“The gold leaf is buried in the soil under the middle of the bed,” Chen said. Niu Jiejie is only six years old. Children don’t lie. If the divorced Guo or Xiao Chen asked her now, she would definitely not tell.
Niu Jiejie quickly lay down and used a small shovel to dig up the refurbished mound of soil under the bed. Inside was a small box. Opening the box, she found the golden leaves she had snatched from the tree earlier.
"Grandma, I'll go get you two more doses of medicine. Wait here!"
Before leaving, Niu Jiejie wanted to annoy Xiao Fubao, so she deliberately called for Xiao Fubao's door to open. However, it was Niu Baozhu who opened the door first.
Niu Jiejie said:
"Baozhu, you know your fifth sister isn't your biological sister, right? Why are you treating a sister who isn't your own good?"
Niu Baozhu is seven years old this year. She wasn't sure if her younger sister was her biological daughter, and she was still a little surprised when she heard the news.
Despite her surprise, she still felt very uncomfortable with Niu Jiejie's words:
"You knocked on the door just to say this? Whether she's my biological daughter or not, she's still my sister, and she always will be." "How could you be so mean? We don't play with bad kids. You can get out now!"
Niu Jiejie snorted and then left; she was going to her uncle's house.
However, the most unpredictable thing in this world is the human heart. Niu Jiejie handed the gold leaf to Guo Ren and asked, "Uncle, where is my mother?"
Guo Rendao:
"Your mom went to your aunt's house. How about your uncle takes you there?"
Niu Jiejie nodded and said, "Mm."
Guo Ren took his niece to the county town and spoke to a man. The man handed Guo Ren several hundred taels of silver, then leered at six-year-old Niu Jiejie. Niu Jiejie, terrified, hid behind Guo Ren and said:
"Uncle, weren't you taking me to Aunt's house?"
Guo Rendao:
"I've already sold your mother; she's working as a prostitute now!"
"Uncle, you're my uncle!" Niu Jiejie cried out, and the man scooped her up and carried her into a house in the alley.
Guo Ren took the money, put it in his pocket, and then went into a brothel.
Knowing that Niu Jiejie had lied to her and taken the gold leaf, Chen banged on the door with a wooden stick and cursed for a long time:
"You little money-loser, you'd better die out there like your mother and never come back."
Chen's curses came true; Niu Jiejie really died. People from the county government came to summon her to identify the body, supposedly because she had been sold by her own uncle to a man with unusual fetishes.
He died a very tragic death.
When Niu Cuihua recounted this incident, she sighed, "This is probably what they call a 'wolf uncle' in operas! Luckily, we don't have an uncle like that." She continued, "She always bullied my sister; this is her retribution."
Little Fu Bao wasn't very happy:
"Although she was hateful, she was also pitiful, and she didn't deserve to be treated like this. Fortunately, her uncle is dead too."
He died on his niece's body.
The Chen family didn't react much. It was just that a granddaughter and a daughter had died, so there was no need to be sad. It was just a pity that Jin Yezi couldn't be found.
Chen's family came again demanding money.
Madam Chen was a shrewd woman. When she was managing the shop, she knew that business was bad and the shop would have to close down sooner or later. So she secretly hid about twenty copper coins every day from the money she made from selling pickles, but when it came time to pay off debts, she would never take them out.
After two or three months, she had saved a lot of money, about two strings of cash. She also saved a considerable amount from the money her family made from selling the land, bringing her total to about five strings of cash.
She ran away with the five strings of cash.
It turns out that she had already started a relationship with another cousin from her maternal family, and Niu Shiwu was completely cuckolded.
Once she ran away, Chen's family could only demand money from her. When they couldn't get the money, they would beat her and smash things. Anything of value or usable was taken away by Chen's family, pots and pans.
Chen's foot, which had been venomed by snakes, had almost fully recovered, but now, as soon as she could walk, she stumbled and tried to stop her relatives from carrying things.
"You can't move! Second sister-in-law, aunt, cousin, you can't move! If you all move away, what will my family eat? We're all relatives, you can't be so heartless!"
The one who was called "Uncle" said:
"We lent you the money out of kinship, but who knew that when your family was making money, you bought all this new furniture without thinking of paying it back first; you were ungrateful first, so don't blame us."
Although Chen's Pickles Shop had an accident at first, business did recover somewhat after they stopped using those rotten vegetable leaves.
At that time, Ms. Chen was so proud of herself that she never thought about paying back the money. She was only concerned with getting a more comfortable bed and furniture.
Actually, her original furniture was still usable, but she had a bad conscience and never thought about paying back the money. Once she made money, she naturally did whatever made her comfortable.
"How could you be so heartless! My God!" Chen collapsed to the ground, slapping her thigh and crying out.
To be honest, Chen's relatives were quite ruthless and vengeful. They didn't leave them even a single grain of rice, and all of Niu An and Niu Shiwu's money was swindled away by Xiao Chenshi.
That means the Chen family won't be able to afford a single meal for a month.
The house was also completely emptied.
When a person is down on their luck, it's not just a little bit of bad luck. Niu An was working on a construction site at the dock, and because he was exploited so badly, he broke his back and became completely disabled.
When the family ran out of money, they had no choice but to call back the two children who were studying in the county town, and then sell Niu An's son to a wealthy family as a servant.
Using the few taels of silver earned from selling one's son to beg for a few bites of food to survive, once a person becomes a slave, their descendants for generations will never be able to rise above their station.
When someone is down on their luck, there's no limit to how unlucky they can get.
When Chen went to the toilet at night, she accidentally fell into the latrine. Niu Shiwu discovered her when he went to the toilet in the morning. Chen almost drowned in the latrine.
Fortunately, he was unharmed, except that he swallowed a few mouthfuls of urine mixed with feces.
Niu Shiwu impatiently bathed Chen Shi several times, but the smell on Chen Shi's body didn't dissipate for half a month.
Everyone said that she had done too many immoral things and was punished; her family members were either dead, crippled, or sold.
They were cursed by a plague god, so the villagers wanted to stay as far away from the Chen family as possible.
Niu Shiwu was thinking about dividing the family property.
He wants to divide the family property like the second son.
His family consisted of two men, father and son, who were able to work, while the elder brother was disabled and had only one son who had been sold into servitude.
The older brother has a son to support him, so it's not a big deal.
But that would mean he was supporting his mother, Chen, all by himself.
He originally had three brothers.
He shouldn't be the only one supporting them.
“Now, out of the three of us brothers, the second brother is the richest and the most successful. Mother can’t let the two of us brothers support him!” Niu Shiwu said to Niu An.
Yuan, from Niu Fangyuan's family, was a formidable woman. Chen didn't really want to be with them, but her disagreement was useless.
When a mother is useful, she is a mother; when a mother is no longer useful, she is just a rag on the table.
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