“It hurts… Gu Niancheng, you’re squeezing my hand too hard. You’re the one who manages all the money, I really don’t know—”
“You—” Gu Niancheng glared at Lin Qingyue with red-rimmed eyes. After confirming she wouldn’t dare lie, he flung her hand away and ran out without looking back.
Lin Qingyue barely managed to lean against the kitchen wall, both hands cradling her belly:
“Ah, my stomach hurts…”
The women in the kitchen hurried out. Auntie Liu looked at Lin Qingyue’s pale, pinched face, then thought about Gu Niancheng’s attitude just now, and suddenly felt a bit of pity for this woman.
“Niancheng’s wife, are you alright?”
She didn’t even notice that her voice was much gentler than usual.
“Auntie Liu, my stomach hurts so much. Could you help me call for an ox cart? I want to go to the hospital…”
Hearing the word “hospital,” Gu Yunyun flew into a rage:
“Isn’t it just a pregnancy? Like nobody’s ever been pregnant before. Why go to the hospital? You’re trying to spend my family’s money again!”
Lin Qingyue’s aggrieved eyes grew even redder:
“I—Yunyun, my grandmother just sent me ten yuan, and from selling herbs last time, I still have over twenty yuan. Even if I spend it, it’s all money I earned myself.”
“Earned yourself? Lin Qingyue, how can you be so shameless? You’re married to my brother now—money you earn is Gu family money. How dare you have the nerve to call it yours?”
“Hmph, stingy and petty. Not like my sister Hongyan—she never schemes and calculates like you do.”
Hearing this, Lin Qingyue was nearly choked with tears of anger:
“Your sister Hongyan is generous? Isn’t that just your brother being generous with my money and my things?”
“Who earned the Gongfen in this family? Who earned the money? You and your brother don’t even manage five Gongfen a day—where would the money come from?”
“You—” Gu Yunyun’s face flushed red.
“Yunyun, your sister-in-law is carrying your little nephew in her belly. It’s only right that she goes to town to get checked up if she’s unwell.”
Auntie Liu had originally come to watch the drama, but even she couldn’t listen any longer.
She’d always thought Gu Niancheng was muddle-headed and couldn’t think straight, but now she saw—the whole Gu family was the same, not a single normal one among them.
“It’s not a little nephew! My mother had someone look at her—she’s carrying a money-losing girl.”
Gu Yunyun muttered discontentedly: “Just a worthless thing. No need for a hospital.”
Smack!
Enraged, Lin Qingyue stepped forward and slapped Gu Yunyun across the face.
“You—Lin Qingyue, you bitch! How dare you hit me?!”
Gu Yunyun never expected Lin Qingyue would dare strike her! This woman had gone completely mad!!
“Girl? Worthless thing? We don’t even know yet whether I’m carrying a boy or a girl. But even if it really is a girl, as her aunt, you have no right to say such things about her.”
“You call her a worthless thing—then what are you? Aren’t you a worthless thing too? And all of us here are women—are we all worthless things?”
When Lin Qingyue argued with Gu Yunyun, the women in the yard were just watching the excitement, unaffected and uninvolved.
But Lin Qingyue’s last words dragged them all into it.
They might want sons, but being called worthless things themselves—that was absolutely unacceptable.
Feeling the displeased gazes of the crowd, Gu Yunyun shrank back in fear:
“I was talking about the one in your belly, not—”
Smack!
Another slap: “You can’t say that about her either.”
“Even the Chairman has said that women hold up half the sky, yet you look down on girls. Gu Yunyun, how about we go to town and ask the Women’s Director whether girls are really a losing bargain?”
“You—” Gu Yunyun didn’t dare go to town. Covering her slapped-red face, she turned and ran.
As she was about to rush out the gate, she nearly collided with a figure.
“What little tramp is this, rushing off to be reborn?”
The voice was full of vigor, and the speaker shoved her viciously.
Gu Yunyun had been running outward, her footing unsteady. Suddenly pushed, she stumbled back several steps and landed hard on her rear!
“Ah—”
Her face still stinging hotly, now her butt and hands hurt too.
