Chapter 75 [VIP]
The other person remained silent, but a storm was brewing on the distant horizon. Indeed, in such a closed and backward village, even finding a wife was difficult, let alone being constantly immersed in this environment; some people would inevitably rebel.
The sunlight was gradually eroded, but the few people chatting so intently under the sun were completely unaware.
Jiang Zhuochen frowned slightly, then raised his voice to interrupt the conversation not far away. "I won't marry her! I went to see that woman the other day, she's hideous! If I married her, I wouldn't be able to eat!"
Yi Shui's eyes flickered for a moment, and the dark clouds slowed down their covering of the sky.
Li Zhuangguo turned around and glared at him angrily: "You're looking for a wife who's capable, what good is a pretty face! Is she just there to seduce men?!"
"Didn't you choose a wife based on looks too?" Jiang Zhuochen retorted, deliberately targeting Li Zhuangguo's furious outburst. "Is it because your wife ran away that you won't let me find a pretty one?"
These words immediately struck a nerve with Li Zhuangguo. His veins bulged, his breathing became heavy, and he grabbed his weapon, ready to throw it at Jiang Zhuochen. "You dare to lecture your father?!"
Xu Xing stepped forward, grabbed the vine that was being lashed out, threw it aside, and shielded Jiang Zhuochen behind him. "You really are incompetent."
Li Zhuangguo choked, the panic surging back into his heart. However, with outsiders present this time, he couldn't afford to lose face as a man. He stubbornly refused to show weakness, brandishing a tree branch to bolster his courage.
"So, you think you're all grown up now! If I don't give you a good beating today, I'm not a Li!"
Jiang Zhuochen tugged at Xu Xing's sleeve and whispered, "Don't make a move, it will arouse suspicion."
After saying that, he pretended to be scared and shrank back, then grabbed Xu Xing and ran away.
On the way home from the fields, the gloom on the horizon, though no longer extending, never disappeared, yet the villagers seemed oblivious to it.
Jiang Zhuochen pushed open the window of the room, placed his hands on the windowsill, and stared at the sky as it darkened, gradually merging with the ominous dark clouds.
“It seems she’s still suspicious.” Xu Xing came to his side.
“Yes.” Jiang Zhuochen looked slightly troubled. “Hopefully, things won’t get too complicated... otherwise we’ll have to gloss over it again.”
The second half of his sentence was spoken so softly it sounded like he was talking to himself, but Xu Xing still heard it. He reached out and casually touched the other person's earlobe, asking, "Oh, how do you plan to get away with this?"
"A fake marriage?" Jiang Zhuochen followed his words without thinking. "Anyway, if we want to dispel doubts, we can only keep acting, right?"
Realizing what he had said, Jiang Zhuochen turned around and, as expected, bumped into a face that held a fascinating expression.
He pursed his lips, trying to suppress a laugh, but then his lips were forced into a pout. Xu Xing pinched his cheek and asked, word by word, "Who are you going to marry?"
Unable to speak, Jiang Zhuochen narrowed his smiling eyes, buried his head in the other's arms, and rubbed against him.
Xu Xing, having lost his temper from being teased, put his arm around the man and snorted softly, "Don't even think about it. How's that soul recovering? Get him out here and get back to work."
Jiang Zhuochen probed it, "It seems the effects of the Azure Cloud Heaven's medicine have been almost fully absorbed. No rush, we don't need it for now."
"What, are you feeling sorry for him?"
"What...?" Jiang Zhuochen was both amused and exasperated. Even if he genuinely felt sorry for her, there was nothing wrong with that. What kind of tone was that? "What I mean is, if it really comes to the point of a fake marriage, we can just use a smokescreen."
Wang Laowu definitely wouldn't bring Yishui to the wedding banquet; without her, he wouldn't notice he used magic. And if this news reached Yishui's ears, it would also dispel her suspicions.
After listening, Xu Xing met the man's calm and smug gaze and raised an eyebrow: "It's rare that you're using all your cunning on me?"
"No way," Jiang Zhuochen said frankly. "What did I do?"
Xu Xing pulled the person inside, saying, "Okay, I'll help you remember."
Jiang Zhuochen stopped abruptly, but he wasn't strong enough and was pulled step by step onto the bed by the other party.
He pressed his chest against the other person's, exasperated, and said, "It's not soundproof here!"
Xu Xing spoke slowly and deliberately: "You can use illusions, but you can't soundproof?"
...Jiang Zhuochen bit his tongue, accidentally shooting himself in the foot.
The next day, Jiang Zhuochen had just finished his unpalatable breakfast when he was assigned to deliver some vegetables to the Wang family.
He glanced at the sky outside and noticed that the dark clouds had thinned out a bit.
Upon entering the Wang family's house, he happened to see Yishui washing a large basin of clothes in the yard. Her little hands were red from scrubbing, and her body was so thin that it seemed as if a gust of wind could blow her over.
Cuilian was sewing shoe soles on the side, and every now and then she would poke Yishui's back hard with an awl, scolding her for being "lazy" and "bad luck".
Yi Shui trembled slightly, not daring to resist or cry.
Jiang Zhuochen put down the vegetables and squeezed between the two of them when Cuilian picked up the awl again, feigning surprise: "Hey, Aunt Cuilian, I think I heard crying. Is Brother Baozhu crying again?"
"What?!" Cuilian exclaimed in surprise, quickly throwing away the awl and rushing back into the house to check the situation.
After everyone left, Jiang Zhuochen lowered her eyes to look at the oblivious figure, as if everything that had happened here had nothing to do with her.
