“You little brat, how dare you snatch my things! Let go right now, or I’ll give you a good thrashing today!”
Everything hurt… Jiang Xia frowned, resisting the intense pain as she slowly opened her eyes.
What met her sight was a dilapidated roof. The sound of howling wind reached her ears, accompanied by a noisy commotion.
“No—Great-grandma, I beg of you! This is the last half-bag of rice in our house. If you take it, we’ll starve to death…”
Curses, tender pleas for mercy, and the crying of children were all jumbled together. The noise made Jiang Xia’s head throb.
She fumbled her way off the earthen kang bed. Spotting a fire poker as thick as a wrist behind the door, she picked it up and walked outside.
In the small courtyard, three little “beans” in tattered clothes stood there; the smallest one was wailing loudly.
Opposite them, the fleshy-faced Wang Shi was gripping one end of a rice bag, her expression vicious. “You little brats, I’m your great-grandmother! Don’t you know what it means to respect your elders? Let go of your filthy paws this instant!”
Seeing this, Jiang Xia’s brows furrowed. “What kind of elder are you supposed to be?”
As she spoke, she pulled the three little ones behind her, acting like a protective mother hen.
the smallest one stopped crying and looked at the two children beside him. “She… she’s alive?”
The slightly older boy quickly covered his mouth and shook his head at him.
Jiang Xia’s sudden appearance truly startled everyone in the yard.
Wang Shi frowned and looked up at her, shock appearing in her cloudy eyes. “You, you, you… aren’t you dead?”
Jiang Xia snorted coldly. “Pah! How could I die before you do?!”
With that, she stepped forward, snatched the rice bag away, and dropped it at her feet. “This is my house. You’re not welcome here. Now, beat it!”
Having the rice bag snatched away just as she had it in her grasp, Wang Shi turned pale with rage. She bellowed, “You shameless hussy! To curse your own grandmother in broad daylight! Everyone, come and look! This old woman is being bullied like this at my age…”
As Wang Shi spoke, she plopped herself onto the ground and began rolling around, throwing a tantrum.
Watching the old woman act like a rascal, the hand Jiang Xia used to grip the fire poker began to creak.
She had received the original owner’s memories and knew that the old woman before her was her grandmother—but she was a total old witch.
In the past, she had tried to sell Jiang Xia to a human trafficker to get money for her grandson’s wedding. Since then, she frequently came to sponge off her, pilfering a bag of rice one day and a basket of vegetables the next.
Jiang Xia gripped the fire poker and pointed it directly at Wang Shi. “Try wailing one more time. Believe me, I’ll beat you!”
Wang Shi froze. Seeing Jiang Xia’s fierce demeanor, she felt a twinge of genuine fear.
This granddaughter, who hadn’t been home for five years, had returned with four young sons. She occupied her family’s house and clearly had money in her pockets, yet she didn’t know how to show filial respect.
Usually, the small things she managed to pilfer weren’t even enough to fill the gaps between her teeth. Today, hearing that the girl had fallen off a cliff and was unconscious—likely dead—she figured she couldn’t let herself lose out. She had to hurry over and take whatever she could before anyone else knew.
She hadn’t expected the girl to actually wake up.
By now, it was evening. Many villagers were returning from the fields, and hearing the commotion, they began to gather around.
Seeing the crowd grow, Wang Shi simply began to howl louder. “There’s no justice! Everyone, look! My granddaughter wants to beat me to death with a stick!”
“This old woman can’t go on living…”
Wang Shi cried out to the heavens, attracting many onlookers.
Outside the fence, a middle-aged man with a hoe over his shoulder couldn’t help but speak up. “Jiang Xia, aren’t you being too much? What kind of granddaughter raises a hand against her grandmother? Aren’t you afraid of shortening your life?”
Hearing this, Jiang Xia snorted. “Afraid of shortening my life? I’ve already crawled back from the piles of the dead. Do you think I’m afraid of that?”
She pointed at the half-bag of rice on the ground and said loudly, “She might be my grandmother, but while I was unconscious after falling off a cliff, she sneakily brought her eldest grandson here to steal our last half-bag of rice. Is this a biological grandmother? She’s more like an enemy!”
Jiang Xia’s words silenced the onlookers.
The middle-aged man who had spoken first also shut his mouth.
From the side, a woman in a coarse linen skirt scoffed, “Years ago, to get her grandson a wife, Old Auntie Jiang was going to sell her fifteen-year-old granddaughter to a trafficker to be a concubine for a fifty-year-old man. Now, she’s only ‘asking’ for half a bag of brown rice—she’s being quite ‘generous’ indeed.”
Hearing this, everyone remembered the events of five years ago. Their gazes turned meaningful as they looked at Wang Shi sitting on the ground.
Wang Shi was stunned, then she quickly scrambled up from the ground and shouted, “Zhang Donglian, what business is this of yours? Why are you sticking your nose in?”
The woman who was scolded, Zhang Donglian, smiled. “Pah! I have no desire to interfere in the Jiang family’s business. I just can’t stand seeing you use your age to bully a widow and her orphans.”
Hearing this, Jiang Xia turned to look at the woman.
She knew that the original owner didn’t have many close friends, but this neighbor had always been good to her.
Receiving Jiang Xia’s grateful gaze, Zhang Donglian simply hummed and turned to leave.
This reaction left Jiang Xia a bit confused.
Just then, a deep middle-aged voice rang out. “Old Auntie Jiang, Jiang Xia is already struggling to raise four children alone. Why must you do this and drive her to a dead end?”
The speaker was the village chief. Jiang Xia glanced at him, and memories quickly surfaced. This man was Wu Ruixiang; he was a decent man. During the six months since she had returned with the four children, she had relied heavily on his help.
Seeing the village chief arrive, Wang Shi didn’t dare act like a rascal anymore. She stood up and said, “Chief, you’ve come at the right time. Judge this for me!”
“This house belongs to my family! This shameless granddaughter ran away in the middle of the night back then, making me lose the two taels of silver deposit to the trafficker. Now, she’s come back unmarried with four bastards in tow, occupying my house for free. I won’t stand for it!”