141 Extra Four
◎ She should bear the heavy sin alone.◎
Hearing what she said, the other party stiffened his neck and shouted, "I'm your father! It's only natural for me to come look for my own daughter!"
Xu Ruolan's expression remained unchanged as she said coldly, "The moment you sold me twelve years ago, I no longer had a father."
Father Xu stepped forward, pointed at Xu Ruolan's nose and cursed: "You ungrateful bastard! If I hadn't sold you out back then, would you be able to live the good life you have today?
"Everyone in the village says you've opened a big shop in town and are living a better life than the landlords. But you're living such a good life and you don't even think about your parents. You've really raised an ungrateful person!"
Xu Ruolan lowered her eyes and stared at him, as if a breath was blocking her throat, choking her and making her unable to speak.
Passersby and tea drinkers all looked over, and her heart couldn't help but tremble. Why? Why wouldn't God let her go? Her eyes unconsciously reddened.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, calmed herself down, and asked, "What do you want?"
Father Xu made a gesture and said, "One hundred taels, give me one hundred taels first."
Xu Ruolan's face darkened. "I don't have any money."
Xu's father immediately threw a tantrum, sat down on the doorstep, slapped his thigh and wailed, "Everyone, come and see! This cruel daughter has earned money but doesn't acknowledge her father. She wants to starve her own father to death. What's the point of me living?"
Father Xu made up stories at random, which attracted many spectators.
Xu Ruolan's face turned pale and she was shaking violently. Raindrops began to fall from the sky, hitting her face and making it hard for her to breathe.
She knew what kind of man her father was, and if she couldn't do what he wanted, she didn't know what he would do next.
She suppressed the emotions in her heart and said, "Dad, get up first. I will go back with you."
Upon hearing this, Mr. Xu stopped crying immediately, got up, dusted himself off, and glanced at Xu Ruolan with pride: "Wouldn't it have been better if you had done this earlier?"
Xu Ruolan managed to steady him for the time being, but she didn't know what to do next. The foggy sky was like a gray spider web that wrapped her tightly. She was almost suffocated in this small world.
She thought about it for a long time, and just thought that A Jin had handed the store over to her, and she couldn't let A Jin down again.
She couldn't drag down A Jin and Cha Yuan, so she had to leave.
She followed her father Xu back to their hometown in Chuzhou. In the adobe courtyard, her stepmother Wang was sitting on the doorstep mending shoe soles, while her son Xu Xiaobao was lying on the stone table eating sweet potatoes.
Seeing them come back, Wang immediately put down her needlework and came forward, her eyes fixed on the cloth bag in Xu Ruolan's hand: "Oh, Miss Lan, you're back? You must be exhausted from the journey. Give me the bag quickly, I'll keep it for you."
Before Xu Ruolan could react, Lin Xiaobao rushed over, snatched the bag, and dumped the contents onto the floor. Apart from a few pieces of silver, an embroidered handkerchief, and half a box of rouge, there was no real money.
Wang's face instantly darkened. "Lan girl, are you kidding us? Everyone in the village says you made a fortune in town, so why did you only bring back so little?"
"The shop is not mine. I'm just working for someone else, and this is the only salary I get every month."
"You're talking nonsense!" Father Xu slammed the table, his eyes red. "I clearly saw you were the one talking at the cashier in the store, and you dare to lie to me?!" As he said that, he swung his arm and slapped Xu Ruolan hard in the face.
The crisp sound of slapping echoed in the courtyard. Xu Ruolan was caught off guard and took the slap. Her cheek felt burning with pain. She turned her head away and glanced at everyone without any expression.
Her eyes were as cold as winter ice. "The city government has records. We can easily find out who owns each shop, who owns it, and how much the employees earn per month."
Father Xu choked, rolled his eyes, and then put on a look of deep sorrow. He slapped his thigh and sighed, "What are you investigating? You are the daughter of my Xu family. Even if you are a hired worker, you have been working outside for so many years. You should have saved some money, right?
"Although Xiaobao is your stepmother's son, he is still your brother. He will go to school and get married in the future. How can you, as his elder sister, just stand by and watch?"
"Brother?" Xu Ruolan suddenly let out a low laugh, her voice filled with sadness. "I only have one biological brother, but he died thirteen years ago—along with my mother, at your hands."
The yard suddenly became quiet.
Xu Ruolan's eyes fell on the crooked locust tree in the corner of the yard. It was planted by her mother herself, and now its branches almost reached outside the adobe wall.
Memories suddenly flooded back, and those bloody fragments that were weighing on my heart were all terrifyingly clear at this moment.
