Chapter 246

"You brat! One mooncake and you've developed the hands of a thief! I'll teach you to steal! I'll teach you to steal! If I don't beat you to a pulp today, I might as well just drown myself in the lake!"

The elderly woman, who was about seventy years old, was thin and frail. She had raised eyebrows, many fine lines at the corners of her eyes, cloudy eyes, a thin lower lip, and a black mole on the side of her mouth.

When his eyes are slightly narrowed, he looks fierce and menacing, sharp-tongued and mean.

She pressed the skinny little girl, who looked about four or five years old, onto her lap with one hand, and raised her other hand high, slamming it down on the little girl's bottom.

"Clap clap clap—"

She hit him twenty times in a row before stopping.

"You brat! Do you dare to steal again?" she asked the little girl angrily.

The little girl lowered her head and lay motionless on her grandmother's lap, refusing to let go of the mooncake no matter how much the grandmother scolded her.

"Hmph, you're quite the patient one, aren't you? You think you can hold out until the day I die? I'm a jinx to both husbands and daughters, so why can't I scare you, you wretched and mischievous brat!"

"Pah!" she spat, then skillfully tossed the little girl onto the ground covered with thick thatch.

"You're not eating for the next two days! You'll just have to live off the mooncakes you stole, you little thief!"

She walked to the door, grumbling and cursing.

"Bang—" She slammed the door shut.

Ling Wu, who had just arrived, sat on the thatched floor and rubbed her aching bottom.

Then, glancing at his hands, which looked like chicken claws, and the mooncake, covered in dust and as hard as a brick, he knew what time it was.

Lingwu sighed softly, enduring the pain in her bottom, and slowly moved to the door with the mooncake in her arms to wait for her grandmother to come home.

——

The old woman's name is Song Chunhua. She looks seventy years old, but she is actually only forty-five.

Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival.

This mooncake was obtained by the original owner, Guan Lingwu, in exchange for doing homework for the children in the village, so that she could celebrate the festival with Song Chunhua.

Guan Lingwu is eight years old this year. Although she has never been to school, she is very intelligent and often runs a long way to eavesdrop on classes at a school in another village.

She had no notebooks or pens, so she practiced on the ground, and over time she even learned to read.

Knowing it's wrong to help others with their homework, I only did it yesterday because of the holiday.

After finishing her homework, she took the mooncakes and went to help her grandmother with farm work as usual. Her grandmother scolded her for being "ambitious" while tacitly approving of her "pursuit of education".

It wasn't until she took out the mooncakes that Song Chunhua became furious and assumed she had stolen them, so she took her home and gave her a severe beating.

Song Chunhua is Guan Lingwu's maternal grandmother and a genuine rural woman. Due to her backward thinking and living in a remote rural area, she became pregnant with Guan Lingwu's mother before she was even eighteen.

But she was always unlucky.

The husband doted on his young wife, Song Chunhua, and wanted to catch fish in the dark to nourish her body. However, on his way home, he hit his head and died on the spot.

Song Chunhua raised Guan Lingwu's mother all by herself.

Under the care of an orphan and a widow, Song Chunhua, who was only eighteen years old and had suffered countless injustices in silence, transformed from an introverted and silent girl into someone who was sharp-tongued, mean, and fierce to the point that no one could rival her!

She had finally raised her daughter to adulthood, but not long after her daughter married her son-in-law Guan Zhao, she passed away after giving birth to Guan Lingwu.

After that, Guan Zhao went out to start his own business and was not heard from for many years.

Because Guan Lingwu was a girl, and because the Guan family felt that the death of their newlywed daughter-in-law was bad luck, their son often stayed away from home, blaming it all on his mother-in-law, Song Chunhua, who was considered "unlucky" and "a curse on her husband and daughter."

So when Guan Zhao had been gone for three months without returning home, the Guan family gathered all their relatives and "lively" handed Guan Lingwu over to Song Chunhua.

Even with Song Chunhua's fiery temper, she couldn't handle such a large family.

