Not long after the talisman water was fed to him, Old Man Jiang, who had been breathing faintly like a thread, suddenly showed obvious movement in his chest.
He even started coughing.
Zhao Jianhua and Old Lady Xu, standing nearby, couldn’t be described as merely surprised.
They were dumbfounded, frozen like wooden chickens.
They stared fixedly at Old Man Jiang, then shifted their gaze from him to Jiang Xu.
“Comrade, this…”
Old Lady Xu had just opened her mouth when Jiang Nan’s furious voice cut in, “You woman, coming into my home playing tricks with ghosts and gods!”
“What are you trying to do to my grandparents? Get out of my house right now!”
As soon as Jiang Nan finished speaking, he charged in from outside holding a brick, poised to smash someone.
“Jiang Nan.”
Gu Hanzheng reached out a hand, a chill in his eyes.
“Let’s talk this through properly.”
Jiang Nan pointed at Jiang Xu. ”Hanzheng-ge, you’re taking this woman’s side too?”
“Has she bewitched you or something?”
Gu Hanzheng frowned.
Zhao Jianhua also urged Jiang Nan to calm down.
No matter who Jiang Xu was, he couldn’t go straight for the brick.
Fighting doesn’t solve problems.
“Fighting doesn’t solve problems?”
Jiang Xu turned her head curiously to look at Zhao Jianhua. “But my master once said, if reasoning fails, one can also convince people through martial skill.”
Could her master have been wrong?
Jiang Xu thought for a moment, then stood up and walked over to Gu Hanzheng’s side.
Jiang Nan opened his mouth, only to discover that his body had been frozen in place yet again.
His eyes widened as he glared at Jiang Xu. “You rotten woman, what did you do to me this time?”
“If you’ve got the guts, let me go—let’s go one-on-one!”
Before Jiang Xu could speak, Gu Hanzheng instinctively explained, “Comrade Jiang, don’t lower yourself to Jiang Nan’s level. He’s just a child.”
Jiang Xu turned to look at Gu Hanzheng. “So you also think that when children misbehave, they should be spanked, right?”
Gu Hanzheng!!
Did he say that?
As it turned out, whether he said it or not didn’t seem to matter.
Because after Jiang Xu finished speaking, without waiting for Gu Hanzheng’s answer, she moved on to her next step.
She reached out and took the four-or-five-pound mud brick from Jiang Nan’s hand.
Weighing it in her palm, she wrinkled her nose. “This thing wouldn’t even hurt anyone!”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she applied gentle force with both hands, and the mud brick in her hands snapped clean in two.
Jiang Nan’s jaw dropped wide enough to fit a duck egg.
Even Gu Hanzheng hissed in a breath.
What strength.
Just as they thought this was the limit of Jiang Xu’s power, she closed her hand around one half of the brick.
Holding it up in front of Jiang Nan, slowly, bit by bit, she crushed the brick into dust.
The pulverized earth sprinkled down from Jiang Xu’s fingers.
Along with the brick, Jiang Nan’s worldview shattered.
And so did Gu Hanzheng’s belief that spirits and immortals weren’t allowed to exist after the founding of the nation…
That strength was too, too, too terrifying.
Zhao Jianhua and Old Lady Xu, behind them, had no idea what was happening over here. Just as the two of them were about to ask, Old Man Jiang, whom Zhao Jianhua was supporting, fluttered his eyelids and slowly opened his eyes.
“Old man, you’re awake!”
Old Lady Xu was overjoyed.
Zhao Jianhua was delighted too. “Uncle Jiang, you’re finally awake.”
Jiang Nan, scared stiff, wanted to move but couldn’t.
Gu Hanzheng urged Jiang Xu, “Comrade Jiang, shouldn’t we check on Grandpa Jiang first?”
Jiang Xu turned her head and glanced at Old Man Jiang on the narrow wooden bed.
She frowned and said, “It’s just disciplining a disobedient child. It won’t take much time.”
After the beating, there would still be time to watch Gou Wazi.
Just as Gu Hanzheng realized something was off, Jiang Xu had already made her move.
Somehow, she had gotten hold of a thin, supple rattan switch.
