Four o'clock in the morning.
The bachelor who was chased away by Chen Que that day came in quietly from outside the low wall in the corner of the courtyard with two other people. The two people who came with him were also ruffians in the village who usually did some petty thefts. The three of them landed skillfully and made almost no sound.
This bachelor's family is not poor. His uncle is a country squire, and his two uncles are a wood merchant and a hunter respectively. However, this boy not only looks shifty, but also is not a hardworking person. His mother is a well-known shrew in the village, and his grandfather passed away early.
Besides, his family actually had a child bride in the past, who was picked up from somewhere. She had big eyes, an oval face, and was well-behaved and pretty. However, she was often beaten and scolded in their family, and she died of illness before she grew up.
The villagers here knew his family inside and out, and they were unwilling to send their daughters there to suffer injustice, so his marriage was put on hold.
The bachelor looked around in the yard, and after a while, he suddenly pointed at the side room.
He had been to this courtyard several times and knew that Tao Yiru and the old lady slept together in the main house, so only this side room was relatively spacious. He also saw that day that the wild man kept by Tao Yiru came out of this room.
After returning home that day, he became angrier and angrier the more he thought about it.
No woman in the village was willing to be with him, except this young widow. Although she was no longer a virgin, she was still a worthy match for him. But this widow was so ungrateful that not only did she not want to be with him, she even allowed that wild man to beat him!
The bachelor was not willing to accept this, so he turned around and looked for his two brothers. He promised to give each of them two strings of money, intending to take advantage of the dead of night, put a sack on the wild man, and beat him with sticks to vent his anger.
The short and fat man stepped forward first, put his index finger into his mouth, dipped it, and then quietly touched the thin layer of window paper.
A small hole slowly appeared in the window pane. The man looked inside and found that at this late hour, there was still a low candle lit in the room. He could vaguely see a person sitting on the bed, holding something in his arms...
He couldn't help but squint his eyes, but when he saw clearly, he was stunned. In order to see more clearly, he moved his feet and planned to continue exploring from a different angle.
But who would have thought that as he took this step, the person inside seemed to suddenly realize something, and suddenly turned his back and put down the baby in his arms.
The fat man didn't dare to look anymore, and turned around quickly, winking at the bachelor frantically. Seeing that the two men didn't understand, he whispered: "He seems to have discovered us..."
"So what?" the bachelor asked hastily, "What did you see just now?"
"Didn't you tell me that he was the wild man that the young widow kept in the house? But why did I see him...feeding the child?"
Before he finished speaking, the door of the side room was opened from the inside out, and the person who came out was Shen Que, holding the square wooden bolt that locked the door in his hand.
The bachelor and the other person were still digesting what he had just said. When they saw this person, they couldn't connect Shen Que with the breastfeeding appearance.
But there was a wind in the courtyard, and he didn't know if it was his illusion, but he actually smelled a faint smell of milk from Shen Que.
He was clearly here to teach this man a lesson, but when he saw Shen coming towards them with the wooden plug, the bachelor was still afraid and staggered back two steps, but was stopped by the fat man.
"Brother Cheng, didn't we agree to come and teach him a lesson? Why are you leaving? He's a half-man, half-woman weirdo. Are we three afraid of him?"
As soon as the man finished speaking, he was hit hard on the head with a stick. He forced his eyes open, but he always felt an itch on his forehead, and something warm was flowing down.
He reached out his hand and felt blood. Before he could react, he was kicked in the abdomen by the man. He leaned backwards and fell to the ground with a thud, without making any sound.
The other one, seeing his brother suffering a loss, hurriedly raised his stick and swung it at him, but in just a moment, the stick was caught by Shen Que, and then he bent his elbow and hit the gangster's chin hard, and then raised another punch, which made the gangster's head buzz.
However, in a flash, another village thug that the bachelor had found was also knocked to the ground.
Before he even had time to react, he fell to the ground, tasted fishy in his mouth, and lay there, spat out two bloody white teeth.
