The moment she stepped into the yard, Lin Qingyue spotted several cloth diapers. They looked freshly washed—water was still dripping off them!
She hadn’t even returned yet, and the baby wasn’t even born. How could there possibly be diapers in the house?
And more importantly, those diapers were ones she had personally prepared for her daughter with her own hands!
The things she had prepared for her daughter—before her daughter could even use them, they’d been given to that little ungrateful brat?
Lin Qingyue was so furious her vision flickered with black spots. Panting heavily, she broke into a jog toward the house.
“Sister Qingyue, steady yourself! Don’t forget you’ve still got a child in that belly of yours!”
Auntie Liu was terrified watching Lin Qingyue practically run with that huge pregnant belly.
That belly was so big—she was due next month! Could she please be a little more careful?
With a bang, Lin Qingyue kicked the door wide open, and immediately a wail erupted—the child inside had been scared into crying.
“Lin Qingyue, are you out of your mind?” Gu Niancheng stormed out of the inner room, furious, a cloth diaper still in his hand.
Lin Qingyue’s eyes were bloodshot as she raised her hand and pointed at him. “Gu Niancheng, what exactly are you doing?”
That diaper—she had torn up her own clothes to cut and sew it herself.
She had chosen the softest pure cotton fabric, all so the baby would be comfortable lying on it.
Now her own daughter hadn’t even gotten to enjoy it, and it was being wasted on someone else.
“You… Lin Qingyue, you caused Hongyan’s difficult labor! The child is weak, and Hongyan’s body has suffered severe damage too. I brought her and the child here to take care of them to atone for YOUR sins!”
“You knew full well Hongyan needed to go to the hospital for her difficult labor, yet you still took the donkey cart! Lin Qingyue, how can you be so vicious?”
Gu Niancheng’s face darkened as he accused her, speaking with complete self-righteousness.
“Gu Niancheng, this is OUR new house, MY heated bed! You brought a woman who just gave birth into MY bed, and you think you’re in the right?”
Lin Qingyue’s voice trembled. None of this had happened in her past life.
But Gu Niancheng’s favoritism had always been obvious. What a pity that in her past life, she had been blind and couldn’t see it.
“I told you, YOU caused Hongyan’s child to be weak! I’m only doing this to atone for your sins—”
Smack!
Lin Qingyue slapped him across the face, hard enough to send his head snapping to the side.
She had wanted to do this for a long time.
“You… Lin Qingyue, you actually dared to hit me?”
“Hitting you is getting off easy. Ha! Atoning for my sins? I’ll go out right now and ask the Village Chief to judge this matter—let’s see whether it was really me who caused your little widow’s difficult labor!”
Lin Qingyue turned and ran. Gu Niancheng’s face changed instantly.
He had brought Yao Hongyan into his home to live—there was no proper justification for it, and people in the village had long been gossiping.
What he had told the villagers was that it was Lin Qingyue’s idea!
If he let Lin Qingyue go out there and start spouting nonsense now, where would he and the Gu family put their faces?
Put nicely, he was being kind-hearted. Put bluntly, he was a married man carrying on with another woman!
If word of this spread to town, he could be investigated—he might even end up in jail!
Terrified, Gu Niancheng scrambled to chase after her. As he passed Auntie Liu, he suddenly tripped and went sprawling face-first onto the ground!
“Hiss…”
That fall hurt quite a bit. Gu Niancheng grimaced in pain, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
“Auntie Liu, why did you—”
“Oh dear, I’d better go keep an eye on Sister Qingyue. Big belly and no one to care for her—ah, truly pitiful.”
By the time he was delayed, Lin Qingyue had already reached the street.
She ran while crying, shouting at the top of her lungs that life was no longer worth living—that her own husband had brought his little widow into their home and onto their very bed.
At this hour, work had already ended for the day, and the adults and children were all at home eating their meals.
When they heard the wailing and commotion out on the street—and given that there was rarely any gossip or excitement to be had in the countryside—the villagers abandoned their meals without a second thought and rushed out one after another to see what was going on.
By the time Lin Qingyue reached the Village Chief’s house, a dense crowd of nearly half the village had gathered behind her.
