Chapter 29 Theft

"Brother! I'm your own sister! Are you really going to force me to my death at the door?" Wei Chunlan shouted into the courtyard.

Mother Wei instructed the people in the courtyard not to open the door for them. The grandmother and grandson outside couldn't stand the sun and left.

However, thanks to their busy work outside, fewer people came to the Wei family to fetch water.

Seeing that the Wei family wouldn't listen to reason or threats, Wei Chunlan held a grudge and made a scene outside for several days. The villagers who had initially come to join in the fun now ignored her.

“Mother, since they are so heartless, then we don’t need to treat them as relatives. Just wait and see how I get the grain back for you!” Wei Chunlan’s son, Pang Hu, said with a gloomy expression.

Song Yushu now sleeps in the same room as her daughter. The mother and daughter wiped themselves down early and went to bed to rest.

"When will this drought end? Will our shop be able to reopen?"

Zhou Chengzhu still misses the days when she helped Song Yushu collect money in the shop. Every day, she would listen to the clinking of copper coins and she would be busy all day without feeling tired. She even learned how to do accounting. Unlike now, she can only stay obediently in the Wei family and can't go anywhere.

“It hasn’t been long, and the imperial relief grain hasn’t arrived yet. We’re lucky that we can still live a peaceful life. We can only open the shop after the disaster is over,” Song Yushu said, seeing that she couldn’t sleep. He took out his abacus and taught her how to keep accounts.

Her shop's ledgers were all kept in Arabic numerals, with daily expenses and income listed in detail, making it easy to understand at a glance.

Zhou Chengzhu was a money-grubber; she wanted to learn anything related to money, so when she saw Song Yushu take out his abacus and account book, she didn't bother to complain.

She's already pretty much mastered addition and subtraction, so Song Yushu plans to teach her multiplication tables to make accounting easier.

The mother and daughter lit an oil lamp, one teaching earnestly, the other listening intently.

This caused trouble for Pang Hu, who was waiting for his chance outside the wall. He originally planned to listen to the sounds inside and wait until everyone was asleep before climbing over the wall to steal things, but instead he heard some faint voices.

He had been waiting for almost half an hour, but the person inside still wouldn't sleep.

Another half hour passed before there was no more movement inside. Pang Hu stood up, stretched his legs which had gone numb from squatting, and moved a few stones to step on, intending to climb up the wall.

He finally managed to reach the top of the wall, and just as he was about to climb up, he felt a sharp pain in his hand.

"ah!"

Even if the Wei family members were sound asleep, they could hear the noise, not to mention the two puppies barking happily in the yard.

"What's going on?" Song Yushu had just fallen asleep when he heard the noise and got up.

"Thief! Don't go out yet!" Father Wei led his two sons outside to investigate.

The father and his two sons, who came out with torches, heard groans. When they got closer, they saw a person hanging on their own wall, their hands pierced by bamboo strips buried on the top of the wall, and they couldn't get down at all.

"Get him down, and I'll ask him whose relative has dared to mess with our Wei family."

Wei's father had only seen Pang Hu a few times when he was a child, and he never saw him again after he broke off his relationship with Wei Chunlan, so he did not recognize him as Wei Chunlan's son.

Just as the Wei brothers were about to tie Pang Hu up after he was taken down, Pang Hu introduced himself.

"Uncle! It's me! It's Pang Hu!"

Mr. Wei was taken aback: "You're Wei Chunlan's son? How did you end up doing thievery?"

"Who cares who he is? If he dares to steal from us, tie him up first!" The Wei brothers didn't have a good impression of that aunt and treated Pang Hu as a stranger.

"Hey! We're all family, how can it be considered stealing!" Pang Hu quickly tried to ingratiate himself.

"Take him to see the village head when it's light. First, gag him and tie him to a tree," Wei's father didn't want to disturb his sleep, so he decided to make plans for tomorrow.

"Luckily, I listened to your daughter and buried some finely ground bamboo strips on the wall. Otherwise, no matter how high the wall was, it wouldn't have been able to stop the thieves. But Wei Chunlan has been gone for many years, and her son has turned out to be such a bad person. It's really karma!" Wei's mother said with lingering fear.

“We need to be more vigilant at night from now on. These bamboo strips can only protect us from ordinary people. If we encounter someone powerful, our whole family might be doomed,” Mr. Wei thought further ahead.

When Song Yushu woke up, the Wei family father and his two sons had already taken Pang Hu to the village head's house to explain the situation.

Pang Hu wasn't even from their village; it was just that Wei Chunlan had shamelessly brought her whole family over to try and take advantage of the Wei family. So the village head showed no mercy and directly summoned the villagers to publicly punish him.

It just so happens that thefts have been rampant in the village recently. Publicly punishing Pang Hu can serve as a warning to others and deter those thieves hiding in the shadows.

Wei Chunlan woke up with twitching eyelids. Thinking about what her son had said earlier, she naturally guessed what he had been up to last night. After all, Pang Hu had been doing petty theft with thugs in town. She had never stopped him from bringing home anything of value, and in fact, she was happy to see him do it.

"Where's Ah Hu? Did he succeed yesterday?" Wei Chunlan asked her daughter-in-law.

"I wanted to ask Mother too! He went out mysteriously yesterday and hasn't come back yet!"

"Are you dead? You don't even look for your own husband when he comes back!" Wei Chunlan suddenly felt uneasy and lashed out at her daughter-in-law.

"I fell asleep, thinking he would come back, but who knew..." Pang Hu's wife felt extremely wronged.

Now that I've come to the village with my mother-in-law, I thought things would be better than in town. But not only am I living in this dilapidated thatched hut, but my husband has also disappeared at this crucial moment.

"Wei Chunlan! Your son has been caught stealing, and the village head wants you to come over!"

The outsiders brought news of their son, Pang Hu, but Wei Chunlan was not happy at all. She could only go with her daughter-in-law with long faces. As for her husband, he felt ashamed and stayed to see his grandson.

When the village head saw the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law coming over, he started talking about serious business.

“Wei Chunlan, your family is not from our village. We only took you in because we felt sorry for you. But your son has no good intentions and has been caught stealing. What do you have to say for yourself?”

"Do you have any evidence to prove that my son stole something?" Wei Chunlan refused to admit it.

"When the Wei family caught him yesterday, he was still hanging on someone's wall! And he still has the nerve to ask for evidence!" A villager who knew the situation shut her down with a single sentence when he saw that she was about to make trouble again.

“The Wei family is his uncle’s family. How can you say he stole from his own family? He hasn’t seen his uncle in so long. What’s wrong with him going to the Wei family to see him?” Wei Chunlan’s shamelessness left everyone speechless once again.

“What kind of relative would come knocking on the door in the middle of the night without knocking and even climbing over the wall? It’s obvious they have ulterior motives. The Wei family doesn’t have any relatives like that.” Wei’s mother looked at Pang Hu with disdain.

“Village chief, this kind of thing has happened several times in our village recently. Maybe the things that were stolen from those households were stolen by this Pang Hu!”