After finishing her meal, she returned to her own room.
Zhou Zhigang also offered Zhao Meifang a word of caution. “Since she’s already willing to marry, don’t push her too hard.”
Unhappy as she was, Zhao Meifang had no choice but to agree.
Back in her room, Tang Xin’er pondered for a long time. The wedding was fast approaching, and before she was married off, she had to get her hands on the Zhou family’s assets as well as the bride price and three-piece gold set sent over by the Qin family.
With her spatial dimension, stashing away these items wouldn’t be an issue at all.
Why not find a time to slip them a heavy dose of sleeping pills so they would all fall soundly asleep? That way, it would be much easier for her to move around and carry out her plans.
Having figured this out, Tang Xin’er leaned back against the bed. When evening rolled around, she slipped into the space again, drank plenty of spiritual spring water, and finally came out to go to sleep.
Her body was severely overdrawn, and the moment she hit the mattress, she drifted off.
The next morning, Tang Xin’er woke up, lingered in bed for a bit, and drank some more spring water. Just as she was about to pull open her door and step outside, she heard murmuring voices from the hallway.
“Yaozu, hurry up and drink this chicken soup and eat the leg. Otherwise, that deadbeat girl will gulp it all down at noon again, and there won’t be any left for you!” Zhao Meifang said, setting a steaming bowl of chicken soup onto the table.
Zhou Yaozu glanced at it and was just about to dig in when Tang Xin’er stepped out of her room.
Before the two of them could even register her presence, she strode briskly right up to the bowl of soup. “I was wondering why there was only one chicken leg last night! Turns out you hid it, Mom!”
“I have to hand it to you, Mom, you really are a master strategist—you just knew I’d want some tonight, didn’t you?” Tang Xin’er flashed a bright smile as she spoke.
Zhao Meifang and Zhou Yaozu looked at her, completely baffled.
Knowing that they had hidden the chicken leg, shouldn’t she be furious? Had her brain snapped or something? How could she possibly still be smiling?
Yet the next second, before either of them could react, Tang Xin’er picked up the bowl of chicken soup and took a massive gulp.
Then she fished out the chicken leg with her bare fingers, devoured it in three quick bites right in front of them, and tossed the bare bone casually back into the bowl. “Thanks, Mom! That was delicious!”
With that task completed, Tang Xin’er turned on her heel and headed straight to the bathroom to wash her face.
The two of them sitting on the sofa were left completely dumbfounded. By the time they snapped back to reality, the bowl was completely empty, with nothing left inside except a single chicken bone.
“Tang Xin’er, are you a starving ghost reincarnated?!”
“You snatched my chicken leg yesterday afternoon, and now you’ve gone and eaten this morning’s too…”
Outside the door, a string of curses echoed one after another, accompanied by Zhao Meifang’s angry rambling, but Tang Xin’er couldn’t care less.
Even though she had consumed a good amount of spiritual spring water, her body was deeply depleted and couldn’t recover overnight. Since there was chicken soup around, why shouldn’t she drink it?
Anyway, until the day she was married off, none of them dared to actually lay a finger on her!
The yelling outside continued for a while. Tang Xin’er washed her face, went back to lie down for a bit, and by the time she got up again, the house was completely empty.
She quickly slipped into the space, found some items she could use to lightly contour her face, disguised herself thoroughly, and headed out.
The house was empty because Zhou Yaozu had gone to see his fiancée, while both Zhou Zhigang and Zhao Meifang were out at work. Zhou Youyou was gone too.
She could use this exact window of opportunity to head somewhere a bit further away and buy sleeping pills.
Come to think of it, while the original owner had lived a somewhat tragic life, she wasn’t completely brainless—she had managed to stash a small amount of private savings hidden right beneath her bed. Otherwise, Tang Xin’er would have rolled her eyes in despair at not even having the cash to buy sleeping pills!
After making a detour around town, Tang Xin’er visited a pharmacy quite a distance away. To ensure she got an adequate dosage, she bought a small batch at one shop, then walked over to another until she had accumulated enough quantity. Only then did she hurry back home at top speed and slip straight into her room.
The timing worked out perfectly. She had just finished washing her face and lain down for a short while when Zhao Meifang and the others came home from work.
