Chapter Twenty-Two: Are you here to collect my corpse?
The two arrived at a remote wooden house in Shuanglin Town. Looking at the impoverished environment, they exchanged a glance and walked over.
Just as Jingwu was about to knock on the door, he saw someone come out.
A man in his forties, wearing a linen cotton coat with several patches, was carrying a hoe and preparing to go to the fields.
Seeing the two people standing at his door, he paused and looked at them.
The two people were a man and a woman. The man was dressed richly, while the woman was dressed like herself in a linen cotton coat, but without any patches.
The two, dressed in completely different styles, were standing side by side at their front door.
He was puzzled. Why would these two people come to his house during the Chinese New Year? Could they be distant relatives from somewhere?
The man shook his head, trying to clear his mind of all thoughts.
He walked towards the two men and asked, "And who are you two?"
"Are you a descendant of Zhou Li?" Jing Wu immediately asked.
The man's name was Zhou Nianhuai. He nodded when he heard this. His great-grandfather was indeed named Zhou Li, but he had been dead for several decades. He had lived with his great-grandfather for a period of time when he was young.
"Yes, what's wrong?"
Looking at the expressions of the two people in front of him, he couldn't help but feel nervous.
Could it be that my great-grandfather had some debts from before, and the creditors have come knocking on our door to collect them?
Thinking of this, his legs went weak, and he immediately turned around and tried to run away.
Unexpectedly, he was pulled back by a spirit rope after only two steps.
Yue Huai, holding onto the rope, looked at him and asked coldly, "Why are you running?"
Zhou Nianhuai looked flustered and struggled haphazardly: "Big brother, big sister, our family really has no money. Look at how bare our house is, where am I supposed to find money for you? Why don't you just go ask my great-grandfather for it?"
The two men listened to his rambling and frowned, realizing he thought they were debt collectors.
"We're not asking you for money."
Upon hearing this, Zhou Nianhuai paused for a moment, then immediately looked up at the two of them: "Really?"
Seeing the two nod, he breathed a sigh of relief, stopped struggling, stood up straight, and patted his chest: "Thank goodness, thank goodness, they're not here to collect a debt."
Jingwu looked at his actions, puzzled.
Logically speaking, since the Qin family didn't get the tofu shop back, the Zhou family shouldn't be in such dire poverty.
“I remember, your great-grandfather had a tofu shop.”
Zhou Nianhuai's lips twitched, and he sighed, "Sigh, don't mention it, it's been gone for decades."
Just as Jingwu was about to ask further questions, a woman with a large pregnant belly walked out of the house.
"Husband, why aren't you leaving yet?"
"Oh, I was just about to leave when I saw the two of them at our door. When I asked, I found out they were looking for my great-grandfather."
Zhou Nianhuai quickly helped his wife up and spoke softly.
The woman, Liu, immediately gripped his hand tightly, somewhat nervously asking, "Are they here to collect debts again?"
"No, no, don't get agitated, we're not here to collect a debt."
Hearing her husband deny it, Liu breathed a sigh of relief, then muttered to herself, "It's good that they're not debt collectors."
Jingwu glanced at her prominently protruding belly, a ripple of emotion flashing in his eyes.
He then looked up at the two of them and asked in confusion, "Zhou Li owes a lot of debt?"
Upon hearing this, Zhou Nianhuai replied, "Yes, according to my grandfather, not long after my great-grandfather moved here, all the family property, money, and the tofu shop were taken away by his wife. That's not all, his wife also borrowed a lot of money everywhere in our family's name."
Upon hearing this, Liu rolled her eyes so hard they almost reached the sky: "What kind of good person could that courtesan be? It's only because your great-grandfather listened to her that he squandered all the family fortune left by his first wife, and now we have to suffer along with him."
Seeing his wife's agitated state, Zhou Nianhuai quickly tried to soothe her gently.
Jingwu hadn't expected things to turn out this way. He lowered his eyes and thought for a moment before asking, "How many grandchildren does your grandfather have?"
"Add me three more, what's wrong with that?"
"I was entrusted by your great-grandmother to ask you to go back and collect her body," Jingwu said.
Zhou Nianhuai was stunned for a moment and stood there dumbfounded.
Upon hearing this, Liu immediately exclaimed, "No way! She ran off with so much money and ignored us all these years. Now that she's dead, she's coming to collect our body? No way!"
Jingwu frowned upon hearing this, realizing she had misunderstood, and immediately said, "She was your great-grandfather's first wife, Madam Qin."
Liu paused slightly. She had been in the house for so long, but she had only heard of this person and didn't really know anything about him.
She turned to look at her husband and saw that his face was complicated, as if he was thinking about something.
Zhou Nianhuai did recall some of the stories his father had told him, and his expression was somewhat complicated.
He lowered his eyes and thought for a moment, then said, "I'm not going."
After saying this, he didn't say anything more and turned to go to the field.
Upon seeing this, Jingwu frowned, looked up and exchanged a glance with Yue Huai, then turned his gaze to Liu Shi.
Liu noticed the gaze and immediately took two steps back: "My husband said he's not going, so he's not going. You can go back."
As soon as he finished speaking, he went into the house and slammed the door shut.
Jingwu clicked his tongue in displeasure.
Suddenly, Yue Huai thought of something and said, "Do you think it might be because of the rumor that Qin Huachan eloped with someone?"
Jingwu thought it made sense, so he nodded and headed towards the fields.
She decided to tell Zhou Nianhuai the truth, and if he still refused, she would drag him there and have Qin Huachan talk to him in person.
She walked to the edge of the field and watched him till the land.
Before long, Zhou Nianhuai could no longer stand the gaze and angrily walked up to her, looking up and shouting.
“I already said I’m not going, I’m not going. She eloped with someone else, why should we be the ones to collect her body? Even though she was my grandmother, if she hadn’t eloped with another man, she would have been firmly in the position of the legal wife. Would my great-grandfather have been so foolish as to squander the family fortune?”
He stopped midway through his speech when he realized his voice was a bit loud and had attracted the attention of many people working in the fields.
After thinking for a moment, he looked at the person in front of him and said, "I'm not going!"
Hearing the defiant tone in his voice, Jingwu's lips twitched.
“Your great-grandmother didn’t elope; she was killed by your great-grandfather and has been hidden in your ancestral home ever since.”
"What?" Zhou Nianhuai dropped the hoe in his hand with a clatter. He stared blankly at the person in front of him and asked again, "What did you say?"
“I said, your great-grandmother didn’t elope. She was killed by your great-grandfather and buried in the wall. Your great-grandfather was afraid of being held accountable by her family, so he lied and said that she had eloped with another man.”
Jingwu repeated it again.
Zhou Nianhuai shook his head in disbelief: "Impossible, how could this be? You're not lying to me, are you?"
Jingwu's patience was wearing thin. He grabbed him by the collar, chanted a teleportation spell, and took him to the room, placing him in front of the wall where the bones were buried.
When Zhou Ying saw the two people appear out of nowhere again, her heart skipped a beat.
Just as he was about to speak, Yue Huai appeared out of nowhere, startling him again.
Jingwu pushed Zhou Nianhuai against the wall, touched his forehead, and opened his Yin-Yang Eye.
The moment he opened his eyes, he saw his great-grandmother, Qin Huachan, wearing a blue blood-stained dress, her face covered in blood, her crimson eyes staring straight at him.
"My dear grandson, are you here to collect my corpse?"
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