Chapter 147 Doesn't seem like a respectable family?
Lu Shizhu turned his head with a resolute look in his eyes and ran away.
He had only taken a couple of steps when the old man grabbed him by the neck and dragged him back, forcing him to sit down. A pair of chopsticks was already shoved into his hand.
The old man smiled and said, "Don't be so polite. Take a bite and see how it tastes."
Lu Shizhu looked pale and sickly: "Can I not eat?"
The old man smiled gently: "No."
Lu Shizhu took a deep breath, his face showing a look of grim determination, and tried to pick up the dark, lumpy thing with his chopsticks.
After trying twice, I finally lost my temper, slammed the chopsticks down, and stood up abruptly.
But when he saw the old man's slightly gloomy face, his rebellious spirit finally gave way to a forced smile: "Uncle Jing, let's put this aside for now. I see you've prepared other dishes. Would you like to show us?"
Upon hearing this, the old man immediately put down the spatula: "This child, you should have said so earlier." Then, smiling, he placed another large bowl in front of him: "Here, open it yourself."
Lu Shizhu yanked open the lid of the bowl, and the dish looked much more normal in color.
"These are...green beans?"
This dish looks much better; at least it has some green in it.
A few red hairs could still be seen inside. Lü Shizhu picked up the red hair with trembling hands: "Hey~ Isn't this the bug that Anuan gave you to eat before? Why are you using it to cook again?"
The old man strongly disagreed, glaring at Lü Shizhu: "Why can't we eat it? This isn't an insect; Anuan said it's a crayfish. I can't eat it, but you can. This is a new dish I developed, called Crayfish and Green Bean Soup."
And this is another dish I recently developed.
As he spoke, he opened the lids of the remaining two bowls and introduced them one by one: "This is a snow pear that I picked on the mountain. I stewed it with green garlic and cooked it for a long time."
There's also a pot of fruit rice that I specially made. I picked a lot of fruit on the mountain today and put it all in.
"You all should come and try it, what do you think?"
As he spoke, he looked at everyone expectantly. After a long while, seeing that no one reacted, the spatula in the old man's hand began to creak.
Awakened by the noise, little Baozhu burst into tears again upon seeing the table full of food: "Waaah, I want my mommy! I want my mommy!"
Although he said these words through tears, they truly touched everyone's hearts.
For about fifteen minutes, everyone, including the old man who was cooking, missed Jiang Nuanzhi terribly.
The old man picked her up and gently wiped away her tears, smiling as he said, "Baozhu must be missing her mother because she hasn't eaten enough. You're crying so hard, you should eat more. Come on, Grandpa will feed you."
As he spoke, he picked her up and sat her on the table, as if he were about to serve her rice.
Little Baozhu's crying stopped abruptly, her face filled with terror: "No, no, no, I don't want to eat."
Seeing this, the waiter immediately snatched the little sister from the old man's arms: "Um... Grandpa Jing, my sister isn't hungry yet, um... let my dad eat first, my dad is hungry."
Li Rong: ...
He vaguely realized that everyone's eyes were on him. He simply picked up his chopsticks and scooped the only piece of fruit and rice that was still edible into his bowl.
Then, under the varied gazes of the crowd, he ate it expressionlessly.
"How was it? How does my cooking compare to Anuan's?"
Li Rong: "..."
"Your food... is incomparable."
Seeing that the old man was about to ask something else, Li Rong simply put down his chopsticks.
I'm full.
Then they lifted Xiao Er and Xiao Baozhu up from the ground.
Inside the room, Lü Shizhu's lips twitched, and she couldn't help but give him a thumbs up: "You're ruthless."
While they weren't paying attention, Xiao Xuanting tried to sneak up onto the heated brick bed from the side, but unsurprisingly, he was caught by the old man.
"We haven't eaten yet, where are we going?"
Xuan Ting blinked, and very sensibly ate the fruit rice as well. He finished it in a few bites, nodded in approval, put down the bowl, and ran off.
Now only Lü Shizhu was left to face the pressure from the old man.
He eventually reached for the fruit and rice, only to find that the old man had taken it away.
"Don't just eat rice, there are other dishes too, eat some of them."
Lu Shizhu wanted to slap himself twice. Why didn't he just eat a bowl of rice earlier? Why make such a fuss?
Just as he was racking his brains for a solution, he suddenly heard a woman's shrill voice coming from outside.
"Is this the home of this little beast? Where is everyone? Get out here right now and see what your son has done! Come out!"
Lu Shizhu's eyes lit up: "Someone's here! I'll go out and see."
The meal was abruptly interrupted by such a noise, and everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Then, they all looked outside.
"They're bastards! Everyone come and see, this family is utterly inhuman."
"Look! This little beast beat my son like this! His body, back, is covered in wounds! He even knocked out several teeth! My poor son has been bedridden at home for days, so humiliated that he's afraid to go to school. If my husband and I hadn't seen it, he might have lost his life!"
A woman with high cheekbones, a thin face, and triangular eyes, carrying a child in her arms, entered the courtyard and sat on the ground, wailing and crying loudly.
As he spoke, he glared fiercely at Ping'er.
At this moment, Li Junping also had injuries on his face, and he was being held back by a fat, burly man. He tried to struggle, but he couldn't. He could only let the other man pull him along.
The man, holding Li Junping in one hand and a large machete in the other, said fiercely, "Get out here right now. If you don't give us an explanation today, I'll kill this brat to avenge my son."
The neighbors heard the noise and started pointing and whispering in their direction.
"It's that kid from the Li family again? That kid's always stealing chickens and dogs! And now he's even beaten someone's child up like this? He's really a handful. Did they come knocking on our door?"
"No wonder Jiang Pangya's stepmother treated him badly, even making him live in a doghouse. Now it seems she deserved it!"
"Sending someone like this to school? It doesn't look like they'll learn anything. They'd be better off helping out at home!"
"Who says otherwise? That spendthrift woman from the Li family doesn't know how to save money at all! I heard that it costs two taels of silver for half a year to go to school."
"Exactly, exactly. I saw them stewing such a big pot of meat just the other day. What kind of family can afford to eat like that? They must be doing something shady."
"Who knows? With so many grown men coming and going from the house, it doesn't look like a respectable family at all!"
Li Junping clenched his fists inwardly, his eyes coldly sweeping over the crowd around him.
A woman who was gossiping nearby met his cold gaze and immediately shuddered.
"Hey, look at this kid's eyes! They're so fierce, like he's about to kill someone! He's definitely not a good person!"
Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Wishing all my dear readers good fortune, a full moon, and peace and happiness. I also wish all my readers and myself a super slim, beautiful, and wealthy year! May we all become better versions of ourselves. Sending you lots of love!
(End of this chapter)
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