Sun Guixiang was hunching over, using a small shovel to carefully loosen the soil of another pot of weaker-growing succulent plants. Her cloudy eyes were filled with focused tenderness, and she was humming an old, out-of-tune song.
"Hey! Sun Guixiang! So early in the morning, are you still tending to those pots of broken grass?"
A sharp female voice with a strong sense of superiority, like a sharp stone, suddenly shattered the tranquility of the courtyard.
Sun Guixiang paused, her spade nearly poking the roots of a succulent plant. She didn't even need to look up to know who it was—Wang Jinfeng, her decades-long rival.
The woman lived in a newly built building on the front street. Her husband had made a small fortune in transportation in his early years, and his son was said to be doing well in the city. He felt superior to others and looked down on everyone.
He especially likes to step on Sun Guixiang, a poor old woman who lives alone in a dilapidated house.
Sun Guixiang slowly straightened her aching back and turned around. Sure enough, Wang Jinfeng was standing at the gate of her low courtyard.
The woman was in her fifties, a little younger than Sun Guixiang, and had gained considerable weight. She was wearing a bright purple satin jacket embroidered with large, gaudy flowers, which made her flesh bulge.
There was a shiny gold chain around her neck, as thick as her little finger, and two heavy gold bracelets on her wrists, which hurt her eyes in the morning light.
On his fat face covered with rouge and powder, his eyebrows were drawn black and thin, and the corners of his mouth were habitually turned down with undisguised contempt.
"Is there something wrong?" Sun Guixiang's voice was not loud, with her usual hoarseness and a hint of imperceptible wariness.
She wiped the mud off her skinny hands on her old apron, which was washed white.
"Can't you come and see your old sister if you have nothing to do?" Wang Jinfeng twisted her waist and walked into the yard, and her pair of shiny black leather shoes stepped rudely on the ground that Sun Guixiang had just swept clean.
Her small eyes, squeezed into a slit by thick eyelids, scanned the small and simple courtyard like searchlights.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," she pouted and shook her head exaggeratedly, causing her gold earrings to sway.
"Sun Guixiang, your life is...too shabby! After decades, you still live in this shabby house with rotten tiles and bare walls! You don't even have a decent piece of furniture! Look at your clothes, they're washed white and frayed, and you're still wearing them? Aren't you ashamed?"
She took two steps forward, and the strong smell of cheap perfume and powder on her body rushed straight into Sun Guixiang's nose.
She lowered her voice, but with a deeper malicious tone: "I heard you were ill a while ago? You emptied your coffin money, right? Tsk tsk, that's right. How much money can you make just by picking up scraps and peeling edamame for people? You can't even afford a decent meal, right? Alas, pitiful!"
Anger instantly ignited in Sun Guixiang's cloudy eyes! Her skinny fingers tightly gripped the wooden handle of the small shovel, her knuckles turning white.
"Wang Jinfeng!" Sun Guixiang's voice suddenly rose, with the roughness of sandpaper and uncontrollable anger.
"You don't need to worry about how I live my life! I have hands and feet, I won't starve to death! I don't steal or rob, I'm clean, how can I be ashamed?! But you, wearing gold and silver, don't seem to have a better heart! You're full of shit, aren't you afraid of biting your tongue?"
"You!" Wang Jinfeng's face turned red due to choking, and then she put on that harsh sneer again.
"Oh! You're so stubborn! You're so poor and yet you're still so stubborn! I'm just kindly reminding you out of pity for you! Don't let yourself get sick one day and have no one to collect your body! Unlike me..."
She changed the subject, straightened her plump chest wrapped in satin, and her face was instantly filled with a show-off glow.
"Our Qiangzi! He works in a large state-owned enterprise in the city! He works in an office! He's a serious leader! His monthly salary is equivalent to what you earn in a year! Look, he just sent me money again, telling me to buy something nice and not to treat myself badly! Look, this is what filial piety is!"
She deliberately shook the gold bracelet on her wrist, making it jingle, and her saliva almost sprayed on Sun Guixiang's face.
"You're nothing like me, an old woman living alone in a shabby house with no living creature to talk to! You only have these few pots of broken grass to keep you company, and you treat them like treasures! How much are they worth? Even if you give them to me for free, I'd still think they take up too much space!"
"A broken grass is better than you who stink of money!" Sun Guixiang was shaking with anger. Her cloudy eyes stared at Wang Jinfeng's smug fat face and her skinny hand pointed at the gate.
"Get out! Get out of here! This shabby place of mine can't accommodate a giant Buddha like you wearing gold and silver!"
Just as the two of them were on the verge of a fight, Sun Guixiang's anger was about to burst through her chest, and Wang Jinfeng also put her hands on her hips and prepared to fight for another 300 rounds -
The old door curtain in the inner room was silently lifted by a cold, white, slender hand.
The morning light seemed to find its focus instantly and rushed towards the door impatiently.
A figure, like a banished immortal walking out of an ink painting, appeared quietly in the light and shadow.
Ye Qingliu was holding a small coarse porcelain bowl in his hand, with a little trace of light green mung bean soup remaining at the bottom of the bowl.
It seemed that he had just finished breakfast and was about to return the bowl to the kitchen.
The moment he stepped out of the door, the whole noisy world seemed to be muted.
Wang Jinfeng's small eyes, squeezed into slits by fat, suddenly widened to the limit, and her eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets.
Her mouth was open wide enough to fit a duck egg, and her scarlet-painted lips trembled, but no sound came out.
What did she see?!
How could such a person be hiding in this...this shabby, dilapidated courtyard with bare walls?!
That face! That figure! That whole air of grace! She had lived for over fifty years, and had seen so many so-called "elites" and "celebrities" at her son's company's annual meeting in the city, but none of them could compare to a single hair of the young man before her!
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