Chapter 180 Seeds
Bai Li weakly looked up and heard Master Chen's laughter coming from the front yard, as he was arranging to distribute bonuses to all the servants in the mansion.
"Let me...see the child..."
Bai Li struggled to sit up, but the midwife pushed her back into the haystack.
"What bad luck!" The old woman shook the blood off her hands. "The madam is holding the young master right now. How dare you, a mere pawned wife, look at him?"
Outside, gongs and drums resounded. Bai Li huddled on a pile of blood-stained grass, the cramps in her abdomen still throbbing.
The festive red glow of lanterns shone through the window, but it couldn't penetrate the dark woodshed.
On the day Zhu Tongwei came to pick him up, Bai Li's crotch was still bleeding.
He kicked over the confinement soup by the bed in disgust, splattering oil on the wall.
"Dirty slut!" He grabbed a moldy straw mat, rolled her up like an animal, and threw her onto the oxcart.
A splinter from the cart floor pierced her back, and the wound burned with pain.
As the oxcart passed the gate of the Chen residence, Bai Li suddenly struggled to sit up.
She seemed to hear a baby crying.
Back in her dilapidated home, Bai Li stared blankly at her emaciated belly all day long.
When she leaked urine at night and soaked the straw mat, she would always think of the child she had never met.
Sometimes, when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she will unconsciously pat her empty chest, making a breastfeeding gesture.
The epidemic came suddenly.
While Bai Li was coughing up blood in the leaky shack, Zhu Tongwei was shouting and yelling at the entrance of the gambling den.
She coughed until her vision blurred, but she still thought: That child should be able to roll over by now, right? Has he also caught the plague? Will the Chen family hire the best doctor for the young master?
These thoughts were more agonizing to her than the blood she coughed up.
In the dead of night, Zhu Tongwei, drunk, kicked open the rickety wooden door.
Bai Li's heart-wrenching cough made him frown sharply, sobering him up considerably.
There are rumors that this epidemic is very serious, and that nine out of ten people who get infected will not survive.
"Bad luck!" He spat, grabbed Bai Li's disheveled hair and dragged her outside. "I had already agreed with Wang Yazi to pawn her again. A good piece of goods that can produce a son would be worth at least eight taels of silver..."
His cursing voice was particularly jarring in the night wind, "Well, well, the duck that was about to be eaten has flown away!"
Zhu Tongwei threw her into a mass grave and left without looking back.
Then, Lu Yao, who happened to be passing by, found her, took her back to the inn, and carefully fed her medicine and treated her wounds.
Bai Li struggled to get up from the bed, kneeling heavily on the ground with his forehead pressed against the cold floor: "I will never forget your life-saving grace, young lady!"
Lu Yao put down the medicine bowl in her hand, spilling a few drops of brown medicine juice.
"It was just a small favor."
She helped Bai Li up, her fingertips touching her bony shoulder blades. "But have you ever thought about making those people pay the price?"
"I want to!" Bai Li's eyes flashed with hatred, her nails digging deeply into her palms. "I've been thinking about it day and night!"
But then she slumped down, saying, "But I... I'm a peasant woman, I don't know anything but farming."
Lu Yao suddenly chuckled softly.
“There was an embroiderer in Qingzhou, even thinner than you. Her father wanted her to be buried with her deceased fiancé for a memorial archway to commemorate his chastity. Later, she pierced her father’s throat with an embroidery needle.”
Bai Li gasped.
But then, as if by magic, Lu Yao opened her palm, and a jet-black seed lay quietly inside.
You said you know how to farm?
Lu Yao placed the seed into Bai Li's calloused hands. "You reap what you sow. This is the fruit of revenge. Plant it."
She leaned down and whispered in Bai Li's ear, "The fruit that will grow will make them wish they were dead."
...
Bai Li sneaked back into the dilapidated courtyard of the Zhu family under the cover of night.
She knelt on the wasteland in the backyard, her ten fingers digging deep into the soil, her fingernails quickly filling with black mud.
She carefully buried the jet-black seed in a three-inch-deep pit.
Bai Li bit the tip of her index finger, and three drops of bright red blood fell into the ground one after another.
For three whole days, she cared for her seed like a baby, not daring to even blink.
On the third day, a blood-red sprout finally emerged from the soil.
Bai Li looked at it with tenderness, as if it were her own child, and cut her finger to water it with her blood.
Late that night, Zhu Tongwei, drunk, kicked open the door, bringing in a foul smell of cheap liquor mixed with body odor.
There was no woman cleaning the house, and the musty smell mixed with the rancid smell of leftover food was nauseating.
He lay down on the bed cursing, completely unaware that the blood-red vine outside the window, which had grown to three feet tall, was slowly wriggling against the wall.
Soon after, Zhu Tongwei started snoring.
The vines slithered in through the crack in the door like venomous snakes.
It first tentatively touched Zhu Tongwei's bare ankle, and seeing that he didn't react, it suddenly sprang up like an arrow.
A thin vine burrowed into his wide-open mouth, and another pierced his ear.
Zhu Tongwei's eyes widened suddenly, his eyeballs bulging, but he couldn't utter a sound.
Countless wriggling ridges rose beneath his skin, as if hundreds of venomous insects were crawling through his veins.
The vines, soaked with blood, turned from dark red to a bewitching crimson.
Finally, with a "pop," the vine emerged from his right eye socket, bringing out a cloudy eyeball that dangled from the end of the vine and swayed gently.
As the sky began to lighten with the first hint of dawn, the crimson vines retreated into the backyard like the receding tide.
Bai Li stroked the still-damp bloodstains on the vine, and the vine rubbed against her palm affectionately, like a baby.
"Good boy..."
Bai Li's hoarse voice carried a strange tenderness.
The vines twined around her wrist, like a crimson bracelet, or like a venomous snake poised to strike.
The room reeked of a nauseating stench of decay.
Zhu Tongwei's body resembled a dried-up piece of meat, his face twisted and ferocious, his mouth wide open as if still cursing.
Bai Li, expressionless, pried open his stiff fingers and pulled out five copper coins from his blood-stained pocket.
These were the last few coins obtained in exchange for selling his wife.
She put the copper coins into her pocket as travel expenses to the Chen family.
Bai Li set off amidst the morning dew, the crimson vines on her wrist writhing restlessly, like a venomous snake poised to strike.
She walked for a whole day and didn't arrive at the Chen residence until dusk.
The plaque above the vermilion gate, inscribed with "A Family of Good Deeds," gleamed with dazzling golden light in the setting sun.
Bai Li looked up, a cold smile creeping onto her lips.
The gatekeeper yawned and noticed a ragged woman standing at the bottom of the steps.
"Go away, go away!" he waved his broom in disgust. "Beggars, go through the back door!"
Bai Li remained unmoved. "Please inform them that the young master's birth mother has arrived."
The servant stared wide-eyed.
"Wait!" He staggered inside.
In the inner courtyard, Madam Chen was teasing her child with a jade ruyi when she heard the servant's report. She slammed the jade ruyi on the table.
"How dare you!" Her phoenix eyes widened. "A mere concubine dares to set foot in my Chen family? Does she think that just because she gave birth to a child, she can rise in rank and become a concubine?"
The old nanny Li quickly offered hot tea: "Madam, please calm down. This old servant will deal with this vile woman."
Madam Chen took a sip of tea, then suddenly sneered, "Bring her in."
Li Mama understood, and as she turned around, she gave the servant at the door a wink.
Inside the main hall, the maids had already set up their positions.
Two rough-looking old women stood behind the screen, clutching hemp ropes soaked in salt water.
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