Looking at Guan Lingwu, who was lying in her swaddling clothes with her eyes wide open and didn't dare to cry out, she cursed her as a "jinx"!

She picked up every single vegetable leaf that others didn't want, every single rice stalk that was left on the ridges of the fields during the autumn harvest, and every last bit of leftover food that others pitied and gave her while she was working.

It was through this small amount of effort that she was able to raise Guan Lingwu little by little.

When Guan Lingwu was sixteen, Guan Zhao returned from starting his own business.

He became a big boss, returning to his hometown in a grand and impressive manner with color TVs, refrigerators, and luxury cars.

He also brought along the media who wanted to film his birthplace, where he started from scratch, back to his hometown.

Upon learning the news, Song Chunhua used a stick to drive Guan Lingwu out of her house.

Guan Lingwu, who had fainted after kneeling outside the door for three days, was taken to the city by Guan Zhao with "warm concern" amidst countless media photos.

Everyone was cursing Song Chunhua for being inhuman in order to get screen time by flattering Guan Zhaohua.

Guan Lingwu, however, peered through the window of the luxury car and saw Song Chunhua wiping away tears through the crack of the dilapidated little door.

Guan Lingwu cried and made a fuss, refusing to leave, but because she couldn't open the car door, and because Guan Zhao coaxed her by saying that he would send her back in a few days, she finally calmed down and obediently cooperated with him.

After Guan Lingwu went to the city and discovered that Guan Zhao was not letting her go in order to maintain his image as a loving daughter, she secretly figured out the way home.

After sneaking back, she learned that, thanks to the sensationalism of unscrupulous media, countless netizens had come to Wanyue Village to condemn Song Chunhua for her wickedness and said she deserved to go to hell!

Song Chunhua responded with sharp retorts, which only confirmed the matter further.

After learning that Guan Lingwu was doing well, Song Chunhua went to the only field where her husband and daughter were buried.

She leaned against her husband's grave, thinking about how Guan Lingwu grew from a little kid into a young woman, until finally sitting in a luxury car, and passed away with a smile.

Upon returning, Guan Lingwu saw Song Chunhua's body lying in the field, with no one to collect it. For the first time, she used the money given to her by Guan Zhao to give Song Chunhua a proper burial.

Upon returning to the Guan family home, Guan Lingwu silently packed all her belongings and returned to Wanyue Village when she faced Guan Zhao, whose face was gentle but whose eyes held disgust.

On the Mid-Autumn Festival night when Guan Lingwu was seventeen years old.

Holding the palm-leaf fan that Song Chunhua used to fan her when she was a child, biting into a hard mooncake, she lay on the rocking chair woven by Song Chunhua, looking at the full moon, and drank pesticide.

Lingwu asked her, "Song Chunhua raised you with great difficulty, why do you want to die so easily?"

She said, "I'm afraid Grandma will be lonely crossing the Bridge of Helplessness alone. I'm afraid she'll be scolded for mistreating her granddaughter in the underworld. I'm afraid she'll think I've forgotten her. I'm afraid she'll never see me again, just like she did in Wanyue Village, and she'll really abandon me..."

"I just, I just miss this little old lady who was prickly all over but still raised me very well."

As she spoke, tears streamed down her thin, dry hands.

She knew that the old woman had become like this because no one had protected her for many years.

"The second time, I took Grandma to a distant place ahead of time, but she had developed a chronic illness when she was young, and the old lady was reluctant to spend my money and refused to get treatment no matter what."

“I have never dared to go to Guan Zhao, because once Guan Zhao finds out about my existence, he will definitely bring the media to publicize it extensively, just like in my previous life. I am afraid that if Grandma finds out, she will abandon me again.”

"Even so, Grandma still passed away three years after her first life."

"Because we had no money, my grandmother and I always lived a hard life."

“I don’t ask for anything myself, I only ask that Grandma can enjoy her old age in peace, be wealthy and happy, and that no one can bully her. If possible, please take her away from that cannibalistic place, Wanyue Village, as soon as possible.”