"My mother is weak." Her voice trembled, but she spoke each word with great emphasis. "You always complained that she couldn't give birth to a son. You beat her when you were drunk and sent her to sleep in the woodshed in the cold winter. She never cried to me, but only hugged me at night, saying that you would treat her better when you had a younger brother in the future."
"Later, she finally got pregnant. She had severe morning sickness and couldn't eat, but you wouldn't even buy her a sweet potato. The other day, I went to the river to wash clothes and heard a neighbor say they saw you cuddling with the widow from the west side of the village on the hillside—I ran home and ran into that Wang sitting on our kang!"
When Wang heard her talk about the past, her face turned ugly for a moment, "Back then..." Before she could finish, she was interrupted by Xu Ruolan, "You forced my mother to give birth, causing her to suffer a shock before giving birth, resulting in two deaths..."
Xu Ruolan's voice trembled as she fought hard to hold back her tears. "The midwife said Mom was pregnant with a son... Mom had just passed away, and you took that widow home with you, not even willing to buy her a flimsy coffin."
Father Xu's face turned the color of liver and he roared, "She's weak and unlucky, what does it have to do with others?!"
Xu Ruolan suddenly raised her voice, her chest heaving violently. "Not only do you not feel the slightest bit of guilt, you even think I'm a money-loser and want to sell me to a matchmaker in town! Does this mean it has nothing to do with you?"
"I'm your father, so if I want to sell it, I'll sell it! Go ask other families and see if I'm right."
Xu Ruolan sneered and wiped the moisture from her eyes. "Of course you're not wrong... but I really don't have any money right now. What are you going to do? Sell me out again?"
After hearing what she said, Father Xu glared at her fiercely and said, "You have no money, but your shopkeeper should have money. I will go to Yunzhou again tomorrow to find your shopkeeper!
"If she doesn't give me money when I ask her for it, I won't be able to do business!"
"You are not allowed to go!" Xu Ruolan said hatefully.
Father Xu was forced to retreat half a step by her sudden momentum, but then he stiffened his neck and said, "Why should I be afraid? I'm your father. It's only natural for me to go to her and ask for the money my daughter deserves!"
As he was about to walk out, his rough hands had already grasped the wooden latch on the gate.
Xu Ruolan was shaking with anger.
The remaining fire in the kitchen reflected on the adobe wall, making the shadows of the three people crooked, like weeds growing on a grave.
They didn't want her to live—
A crazy thought suddenly burst out from the bottom of her heart, like burning kerosene, instantly burning through her limbs and bones. Since they want her dead, why not all of them die together?
Xu Ruolan's gaze fell on the corner of the table - there was an oil lamp lit there, the brass candlestick was cast with rough patterns, the candlelight flickered, casting her shadow on the wall, like a ghost with bared fangs and claws.
Without thinking much, she reached out and picked up the candlestick. The candle oil splashed on her hand, burning her and making her shiver, but she held it tighter.
She raised her arm high, and the brass candlestick made a whistling sound as it hit the back of Xu's father's head.
With a dull thud, Father Xu swayed like a rag and slowly collapsed on the threshold. Dark red blood oozed from his hair, trickled down his cheeks, and dripped onto the bluestone, creating a small, dark patch.
She looked at the red, and instead of being afraid, she felt the tightness in her chest dissipate a little - it turned out that blood is warm, and it turned out that these people could also feel pain.
She raised the candlestick again and smashed it down on Xu's father's back, again and again. The sharp edges of the candlestick struck bone, making a dull sound that, mixed with the sharp screams of her stepmother Wang, exploded in the twilight.
Xu Ruolan paused, the candlestick still dripping with blood, her hands and her skirt stained with warm liquid. She slowly turned around, her gaze calmly sweeping over the mother and child huddled in the corner. There was no trace of fear, only a calmness that bordered on relief.
She tightened her grip on the candlestick and walked towards them step by step.
After a moment, she closed her eyes and felt the deathly silence in the house. She suddenly smashed the candlestick in her hand towards the other lit oil lamp in the house, and the candlelight fell on the table. In just a moment, the orange-red flame suddenly licked the window frame, dyeing half of the yard red.
Xu Ruolan seemed to have lost all her strength. She slowly sat down, leaning her body, lying in this familiar yet strange place.
It would be better to die, she thought.
She closed her eyes, waiting for the fire to consume her. But at this moment, a picture suddenly popped up in her mind - the scene of everyone sitting around the copper pot and eating hot pot during the Chinese New Year last winter.
The soup in the copper pot was bubbling. Ah Jin picked up a piece of mutton roll sprinkled with sesame seeds and said with a smile, "Come and try my cooking!"