Of course, Gu Niancheng’s parents were among them too!
When the two of them first heard that it was their own daughter-in-law causing trouble, they hadn’t believed it.
Father Gu was somewhat uneasy: “I said we shouldn’t have brought her into the house. See, that girl Qingyue is bound to make a scene.”
Mother Gu, however, let out a disdainful snort. “A little tramp with no father to love her and no mother to care for her—her heart and eyes are filled with nothing but our son. All he has to do is give her a kind look and she’ll do as he says. What are you afraid of?”
Though Mother Gu said this, she was secretly worried as well.
What she hadn’t expected was for Lin Qingyue to make such a huge spectacle of it—it left her utterly stunned.
“This… this damned girl! Is she trying to make it impossible for us to show our faces in this village?”
Mother Gu hurried forward on her bound feet, trying to squeeze through the crowd, but everyone wanted to watch the show, and at the very front, Auntie Liu was giving a vivid, animated account of events—no one was willing to give way!
“If you ask me, that Gu Niancheng really isn’t much of a man. His wife is due to give birth next month, and yet he’s carrying on with that Young Widow, all shady and unclear.”
“Running over to her house every day is bad enough, but when the Young Widow went into labor, she called on him for help, and after she came back from confinement, she had him wait on her hand and foot. If you tell me there’s nothing going on between them, would any of you believe it?”
“The one who deserves the most pity is his wife—having a husband is worse than having none at all!”
Auntie Liu spoke with spittle flying, and the villagers listened with great relish. When the old Village Chief came out and saw the dense crowd outside, even he felt his scalp tingle.
The courtyard walls in the countryside were only about as tall as a person and not very soundproof, so he’d already heard most of what was said from inside his home. Yesterday, he had tactfully advised Gu Niancheng, but Gu Niancheng had insisted it was Lin Qingyue’s own idea!
And now today, the wife had come to raise a ruckus.
“Village Chief, you must see justice done for me.” Lin Qingyue, seeing the Village Chief come out, bent her knees as if to kneel down!
Lin Qingyue was a pregnant woman about to give birth—how could he dare let her kneel? He hurried forward and grabbed her arm to support her!
Auntie Liu also came over and firmly held Lin Qingyue up, encouraging her:
“Sister Qingyue, the Village Chief will surely see justice done for you.”
“Whatever grievances you have, just speak up boldly!”
Lin Qingyue raised her sleeve to wipe the tears from her face, but no matter how she wiped, they wouldn’t stop!
“Village Chief, yesterday my stomach hurt—I was having trouble with the pregnancy—but my husband was off taking care of Yao Hongyan…”
As she spoke, she made sure to add a few sobs, making her look even more pitiful!
“Auntie Liu was afraid something might happen to me, so she accompanied me to borrow the village’s donkey cart and took me to town for a check-up. But when I came back today, I ran into my sister-in-law at the village entrance, and she pointed at my nose and cursed me, saying I’d harmed her ‘Hongyan sister.'”
“She even tried to hit me. If Auntie Liu hadn’t happened to pass by and stopped her, I might already be dead—two lives lost at my sister-in-law’s hands.”
“You’re lying… I never…”
Gu Yunyun had just caught up and heard Lin Qingyue speaking ill of her. Standing at the very back of the crowd, she could only jump up and down to refute the accusations—unfortunately, Lin Qingyue never gave her the chance to finish.
“I finally managed to escape back home, only to find that the diapers I had prepared for my daughter had all been used! My husband brought Yao Hongyan home to take care of her, settling her on the very kang where we were married, using the diapers and clothes I had prepared for my child, all while claiming it was to atone for my sins.”
“Village Chief, I just want to ask—does every use of the village’s donkey cart have to be reported to my husband or Yao Hongyan? Just because I used the donkey cart after my pregnancy was threatened, am I now responsible for her difficult labor?”
Lin Qingyue poured out her grievances through tears, her eyes blurred with weeping. She was already frail and thin, with only her belly protruding high, making her look even more pitiful at that moment.
And her words just now had stunned the villagers into silence, leaving them utterly speechless.