Seeing that the helpers he had found were all easily dealt with by him, the bachelor's teeth trembled and he shouted: "We saw everything, you are not a man at all, you freak..."
Before he could finish his words, he asked Shen Que to hit him on the mouth with a stick.
The bachelor felt pain and immediately screamed like a pig being slaughtered: "Kill, kill! Help, help, Tao Yiru!"
Hearing him shouting like that, Shen frowned, and then a stick came down and hit him hard on the calf.
"Ah!" The bachelor screamed immediately, hugged his leg, rolled on the ground, and screamed intermittently, "How dare you touch me! My uncle is a scholar, if you dare to touch me, I will make sure you can no longer stay in Qingyuan Village!"
After a while, Tao Yiru and the old lady, who were still sleepy, rushed out with their clothes on. Some neighbors outside were also woken up and started banging on the door.
"What happened?" Several people outside also shouted, "It's the middle of the night, can't we sleep?"
Tao Yiru hurried to open the door, and three or two men and a woman squeezed in. The woman saw the three people lying on the ground, covered her mouth and said in surprise: "Isn't this Fang Lang from the Wang family? Oh, there are these two brothers too, what kind of grudge is this? There's blood!"
Hearing her yelling like that, Tao Yiru knew that this matter would not end well. She leaned into the old lady's arms and started crying, "I have no face to live anymore, mother..."
As she spoke, she tilted her head and said with a tearful tone, "Aunt Hui, how would you know? In the middle of the night, Fang Lang brought two hooligans over the wall. Isn't it obvious that they wanted to bully me? If it weren't for my distant cousin who heard the noise and rushed out to protect me, how could I still be standing here?"
"My heart is with my late husband, and I only want to rely on him for my whole life. Fang Lang's behavior has ruined my reputation for no reason. How can I still live in this world with dignity? It's better...it's better for me to hit my head against the wall and die, and go to the underworld to accompany my husband!"
Having said that, he rushed over and tried to ram into the fence with all his might.
She had already done so much preparation, how could these people not know how to stop them? With outsiders present, Shen couldn't take action, so she just let the old lady and the woman pull them away.
"Don't be impulsive. Think about your mother. You don't have any brothers or sisters. If you die so cruelly, how will your mother live alone? Who will take care of her in her old age and see her to the end of her life?" The woman and the old lady each held one of her arms and persuaded her to go back to the main room.
These three hooligans broke into the widow's yard in the dead of night and caused trouble. It would not be good if the news got out, so the three men in the yard made a plan and each of them carried the hooligans who were crying and wailing on the ground on their backs and sent them back home.
After these people dispersed, Shen Que dared to go to the main room and looked at Tao Yiru with a bit of guilt in his eyes.
Tao Yiru's crying tone just now was fake. There was no tear in her eyes at this moment. Instead, she comforted him: "It's not your fault. They came to your house in the middle of the night. It was obvious that they had bad intentions. If you didn't do anything, would you let them bully you?"
The old lady next to him also said, "They broke into the courtyard late at night, so they were in the wrong. Even if they asked us to kill them, the fault would not fall on us."
This point is also clear to Shen. According to the law, anyone who breaks into someone's house without reason at night can be killed immediately by the owner without being charged with any crime.
But he was still holding his breath in his heart. He had bad luck and always felt that this matter would not end well. He was secondary, but he was afraid that Tao Yiru and her daughter would be implicated.
What you fear will come to you.
The next morning, just after dawn, the parents of the three hooligans blocked the gate of their yard, holding knives and sticks in their hands, shouting that they wanted to see Chen Que.
Tao Yiru heard the noise and hurriedly stopped Shen Que, whispering to him, "I'll go out first. If these people can't see you, they won't make a fuss."
As he said that, he went out and opened the door. He saw the bachelor's mother holding a hatchet. Seeing Tao Yiru coming out, she glared at her fiercely and said, "You little whore, not only did you seduce my Fang Lang, but you also let your adulterer beat him. You broke the leg of a healthy child!"