“Lin Qingyue, do you not watch where you’re going? Carrying a child and still so reckless—what if you hurt my grandson?”
The newcomer scolded harshly, spittle flying everywhere.
Everyone in the yard was stunned.
Lin Qingyue pointed at her own nose, then looked at the two people at the door.
Auntie Liu and the others exchanged startled glances. They’d heard that Old Madam Gu’s eyesight was poor, but…
She couldn’t even tell her own daughter from her daughter-in-law. Her eyesight was truly beyond hopeless.
“Mother…”
Gu Yunyun cried out in grievance, refusing to get up from the ground.
Mother Gu??
Only then did she look down and see that the person on the ground was her precious daughter. Her face changed:
“Yunyun, it’s you?”
“Mother, you didn’t think I was the one you bumped into, did you?”
Lin Qingyue asked, her voice choked with tears. “You charged at me so hard just now—could it be you don’t want the child in my belly?”
Mother Gu’s face shifted dramatically. She turned to look at Lin Qingyue, standing unharmed not far away, and inwardly lamented the missed opportunity.
Why hadn’t it been that little tramp she’d bumped into?
She’d thought her son’s household had only Lin Qingyue in it—she hadn’t expected her daughter to be there too.
But… thinking of her son’s words, her eyes darted around slyly, and she forced a smile that wrinkled her face like a chrysanthemum:
“Yueyue, you nearly scared me to death just now! Thank goodness it wasn’t you!”
Saying this, Mother Gu ignored her daughter still sprawled on the ground and hurried over on her tiny three-inch feet. Just as she was about to reach Lin Qingyue, she suddenly stumbled and lunged straight at her.
Lin Qingyue’s eyes turned cold. Here it comes again.
In her past life, it had been the same. Gu Niancheng had pushed her to the ground, and though it had shaken her pregnancy, it hadn’t been enough to trigger premature labor. After Gu Niancheng took all the money from the house and left, her mother-in-law had come to help her up—but then “accidentally” fell, and conveniently shoved her into the table, her lower back slamming hard against its edge.
The pain had nearly made her pass out.
That impact had caused her premature labor, making her give birth on the same day as the Young Widow.
But the midwife, the money, and the village’s only ox cart had all been taken to town by Gu Niancheng. She’d had no choice but to endure the birth at home!
Now, her sister-in-law bringing people over was a new variable, but her ruthless mother-in-law’s desire to make her deliver early remained unchanged.
Even a tiger won’t eat its own cubs, yet this mother-in-law and Gu Niancheng, for the sake of the Young Widow’s child, were truly worse than beasts!
With that thought, as Mother Gu was about to crash into her, Lin Qingyue’s legs suddenly gave way, and she fell directly toward Auntie Liu beside her.
Auntie Liu instinctively stepped back but still caught Lin Qingyue.
“Ouch—”
To knock out the child in Lin Qingyue’s belly, Mother Gu had put all her strength into it.
But she didn’t hit anyone—her body couldn’t stop in time, and with a thud, she fell flat on her face.
When she lifted her head, her nose was broken, her face smeared with blood.
“My waist…”
Mother Gu tried to get up, struggling several times without success.
She let out pitiful cries of “ouch, ouch.”
The onlookers glanced at Mother Gu, then at Gu Yunyun not far away.
Mm, good—like mother, like daughter. Both were lying on the ground.
In the end, it was Gu Yunyun who crawled to her feet, glaring viciously at Lin Qingyue:
“Lin Qingyue, didn’t you see Mom fall? Don’t you know to help her up?”
Lin Qingyue innocently cradled her belly and let out a long, leisurely sigh:
“Yunyun, I want to, but look at how big my belly is—I really can’t bend down.”
“Also, no matter what, I’m your sister-in-law. You call me by my full name left and right. At home, that’s one thing—after all, you’re still a child, and I as your sister-in-law won’t quibble with you. But out here, people might think you have no manners.”
“Look, you’re seventeen now, about to be matched with a family. If you keep being so disrespectful and calling me by name, aren’t you afraid word will get out and you won’t find a good match?”