Chapter 30 Chapter 30 Chapter 30...
Chapter 30
Just when Weisheng and Yu Tao were stunned by the sudden news, the village chief rushed in with a look of arrogance.
"Something's happened at the Youth Hostel." The village chief spotted Weisheng as soon as he entered the west room. He spoke quickly, "I don't know where Xu Hongbing has gone. Hurry, get dressed and take them to town."
In the village, apart from Xu Hongbing, only Weisheng can drive a tractor. It’s not because the tractor is difficult to drive, but because the villagers treasure the tractor so much that they don’t allow anyone else to touch it.
Now that something happened and Xu Hongbing was not in the village, the village chief had no choice but to come find Weisheng.
In winter, Weisheng's activities are limited to the west room and the space, so she is now wearing a pair of thin slip-on cotton pants and a loose sweater that is a bit thin but the hem can cover her buttocks.
When she heard the village chief say this, she quickly stood up, put on her shoes and went to the field, while asking what happened at the Youth League Home.
Weisheng found a piece of plastic cloth three meters long and one meter wide, and a one-meter long wooden plank, and made a very simple dust-proof clothes hanging area on the other side of the door.
He first pulled out a pair of plain black ski pants from the plastic sheet, devoid of any logos, and put them on while leaning against the edge of the kang. When he was done, he put on his equally unassuming, yet lightweight and warm, high-top cotton shoes.
Just as Weisheng was putting his clothes on, the village chief relayed what he had just heard to Weisheng, Yu Tao and the other two.
The Ma brothers stayed in the hospital for about twenty days before being taken home by their mother to recuperate. During the past two months, neither the Ma brothers nor the Ma family had caused any trouble, so the villagers stopped paying attention to them.
Over a month ago, Ma Junming had been leaving the village frequently, often bringing gifts for Jin Menglan. Times had changed, and the Jin family wasn't as excited about Ma Junming's arrival. But they still weren't optimistic about the match, often even giving him the cold shoulder.
Jin Menglan was incredibly upset, but she didn't dare show it. And because Ma Junming could send her this and that during this time of scarcity, she simply pretended to be unfilial, even though she couldn't forget their past.
Ma Junming is smarter than Ma Lao Niang, and he was not very satisfied with Jin Menglan to begin with. However, after trying a few times, he saw through Jin Menglan's tricks.
As the sentence that is often seen on the Internet - I have seen you love me, and your eyes are full of me, so your perfunctory and indifference cannot be hidden from me.
Jin Menglan's attitude changed so much that she thought she had done it perfectly, but she didn't expect that she couldn't hide it from Ma Junming at all.
Unfortunately, Ma Junming had bad luck recently. He lost his job and got injured, and his mentality completely collapsed.
So after a month of preparation, Ma Junming brought back four pounds of refined flour the night before yesterday.
He first went to find Jin Menglan and gave her the two pounds of flour that he had allocated in advance. Then he took the remaining two pounds of flour back home.
Because of the previous preparation, and the fact that when Ma Junming handed the flour, he acted as if he wanted to please the Jin family and get them to agree to him and Jin Menglan being together, so Jin Menglan didn't think too much about it.
Jin Menglan took the two pounds of flour home without any suspicion. When the people in the old Jin family found out, they just regarded it as a "filial piety".
Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, and according to the custom in Kaoshan Village, dumplings are eaten on such days. So, after noon, Sister Jin chopped up some pickled cabbage, and Menglan's mother scooped a spoonful of greasy lard to mix with the dumpling filling.
The dumpling filling is very fragrant, and you can tell how delicious it is just by smelling it.
However, Jin Menglan did not eat it. When the dumplings were put into the pot, she said she had a stomachache and asked her family to leave her a bowl while she went to the toilet.
Mrs. Jin pulled her lip with disdain, but did not expose her sister-in-law's trick. Instead, she took a bowl, put a dozen dumplings in it and placed it separately in the cupboard. Then she took the cooked dumplings into the house to eat.
Nowadays, every family is struggling. Jin Menglan has little money and lives with her parents, brother and sister-in-law. If she wants to support Li Wenxuan, she has to save money on her own food.