Upon stepping inside and seeing the place littered with a mess, with the morning trash still sitting unemptied and the living room unswiped, Zhao Meifang’s fury flared up instantly.
She marched straight over and shoved open Tang Xin’er’s bedroom door. “What on earth do you do all day around here? You can’t even be bothered to sweep the floor!”
“Resting and recovering, of course,” Tang Xin’er replied from the bed, not even lifting her head. “What else did you expect me to be doing?”
Zhao Meifang felt a throbbing headache coming on from sheer anger as she slammed the door shut. “Get your lazy behind out here right now and help with dinner, or I swear, even if you were the Queen Mother of the West herself, I’m going to beat you today!”
She had never treated Tang Xin’er particularly well to begin with. Having held her tongue all day long, and with Zhou Zhigang not yet home, she had reached the absolute limit of her patience.
Even if the girl was getting married off, she was still her daughter. Other people couldn’t criticize her, but surely she had the right to yell at her own child, right?
Lying on her bed, Tang Xin’er once again shook her head in pity for the original owner. What kind of wretched family had she ended up tied to? If she hadn’t transmigrated, she really should have run away long before now.
Still, this fit of rage worked out in her favor by creating the perfect opportunity for her plan.
Tang Xin’er finally dragged herself up at a leisurely pace, slipped the sleeping pills into her pocket, and prepared to quietly mix them into the food later on.
Once that was done, she sauntered out of the room, faking a weak and exhausted expression. “My body still feels awful, I’m just too tired… Should I just…”
Zhao Meifang marched over, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her straight into the kitchen. “Stop chattering away with me! You’re helping with dinner this afternoon, and you’ll do whatever I tell you to do, or else you don’t eat a single bite!”
Tang Xin’er shook her off with a flick of her wrist. “Fine, I’ll cook!”
That response finally satisfied Zhao Meifang, who muttered under her breath, “As if you could fly out of the palm of my hand!”
Tang Xin’er scoffed inwardly. Today is the last day you get to act like this; otherwise, I wouldn’t waste my breath humoring this so-called birth mother of mine.
She had heard before that some people were simply not fit to be parents, and though she hadn’t quite understood the sentiment back then, she now had a painfully clear understanding of what it meant.
People like Zhao Meifang were entirely unworthy.
She was going to cut ties with this family completely.
Intent on putting Tang Xin’er in her place, Zhao Meifang prepped the basic ingredients and dumped almost all the heavy kitchen work entirely onto her.
Tang Xin’er was more than happy to oblige. She casually tossed the dishes into the wok, stirred them a few times, and seamlessly sprinkled the crushed sleeping pills into the food—reserving two separate dishes for herself to eat.
“Dinner’s ready!”
The moment the food came out of the pot, Tang Xin’er called out. The rest of the family acted like a bunch of feudal lords, sitting lazily around the table just waiting to be waited on.
She didn’t care to serve them. Instead, she simply dished herself a bowl of rice, grabbed the two uncontaminated dishes she had set aside, pulled up a chair right at the corner of the table, and started eating by herself without offering a single plate to the others.
Zhou Youyou and the rest were fuming to the point of dizziness, but eventually, Zhou Zhigang gestured for Zhao Meifang to just go ahead and serve the food.
“Xin’er,” Zhou Youyou said, finding it impossible to bite her tongue any longer. Putting on her best “caring older sister” mask, she sighed with a troubled expression, “We’re family, after all. You can’t just treat us with such cold indifference.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tang Xin’er had never been someone to let people walk all over her, even before she transmigrated. Now that she had the spatial dimension backing her up, why would she be afraid of them?
She curved her lips into a cold, mocking smirk. “I’m the one being sold off to marry someone else in your place, and you won’t even let me enjoy a couple of decent days beforehand?”
With that, she shot a freezing glance at Zhao Meifang. “I never got to live a good life following my own biological mother anyway, so what’s wrong with me refusing to cook right now?”
“Is that any way to talk to your mother?!” Zhao Meifang snapped, her face darkening in displeasure. “If I hadn’t married your Zhou uncle, could you have grown up safe and sound? You would have starved to death years ago!”