She raised her hand, and the switch came down with a sharp crack on Jiang Nan’s backside.
Jiang Nan leaped up instantly!
“Ah! You stinky woman—you, you actually dare to hit me! I’ll kill you!”
Jiang Nan dodged while cursing up a storm.
Jiang Xu wasn’t the least bit annoyed.
The switch in her hand moved like a nimble snake. No matter how Jiang Nan jumped or dodged, it landed squarely on his backside every time.
Jiang Nan was both humiliated and furious!
In seventeen years of life, this was the first time he’d been spanked by a bad woman his own age who had appeared out of nowhere!!
He would never be able to show his face again.
The seat of Jiang Nan’s pants was already torn, and after Jiang Xu’s few strokes with the switch, his pants were completely ruined.
Revealing the long underwear beneath, which had two holes in it as well!
His two butt cheeks burned hot and stung cold.
Jiang Nan hopped around, clutching his backside with both hands as he bolted outside in a panic.
“Just you wait, you stinky woman! I’m not done with you!”
Even in this state, he hadn’t forgotten to throw out threats.
Jiang Xu glanced at Jiang Nan as he rushed out the door, put away the switch, and rubbed her wrist.
“It’s been so long since I last hit someone. My skills have gotten rusty.”
Beside her, Gu Hanzheng’s thin lips twitched.
He was trying hard to control himself.
He just failed to control it.
In the end, curiosity got the better of him, and he asked what Jiang Xu’s skills would look like if they weren’t rusty.
Jiang Xu thought for a moment, then tilted her head to look at him. “Want to try?”
“You’re not one of our Old Jiang family’s brats, but I can still grant you the wish of getting a beating.”
The corners of Gu Hanzheng’s mouth twitched violently, and it took him a long while to squeeze out a sentence.
“You’re really too kind.”
Jiang Xu waved her hand carelessly. “I don’t say yes to just anyone.”
She hardly deserved to be called a good person.
Gu Hanzheng…
So was he actually supposed to thank her? For taking the time to demonstrate how to spank a kid?
Pfft—he wasn’t a kid. He was a twenty-six-year-old man.
Gu Hanzheng did not agree to let Jiang Xu switch him.
Jiang Xu, clearly, had more important things to attend to and no time for demonstrations for the moment.
She walked over to the wooden bed, looked at the still-weak Old Man Jiang, and spoke in a displeased tone.
“Gou Wazi.”
“Why have you let your life come to this?”
Hearing that familiar form of address, Old Man Jiang lifted his head in astonishment, supported by his wife.
The moment he got a clear look at Jiang Xu’s face, he nearly collapsed to his knees with a thud.
“Great-Aunt… Great-Aunt, have you come to take me away?”
Zhao Jianhua??
So the young girl really was the Old Jiang family’s ancestor?
Gu Hanzheng…
He stepped forward and gently tugged at Zhao Jianhua’s sleeve, signaling with his eyes that they should leave first.
After the two quietly left the room, only Jiang Xu, Old Man Jiang, and Old Lady Xu remained in the low, humble house.
Old Man Jiang clutched the hem of Jiang Xu’s clothing, weeping with snot and tears.
He rambled on about his life—how he had lived, what he had done—and said that now that he was about to go down to the underworld, the only things he couldn’t let go of were his wife, who had followed him down to the countryside, and his grandson.
“Great-Aunt, Great-Aunt, your spirit is in heaven—can you not bless Yaya and Nan? Let them live on in peace?”
Even now, Old Man Jiang still believed she was a hallucination he was seeing before death.
Old Lady Xu kept wiping her tears at the side.
She kept urging Old Man Jiang not to get worked up, telling him nothing would happen to him.
“Yaya, I can’t stop worrying about you!”
Old Man Jiang held Old Lady Xu’s hand, weeping bitterly.
“Ever since we were kids, when you discovered I was stealing your candy but didn’t expose me, I fell in love with you. I secretly swore to protect you for the rest of my life!”
“But now I’ve broken my promise—I have to go on ahead of you…”
Old Man Jiang’s tears came pattering down.
But Old Lady Xu sensed something off. “Wait a moment—when did you ever steal my candy as a kid?”