Chapter 9: Gua is at the age of being afraid of death
"Why are you so arrogant!" Beside Brother Hai, the short young man who had been kicked to the ground struggled to get up and said angrily, "Just wait if you dare!"
The young man looked at him indifferently, with the corners of his lips slightly raised: "Oh, but I suggest that next time you don't trick me into coming here. I'm busy and don't have time."
"Now, get out of here," he said lightly.
The four men rustled around for a while, uttered a few harsh words through gritted teeth, and then supported each other and left quickly.
Xiang Yao took a mouthful of melon and witnessed a brief fighting scene, feeling very satisfied.
At the same time, a numbness swept over his legs.
Xiang Yao moved his legs with difficulty and felt a little painful.
Everyone else has left, why is this person still here? If she doesn't stand up and move around, her legs will be broken from squatting!
Just as she was complaining, she saw the young man actually walking towards her.
She couldn't help but be shocked. She just came to watch the fun, how could she be discovered?
This guy hadn't beaten her enough just now, so he wanted to beat her up again...
She is just an ordinary passerby who is just watching the fun!
She endured the numbness in her legs and felt around, and actually felt a large, hard clod of earth. She thought that if this man really wanted to hit someone, she would hit him on the head with this clod of earth.
As the young man's figure got closer, Xiang Yao became more and more nervous.
She clenched the clod of earth tightly, almost in a state of preparation for battle. She didn't care about the numbness in her legs at the moment, and stared at the man closely, guarding against any sudden attack from him.
The young man walked up to Xiang Yao and really stopped.
Xiang Yao pretended to notice someone approaching and looked over.
The forest in the mountains was dense and the branches and leaves were thick. The light in the sky had dimmed at this moment. In the blur, I only felt that the side face that I thought was beautiful before had turned into a perfect front face.
"Have you seen enough?" The young man opened his lips slightly, his tone still cold, but less intimidating, as if he was just saying it casually.
"I've seen enough..." Xiang Yao blinked, feeling relieved. He knew this man probably wasn't out to beat anyone up. He forced an awkward smile and assured her, "I just saw it accidentally. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone!"
The young man glanced at her, nodded, and then walked away from her without looking away.
Only after the person's backs disappeared did Xiang Yao throw away the clod of earth, pat his chest, and breathe a sigh of relief.
This man has a stern face, which is really intimidating.
She propped herself up and stood up, moving around for a while before the numbness was completely gone.
Waving a branch, he walked down the hillside, and Xiang Yao secretly commented in his heart:
Tsk, although she looks good, you can tell she has a bad temper.
*
The melon he ate this time was not very big, but Xiang Yao looked at the melon field in his mind and saw that he had indeed gained ten more minutes of access time. He felt very happy and his steps became lighter.
No matter how big the melon is, as long as she can get it into the melon field and eat it, it is a good melon!
The sun was about to set and wisps of smoke were rising from the roofs of every house.
The smoke from cooking drifted into the valley with the wind, forming a long bridge of smoke that stretched across the green hills.
The Xiang family is also busy.
In the kitchen, there was the clanging of bells and the regular and rhythmic sound of spatulas hitting iron pots. It was Xiang Yao's aunt Zhou Aihua who was busy making dinner.
In the yard, a father and son were working with yellow mud with their bare chests, apparently repairing the earthen wall. They were my uncle Xiang Gensheng and my cousin Xiang Jun.
When they saw Xiang Yao coming back, they both smiled foolishly, and their faces looked almost the same when they smiled.
"Yaoyao is back?"
"You must be tired. Come into the house and have some herbal tea."
Xiang Yao also smiled and called out to his uncle and second brother: "Yeah, okay!"
There was another young woman sitting under the eaves, sewing clothes intently. When she heard Xiang Yao coming back, she just raised her eyes to look at her and then continued to busy herself with her own things.
Xiang Yao didn't care. She had become accustomed to the inexplicable coldness of her second cousin's wife. If others ignored her, there was no need for her to get too close to them.
"Why are you back so early? Didn't I tell you to go collect grass for the pigs? Where's the grass?" Zhang Juhua came back from the vegetable garden carrying a bamboo basket of chili peppers. Seeing Xiang Yao's empty hands, she frowned fiercely.
Xiang Yao's mood, which seemed to be flying all the way, fell down with a snap under the stare of Zhang Juhua's triangular eyes.
She widened her eyes slightly: "What pigweed?"
Zhang Juhua gave her a disgusted look: "You know you need to eat, but the pigs you raise at home don't want to eat?"
The production team would assign pig-raising tasks every year. There were work points and the work was not hard. Only families with good performance could take the piglets home to raise.
Because Xiang Liangsheng used to be the team leader and performed well in the competitions among major production teams every year, the Xiang family was allocated one almost every year.
Xiang Xiuxiu didn't come out of the room. Upon hearing this, she shouted out the window, "I told her about it at noon, and she told me she wouldn't bother with it! Let's see what we can do to her!"
This lawsuit is so gleeful and irritating.
Xiang Yao shrugged and turned his head to say, "You did mention pulling pig grass, but you didn't go to the fields this afternoon. Why didn't you pull it? Are you leaving all the work to me? What did you do?"
Liu Xiaolan, who was watering wilted vegetables at the foot of the courtyard wall, saw Xiang Yao lashing out at her daughter and quickly spoke up, "Hey, Yaoyao, Xiuxiu is busy studying. She'll be going to college next year, so she shouldn't hurry up. As her older sister, why don't you do as much as you can? If Xiuxiu becomes successful in the future, won't that benefit you?"
