Her eyes lit up when she heard the mention of two thousand yuan.
Old Xu huddled behind his wife, head drooping, his cloudy eyes following the number "two thousand yuan" for a moment before he nodded.
"That's right! Two thousand yuan! Not a penny less!"
Zhou Shuhua trembled with anger, pointing at Li Guixiang, her lips quivering, and after a long while, she managed to squeeze out a few words through gritted teeth, her voice hoarse and distorted:
"You...you...good! Very good! Li Guixiang! Xu Laonian! You...you..."
Li Guixiang's shameless attitude of "reason prevails everywhere" completely choked Zhou Shuhua.
Her upbringing and education made it impossible for her to find a suitable and satisfying word to express the raging anger churning inside her.
Those two "bullshit"s yesterday were the most vulgar words she had ever uttered in her decades of life.
Her fingers trembled as she pointed directly at Li Guixiang's harsh face, her fingertips shaking.
“I…I’m not going to argue with a shrew like you! I’m going to town right now! To the police station! I’m going to sue you! I’m going to sue you for child abuse! The whole village is a witness! In the end, you’ll be the ones paying compensation to my niece! You’ll be the ones going to jail!”
Zhou Shuhua's chest heaved violently, her face turned deathly pale, as if she were about to faint at any moment.
"Sue me? Go ahead! Who's afraid of who!"
Far from being intimidated, Li Guixiang put her hands even tighter on her hips, raised her chin high, and almost sprayed spittle onto Zhou Shuhua's face.
“I, Li Guixiang, have always been upright and honest! I’ve raised Zhou Qiqi for over a decade! She eats the food of the Xu family and wears the clothes of the Xu family! She is a member of the Xu family! Hitting her? Scolding her? That’s discipline! A strict teacher produces outstanding students! If it weren’t for the Xu family’s ‘meticulous’ discipline, would she have grown into the beautiful and promising girl she is today? Dream on! Would she even know you, her aunt who is a high-ranking official? She would have been rotting away in some remote mountain village by now!”
The more she talked, the more convinced she became of her point. She glanced sideways at Zhou Shuhua with her triangular eyes, her face radiating an air of utter defiance.
"Go ahead and complain all you want! It was Shui Sheng and his wife who personally handed this little brat over to us! It's all in black and white with their fingerprints! They only said 'entrusted' her, but they didn't say how the Xu family should 'raise' her! This is how the Xu family has raised children for generations! We feed them coarse grains and discipline them with sticks! It's only right and proper! Who are you, some distant aunt, to tell us what to do? It's none of your business!"
This set of fallacies and heresies made Zhou Shuhua feel as if a huge boulder was pressing on her chest, her vision blurred, and her lips trembled, unable to utter a single word in rebuttal.
She felt a metallic sweetness rush to her throat, and her whole body swayed. She was only able to stay upright because Political Commissar Lei caught her from behind.
She gripped her husband's arm tightly, her nails digging into his firm flesh, tears welling up in her eyes but stubbornly refusing to fall.
She abruptly turned her head, burying her face in Political Commissar Lei's shoulder, her shoulder heaving violently, her heart aching terribly.
“Old Lei. Listen to this, listen to this! Jianbang... my poor brother, he's had the worst luck imaginable! In the end, how could he... how could he be so blind as to entrust Qiqi to such a pair of heartless, shameless wolves! What a tragedy... what a terrible tragedy!”
Commissar Lei's face was ashen. He held his wife's trembling body tightly, his sharp gaze sweeping coldly over the two disgusting faces at the gate of the courtyard, his eyes surging with suppressed anger.
But he never liked arguing with people, and for a moment he couldn't do anything about these two.
It must be said that what they said was true to some extent.
After all, it was Shui Sheng and his wife who personally handed Qi Qi over to them, so how they raise her is their family matter.
Even biological children can die while being raised, so it's even more common for adopted daughters to die.
The courtyard was filled only with Zhou Shuhua's suppressed sobs and Li Guixiang's heavy, slightly triumphant breathing.
Just then—
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