Chapter 202: Thoughts
“What are we going to do about our Lan’er from now on!”
“What do you mean what to do? Worst case, we’ll raise her for a lifetime!”
After scolding, Ruolan’s Mother couldn’t help but feel heartbroken for her own daughter. A perfectly good young unmarried girl had run into this kind of thing.
Just thinking about it, she knew those gossips about this family and that family’s affairs would spit all over. Even if innocent, they could be sprayed for three hundred miles.
From now on, either marry far away or recruit a son-in-law.
Her daughter, whom she’d cherished for over ten years, marrying far away and only seeing her once or twice a year—wouldn’t that take her life?
As for recruiting a son-in-law, which family’s good young man would marry in? Either the family burden is too heavy or it’s a big old cucumber missing an arm or a leg.
The two of them, getting on in years, were certainly willing to raise their daughter for life, but how much longer could they live!
“What a sin! You dog thing deserving a thousand cuts and ten thousand hacks, you’ve really harmed my little Lan’er.”
“Alright, alright, things haven’t reached that point yet!”
Dong Fusheng felt bad in his heart too. Hearing his old wife’s thigh-slapping wail, his hatred for Zhang Yi surged uncontrollably higher and higher.
But the person was already locked up, and they couldn’t drag him out for another beating.
Thinking it over, he still held back his anger and advised, “Anyway, Lan’er is still young. We can wait a few years until this matter fades, then talk about marriage—it’s not urgent.”
“The daughter probably feels bad in her heart, so don’t yell in front of her.”
“You old thing, is she just your daughter?!”
……
Tonight, those unable to sleep from anger weren’t just the Dong family—there was also Yuan Qing at the Educated Youth Point, so furious she wanted to punch the wall.
“Useless thing that spoils everything!”
The plan was just about to be carried out, but at the last moment, this had to happen—truly rotten mud that can’t stick to the wall.
Now it was good, missing that key thing. Was she supposed to go herself?
She wanted to, but did she have that tool for the crime!
The more she thought, the more her teeth itched with hate. Yuan Qing suddenly stood up, swung her fist, and smashed hard at the bed board beneath her.
A dull thud rang out, making her cry out in pain and startling the others in the room into a big jump.
“Yuan Qing, are you sick? In the middle of the night, not sleeping—what madness are you having!”
“Exactly, we finally finished the hard work on the irrigation canal. Tomorrow we can sleep well, but you won’t sleep and won’t let others sleep—what’s your intention?!”
“I’m banging my own bed, I feel like it—mind your own business!”
“You, you don’t go too far!”
“Heh~ what, you dare hit me too?”
The room barely squeezed in four 1.2-meter small beds, with such a narrow walkway that stretching out an arm straight could hit others.
In this situation, unless everyone in the room had top-notch tempers, there were bound to be constant little frictions.
Yuan Qing, to put it nicely, had a straightforward personality; to put it bluntly, she spoke without thinking. In less than a year here, she’d somehow offended everyone inside and out.
Yet she felt great about herself, relying on her decent family background to boss people around, her gaze at others like she was standing on a stone looking down comprehensively.
Unfortunately, her height wasn’t enough, so she made up for it with attitude—either nostrils to the sky or disdainful eye rolls, clearly not well-liked.
“Fine, fine, just watch if I’ll beat you or not!”
The pent-up anger finally erupted fully. In the middle of the night, they actually started fighting with bangs and crashes.
Xu Qian, whose bed was right by the door, threw on a thick jacket, clutched her abdomen, and quickly exited the room.
She wasn’t good with words to begin with, and now as half a patient, she truly couldn’t handle these three fighting.
With such a big commotion, unless passed out cold, even the deepest sleeper would be instantly woken.
“What happened again? In the middle of the night, what nonsense is this!”
Yao Zhiqin’s face was extremely ugly. They’d just had the Zhang Yi incident—how was it not embarrassing enough?
Did all the educated youths in their entire Educated Youth Point want to provide a year’s worth of gossip material to Hongqi Commune to be happy?
Did these brainless ones even understand what “one prospers, all prosper; one loses, all lose” meant!
“All of you, stop it!”
Seeing the three women twisted together like a stack of arhats through the wide-open room door, Yao Zhiqin roared, “If you want to all be sent to the farm, then keep making trouble!”
“Hit ah, why stop hitting?”
“It was those two who started it!”
With disheveled hair and a glaring scratch on her neck, Yuan Qing was crying so hard she could barely breathe. Hearing the Team Leader’s words, she immediately wouldn’t stand for it.
