Ah Mian was so busy all day that she could barely keep her eyes open by evening.
So when she saw Yuan Hua return, she didn't bother to argue. "Well, we're not the government here, and we can't lock you up for life. If you want to work for someone else, you can leave anytime."
"After you finish dinner, think it over carefully." Meng Chijian carried the wooden bucket into the house.
Yuan Hua felt truly wronged. Although the work had been tough these past few months, the Meng family had stopped treating him like a bad person and now ate with him every day.
But now he was suddenly excluded again. Yuan Hua immediately wanted to turn around and leave, but in the end she pitifully said from outside the window, "After you left, Miss Lu sold out of food and was packing up her stall... when she suddenly burst into tears!"
Meng Jing got excited and spent the last few days taking her mother to see operas, missing out on a lot of gossip.
Unfortunately, the opera troupe was transient and only came once in a while, so she reluctantly did not go to the city with her third brother and sister-in-law.
"What's wrong? Tell me what happened!"
Inside the house, someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder was nitpicking about the little wild child's hygiene.
Meng Chijian wrung out the towel until it was half dry and wiped Ah Mian's face, neck, arms, and back until they were red, just like he was cleaning tables and chairs during a New Year's cleaning. He even scrubbed her feet twice with a brush!
Ah Mian complained, "I'm sleepy!"
"I told you not to take a proper shower."
Actually, she really wanted to sleep. She had long been accustomed to being clean and tidy, and she was caught being lazy just once.
However, after all that commotion, my drowsiness had dissipated considerably, and I could still hear people talking outside the window:
"After closing, Miss Lu counted the copper coins and found that it wasn't even half of her initial investment. She was stunned and asked me to help her calculate the accounts... and it turned out to be exactly that much, without any miscalculation."
"The price is too cheap." A-Mian's voice was a little muffled.
"Yes. She complained to me about her husband afterwards. You all know that Miss Lu's husband is a scholar, but he comes from a poor farming family. He looks glamorous on the outside, but he's actually struggling financially. He can't even afford the tuition for his teacher... oh, what you call tuition. Yet his expenses are still huge. Zhang Sheng wants to study, but he also wants to go to restaurants and travel around with his colleagues. In desperation, she had to sell her dowry and try to start a business... Who would have thought it would turn out like this!"
Meng Jing pouted: "What do you mean by 'having no choice'? Couldn't she just have no choice but to keep her husband in check and stop him from causing trouble outside?"
"Won't this mean the couple will both squander money?"
Yuan Hua continued, "That's what I said too. I said, since your husband is such a good-for-nothing, why are you putting your own money into it? But guess what she said next?"
At this point, A-Mian had become completely curious.
"She gave me a very strange look, then suddenly laughed. She said that in a few months, her husband would become a scholar, and he would remember her for sharing the hardships with him."
Yuan Hua deliberately omitted a seemingly unremarkable sentence here.
Lu Weiwei also said, "But it's strange, I've never seen you in my dreams."
At that moment, the hairs on Yuan Hua's back stood up.
After all, only he himself knew that he was not a person of this world.
The strange feeling in his heart grew stronger and stronger, so he couldn't help but ask a few questions. Lu Weiwei had never told anyone about her dreams before, and only regarded him as an insignificant character, so she casually told him as well.
"I only went to find out what was going on at noon, but I didn't expect her to be so certain later. She said, don't be fooled by your peaceful life now, in a few months, the government will come and say that they have found out that Meng San is smuggling and selling ironware to those mountain bandits. Not only will they lock Meng San up in jail, but the blacksmith shop will also be confiscated by the government!"
Everyone looked horrified.
Salt and iron have been state-run enterprises since ancient times, and this dynasty is no exception, only the methods of governance are different.
Anyone wanting to open a blacksmith shop had to register at the government office. According to regulations, each customer's identity and purchases had to be recorded, along with the account book. Every few months, officials would come to review the records. However, despite the regulations, enforcement was quite lax. The minor official would come, accept a bribe, quickly glance at the records, and then go home to rest.
Moreover, the idea of smuggling ironware to bandits is utterly absurd.
Meng Chijian isn't stupid. He runs a business in this city and the surrounding towns. Everyone knows each other. It would be strange if there was a bandit among them!
These words were simply delusional, wishing for their family to suffer a great misfortune.
However, despite his certainty, Meng Chijian felt a chill in his heart.
He was never afraid of the unpredictable nature of life, and he used to live a life where he didn't know tomorrow. But now things were different.
Ah Mian, who was listening by the window frame, had already turned pale and was unconsciously clutching his clothes tightly.
What will Ah Mian do if that day ever comes and she loses her shop and land and becomes a widow?
"I'll fight them to the death." Although Ah Mian was very scared, she was also full of heroic spirit.
Meng Jing was younger and, having three older brothers, had never experienced hardship. Her idea was, "Let's run away."
A-Mian thought it made sense, but had a problem: "What about A-Dou? If he escapes to the back mountain, he can't get to the steep parts."
They had already thought of an escape route, which was on the mountain behind them. Once the government officials left and the situation calmed down, they could go down the mountain.
"We can ask my second brother's family to help support him; he'll definitely agree..."
If we keep discussing this, I'm afraid this plan will actually come to fruition. Meng Chijian was both amused and exasperated: "Is disaster more frightening than a tiger? It hasn't even happened yet!"
Yuan Hua's face was even more ashen than theirs. After all, he had read many novels and was quite familiar with these tropes. "Miss Lu... should be the protagonist of this novel. Her dreams are all precognitive dreams, and you are her control group family... I'm afraid the outcome will be..." He muttered to himself, his teeth chattering, but the others who were having a heated discussion didn't pay much attention.
"What's all this noise about!" In the midst of the chaos, it was the blind mother of Mencius who slammed her hand on the table.
She had been quietly enjoying the cool air after dinner, but now her face was solemn. This woman, who had experienced the loss of her husband and eldest son, possessed a temperament forged through trials and tribulations. "Meng San, I only ask you, think back carefully about your shop. Did you sell any ironware to the wrong people?"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