Before her rebirth, Jin Menglan and her sister-in-law had no conflicts, but after her rebirth, she still remembered her sister-in-law's indifference to her mother's misfortune. Furthermore, after her rebirth, she gained some knowledge of the afterlife, which gave her a certain degree of self-esteem. Not only did the two of them bicker frequently, but they also began to dislike each other.
Mrs. Jin knew that her sister-in-law was using this method to subsidize a certain wild man again. Mrs. Jin might also be aware of this, but she chose to pretend to be deaf and dumb, wanting to see how much progress her "smart" daughter could make.
Jin Menglan squatted in her own toilet for a while, then went to the barn and waited for a while before returning to her room, clutching her stomach. She didn't eat, but instead lay on the kang, as if she wanted to warm up before eating.
After all, it is the winter solstice, so in addition to dumplings wrapped in fine flour, the old Jin family also prepared other dishes.
Roast a plate of peanuts grown in your own fields, mix it with a plate of shredded radishes harvested in autumn, stew some cabbage and vermicelli, and make some scrambled eggs with green onions.
For this, Old Man Jin also drank a small cup of white wine.
It was rare to eat refined flour, and the dumpling filling was greasy. Aside from the bowl of dumplings left for Jin Menglan, the rest was devoured by the Jin family. Of the four dishes, only the cabbage vermicelli stew had any left.
After dinner, to save lamp oil, the old Jin family went to bed early before seven o'clock. Then Jin Menglan quietly got up from the kang and went to the outer room to take a look at the dumplings her sister-in-law had left for her.
After counting, there were only eleven. Jin Menglan cast a fierce glance in the direction of the wing room and cursed silently. Then, greedily, she ate a dumpling, picked out eight more dumplings and put them in an aluminum lunch box, and put two in a very small bowl.
After eating some cornmeal dumplings with the remaining cabbage and vermicelli for dinner, seeing that it was only 7:15, Jin Menglan went to the Youth League Home with her lunch box.
When they arrived at the Youth League Home, Jin Menglan stood outside the female youth dormitory and shouted Zhang Xiaoyu as usual.
The female educated youth in the dormitory were busy reading books on medical care, preparing for the village health worker exam. Hearing Jin Menglan's voice, Zhang Xiaoyu felt annoyed for a moment, then smiled.
Although this woman always came to see him for other reasons, she would always bring him some food and drinks.
It doesn't seem like a bad thing to be used by her.
He left the dormitory with the thought of not being at fault, and was fed two cold dumplings by Jin Menglan in the leeward side. Zhang Xiaoyu exchanged a few polite words with Jin Menglan and returned to the dormitory.
Over in the male educated youth dormitory, Li Wenxuan, who heard Jin Menglan calling Xiaoyu, seemed to have heard some secret code. He waited for another two minutes before putting on his shoes and getting off the bed on the pretext of going to the toilet.
Chen Zhao glanced at Li Wenxuan who pushed the door open and continued writing his letter home.
Shen Zhao had already discovered what was going on with those three people, but since it was none of his business, he didn't bother to pay attention. In Shen Zhao's opinion, instead of focusing on these bullshit things, it would be better to find a way to return to the city.
On the other side, after Zhang Xiaoyu returned to the house, Li Wenxuan appeared not far from Jin Menglan. After only a few words, Jin Menglan shyly handed the lunch box to Li Wenxuan.
One pretended to be a young girl in love, secretly in love. The other pretended to be in love but unable to express it. They each showed off their acting skills. One returned to Old Jin's house feeling very proud, while the other took his lunch box and ate alone in the outer room.
Li Wenxuan, who had eaten refined flour but never rat poison, always felt that there was a smell of sourness in the dumplings, a smell that even the sourness of sauerkraut could not cover.
But in this time of food and clothing shortage, Li Wenxuan did not waste this rare dumpling feast.
Jin Menglan returned home. She moved very quietly for fear of waking up her sleeping parents and brothers, and only breathed a sigh of relief after she lay down again.
