Then something even more shocking happened.
Su Lu rushed to the courtyard wall, carrying a thermos in one hand and a stool in the other. He handed the thermos to Qin Xiaoxiao, then opened the stool, climbed over the wall, and sat down next to Qin Xiaoxiao. He then slowly took out a porcelain spoon from his pocket, opened the thermos, scooped out a mouthful of porridge, blew on it twice, and then fed it to Qin Xiaoxiao.
"Sweetie, open your mouth. We can eat and watch at the same time, it won't take up your time."
Qin Xiaoxiao didn't speak, her small eyes fixed on the courtyard. She only turned her head and opened her mouth so that Su Lu could feed her the porridge.
That wasn't all. Qin Xiaoxiao said, "What's this taste like? It's so sweet! Did you add brown sugar? Rice porridge with brown sugar tastes good, but millet porridge doesn't. Don't make it next time."
After hearing this, Su Lu immediately apologized, "I really didn't know. I didn't even taste it after I finished making it before putting it in the thermos. I'll be more careful next time and not put sugar in the millet porridge. Or, how about we have rice porridge next time? We can put sugar in it then, and it'll be sweet and delicious."
Qin Xiaoxiao nodded indifferently, "Whatever you want, do as you see fit."
...
The crowd below the wall...
Where am I? What am I doing? What happened?
Are they blind or are they hallucinating because they haven't woken up yet?
Su Lu, the most unreliable member of the Su family, is actually so good at doting on his wife. Look how much he spoils the eldest granddaughter of the Qin family. He even feeds her porridge. Does she not have hands?
Soon, Su Lu's reputation for doting on his wife was widely recognized, because almost all the old men and women in the village who were not working were standing under the wall, looking at the young couple with envy and jealousy, not even caring about what was happening in the yard.
Qin Xiao ate very quickly, and soon finished a bowl of brown sugar millet porridge.
Only then did Qin Xiaoxiao and Su Lu focus all their attention on the gossip in front of them.
The couple lowered their eyelids and saw that the once lively courtyard was now completely silent. More than a dozen people in the courtyard were glaring angrily at the two of them, as if they wanted to devour them alive.
Qin Xiaoxiao couldn't help but shiver and moved closer to Su Lu. "See? I told you I wouldn't come, but you insisted. Look at the mess this has made! The aunties have misunderstood!"
Su Lu turned his head to look at Qin Xiaoxiao in disbelief.
Honey, you're just going to sell me off like this? They only glared at me, didn't even offer a price, aren't you afraid of losing money?
My poor bucket of millet porridge was all fed to that ungrateful wretch.
This is his own wife, someone he spent a fortune to marry. If she drives him away, he'll have lost out.
Su Lu remained calm, rubbed his face, and quickly put on a sunny and harmless smile.
"Everyone's here? So early in the morning, haha... Hey, isn't this my brother Erzhu? What brings you here?"
Su Lu was having a headache when he saw an unexpected figure in the courtyard.
Qin Erzhu stood under the courtyard wall, looking up at them with a mixture of amusement and exasperation.
Qin Erzhu took a deep breath. "Brother, you're here? What are you doing sitting on the wall? Come down, it's safer to sit in the yard."
Su Lu gave a shy smile. "I'm so sorry, wife. Brother Erzhu asked us to sit in the yard and watch. Come on, let's go down first."
Upon hearing Su Lu's shameless remarks, Qin Erzhu revealed a helpless expression of "I knew it," while the villagers inside and outside the courtyard stared wide-eyed in horror.
Damn, that's some serious shamelessness! Even a cannon couldn't break through it!
You're just taking the easy way out, aren't you? Don't you even check if the steps are sturdy? Aren't you afraid of falling to your death halfway down?
Su Lu didn't care about all that. Anyway, these people wouldn't really do anything to him and Qin Xiaoxiao. To put it bluntly, they couldn't afford to offend the couple. Not to mention anything else, Su Lu and Qin Xiaoxiao were practically local tyrants in this village. Who would dare to gossip? Who would dare to point their fingers at them and curse them to their faces? Even relatives from both families wouldn't easily offend them. There was nothing they could do; they were just spoiled.
Before long, Su Lu helped Qin Xiaoxiao sit down under the courtyard wall. It was inside the courtyard wall, so they could watch the excitement more directly and up close.
“Ka-ka-ka…”
Unsurprisingly, all the villagers heard the familiar sound of sunflower seeds being cracked once again. They knew without even looking that it was the sound coming from those two shameless bastards in the yard.
Qin Erzhu glanced helplessly at Su Lu, signaling him not to go too far, and then faced an old lady with triangular eyes and deep nasolabial folds in the courtyard.
“Aunt Ren, I admit that I was dating your daughter, but I swear that your daughter’s disappearance has nothing to do with me. I haven’t seen her since we parted ways in the county town yesterday. I came to see her yesterday to make sure she got home safely.”
"If you don't believe me, I have a witness. Qin Ergou was with me at the time; he came back with me."
The old lady, who looked very mean, curled her lip and said, "Pah, you just said that. I don't believe it. Qin Ergou grew up with you and hangs out with you all the time. Of course he'll side with you."
Anyway, I don't care. My eldest daughter is missing now. You're dating her, so I'm coming to find you.
Qin Xiaoxiao and Su Lu exchanged a silent glance upon hearing this.
When did Qin Erzhu start dating? And it's a girl from the Ren family? Doesn't he know anything about the Ren family? Is he crazy?
Su Lu glared at Qin Erzhu with exasperation, so angry that she wanted to physically open his head to see if he had gone mad, otherwise why would he have provoked the Ren family's daughter?
The Ren family was notorious in Qinjiagou for favoring sons over daughters. Many families in the countryside favored sons over daughters, but none treated girls as less than human beings.
The Ren family raised their daughter like a servant. They barely cared for her from birth. If she wanted milk, fine, she could drink it if her mother had milk, but if not, she would have to go hungry.
To put it simply, whether you survive or not depends entirely on fate. If you're lucky, you'll die quickly to avoid future suffering. If you're unlucky, you'll survive and then spend your life devoted to the men of the Ren family.
Girls who are lucky enough to survive are expected to help take care of their younger brothers when they turn three. If their brothers cry, they get beaten; if their brothers poop, they clean them; if their brothers are hungry, they feed them; if their brothers run and fall, it's their fault for not watching them.
It was common to beat someone eight times a day. When they were six or seven years old, it wasn't just these chores. They had to work in the fields to earn work points to support their older and younger brothers, take care of the family's meals in the morning and evening, and get up in the middle of the night to change their younger brother's diapers.
If you live to be fourteen or fifteen, then your good days are coming to an end, because you will be getting married, and you will marry into whichever family offers the highest dowry.
Like Mrs. Ren's four daughters, they were all married off to her husband's family with high dowries. Among them, one was lame, one was mentally challenged, one was a domestic abuser, and one was an old man thirty years older than the woman and a pervert.
Grandma Ren was very good at raising her daughters. Her four daughters were all manipulated by her into accepting their fate and desperately sending good things back to their maternal family to support their older and younger brothers.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