She was one against two—why not help her?
Long Ying, who had the advantage two-on-one and hadn’t suffered much, unobtrusively tossed away the tuft of hair in her hand. “Sorry, Team Leader, she was just too obnoxious—I couldn’t hold back.”
The farce didn’t end until almost dawn. No one in the entire Educated Youth Point got a good night’s sleep. Fortunately, the next day they didn’t have to get up early for work, or it might have escalated to needing Brigade Leader Su Qingshan to intervene for a resolution.
Completely unaware of all this, Su Ning got up early and slept early. After breakfast, she went to the health clinic to start her regular work.
……
For several days in a row, nothing big or small happened in the brigade until Zhang Yi’s hooliganism conviction was finalized, reigniting the gossip hearts of the onlookers and pulling the Dong family, which had just quieted down, back into the center of the storm.
Even Su Ning, whose shadow appeared in the matter, was inevitably dragged out, with gossip about her herself automatically extending.
Fu Jiaming, who had run errands for Yan Bei and finished his tasks, walked back with his ears full of this, instantly so irritable he nearly started fighting those big aunts and aunties.
“How come you’re back with such a temper? Need me to make you some lily and chrysanthemum tea to cool you down?”
“Hey, who is this for?”
“I’ve heard it all? Don’t mind them—they’ll stop on their own in a few days when it gets boring, and gossip about something else.”
“Fine, you’re really something!”
Fu Jiaming felt inferior in mental fortitude, breadth of mind, and demeanor. He gave her a thumbs up.
After finishing processing and arranging the last of the Chinese medicinal materials, Su Ning finally had time to look at him. “Right, the boxes for you and Maternal Uncle Yan have been brought out. When do you want to move them?”
“That fast?”
“What else?”
At the mention, Fu Jiaming got interested and set down the drug manufacturing tool he was fiddling with. “Already here?”
She cleaned her hands and nodded at him to follow, then turned and led him to the adjacent storage room.
Before opening the door, Su Ning moved with a thought, shifting the several large boxes the two had selected from the space and stacking them in the most corner by the wall and cabinet.
“Maternal Uncle Yan’s was transported here too?”
“Mm, when the time comes, handing it to Maternal Uncle Yan is up to you.”
“Okay, no problem!”
Fu Jiaming entered the room, saw the familiar marked large boxes, and upon hearing her words, patted his chest and nodded in agreement.
The large wooden box was too heavy for him to move alone, so Su Ning found him a hand truck.
One pushed, one watched and steadied. After several trips back and forth, they transported all the boxes from the backyard small door to the Fu Family small courtyard just one wall away.
Fu Rong and the other two at home smiled as they watched Su Ning leave, then asked the person who was full of joy and secretly delighted.
“Jiaming, what are these things?”
“Hehe, Mom, open it and see. I guarantee you’ll like it!”
“Oh?”
Ma Xiuzhen glanced at her husband, helped him to the bamboo chair behind him and sat him down, then chuckled as she walked to the several large boxes. “Then I have to take a good look—what thing can you guarantee I’ll definitely like.”
With that, she casually opened one. She was lucky; the one she opened happened to contain various gold, silver, and jewels jewelry.
The glittering jewels nearly dazzled her eyes. She took a deep breath and simply opened all the boxes.
“This, where did this come from?”
Though the Fu Family had saved some foundation over the years, it was far from those top families with heritage and depth.
So much gold, silver, and jewels, gold bars and ingots—Ma Xiuzhen was truly shocked.
Everyone present was immediate family, so Fu Jiaming had no intention of hiding it. He roughly recounted the events of going into the mountains to gather medicine that day.
After they digested it, Fu Jiaming proudly raised his head, looking like he was waiting for praise. “So there’s still over ten boxes in that cave!”
“I say son, don’t you have a big face?”
“Ah?”
“I mean, you’re just the one who picked up the bargain and did nothing—how can you have the nerve to split equally with Ning Ning, Double Double, and Maternal Uncle? Just because your face is big and thick-skinned?”
“Uh…”
Even thick-skinned Fu Jiaming couldn’t help his ears heating up at these words. Not unworthy of his mother.
Meeting the agreeing looks from his old man and older brother that Mom/our mom was right, Fu Jiaming helplessly spread his hands with a wry smile. “I said the same at the time, but Su Ning and Maternal Uncle wouldn’t agree—they insisted on splitting equally.”
He couldn’t out-argue Maternal Uncle, and couldn’t retort Su Ning—what could he do!