There was no college entrance examination in those days, but those with excellent academic performance in school could be recommended to go to university as workers, peasants and soldiers.
Xiang Yao smiled slightly. "Xiuxiu has to study and has no time. Third Aunt, you have time, so go ahead and do it. I'm still young, and I have to work in the fields to earn work points. After that, I have to pick grass for the pigs so I can do the laundry... Why do I end up doing more work than you adults? It wouldn't be nice if this got out, wouldn't you say, Aunt?"
Liu Xiaolan choked and said awkwardly, "How come you do more work than us? Don't talk nonsense, girl. Besides, this is what your grandma assigned you to do, why blame us?"
Zhang Juhua knocked on the bamboo basket, her triangular eyes rolled up as she stared at Xiang Yao and started to curse, "I asked you to do something, but you still find all kinds of excuses. Do you just eat for free every day and don't work? I knew you were such a lazy, money-losing idiot. I should have drowned you when you were born!"
At noon, she was still being talked down to by this money-loser. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. Such a cheap girl actually dared to climb over her head and confront her?
Zhang Juhua's three generations were all poor peasants. No matter how severe the situation was in the past two years, they were not afraid. She was just teaching her disobedient granddaughter a lesson at home. Could others really report her?
Thinking of this, her words became even more unpleasant: "Your mother is a money-loser. She's been married for so many years and she can't even lay a single egg. She gave birth to a freeloader like you. You're also a terrible money-loser. It's better not to have given birth to you!"
Xiang Yao didn't like what she heard. Her original mother, Liu Qiaoyun, had been suppressed by this theory of losing money for decades and could not raise her head. After Xiang Liangsheng died, she was driven out because she had no son. Now Zhang Juhua wanted to use the same trick to deal with her.
Pay, pay, pay, pay what the hell!
It would be better to compensate her, Zhang Juhua.
She looked around and saw that her uncle was avoiding her gaze, while Xiang Jun seemed to want to speak but didn't dare.
As for the others, they all watched the show as if it had nothing to do with them, as if the more Zhang Juhua scolded her, the more excited they would be to watch. She couldn't help but sneer in her heart.
Xiang Yao raised her eyebrows: "Grandma, how can you say such things? You have already forced my mother away, what else are you dissatisfied with?"
Thinking of how his original mother had suffered so many years at the hands of this old woman, Xiang Yao's intense pain surged up in his body.
Not all mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships are so disgusting, but Zhang Juhua definitely has a place among the ranks of evil mothers-in-law.
Zhang Juhua glared at him, "Why can't I speak? As your elder, how can I not teach you a lesson?"
Xiang Yao sneered, "You can scold me, but don't bring up my mother. My father just died, and you're already bullying us. It's not enough to drive her away, but you're also trying to drive me away? Don't you think you can rest assured even after my father is buried?"
Zhang Juhua didn't expect that she would suddenly talk about her dead second son, and she was stunned for a moment.
After hearing this, everyone present couldn't help but feel a little chilled.
Especially my second cousin-in-law Ye Fang. She has been married to the Xiang family for three years and has only given birth to a girl.
At this moment, he thought of himself when he saw Liu Qiaoyun being forced to leave, and of his daughter when he saw Xiang Yao being insulted from time to time, and he felt a sense of panic in his heart.
As a bystander, she didn't feel much at first, but when she thought that she might have the same fate in the future, she couldn't help but feel a little sad.
For a moment, Ye Fang could no longer sew the clothes in her hands, so she stood up and went into the house with a stern face.
Liu Xiaolan, who was watering the plants, lowered her head and rolled her eyes.
After she gave birth to Xiang Xiuxiu, she was unable to give birth to a son for four years and even had a miscarriage during that period. She received the same treatment as Liu Qiaoyun at that time.
In the cold winter, before she even left her confinement, she was rushed to the river to wash clothes. The freezing water froze her hands until they lost feeling, and when she came back she was scolded for being slow. She will remember this feeling for the rest of her life.
The suffocating feeling of being rejected and insulted still makes her shiver when she thinks about it.
Humph, if she hadn't given birth to her youngest son Xiang Liang, she would probably still be a useless goose in her mother-in-law's eyes!
Zhang Juhua, unaware of the others' thoughts, rapped the edge of the bamboo basket hard and said angrily, "What's the matter? I scolded you, and even mentioned your father. Your father shouldn't have insisted on marrying Liu Qiaoyun in the first place! You and your daughter are both bad people. I think you've learned your mother's wasteful ways. When you get married, you'll be unable to give birth to a son! You deserve to be beaten to death by your in-laws!"
She had never been to school for a day, but she had a sharp tongue and had been cursing everyone in Xiangjiawan for decades. Now, facing a granddaughter whom she had always disliked, she naturally had no intention of holding back.
Xiang Yao felt sorry for the original body and had an urge to go up and slap her twice.
But she knew it wouldn't work. In this era, it was common for elders to beat and scold the younger ones. If she really fought with Zhang Juhua, she would definitely not be able to survive in Xiangjiawan.
This is not the future, where you can go far as long as you make up your mind to break off the relationship.
She needed a letter of introduction to go out, and without a ticket she couldn't eat anything, so she couldn't leave.
After enduring it again and again, Xiang Yao snorted and laughed, with a tone of sarcasm in her voice: "Grandma, I know you wish I would die, but don't be impatient. Between the two of us, it is definitely not me who will be buried first."
Anyway, there is no point in reasoning, so she might as well just go straight to personal attacks.
After all, even someone as mean as Zhang Juhua is already in her sixties, which is the age when people are afraid of death.
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