"Leather shoes, huh? I wonder how much of my and my children’s blood paid for these. And you have the nerve to parade them in front of me." After knocking Gao Yulan to the ground, Bai Jiu reached down and yanked the shoes right off her feet.
She chucked them into a nearby ditch. "Go ahead and wear them! Wear them!" Grabbing handfuls of snow from the ground, she hurled it at the shoes. In no time at all, they were completely buried.
"Stop it! What are you doing? What are you doing?!" Seeing her brand-new leather shoes getting buried in the snow, Gao Yulan lunged forward without another word to fish them out.
But she hadn’t expected the ditch to still have water in it. She pitched forward face-first, plunging right in. She nearly choked to death on the icy water.
The commotion had attracted a crowd of villagers. Seeing Gao Yulan flailing in the water and fearing she might actually drown, a few bystanders hurriedly rushed over to haul her out.
"Zhijun’s wife, this isn’t right," one of the villagers reprimanded. Although the locals knew about the Gao family’s internal drama, they felt Bai Jiu was crossing a line by nearly killing someone.
"Yeah, you’re going too far."
"You can’t just kill someone! Besides, she’s still Yulan, your husband’s sister."
"Exactly. Hurry up and get her home. Look at her, she’s freezing!"
Quite a few people chimed in to scold her.
"Ha, did I push her in?" Bai Jiu scoffed. She couldn’t wrap her head around their logic. Were these villagers completely blind to how the Gao family had treated her and her children in the past?
"She fell in on her own! What does that have to do with me? Stop acting like I’m trying to murder someone." Bai Jiu refused to be morally kidnapped by the crowd. "And as for her being family? She doesn’t deserve the title.
"My Xiuxiu and Zhengyang certainly don’t have an aunt who would sell them off just to buy herself new shoes and meat!"
Her words sent a shockwave through the crowd.
Just then, Old Mrs. Song came rushing over.
Hearing Bai Jiu’s accusation, she lunged forward without a word, claws bared to scratch her face. "You wretched tramp! I’ll teach you to spout nonsense! I’ll teach you to spout nonsense!"
SMACK!
Her heavy palm slammed directly into Bai Jiu’s back.
THUD!
The loud impact made the nearby villagers jump in fright. The older generation always warned against striking the back too hard, fearing it could rupture internal organs. Judging by the sheer force of that blow... it didn’t sound good.
"Spouting nonsense? Ha!" Bai Jiu’s fury flared up. "Which part of what I said was wrong? Didn’t you sell my daughter just so your precious Yulan could eat meat and buy those leather shoes?
"Didn’t you starve me and my children just so she could buy new clothes and eat eggs?
"And now I’m the one spouting nonsense? Has a single cent of Gao Zhijun’s salary ever been spent on me or his kids? No! Every last penny went into feeding that pig-fat daughter of yours!
"And you have the nerve to hit me? Go ahead, hit me! Hit me! Do you really think I’m just some spineless pushover?"
Growing up, Bai Jiu had never been struck by anyone. There was no way she was going to swallow this grievance.
"You call it ’separating the household,’ but you didn’t give us a damn thing! You kicked me and my children out with nothing but the clothes on our backs! Did you really think I wouldn’t dare report you?" As Bai Jiu shouted, she fought back, her blows striking every bit as hard as Old Mrs. Song’s earlier slap.
She didn’t care if this woman was her mother-in-law. No one was allowed to bully her anymore. And hitting her? Absolutely out of the question.
"Stop fighting! Stop it! Zhijun’s wife, that’s your mother-in-law!"
"Mother-in-law?" Bai Jiu sneered as the bystanders pulled her away. Hearing the reprimand, she forcefully spat a wad of phlegm right onto Old Mrs. Song. "She doesn’t deserve the title! With her vile character, she doesn’t even deserve to be a mother!"
The brawl had escalated quickly, alerting both the production brigade captain and the village chief. Old Man Gao had also rushed to the scene.
Seeing his precious youngest daughter soaking wet and his wife disheveled, fury boiled in his chest.
"Zhijun’s wife! Do you have any regard for the law?! Have you forgotten all your filial piety?!" As soon as Old Man Gao arrived, he immediately tried to pin all the blame on Bai Jiu.
"Ha! The law? Does the Gao family even know what the law is?" Bai Jiu retorted sharply. "And filial piety? Do you deserve it?
