"That's right!" Chen Weiwan wiped the tears from her laughter, and the croton powder on the chopping board fell to the ground as she laughed. "If I had used this scheming energy in the right way, I might have become a constable, specializing in catching thieves who escaped from prison!"
Before he could finish his words, Kengkeng and Wawa rushed in, holding kites with half-dried croton powder still stained on their tails. "Mom! Dad! Sister Chuntao said Grandma Liu fell into the manure pit again? And she's being chased by bugs!"
Chen Weiwan touched her son's face, which was covered with bean powder, and smiled until her eyes curved into crescents. The croton flower hairpin in her hair dazzled people: "Yes, so you must remember this. Don't learn bad intentions in the future, otherwise you will be like Grandma Liu, chased by dung beetles all over the ridges of the fields."
"Got it!" the children said in unison, turned around and ran to the garden, leaving a crooked trail of croton powder behind the kite.
Xiao Yu put his arm around Shen Weiwan's waist and looked at the swaying Croton flowers outside the window: "Do you think she should be honest this time? She has fallen into the cesspool twice, she should learn her lesson."
"Who knows," Shen Weiwan raised her eyebrows, her fingertips drawing circles on his chest, "With her stubborn personality, maybe she'll hide in the fertilizer cart next time and have a close contact with cow dung."
Sure enough, within three days, news came from Badoutian again: Liu had hidden in a cart full of cow dung, half buried to death by half a cart of fertilizer, and her buttocks had been pierced by a dung fork. Her wails could be heard two miles away. From then on, the people of Badoutian made up a more catchy ballad, squatting on the ridges of the fields while weeding and singing:
"Croton fields, Liu's madness,
Stealing beans and breaking your intestines,
The dung beetle chases and bites my butt.
He's crying out for his mother and then for the wolf in the cesspool!
With worms stuck in his head and feces wrapped around his body,
The noble lady in the general's mansion,
Now it stinks worse than latrine dung,
When you see a dung beetle, you call it "kiss!"
As Shen Weiwan listened to the ballad, she and Xiao Yu were playing a chessboard painted with croton powder. She laughed so hard that the chess pieces scattered all over the table, and a few rolled into the cup of croton tea. Xiao Yu bent down to pick them up, but saw tears of laughter in her eyes. "Madam, your aunt's fate is even more exciting than the clown in the storybook."
"Of course," Chen Weiwan wiped the corners of her eyes, the croton powder stained the silk handkerchief, blurring out a light brown mark, "don't you see who it was that was in the general's mansion back then, feeding me poisonous chicken soup in various ways?"
That night, in the Prince's mansion garden, Kengkeng and Wawa were drawing crooked traps with croton powder. On a wooden sign, charcoal pencil read, "Squirrel snacks inside. Greedy eaters get a day trip to the dung pit." Next to it was a drawing of a little man wearing a dung beetle hat. Shen Weiwan leaned against Xiao Yu's chest, listening to the children's laughter. Suddenly, she felt that the most satisfying thing in the world wasn't to trample on one's enemies, but to watch them sink deeper and deeper into the pit of desire they had dug, ultimately becoming the laughing stock of the common people.
Liu from Croton Farm, after three baptisms in the dung pit, finally gave up on escaping. Every day, she hunched over the bean fields, weeding them. Her white hair was always covered in grass clippings and croton powder, making her look like a mass of weeds from afar. Occasionally, a swarm of dung beetles would fly over the bean fields, and she would reflexively scream and run to the dung pit, only to be dragged back to the ridge by the yamen runners, drawing laughter from the prisoners working in the fields. Over time, the inmates of Croton Farm would exchange glances at each other when they saw her: "Look, that's Liu, chased into the dung pit by dung beetles! She used to be so powerful in the general's mansion, but now even the dung beetles despise her!"
Shen Weiwan shrugged when she learned about it and sprinkled an extra spoonful of freshly ground croton powder into Xiao Yu's tea: "Let her be. Anyway, the manure pit in the croton field is deep enough for her to suffer so much that she will be reborn with this stench in her next life."
Xiao Yu sipped his slightly spicy tea, watching his wife's sly smile, shaking his head in a helpless yet doting manner. He knew that as long as Chen Weiwan was around, the Dasheng Dynasty would be filled with chaos and joy. Liu's "situational tale" was just another lighthearted footnote to their idiotic lives, a story about croton powder and karma. As for how many more ridiculous and deceptive stories would unfold in the future? The warehouse in the west wing of the Prince's Mansion still held three large jars of premium croton powder, tributed from Southern Chu. Clearly, this story, filled with the fragrance of croton, still had a long way to go.
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