Liang Shuyan finally realized that the shopkeeper wanted to extort money from them because of their tattered clothes!
"What's wrong, innkeeper? Are you trying to charge us for double the meal?"
The shopkeeper, a chubby man, stared at Liang Shuyan with his eyes wide open and sneered, "Looking so poor, why are you pretending to be rich to eat here? What, do you not have money to pay for the meal, so you deliberately let this child shout that there are locusts in our food, is that it?"
“If I say no, would you believe me? Of course not. So, in that case, why don’t we find someone who can testify to this?”
"You're talking nonsense! You just scared all our customers away. What do you want to say now? What witnesses do you need?"
With her hands on her hips, Liang Shuyan slammed her fist on the table and shouted, "Everyone who's passing by, come and help this old woman! We're from out of town, and we came here to eat noodles. We never expected to find locusts in our food, and they even blamed my son for shouting it out! Tell me, does this restaurant have any sense of reason?"
Everyone was curious and gathered around, pointing and commenting on the shop owner. The voices were mixed, with all sorts of opinions.
"Oh dear, this noodle shop is the most popular in our Ningyuan Town. I never expected that they would put locusts in their noodles to sell. What kind of people are they? Are they so poor that they have to sell locusts?"
“That’s right! My husband said this place has delicious noodles and good business. Turns out they’ve made a fortune off locusts! This woman from out of town has it tough too. She came here to eat a bowl of noodles, and you do this to her? Give her money back!”
The crowd immediately stirred up the atmosphere. When the shopkeeper saw this group, he hurriedly begged for mercy: "Please listen to me, everyone. That's not how it is. There are no locusts in our noodles. This woman is framing me!"
Liang Shuyan pulled Sanwang out and said, "Everyone knows we are honest and simple country folk. Of course, my child can't speak. Tell me, Sanwang, where is the locust you just stepped on?"
Jin Sanwang took two steps back, pointed at the locusts trampled into a clump of corpses on the ground, and said, "Look, did I lie? There really were locusts. I just shouted once, and the shopkeeper came down to cause trouble for us!"
Seeing that Jin Sanwang wasn't lying, the shopkeeper felt much more at ease. He looked at Liang Shuyan and said, "Hmph, so that means the locusts aren't in our shop. These things have wings and can control everything, but I can't control locusts flying around everywhere."
Liang Shuyan snorted coldly and spread her hands: "Since the owner of this restaurant has said so, who do you think would dare to eat at her place in the future? You might accidentally find a locust in your food and you can't even say anything, or you'll have to pay for two meals. Who would dare to come to a noodle shop like this?"
The shopkeeper's lips twitched with anger. He had clearly won, so why was this woman still able to argue? She looked like just an ordinary country woman; how could she be so eloquent?
"What...what exactly do you want?"
"In that case, it's none of our business. We didn't eat the noodles you served. Sorry, because of the locusts, I have no interest in eating them. Let's go!"
Li Lanfang, however, felt a little embarrassed: "Let's just eat this meal. Anyway, it's not easy for anyone to do business right now, so please be understanding."
Liang Shuyan thought for a moment and said, "Fine, I'll let it go for the sake of my kind mother-in-law. We'll eat the noodles and you can have the money, but you have to apologize to me in front of everyone!"
"Okay, okay, I apologize, but let's just forget about it. After all, we're a small business, and we should have taken precautions when there are locusts. I was just angry and misunderstood you. I'm sorry. I won't take the money for today's meal; consider it my apology, okay?"
Liang Shuyan wasn't one to hold a grudge. Now that things had come to this point, the most important thing was how to get out of here as quickly as possible. Perhaps Li Zheng and his group were getting impatient?
Remembering that she had more important things to do, she clapped her hands and said, "Alright, I'll let it go today because my mother pleaded for you!"
Once outside the noodle shop, the old lady looked unhappy and began questioning Liang Shuyan: "Why are you making such a big deal out of this? It's just that the shopkeeper wronged us, why did you smash the noodle shop's signboard in front of so many people?"
This was the first time Jin Sanwang had ever seen his grandmother argue with his mother about this. He quickly grabbed his grandmother's hand and said, "Grandma, this is all my fault. I didn't yell, but I was really scared of those locusts. What if I got bitten by one? Would I die?"
"Who said locusts are edible? Would you believe that?"
At this point, Liang Shuyan actually thought of a business to make a living, but at the moment, they were still on the road fleeing famine, so even if it was a good business, she had no way to do it.
Jin Sanwang's eyes widened: "What? Mother, you can eat locusts? Are you delirious from hunger? How can you eat these things?"
"Alright, Mother's just delirious with hunger. Let's hurry up and go, your brother and sister-in-law are getting worried!"
Liang Shuyan pulled the old lady along and hurried towards the town gate of Ningyuan Town, with Jin Sanwang carrying large and small bags, following behind like a servant.
"Mother, don't be angry. Actually, if that woman hadn't been trying to blackmail us, I wouldn't have thought of such a despicable method. Never mind, it's all in the past now, let's go!"
On the way, Liang Shuyan kept thinking about the locust business, her mind a jumbled mess.
Dashan and Erniu rubbed their hands together in front of the donkey cart, saying, "Where could Mom and Grandma have gone? We've already searched separately, but we haven't seen them in the whole town. What should we do now?"
Liu cursed, "You two big bad wolves! Even if you saw Mother and Grandma, you still couldn't find them. If I had known this would happen, I should have gone with Mother and Grandma!"
Zhang said calmly, "It's alright. With your mother here, Grandma will be fine. Besides, isn't Sanwang with you? If you ask me, Sanwang is much smarter than the two of you!"
Seeing the family arguing about how to find them, Liang Shuyan and the old lady came over: "Stop arguing, how could we, two old people, get lost? Don't make a fuss!"
"Candied hawthorns! And, and meat buns!" Niu Niu's little eyes immediately spotted what San Wang was carrying.
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