"When elders are cruel, how can they expect the younger generation to be filial? This isn’t the feudal era where parents hold absolute power over their children. The great leaders themselves say that women hold up half the sky! Why on earth should I let you dictate my life?" She was not someone to be trifled with.
In the entire Gao family, Old Man Gao was the most shameless of them all. He always let Old Mrs. Song do the dirty work on the front lines while he stood back, pretending to be the reasonable, upstanding patriarch.
"Hmph, as if you don’t know exactly what ’good deeds’ your daughter has been up to. Save your hypocritical act!" Bai Jiu wasn’t afraid of blowing this matter out of proportion. She suddenly turned to the officials. "Captain! Village Chief! You have to give me justice!"
If they were going to play the victim, she could play that game too.
"Get up first," the brigade captain sighed, massaging his temples. "Tell us, what exactly happened here?" He had a massive headache. The family separation a couple of days ago had gone relatively smoothly, so why were they causing such a massive scene now?
"WAAH! My life is so bitter!" Bai Jiu plopped herself right down onto the snowy ground. Mimicking Old Mrs. Song’s signature tantrums, she slapped her thighs and wailed, "My husband dedicated his life to this country and went missing! There’s still no news of him, yet everyone insists he’s dead! Fine, I’ll treat him as dead! But why must everyone gang up to bully a poor widow and her fatherless children? Why?!
"I originally kept my mouth shut because we’re family! I didn’t want to air our dirty laundry and ruin the Gao family’s reputation! But my consideration only made them greedier! Captain, no matter what happens today, I’m taking this all the way to the higher-ups to demand justice!"
If she didn’t blow this up now, they would genuinely think they could trample all over her forever.
"Zhijun’s wife, stop crying for a moment and explain clearly," the captain urged gently. He was deeply troubled. Bai Jiu had always been such a mild-mannered and gentle woman. What on earth had they done to push her to this breaking point? It was clear that since Gao Zhijun went missing, she had suffered terrible injustices.
Old Mrs. Song and Old Man Gao’s hearts sank the moment they heard the captain’s sympathetic tone. They knew things were taking a disastrous turn. If the truth about selling the children came to light, how would their precious Yulan ever find a decent husband? No family would want a woman like that!
"Enough, Zhijun’s wife! Don’t you just want money? Fine, I’ll give it to you. I’ll give it to you!" Old Man Gao suddenly stepped forward, putting on a deeply disappointed and long-suffering expression.
Bai Jiu rolled her eyes inwardly. She knew this old fox was utterly shameless, trying to paint her as a greedy shrew.
"Keep your dirty money! I want justice!" Bai Jiu yelled back. "I want everyone here to listen and see for themselves exactly whose fault this is!"
She wasn’t short on money. If she didn’t teach the Gao family a brutal lesson today, they would only cause her endless grief in the future.
"If I wanted money, I would demand the wages my husband earned! Over the years, how much of his hard-earned military pay was actually spent on his own wife and children? Father, when you speak, you ought to use your conscience!"
Out of everyone in the Gao family, she despised this hypocritical old man the most. Song Caihua might be an abrasive and nasty piece of work, but at least the old hag was straightforward with her malice. She didn’t act one way to someone’s face and another behind their back. Old Man Gao, however, always kept quiet at home while parading around as a respectable, dignified elder in public. Yet behind closed doors, he was a ruthless, cannibalistic snake who would devour a person whole without spitting out the bones.
Hearing her scathing words, Old Man Gao pointed a trembling finger at Bai Jiu. "Zhijun’s wife, you... how could you..."
"Save your breath! Today, I’m going to ask everyone here—does a woman who pulls a stunt like that deserve to be called a sister? Does she deserve to be an aunt to my kids? Does she even deserve to be called a human being?!"
The brigade captain could clearly see that the relationship between the Gao family and their third daughter-in-law was irreparably shattered.
"Alright, that’s enough! Everyone, quiet down. Blowing this up won’t do any of you any good." As the brigade captain, the last thing he wanted was for a domestic scandal to spiral out of control and draw unwanted attention to their village. He waved his hands at the gawking crowd. "The rest of you, disperse! Go home! As for you lot," he pointed to Bai Jiu and the rest of the Gao family, "follow me back to the Gao family courtyard."
The village chief, who hadn’t uttered a single word the entire time, didn’t bother following them. Clasping his hands behind his back, he slowly strolled toward his own home. Let the brigade captain lose sleep over these petty domestic squabbles—it certainly wasn’t his problem.