"Hey." He squatted down next to Yi Shui, put the awl into his bag, and spoke in an attitude that was as consistent as possible with his persona: "I heard you were sold here?"
He saw the other person pause for a moment, lower their head even further, their lips move slightly, and finally they only whispered, "Mm."
"Aren't you a city kid?" Jiang Zhuochen asked casually, "Never thought about running away?"
Yi Shui's first reaction was to turn around and check if anyone else was there, before she managed to force a smile, her voice barely audible.
"There's no escaping it. The whole village is in cahoots; I'm monitored wherever I go. I've tried to escape twice, but I was caught both times..."
So at this point, she harbored resentment towards the people in this village?
Jiang Zhuochen didn't know what to say to comfort him, and he understood that these things had really happened, so there was no point in saying more. However, in order to conceal his identity, he still spoke up: "You're just a coward. If I were caught and taken to an unfamiliar place, I would definitely beat them up."
Yi Shui murmured to herself, "Haven't I tried it before...?"
She glanced at Jiang Zhuochen, her emotions remaining largely unchanged. "Resist? Didn't you beat your dad up yesterday?"
Jiang Zhuochen paused; he knew this matter couldn't be let go so easily. "That's different."
"What's different?"
The darkness on the horizon gradually deepened, spreading towards the direction where the two were.
Jiang Zhuochen explained calmly, "He's my dad. Even if he hits me, he can't kill me. Besides, I can run away. What's there to be afraid of?"
"You're strange." Yi Shui's hands stopped moving, her eyes reflecting the deep darkness of the sky.
"In this village, once a man finds a wife, the whole village knows in no time, and they're all overjoyed. But you don't want one?"
“I didn’t say no.” Jiang Zhuochen brought out the excuse he had used before: “I just think she’s too ugly. I feel like throwing up just looking at her. I’d rather bang my head against a wall than marry her.”
Yi Shui didn't know most of the people in the village, and was skeptical of Jiang Zhuochen's straightforward excuse.
Jiang Zhuochen could tell from the fact that the storm showed no signs of stopping that the other party did not believe him, so he stopped trying to make things worse.
He stood up, patted his pants, and looked listless, as if he had heard something unlucky. His expression also changed towards Yishui.
"Mind your own business, you city people are just annoying. Get back to work, you jerk."
The dark clouds in the sky seemed to have thickened after Jiang Zhuochen left, forming a clear dividing line with the cloudless clear sky on the other side.
When Xu Xing and the others returned, he poured them a glass of water and asked, "What happened to her?"
"Nothing much." Jiang Zhuochen scratched his head and sighed, "She asked me about my marriage again, so I scolded her a couple of times."
"Didn't you say you were here to reform her?" Xu Xing said helplessly. "Won't doing this just make her go astray faster?"
"I know," Jiang Zhuochen pouted, "but if I were to genuinely show her some concern, I'd be struck by lightning the next second."
To follow the sequence of events without doing anything unreasonable, while also reasonably reforming the female ghost without compromising one's character—isn't that putting people in a difficult position?
Xu Xing was amused by him, "If you can't grasp it, then talk less and do more."
Jiang Zhuochen finished the water in two gulps, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, "That makes sense. I'll try it next time."
In the following days, the two rarely encountered Yi Shui, except when they went to Wang Laowu's house. Jiang Zhuochen inquired and learned that Baozhu's health was deteriorating.
He was barely breathing, his face was deathly pale, and he didn't even have the strength to groan in pain. He could only open his mouth almost imperceptibly and exhale long, drawn-out breaths.
Cuilian spent her days in tears, which annoyed Wang Laowu. He would either yell loudly or smash things all over the place.
In the end, Yi Shui had to bear all of this. Whenever the couple was in a bad mood, they would beat and scold the girl even more. Within two days, the bruises on Yi Shui's body could no longer be hidden.
Jiang Zhuochen had seen it from afar once, and the look of utter despair on that face was even more intense than the deathly aura emanating from Baozhu.
The rest of the village ignored it, only bringing it up occasionally during their leisure time, without a trace of pity in their eyes, only condemning the girl for being utterly useless.
They said they bought her at a high price to bring good luck, but things didn't improve for Wang Laowu's family at all. In fact, their only son was on the verge of death. Even worse, people would point and whisper when they passed by the Wang family, saying that Yishui was a jinx, destined to bring misfortune to her husband.
The rumors grew increasingly offensive, eventually reaching the ears of the two members of the Wang family, who were met with another brutal beating from Yi Shui.
The family was in a state of chaos and preoccupation, so no one dared to bother them. Having lost the opportunity to openly enter the Wang family home to investigate, Jiang Zhuochen and Xu Xing could only scout ahead in the dark of night.
Upon discovering that the other person was lifeless, Jiang Zhuochen began to doubt whether she could survive this ordeal.
Without hesitation, he exploited the villagers' superstitious nature, secretly bewitching a few people in an attempt to quell the storm by spreading rumors that their recent actions had angered the mountain god.
And as expected, it failed. This was a crucial juncture that Yishui had to go through, and they couldn't change it.
Late at night, the rain was torrential, accompanied by thunder and lightning.
Jiang Zhuochen and Xu Xing lied to Li Zhuangguo by saying they were worried about the house leaking and wanted to stay there. They stayed in their own simple main room and heard a fierce argument and the sound of things being smashed coming from the direction of the Wang family. There were also heart-wrenching cries from a woman and faint screams from Yi Shui.
The next morning, news came: Wang Laowu's only son, Baozhu, was dead.
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