"Hurry up and tell your adulterer to get out. We need justice for our child!"
"Get out!"
"I heard from my Erlang that the adulterer was a weird creature that was neither male nor female. If this is true, if such a monster is allowed to stay in our Qingyuan Village, I am afraid it will cause disaster and ruin the fortune of our entire village."
They were making a fuss in front of the door, attracting many villagers to come over and watch.
Facing these vicious villagers, Tao Yiru refused to show weakness: "I didn't go looking for you, but you guys are the first to cry thief. Aunt Hui, Uncle Pan, can you testify for me? Are they the three who broke into my yard late at night?"
"That's right," Aunt Hui said, "the three men couldn't have been captured by Yi Ru, a woman, could they? They caught them in the middle of the night and broke into a widow's house. What else could they be thinking?"
"Mr. Pan, do you need to say anything here?! Your own man can't even figure it out, and you have no need to care about others," the bachelor's mother was hot-tempered and scolded everyone she saw. "My son has always been well-behaved. If it weren't for that little whore seducing him, how could he dare to do such a thing?"
As soon as she said this, many villagers who came to watch the fun on the roadside covered their lips and laughed. They all knew exactly what kind of person her Fang Lang was.
Hearing the low laughter, the shrew became even more angry and shouted at the inside: "You androgynous coward, you dare to hide behind a woman's buttocks, call a woman out to replace you, you dare to do it, come out now!"
Seeing that there was still no movement inside, the woman continued to shout, "Okay, you won't come out, right? Then I will tear this widow's face apart and see if it hurts her face or you!"
After saying that, she was about to pull Tao Yiru, and the crowd suddenly became chaotic. At this moment, a man suddenly squeezed out from the door, holding an axe in his hand, stood in front of Tao Yiru, and glanced at the crowd coldly.
When the mute is not smiling, his eyes are dark, and combined with the axe in his hand, he looks quite intimidating.
After all, he knocked down three men by himself. The troublemakers saw the murderous intent in him and were stunned. After a moment of silence, the shrew started to make trouble again: "Look, everyone, this beast broke my son's leg and it's not enough, now he wants to chop off a mother like me, this is so unfair!"
Relying on the fact that she was in numbers and was sure that Shen didn't dare to do anything to her in public, she boldly started to throw a tantrum.
Finally someone in the crowd spoke up for Shen Que: "You should save your breath. It was your Fang Lang who provoked them first. He broke into their yard late at night. Even if he was beaten to death, it wouldn't be a big deal. Now it's just a broken leg, so just be happy!"
The two daughters of this man's family had been harassed by the bachelor. That day, they went to the river together to wash clothes. When they came back, they said that the bachelor touched their hands and they cried out of grievance.
He loved his daughter very much, so he dragged his wife to the bachelor's house to ask for an explanation, but the shrew scolded and beat him and kicked him out. Now that he saw that the little rascal had his leg broken, he felt very happy.
The shrew was about to refute something when she heard someone behind her say, "It seems like an official is coming!"
"Disperse, disperse, let's all disperse. It seems like the government is coming to arrest someone!" someone else shouted.
Shen was startled and quickly put down the axe in his hand.
The shrew tiptoed out and really saw a few young officials riding horses towards them, so she immediately went to meet them and took the lead in complaining about her grievances: "My lord, you have come at the right time. That man broke my son's calf for no reason and took an axe to kill me!"
The yamen official glanced at her calmly, and then asked these people: "The yamen official received a report that someone in your village broke into a private house at night. Is this true?"
The villagers immediately started talking at once and revealed the identities of the three ruffians.
"Where are the homes of those three people?"
Hearing this, the shrew could no longer stand and leaned against the horse: "No, sir, this is not my husband Fang's fault, it's clearly that little whore..."
Before she could finish, the official whipped her with a whip and said, "Anyone who interferes with public affairs will be taken away as well."
The shrew's legs suddenly went weak and she fell to the ground.
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