’t help frowning, “Eldest, what’s going on?”
“Dad, there’s nothing.” Lin Jianshan refused to believe it and kept digging, but it was all dirt— no sign of the so-called silver.
He had clearly instructed Tie Dan to come bury the silver here while everyone was at the old elm tree.
Now there were signs of digging on the ground, and Tie Dan wasn’t here, so he must have gone home after burying it. The plan had gone very smoothly, so why couldn’t he dig it up?
Where did the silver go?