Those warm fragments were like tiny fragments of light, making her eyes hurt, and tears fell without warning - in this world, there were still people thinking about her, waiting for her, and longing for her.
How could she just die like that?
"No... I can't die!" She muttered to herself, suddenly got up, and stumbled towards the door. At this time, the wooden beams of the roof had begun to fall down, and sparks landed on her hair, burning her neck and making her run faster.
The thick smoke choked her so much that she couldn't open her eyes. She groped her way to the door based on her memory. Just as her fingers touched the door frame, there was a loud "boom" behind her - a burning wooden beam hit the place where she had just squatted, and sparks splashed on her back.
She didn't dare look back, and rushed out with all her might, unaware that her skirt was torn by the sparks. As she stumbled out of the yard, the house behind her had been completely engulfed by the fire dragon, and the sound of the wooden pillars collapsing shook the ground.
She fell to the ground on the ridge outside the yard, looked back at the sea of fire, and tears fell again. The past will eventually pass. She still has a future, and she still has Ah Jin and Li He...
There was a drizzle in the yard. Xu Ruolan did not hold an umbrella. She walked down the steps slowly, raised her head, and felt the drizzle wetting her face. Unlike the rain in person, this rain was gentle and warm.
It doesn't matter. No one needs to know these things except her. She can bear the heavy sin alone.
******
That night, she was slowly combing her hair in front of the bronze mirror. When she caught a glimpse of a dazzling white strand, her hand paused slightly.
She gently brushed the white hair, picked it up in her palm and looked at it carefully, then looked at the person in the mirror. She was already thirty years old, no longer young, and would not consider getting married.
Over the years, she has recruited many girls who were "abandoned" by their parents into her store and raised them personally, just like how Song Jinyi and she raised Zhang Jinfei together.
Days like this are both plain and warm - she likes them very much.
In the blink of an eye, it was the end of the year again. She received a letter from Song Jinyi and Li He. Song Jinyi sent her greetings in the letter and talked about business in the Western Regions. She also talked about going further west, where there were Kucha and Mengdu...
Zhang Jinfei came over to read the letter with her and said curiously, "People in the west would wear ankle-length moon-white robes and white headscarves..."
She paused and said, "This is not like wearing funeral clothes..."
"Don't talk nonsense!" Xu Ruolan interrupted, "That place is not Daxia, the customs are different. Maybe it's their daily clothes."
Zhang Jinfei nodded, "Master, have you ever seen that person from the Western Regions?"
Xu Ruolan shook her head. "Except for Wuyang back then, I haven't seen any other foreigners."
Zhang Jinfei sighed, "I really envy Shopkeeper Song. He's been all over the place. What he described in the letter is really interesting. The language, living habits, and food are all very unique. I really hope to have the chance to go and see it."
"If you really want to go, I will write a letter to Ah Jin and ask her to take good care of you."
Upon hearing this, Zhang Jinfei took Xu Ruolan's arm and said with a pout, "It was just a joke, Master, why did you take it so seriously? Of course I'm not going anywhere. I want to stay and accompany you."
Xu Ruolan smiled and said, "Can you stay with me forever?"
Zhang Jinfei immediately replied, "Why not? If Master doesn't marry, I won't marry either. I'd rather serve Master for the rest of my life."
"What nonsense are you talking about?"
Zhang Jinfei wanted to swear an oath right then and there so that her master would understand her true feelings, but Xu Ruolan stopped her.
Although Zhang Jinfei failed to make a vow, he thought to himself: Time will prove everything.
Xu Ruolan carefully put away Song Jinyi's letter, then opened Li He's letter. After glancing at it twice, she stood up and said, "Hurry up and prepare the carriage. We will go to Shengjing tomorrow."
Zhang Jinfei had never seen his master lose his composure like this, and hurriedly asked what was wrong.
"Ahe is pregnant!"
Zhang Jinfei was startled at first, then she reacted and ran out immediately. After a while, she ran back and asked Xu Ruolan in a bewildered manner: "Master, what should I prepare?"
Xu Ruolan was stunned by her question. They looked at each other for a while and realized that they both had no experience in pregnancy and didn't know what to prepare.
Finally, she asked Cheng Xia, who was already a mother of two, and then she prepared tiger-head shoes, a longevity lock, gold and silver ingots, and various small ornaments. She hurriedly took the gifts to the capital.
Before leaving, she looked back at the pomegranates in the yard and picked a few big ones to bring to Li He. The pomegranates had a flavor that could not be found anywhere else.
The pomegranate tree bears fruit every year, and the fruit is sweet throughout the entire autumn.
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