After a good night's sleep, I woke up the next morning to find the house remarkably quiet. Rubbing my eyes, I rose from the covers and discovered my parents, always early risers, were still lying on the kang. And my parents and family, who had been fine the day before, were now covered in lividity.
Facing the dead body on the kang, Jin Menglan screamed in fear...
Compared to the old Jin family who were already dead, Zhang Xiaoyu, who had only eaten two dumplings yesterday, vomited and had diarrhea not long after returning to the house because they were cold dumplings and he ate them in the cold wind. Before going to bed at night, he kept thinking that this bargain was not so easy to take advantage of.
Li Wenxuan, who had eaten eight dumplings, vomited in the middle of the night. Even though he vomited, his condition remained poor. When news of Old Jin's family reached the Youth League compound this morning, Li Wenxuan for some reason thought of the dumplings he had eaten yesterday.
On the other side, Jin Menglan, who only ate one dumpling, had no reaction at all, perhaps due to the dosage.
Of course, it is also possible that Ma Junming was afraid that if he gave too much medicine, the Jin family would find out.
Ma Junming never intended to let Jin Menglan go. When he heard that Jin Menglan survived, he immediately realized that something was wrong, so he packed up some things and ran away.
Winter is here and everyone in the village eats two meals a day. In order to save lamp oil and food, many families go to bed early and get up late, and they make sure to lock their doors from the inside before going to bed at night.
At night, when everyone was dead, he would quietly lock the door of Lao Jin's house from the outside. Even if someone came to visit the next day, they would think that Lao Jin's family was not at home because of the visible lock on the door.
In winter, families often visit relatives. By the time the villagers realize something is wrong, the bodies will probably have been eaten by rats.
According to Ma Junming's plan, once Jin Menglan died, no one would know he had poisoned her. Now... he could only flee.
~
Such a big thing happened in the old Jin family. Even if Jin Menglan didn't think of looking for the village chief, the neighbors would spread the news quickly.
When Li Wenxuan grabbed the hand of a male educated youth and asked them to go find the village chief, the village chief cursed, "What's going on?" and walked out while asking someone to find Xu Hongbing.
The village chief wanted Xu Hongbing to drive a tractor to take Li Wenxuan and Zhang Xiaoyu to the town hospital, and go to the town police station to report the case.
When the weather turned cold, the village's tractors were almost useless, and Xu Hongbing often disappeared. Now that such a big thing had happened, the village chief had no choice but to come looking for Weisheng.
This matter was so outrageous that not only Yu Tao and others, even Weisheng felt terrified that something outrageous had just been opened by someone else, it was so outrageous.
After putting on his pants and shoes, and then his scarf and hat, Weisheng went to the clothes rack and wrapped himself in an army green cotton coat.
The gloves are in the coat pocket. Just button them up as you walk out. After buttoning them up, put on the gloves.
There were still red beans cooking in the pot, so Yu Tao didn't follow him out. Shan Xingchen saw Weisheng and his biological father go to the village committee compound, so he followed them without thinking.
It was too cold, and the tractor had been parked for a long time, so it wouldn't start unless it was thawed out first. Fortunately, when the three of them arrived at the village committee compound, someone had already lit a brazier and placed it under the tractor, as instructed by the village chief.
He drove a tractor, took the village chief who reported the case, the production team leader in charge, the accountant who paid the money, and the villagers who went to help to go to the Youth League Home first, picked up Li Wenxuan and Zhang Xiaoyu, and went to the town.
When passing by the police station, Weisheng dropped the village chief off and continued driving to the town hospital.
After arriving at the town hospital, Weisheng turned the car around and went to the police station to pick up the village chief and the comrades handling the case and take them back to the village.
Twelve people in the Jin family died in a flash: parents, brothers and sisters-in-law, younger brother, nephews and nieces. It was a shocking crime not only in the village but also in the town.
All the officers of the town police station were dispatched, and they even called the leaders of the town committee and the municipal bureau to report the situation and request support.
Because Weisheng became a personal driver, driving a tractor back and forth between the village and the town, he knew more than others.
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